Who was not taken to the front and why during the Great Patriotic War

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Did you know that during the Great Patriotic War, not all men liable for military service fell under the draft. Moreover, representatives of some peoples were considered unreliable, since they easily became accomplices of the Germans. Who was not called up to the front, even in spite of the plight of the Red Army?

1. Prisoners

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, many people managed to serve a term under the political 58th article of the USSR Criminal Code as enemies of the people. The state considered such citizens unreliable, therefore it was afraid to give them weapons and send them to the rear of the enemy. They also did not call for former prisoners who were imprisoned for serious offenses.

Only in 1943, when the situation at the front intensified even more severely, thieves in law and convicts convicted under articles of small severity began to take to the front.

2. Party elite and bosses

Also, men were not called to the front, whose professionalism was important in the rear, in order to provide the army and civilians with everything they needed. These included representatives of party bodies and senior management officials both in large cities and in the periphery. The heads of enterprises, valuable cadres like scientists and engineers were also left to work in the rear.

In the case when the Germans approached industrial cities, the factories and their directors were first evacuated. If it was not possible to take out the enterprises, the authorities joined the partisans and led the detachments behind enemy lines. Although there were precedents when the former leadership went over to the side of the occupiers.

In the first year, teachers, combine operators and tractor drivers who were harvesting, students who participated in taiga logging were not called to the front either.

3. Artists and ideologues

Maintaining the morale of the military was as important as providing food and weapons. They tried not to call famous artists, composers, painters, writers, poets to the front, although this was not a mandatory rule for all creative personalities.

For example, the artists formed concert brigades that performed in front of the soldiers of the Red Army. Artists, writers and poets participated in the ideological war and with their talent helped to strengthen the belief in victory.

The poem by Konstantin Simonov "Wait for me" became the leitmotif of the war and a real hymn addressed to a loved one. The poet also worked as a war correspondent.

Another example is Arkady Raikin. The famous satirist went to the front line with concert crews. Many representatives of the creative intelligentsia went to fight as volunteers and died. Among them: actors Vladimir Konstantinov, Gulya Koroleva, poets Vsevolod Bagritsky, Boris Bogatkov.

4. Unsuitable for health reasons

Of course, people with physical or psychological disabilities and disabled people were not called to the front. In reality, many of them, capable of holding a rifle, enlisted in the army as volunteers or participated in partisan movements. However, patriotic sentiments were not supported by all Soviet citizens.

The Starostin brothers, famous footballers of "Spartak", became a negative example. In addition to sports, they "became famous" for pro-German agitation and helping men liable for military service to "roll away" from the army for money. For this, in 1943, all four Starostins were convicted and sent to the Gulag, but rehabilitated under Khrushchev.