3 - Moscow 1941: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet People’s Militia (Narodnoe Opolchenie)

Summary

In the wake of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin’s government relied upon extraordinary measures to avoid the complete anihilation of the Soviet State and its military. One of these measures was the creation of the People’s Militia (Narodnoe Opolchenie) in July 1941, first in Moscow, and then in other large Soviet cities. Usually seen in the Soviet and Russian historiography as an outburst of popular patriotism, the Militia, it can be argued, was also a catastrophic experiment in the mobilization, training and frontline use of civilians, thus blurring the civilian-military divide. Using declassified Communist Party materials from the experience of Moscow in 1941, this article stresses the various methods, often coercive, carried out by various local committees of the Soviet Communist Party to raise in a few weeks a paramilitary force numbering hundreds of thousands of civilians.