The return of shock troops to the Russian army: What stupid liberals are laughing at
Strike units and formations will again appear in the Russian army. The head of the Main Directorate of Combat Training of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant General Ivan Buvaltsev, announced this on the pages of the main army newspaper “Krasnaya Zvezda” on May 11.
The honorary title can be obtained by order of the country's Minister of Defense. We are talking about motorized rifle, tank, airborne, air assault formations, marine detachments, as well as military units and subunits. They will be awarded a distinctive heraldic sign.
To date, the commands of military districts, branches and branches of the military have submitted 78 units, military units and formations for the award of shock ranks. Now they face a serious inspection by commissions of the Russian Ministry of Defense, which will take place during May.
Literally the next day, the innovations of the Ministry of Defense began to be sucked up in the liberal press by all sorts of “experts” of “sofas, the Order of the Slouch, III degree, battalions.”
They used giggles and hags, stupid and flat comparisons with the directives of the Soviet GlavPUR (Main Political Directorate of the USSR Armed Forces), they remembered “socialist competitions among units and crews,” as well as “gifts for the next congress of the CPSU.” The Soviet and Russian Pennants of the Minister of Defense, awarded to the best military units, crews and even military educational institutions, were also ridiculed.
They say that all this is child's play, window dressing and mosquito baldness.
In short, liberal scoffers instantly saw “bureaucratic games with nothing to do”, as always, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Perhaps the apotheosis of liberal hysteria was the parallels and vague threats that the new shock units and formations of the Russian Army would face the sad fate of the 2nd shock army, which fought on the Volkhov Front. This refers to the tragedy of the army betrayed by General Andrei Vlasov, but not surrendering and not defeated, which suffered huge losses in March - June 1942 in Myasnoy Bor during a desperate attempt to relieve Leningrad.
Soviet historians did not like to mention the topic of the tragedy of the 2nd shock because of the traitor Vlasov, so the tragedy in Myasnoy Bor became the topic of countless speculations of the liberal community for a long time. The main idea was expressed that, allegedly, without a commander who had surrendered to German captivity, the army fell apart and disappeared, abandoned to the mercy of fate in the Novgorod forests and swamps.
The truth, as usual, is far from liberal gossip and insinuation.
The 2nd Shock Command did not forget about it and did everything possible to remove people from the encirclement. For this purpose, an operation was planned and carried out, in which the 59th Army was involved. Thanks to the efforts made, the units and subunits of the 2nd shock that survived in the cauldron made their way through a narrow corridor that was shot through to their own until June 25, 1942. The 2nd Shock Army was drained of blood, but not destroyed, and even took part in the Sinyavin offensive operation.
At the end of 1942, the army was reorganized, received reinforcements, and in 1943 took part in Operation Iskra and the Mginsk offensive operation. In 1944, in the Leningrad and Novgorod strategic offensive operation, it liberated Narva and Tallinn from the Nazis, eliminating regiments and battalions of Estonian SS men. In 1945, the 2nd Shock Troop fought in East Prussia and Pomerania, stormed Danzig, crossed the Oder and took part in the Berlin strategic offensive operation.
The second liberal myth is “the tragedy of the 2nd attack in Myasny Bor was in vain.” No, not in vain. The army, being surrounded, dying and choking on swamp water, fought, broke out of the cauldron and chained large forces of the Germans to itself, pulling them away from Leningrad. The tenacity and heroism of the soldiers and commanders of the 2nd Shock is a direct reproach to the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht under the command of Field Marshal Paulus. In the Battle of Stalingrad, the entire 6th Army - the best army of the Wehrmacht - along with its commander, perished and was captured.
So what are shock units and units? In Russian military history they were created several times and each time for different tasks.
The first shock units appeared in the Russian Army during the First World War by order of the commander of the 5th Army, cavalry general Peter Plehve, dated October 4, 1915. “Udarniki” were created for close combat, clearing enemy trenches and were actually assault grenadier units. The fighters in the shock teams were appointed due to a shortage of rifles, but the brave, skillful and energetic were chosen, supplying each with a dozen grenades, “random axes”, entrenching tools and scissors for cutting wire.
