Categories
Men ordinarily subject to penal military unit service included:
- Those convicted of desertion or cowardice under Order No. 227. While cowardice under fire was punished with instant execution, soldiers or officers in rear areas suspected of having a "reluctance to fight" could (and frequently were) summarily stripped of rank and reassigned to a shtrafbat under Order 227.
- Former Soviet POWs liberated by the Red Army. During the war, some escaped Soviet POWs were sent to penal units under Order 227 retroactively. Stalin made perfectly clear that under 'Not One Step Back', surrender or falling into live captivity (even if wounded) was tantamount to cowardice in the face of the enemy (and, by Stalinist extension, treason). This official attitude did not require ill intent for guilt, as any Soviets who had been under the control of the Germans for even a brief period were now considered "untrustworthy", "ideologically suspect" and "likely to have been influenced" by their contact with the world outside the Soviet Union. Up to 75% died in captivity, and the few who survived were often stripped of their rank and awards and sent directly from the squalid German POW camps to the Russian Gulag prison camps in Siberia, such as Kolyma.
- Soviet Gulag labor camp inmates. Physically capable prisoners could volunteer for shtrafbat service and many were "drafted" directly from the camps. This included the usual Stalinist mix of civilians, bureaucrats and military (as well as both common and political criminals).
Read more about this topic: Shtrafbat
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