Barrier troops
On 12 December 1937, the NRA collapsed in the face of an offensive by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), and various units attempted to retreat without orders through the gate.
[2] The barrier troops comprised personnel drawn from the Cheka secret police punitive detachments or from regular Red Army infantry regiments.
[4] According to Figes, "a majority of deserters (most registered as "weak-willed") were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of the rear armies or directly to the front".
[7][8] With the continued deterioration of the military situation in the face of the German offensive of 1941, NKVD detachments acquired a new mission: to prevent the unauthorized withdrawal of Red Army forces from the battle line.
1919 (Директива Ставки ВГК №001919) concerning the creation of barrier troops in rifle divisions of the Southwestern Front, to suppress panic retreats.
Penal military unit personnel were always rearguarded by NKVD anti-retreat detachments, and not by regular Red Army infantry forces.
A report to the Commissar General of State Security (NKVD chief) Lavrentiy Beria on 10 October 1941 noted that since the beginning of the war, NKVD anti-retreat troops had detained a total of 657,364 retreating, spies, traitors, instigators and deserting personnel, of which 25,878 were arrested (of which 10,201 were sentenced to death by court martial and the rest were returned to active duty).
[10] At times, barrier troops were involved in battle operations along with regular soldiers, as noted by Aleksandr Vasilevsky in his directive N 157338 from October 1, 1942.
[12] According to an official letter addressed in October 1941 to Lavrentiy Beria, in the period between the beginning of Operation Barbarossa to early December 1941, NKVD detachments had detained 657,364 servicemen who had fallen behind their lines and fled from the front.
[17][18][non-primary source needed] Fedir Venislavsky, a member of the Ukrainian parliament's committee on national security and defence claimed that the Russian Ground Forces used Chechen personnel from the 141st Special Motorized Regiment as barrier troops to shoot deserters who tried to leave combat zones during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
[22][23] In a video appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin published on 25 March 2023, members of a unit tasked with assaulting Vuhledar claimed that their commanders were utilizing anti-retreat troops to force them to advance or risk being shot.
[24] In October 2023 member of Russian Duma Gennady Semigin openly praised Kadyrovite units role as barrier troops in Ukraine, a fact that was widely known but previously avoided in public debate in Russia.
[25] In an interview with Armiya TV, Dmitry Kukharchuk said that his unit had been positioned behind the 110th Territorial Defense Brigade in 2022 order to prevent them from retreating.
[28][29][30][31][32][33] The 2001 film Enemy at the Gates shows Soviet Red Army commissars and barrier troops using a PM M1910 alongside their own small arms to gun down the few retreating survivors of a failed charge on a German position during the Battle of Stalingrad.