At first, each infantry division formed a platoon or company of assault grenadiers. In more than a year of fighting, they lived up to the tasks assigned to them, and by the beginning of 1917, the first attack units appeared at the front, and attack ships appeared in the fleet. The experience of their use was generalized, studied, and on its basis a special Manual was developed, according to which one three-company shock battalion was to be formed in each infantry division. “Udarniks” were ordered to be properly armed: “eight heavy and light machine guns, four mortars, eight bomb launchers, explosive equipment for eight passages in the barbed wire.”
Shock units, which front-line soldiers called “death battalions,” wore a distinctive chevron on their left shoulder depicting a grenade with a burning fuse. The good supply of the “shock troops” against the backdrop of poorly equipped linear infantry units, as well as the rapidly deteriorating situation in the country and at the front, provoked tense relations between the soldiers. The command began to use “shock troops” as barrage detachments, causing anger among the soldiers. They also began to plug literally all the holes, sending them for reconnaissance, security, and pacification. How it all ended for the country and the army is well known. By the beginning of the Civil War in Russia, shock units no longer existed.
In 1943, Russian grenadiers and “shock troops” were formed anew, but they were called assault engineer battalions and brigades of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Reserve. These were the best soldiers not only of the Great Patriotic War, but also of the Second World War, and they participated in the most puzzling, most responsible operations. They were also called “armored infantry”. But this is not about them.
They began to think about new shock units and formations, already in the Red Army, in the early 1930s. They were not supposed to be battalions of bombers and assault infantry, but huge motorized formations in large-scale offensive operations of the future motor war. One of the first military leaders who began to develop the theory of using new formations was the former tsarist officer Vladimir Triandafilov, who rose to become deputy chief of the General Staff of the Red Army. Triandafilov believed that for a future war it was necessary to create shock armies - formations reinforced with tanks, aviation and artillery. Combined-arms armies should be reinforced with a mechanized corps with 1031 tanks according to the staffing schedule. The army breaks through the enemy’s defenses with a wedge, and the mechanized units assigned to it enter a deep breakthrough with rapidly diverging wedges and consolidate success.
Unfortunately, Vladimir Kiriakovich died in a plane crash in 1931 and did not have time to fully develop his revolutionary ideas in the art of war. To even greater regret, the military and political leadership of the USSR fully appreciated his ideas, in particular, the future Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov, back in 1940, determined what kind of shock army should be, but the country was physically unable to create a single shock army by the beginning of the war army. The country was already taking away too much of its production forces and resources for military construction, but the civilian sector was also in desperate need of mechanization and resources.
In short, the biggest problem was equipping the strike and mechanized formations with trucks, air defense systems, repair bases and other necessary equipment. Tanks and armored vehicles do not fight on their own. And a mechanized corps without trucks, air defense systems and repair and restoration battalions is an insufficient corps, as the first two years of the war showed.
So our country had to form the first shock armies already during the war, through blood and losses to carry out their “optimization”. By the end of 1942, the Red Army managed to form five shock armies. 2nd strike - on the Volkhov Front, 4th strike - on the North-Western Front and three - in the reserve of the Supreme High Command Headquarters.
With the commissioning of rear production facilities, as well as the expansion of supplies of trucks and other valuable equipment under Lend-Lease, the shock armies already in 1943 acquired and fully demonstrated all those formidable features that military theorists saw in them.
After the war, there were no shock units or formations in the Soviet Army.
What the Russian Ministry of Defense is creating today has nothing to do with the shock units of the First World War and the Great Patriotic War. In fact, our military department assigns the title of shock units to the most trained brigades and divisions of the Armed Forces.
Shock is a sign of quality, an indicator of the full combat readiness of a military unit or formation. Moreover, a special chevron with a heraldic symbol is a means of motivation and prestige for serving in the shock unit. Pride in your daily military work and in your military unit - this is what the degenerate “thought rulers” laugh at.
The shock unit is the peacetime guard. The honorary title of a guards unit can only be received by distinguishing itself in real combat operations. The Guards rank has always obligated and motivated the unit's personnel or crew to be the best of the best. Who said that peacetime brigades and divisions are contraindicated with regalia and insignia for combat training?
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