Source: Thirty Years of the Soviet State Calendar
Published: Foreign Languages Press: Moscow, 1947
Transciption/HTML Markup: Mike Bessler for greeklish.org, August 2008
Public Domain: 2008. You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “gammacloud.org” as your source.
IN THE EARLY DAYS of the German fascist invasion of the Soviet Union, guerilla warfare broke out on the territories temporarily occupied by the enemy.
At the call of Joseph Stalin, peace-loving Soviet men and women took up arms and carried into execution the unforgettable words of the Soviet leader: “In occupied regions conditions must be made unbearable for the enemy and all his accomplices. They must be hounded and annihilated at every step, and all their measures frustrated.”
In their attempts to extinguish the fire of the guerilla war the Hitlerites did not hesitate before the most monstrous crimes. The guerillas who fell into their hands were tortured to death. The Nazi butchers wiped hundreds of large villages off the face of the earth because they were suspected of helping the guerillas. Nothing, however, could shake the will of the Soviet people to wage a merciless struggle against the hated enemy. Despite innumerable difficulties and hardships and in defiance of all the enemy’s efforts, the guerilla movement grew and expanded into a powerful force that was a constant menace to the Germans.
Over 200,000 people’s avengers in 2,145 guerilla groups, detachments and formations operated on the occupied territory of the Ukraine as early as the first year of the Patriotic War. In Pskov region a whole territory turned guerilla in August 1941, and, by spring 1942, had grown to include 400 villages. In the rear of the enemy Soviet power was re-established. Columns of carts loaded with food were sent across the frontline to the defenders of besieged Leningrad.
In the steppes of the Ukraine and the forest thickets of Byelorussia, in the vast expanses of the Don and Kuban, in the Bryansk forests, the Baltic republics, the Crimea and Moscow region—wherever the German fascist enslavers appeared they met with the wrath of a “people’s war.” German troop and supply trains were derailed and bridges were blown up.
The sudden and precipitate attacks of the guerilla detachments caused great casualties to the German army and did extensive damage to its materiel. In only two years the guerillas, according to very incomplete figures, killed more than 300,000 invaders, including 30 generals and 6,336 officers. During the same period they derailed no less than 3,000 enemy trains and wrecked 3,263 railroad and highway bridges. The guerillas wrecked more than 1,190 German tanks and armoured cars, 476 planes, 378 guns and 14,645 motor-vehicles and destroyed 895 bases and munition stores. In addition the guerillas captured large quantities of all sorts of German materiel.
The wide scope of guerilla warfare forced the enemy to keep large forces in the rear and withdraw troops from the front. In the Ukraine in 1941 some 50,000 fascist troops were engaged in fighting the guerillas. In 1942, Ukrainian partisans diverted 120,000 German officers and men from the front, while in 1943 this number grew to 424,000.
In the attempt to suppress the guerilla movement the Hitlerites constantly increased their bloody terror. The merciless atrocities of the German fascist invaders, however, only served to fan in the people the sacred flames of hatred for the brutal enemy.
Despite the persecutions, ever greater masses of people joined the guerilla movement.
In the autumn of 1942 Joseph Stalin conferred in the Kremlin with commanders of guerilla detachments and formations. He pointed out concrete ways and means of further extending the guerilla movement, which in combination with the operations of the Soviet Army at the fronts was to aid in the final rout of Hitler’s army. Generalissimo Stalin’s instructions gave a powerful impetus to the further growth of the people’s guerilla warfare in the rear of the enemy. Putting the Stalin plan into practice the guerillas began to launch bold and protracted raids on the occupied territory, destroying enemy garrisons on their way, seizing and destroying German stores, blowing up bridges and cutting communications of the German fascist troops.
The guerillas commanded by Twice Hero of the Soviet Union Sidor Kovpak covered a distance of more than 18,000 kilometres through 20 regions of the Ukraine and Byelorussia and two Polish provinces, all occupied by the Germans. They fought a number of successful battles against the German invaders and diverted considerable forces from the front. More than 20 times the Germans succeeded in surrounding the guerillas, but, brilliantly employing their own special tactics, the guerillas broke through the encirclement where they were least expected and struck ever new blows at the enemy. In the course of the war Sidor Kovpak’s guerillas accounted for 26,185 German officers and men, 89 troop trains,12 planes, 162 tanks and armoured cars, 225 bridges, etc.
Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Naumov’s guerilla formation traversed 14 regions, passed through 2,080 towns and villages and killed 11,600 German officers and men in a raid on enemy lines of communication. Other guerilla detachments met with equal success.
The guerillas were assisted in their tense and bitter struggle by the Soviet government and Joseph Stalin personally. Large quantities of arms, munitions, clothing and equipment were regularly delivered to the detachments by planes. Not infrequently the guerillas attacked the enemy jointly with units of the Soviet Army, acting in accordance with a single plan.
The Soviet guerillas wrote one of the most glorious pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War. Tens of thousands of peaceful Soviet people performed great deeds of courage and self-denial.
The names of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Lisa Chaikina, young guerillas, who died the death of heroines at the hands of a cruel enemy, have been immortalized by their deeds. The Soviet people will never forget the brothers Gennadi and Evgeni Ignatov, who, executing the order of the commander of a guerilla detachment — their father Pyotr Ignatov — perished while blowing up a German troop train.
The entire Soviet people reveres the memory of the guerilla-heroes who laid down their lives that the hated enemy might be destroyed and victory won. Their glory will never fade.
The country has highly appraised the exploits of the people’s avengers. In the Ukraine alone more than 10,000 guerillas were decorated with Orders and more than 20,000 with Medals. The valorous deeds of the guerillas of the Great Patriotic War were a brilliant expression of the intrepid heroic spirit of the Soviet people.