![]() ![]() 227, each Army should have had 3–5 barrier squads of up to 200 persons each.Ī report to the Commissar General of State Security (NKVD chief) Lavrentiy Beria on October 10, 1941, noted that since the beginning of the war, NKVD anti-retreat troops had detained a total of 657,364 retreating, spies, traitors, instigators and deserting personnel, of which 25,878 were arrested (of which 10,201 were sentenced to death by court martial and the rest were returned to active duty). ![]() ![]() Penal military unit personnel were always rearguarded by NKVD anti-retreat detachments, and not by regular Red Army infantry forces. 227 (Директива Ставки ВГК №227) issued on 28 July 1942, set up penal battalions, anti-retreat detachments were used to prevent withdrawal or desertion by penal units as well. These barrier troops were usually formed from ordinary military units and placed under NKVD command. ![]() Their primary goal was to maintain strict military discipline and to prevent disintegration of the front line by any means. Each Red Army division was to have an anti-retreat detachment equipped with transport totaling one company for each regiment. 1919 (Директива Ставки ВГК №001919) concerning the creation of barrier troops in rifle divisions of the Southwestern Front, to suppress panic retreats. On SeptemJoseph Stalin issued the Stavka Directive No. The first troops of this kind were formed in the Bryansk Front on September 5, 1941. With the continued deterioration of the military situation in the face of the German offensive of 1941, NKVD detachments acquired a new mission: to prevent the unauthorized withdrawal of Red Army forces from the battle line. for the purpose of catching "deserters and suspicious persons". On June 27, 1941, in response to reports of unit disintegration in battle and desertion from the ranks in the Soviet Red Army, the 3rd Department ( military counterintelligence of Soviet Army) of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the Soviet Union (NKO) issued a directive establishing mobile barrier forces composed of NKVD personnel to operate on roads, railways, forests, etc. The concept was re-introduced on a large scale during the Second World War. The barrier troops were also used to enforce Bolshevik control over food supplies in areas controlled by the Red Army, a role which soon earned them the hatred of the Russian civilian population. It is absolutely essential that we have at least an embryonic network of blocking units and that we work out a procedure for bringing them up to strength and deploying them. How do things stand with the blocking units? As far as I am aware they have not been included in our establishment and it appears they have no personnel. In December 1918 Trotsky ordered that detachments of additional barrier troops be raised for attachment to each infantry formation in the Red Army. The first use of the barrier troops by the Red Army occurred in the late summer and fall of 1918 in the Eastern front during the Russian Civil War, when People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs (War Commissar) Leon Trotsky of the Communist Bolshevik government authorized Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the commander of the 1st Army, to station blocking detachments behind unreliable Red Army infantry regiments in the 1st Red Army, with orders to shoot if front-line troops either deserted or retreated without permission. The barrier troops comprised personnel drawn from Cheka punitive detachments or from regular Red Army infantry regiments. In the Red Army of the RSFSR and the Soviet Union the concept of barrier troops first arose in August 1918 with the formation of the заградительные отряды ( zagraditelnye otriady), translated as "blocking troops" or "anti-retreat detachments" ( Russian: заградотряды, заградительные отряды, отряды заграждения). The battalion responded by opening fire on the retreating NRA units, killing several people. On 12 December 1937, the NRA collapsed in the face of an offensive by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), and various units attempted to retreat without orders through the gate. National Revolutionary Army ĭuring the Battle of Nanking of the Second Sino-Japanese War, a battalion in the New 36th Division of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) was stationed at the Yijiang Gate with orders to guard the gate and "let no one through". Barrier troops, blocking units, or anti-retreat forces are military units that are located in the rear or on the front line (behind the main forces) to maintain military discipline, prevent the flight of servicemen from the battlefield, capture spies, saboteurs and deserters, and return troops who flee from the battlefield or lag behind their units.Īccording to research by Jason Lyall, barrier troops are more likely to be used by the militaries of states that discriminate against the ethnic groups that comprise the state's military. ![]()
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