Stalin's Commandos

At the height of World War II, a number of Soviet partisan organisations fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union. Coordinated and controlled by the Soviet government and modelled on the Red Army, the primary objective of these 'Red Partisans' was the disruption of the Eastern Front's German rear, especially road and railroad communications. Alexander Gogun here looks at the partisan forces operating in Ukraine. Along with Belarus, Ukraine was the first and most devastated Soviet republic, following the German invasion of 1941. The consequences of the occupation for the Ukrainian population were dire. As a result, the partisan movement spread rapidly over the occupied territory. The fighter groups, supported by the Ukrainian Partisan Movement Headquarters in Moscow, operated throughout occupied Ukraine and numbered over 150,000 combatants.