Lieutenant, NKVD Border Troops
This NKVD Border Troops lieutenant is in a mixture of walking-out dress and everyday wear. He is wearing the popular Trench’ tunic, which was normally accompanied by dress trousers and walking shoes. However, he is wearing here the everyday sharovari pants, in dark blue with red piping, with high black boots. His field equipment includes the Sam Browne belt, Nagant pistol holster and map case. The basic service colour of the NKVD Border Troops was a bright medium green, evident on the peaked service cap and collar tabs, with the secondary dark blue colour evident on the cap band. The piping colour was red. The insignia for a lieutenant consisted of the two enamelled red squares on the collar tab. and the chevron on the sleeve in two alternating stripes of gold and red.
NKVD Internal Security Officer
The NKVD security units generally wore ordinary Red Army gear, but had their own branch of service insignia. On occasion, NKVD officers wore the more conspicuous styles of branch insignia as a not very subtle reminder of the power they represented. The officer’s peaked cap was made of sky-blue fabric with a red band and red piping. Shoulder boards were blue. He is armed with a Tokarev pistol.
NKVD power in the 1940s would be comparable in the USA to the FBI, CIA, NSA, Border Patrol, Customs Service, ATF, and all state police forces being unified into one agency – plus having its own military formations equipped with the most modern military hardware the state had to offer!
NKVD had far more power than the Cheka that preceded it and the KGB & other agencies that followed it.
NKVD combined the functions of today’s MVD, FSB, and SVR. At some point during or after the war NKGB was separated out of NKVD, and after the reforms that turned People’s Commissariats into Ministries, they became KGB and MVD respectively. NKVD troops became Interior troops (”vnutrenniye voiska” — hence “BB” on the shoulder boards).
NKVD strength ranged from 450,000 to over 800,000 men organized into divisions, brigades, and regiments. The NKVD organized a full army in 1942, which it later committed to the Red Army as the 70th Army. These forces (particularly the brigades) served as blocking detachments (to prevent desertion), gathered recruits for the Red Army, ensured rear area and governmental security, provided railroad security, managed the GULAG and POW camps (thus Katyn), and fought as combat forces (particularly in 1941 and 1942). They were still around in the 1970s and 80s in the groups of forces. The NKVD incorporated volunteers and conscripts but they were carefully screened for service.
Aside from combat units of the Red Army, Soviet state security forces fielded a large number of combat units during the war. In 1941 the NKVD was responsible for the Border Troops who patrolled along the frontier, and these took a very active part in the initial fighting of June 1941. The war also saw a major expansion in the NKVD Internal Troops. These units were organised like rifle or cavalry divisions and were intended to maintain internal order in the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the war the NKVD formed 15 rifle divisions. At times of crisis, these units were committed to the front like regular rifle divisions. Indeed, the NKVD formed some of them into Special Purpose (Spetsnaz) Armies, and one of these was used during the breakthroughs in the Crimea. However, this was not their primary role. They were intended to stiffen the resistance of the Red Army, and during major operations were often formed into ‘blocking detachments’ which collected stragglers and prevented retreats. Their other role was to hunt out anti-Soviet partisan groups, and to carry out punitive expeditions against ethnic groups suspected of collaborating with the Germans.
The NKVD special troops were expanded in the final years of the war, eventually totalling 53 divisions and 28 brigades, not counting the Border Troops. This was equal to about a tenth of the total number of regular Red Army rifle divisions. These units were used in the prolonged partisan wars in the Ukraine and the Baltic republics which lasted until the early 1950s. They were also involved in the wholesale deportations of suspected ethnic groups in 1943-45. In some respects, the NKVD formations resembled the German Waffen-SS in terms of independence from the normal military structure. However, the NKVD troops were used mainly for internal security and repression, and were not heavily enough armed for front-line combat. Unlike the Waffen-SS, they had no major armoured or mechanised formations.
The Germans would encounter the NKVD as individuals when taking out Red Army headquarters units, as small groups when on the receiving end of “shtraf” attacks (they’ll be the ones bringing up the rear with automatics, encouraging (ahem) the forward momentum of the assault troops) and as larger groups either during Barbarossa defending the borders or during set-piece battles like Stalingrad where entire NKVD units were committed as infantry.
NKVD Construction battalions
One of the great disadvantages the VVS faced in June 1941 was the lack of suitable airfields. As has already been pointed out, one of the NKVD tasks was defending the frontiers. Before 1939 these units were stationed in an extensive series of fortifications called the “Stalin Line” which ran along the frontier. This line was supported by a chain of airfields on which the aircraft of the VVS were based.
After the annexation of Eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, this line was several hundred kilometers from the new frontier. The NKVD was put in charge of building new fortifications, including a new series of airfields. This work began in 1940, but very little had been accomplished by the end of the year, resulting in a scandal in Moscow. It was discovered that the concrete was poorly poured; much of the fortification work had to be redone, while work on the airfields had barely begun.
The NKVD were relieved of the responsibility for this work, and Red Army engineers took it over. Work was begun with urgency, but in June 1941 the VVS, which had a very large number of aircraft in the area, was still largely without bases. Generally speaking, they were operating from grass fields with no permanent buildings, fuel storage facilities, ammunition or bomb dumps, control towers, very few anti-aircraft guns, no anti-aircraft shelters, and no hardstands for dispersing the aircraft. There were no real barracks for the personnel and none of the servicing infrastructure: no hangars to work on aircraft them away from the weather, no machine shops or paint shops or stores warehouses or any of the other facilities usually required to maintain a fleet of aircraft. All this work had to be done in the rear areas, away from the squadrons, which had quite an impact on serviceability and effectiveness. On 22 June, when the Luftwaffe appeared over the six major bases adjacent to the border, the VVS was quite unprepared and was annihilated. 1500 aircraft were strafed before noon, and another 300 destroyed by nightfall.
The NKVD were lousy contractors.
