Yuriy Nikolaevich Arzamaskin,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Military University of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Soviet Partisans in the Second World War
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-3-16
The article reveals the main organizational features of the partisan movement during Great Patriotic War 1941–1945. The main form of the partisan movement was the armed struggle. The partisan movement consisted mainly of reconnaissance and sabotage units of the NKVD and GRU, and military personnel – “encircled”, detachments created by the population of occupied territories as well as units of regular troops that operated behind enemy lines. It is the popular nature of the partisan movement of the USSR that distinguishes it from the resistance movement in Europe and Asia during the Second World War. There are considered the domestic and foreign historiography of the problem. Despite the abundance of literature, both fiction and scientific, for a long time the “guerilla war” in the occupied territory remained one of the most poorly studied. The reason is clear, until August 1991 all documentation on this issue in the USSR was strictly classified as government secrets. Based on the latest declassified archival documents, a conclusion is drawn about the real contribution of the partisans to the cause of the Great Victory.
Publishing: 28/06/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 26.03.2021
How to cite: Arzamaskin Yu.N. Soviet Partisans in the Second World War // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 3 (17), pp. 147–153. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-3-16.pdf
Links: Issue 3 2021
Keywords: rewarding; Second World War; Great Patriotic War; Red Army; partisan movement; collaborators; Soviet State; occupied territories; eastern formations