Page 208 - The Chief Culprit

Partisans or Saboteurs? y 169

Secret bases for peacetime partisan groups were created in impenetrable forests and islets
amid the swamps. During peacetime, subterranean shelters, hospitals, storages, and workshops
for the production of weapons and ammunition were built. In peacetime, only Belorussian
secret subterranean storages held ammunition, weapons, and supplies for fifty thousand par-
tisans. Secret schools were formed for preparing partisan leaders, organizers, and instructors.
Secret research and development centers worked on creating special means of warfare, arms,
communication channels, and equipment. Partisans were often subjected to training and tests,
with divisions of the NKVD often playing the role of the enemy. In addition, small groups were
prepared for undercover activities. ese groups, in case of aggression, did not retreat to the
forests, but stayed in the cities and towns, with the task of “gaining the trust of the enemy” and
“offering him assistance.”
at sort of work was conducted not only in Belorussia, but also in Ukraine, in the Crimea,
in the Leningrad region, and other areas. e same duties were simultaneously, but totally inde-
pendently from the NKVD, performed by the Soviet Military Intelligence: it set up secret bases,
apartments, and hiding places, and prepared lines of communication for conspirators. Soviet
Military Intelligence had its own secret schools, its own organizers, and its own instructors.
Aside from the NKVD and the military intelligence, the Communist Party prepared some of its
leaders in the western regions of the country for transfer to an underground position in the event
of a territory takeover by the enemy.
e partisan units were formed in the so-called “death zone”—the Soviet security pale,
where during retreat of Soviet troops all bridges should be blown up, tunnels buried, railroads
destroyed, and telephone cables and other communication channels evacuated. e partisans
had to prevent the enemy from restoring the destroyed infrastructure. e partisans were almost
undefeatable—their leaders knew safe passages, which the enemy did not know, through the gi-
ant minefields; in an emergency, the partisans could easily disappear from any pursuers into the
mined forests and swamps, which were impassable to the enemy.
e security pale and partisan groups, ready at any minute to act in a zone of destruction,
were the great defenses of the Soviet Union. However, in the second half of the 1930s, as the
country’s industrial and military might grew, the Soviet Union tended to fight enemies on
their soil rather than protect Soviet land. From that period, defense systems became unneces-
sary. “Whole caches of weaponry, ammunition, [and] explosives, intended for partisan forces
and kept hidden, were liquidated. e network of partisan training schools, along with their
very competent leaders, was eliminated. Partisan battle groups were disbanded. Only the few
partisan leaders who confronted the fascists in Spain kept their places. Among them were A. K.
Sprogis, S. A. Vaupshassov, N. A. Prokopyuk, I. G. Starinov, and others.” 1
On November 30, 1939, the Red Army began the “liberation” of Finland, and hit up
against the same elements of self-defense that had earlier existed in the Soviet Union: a line of
concrete fortifications, a security pale before it, and light squads of partisan fighters within. e
light ski units of Finnish partisans carried out sudden strikes and then immediately disappeared
into the forests. e Red Army suffered tremendous casualties from those strikes, and all its
modern technology was useless in the fight against an enemy that evaded open battle. Perhaps,
having learned a cruel lesson in Finland, Stalin changed his mind and once again created parti-
san formations in the western regions of the Soviet Union? No, he did not.