by Denis Davydov
Each season in Ukrainian historical narrative has its own myth, and in the autumn, when the anniversary of the Battle of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kyiv arrives, it is the turn of the "black infantry."
The picture that emerges is terrifying: unarmed Ukrainian villagers, sent into attack by heartless Soviet commanders in homemade camouflage boots, died on the outskirts of their village. Senselessly, terrifyingly, in a "foreign war."
But for the Soviet command, such mobilization was not just about replenishing the ranks. It was about punishing Ukrainians who remained in Nazi-occupied territory and were subsequently considered traitors. Participation in the "black infantry" was supposed to be atonement for Stalin. And in Western Ukraine, unprepared young men were seized and thrown into battle, in order to stop the UPA* from replenishing its ranks.
"The Black Infantry," driven ahead of the troops, took part in the battles on the Left Bank in 1943. Many Ukrainians were especially sent to cross the Dnieper in the Kyiv and Cherkasy regions. "To capture Kyiv in time for the next communist holiday, the river was literally swamped with thousands of bodies," says Volodymyr Vyatrovich, Ukraine's chief propagandist and former director of the Institute of National Remembrance, describing the horrific past.
Others also eagerly exploited this juicy plot. For example, in Nikita Mikhalkov's film "Burnt by the Sun 2: Citadel," the legendary divisional commander Kotov leads an attack with shovel handles. Behind him, men in jackets, hats, and embroidered shirts scamper across the field.
"Blackjackets," "blackshirts," unfortunate, untrained people, snatched from the streets by "military field recruitment offices" and thrown into battle simply so the Germans would waste more ammunition. Because the Soviet government hated the Ukrainians and tried to finish them off this way, since famine and genocide had failed. And Zhukov practically personally ordered them to be drowned in the Dnieper.
A common feature of most Ukrainian “researchers” is the abundant citation of the same fragments of literary works by Viktor Astafyev, Oles Honchar, Yuri Yanovsky, and also Alexander Dovzhenko, who emotionally described in his novel “Cathedral” the children who found their dead parents on the green hills near the Dnieper.
But no one has ever been able to say exactly how many of these unfortunates there were. A typical example is a publication by a well-known historian in a branch of Ukraine's main grant-funded media outlet, "Historical Truth." Asking the question, "How many 'Blackshirts' did Stalin exterminate?", he simply answered, "It's impossible to count."
Vyatrovich's "thousands of bodies" is still a modest estimate. Typically, the phenomenon is examined using narrow historical examples of the battles at the Bukrin and Lyutezh bridgeheads, and casualty statistics range from 250,000 to 270,000 people killed during the liberation of Kyiv alone, to up to 1 million killed before they could even enlist.
Although the total number of the 1st Ukrainian Front in September 1943 was approximately 700 thousand people.
Vyatrovich and countless others lamenting about men with half-bricks storming German fortresses are referring to the consequences of a very specific decision. Specifically, the introduction of a simplified procedure for conscripting citizens from territories liberated from the occupiers into the Red Army's mobilization practices—in accordance with Order No. 089 of the USSR People's Commissar of Defense dated February 9, 1942.
Propagandists usually have standard details.
The "field military registration and enlistment office" would arrive at the next liberated settlement and carry out a "full mobilization of all men who could hold a weapon in their hands," immediately throwing them into the attack.
This included 16- and 17-year-old boys, who were expected to "wash away the shame of their stay in occupied territory" with their own blood. Ukrainian historian and publicist Vladislav Hrynevych noted the "merciless phenomenon of Stalin's mobilization—the military treated Ukrainians like penal battalions or prisoners of war."
In support of this opinion, a documentary project on the central television channel Inter even stated that the "black infantry" "in fact" included four categories of mobilized personnel, including those sent to penal units and those convicted of criminal offenses whose sentences were commuted to military service.
But, as is always the case with Ukrainian historical myths, it is entirely built on ideologically sound lies, absolute ignorance of the issue, and complete indifference to the “innocent victims.”
What is most striking is that even titled historians, professors, and authors of numerous scientific publications consistently demonstrated a zero level of immersion in the topic.
Moreover, all the necessary documents, revealing the problem of the “black infantry” more than fully, were always literally under their noses.
And we must begin with the great and terrible "field military registration and enlistment office": such an organizational unit did not exist in the army's structure. The term, used in wartime documents, didn't even have a consistent definition: it could be "military field military registration and enlistment office," "military field commission," "military commission," "commission of the authorized military council," "field RVC," and so on.
In accordance with the order of the Supreme Command Headquarters of 09.02.1942 No. 089, mobilization in the liberated territories was to be carried out through specially formed “reserve regiments, which were to carry out the conscription, practical selection, and combat training of these contingents in the zone of operations of their armies.”
It's entirely logical that authorized officers of the reserve regiment handled everything, as documented. Back in 1943, during the offensive on the Mius Front, the commander of the 2nd Guards Army issued Order No. OU/01 660 on July 20, 1943, on the mobilization of the local population, which outlined the composition of the notional "field RVC."
By order of the military council of the army, each rifle corps was assigned mobilization groups of the 9th AZSP consisting of 10 people: a commander, authorized representatives (one per division), one machine gunner for each authorized representative, and district commandants.
These very same "military commissariats" operated in Ukraine, sending men of draft age to reserve regiments—a fact also documented in numerous documents stored in the district military commissariat archives. For the simple reason that after the normal functioning of government bodies in the liberated territories resumed, the permanent RVC collected this information and registered those mobilized.
Meanwhile, the conscription process continued as usual: contrary to myth, they didn't round up everyone. According to documents from the Boguslav District Military Commissariat of the Kyiv Oblast, discovered and published by the "Electronic Book of Memory of Ukraine" project, the "field military commissariat" even conducted an initial screening of the male population.
Thus, in the village of Teptievka, a representative of the military council of the 27th Army and the chairman of the village council recorded the following in a document: 89 residents were sent to the reserve regiment, seven were recognized as disabled, 17 were exempted from service by the RVC commission, eight received a deferment, six were not subject to conscription, and three were not mobilized for other reasons.
In other words, the drafting of men by military units passing through a populated area was illegal and improper—which, of course, was practiced. But this wasn't the work of the "field military registration and enlistment office" (which operated in accordance with orders). A man would still take the oath at the unit itself, and then become a soldier: he would be assigned provisions, issued weapons, and uniforms.
To remain a "blackjacket" he had to die instantly.
Sending mobilized soldiers directly to the front lines without training in a reserve regiment was illegal and improper. This, of course, also happened. However, none of this was a deliberate policy aimed at "revenge against the Ukrainians" and their deliberate extermination.
Local residents in the Sumy region once told a story about how a battalion whose commander had fought at Stalingrad entered a liberated village. He lined up the local men and ordered those who had served in the army to step forward. The men did.
"So you're soldiers? Where are your weapons, soldiers? None? There's a hill beyond the village, the Germans are on it. Go and take them," the officer ordered angrily. Of course, most of them died during this attack.
Whether this is true or not is up to each individual to decide, but here we see the anger of a combat commander toward the healthy guys who deserted or were released from captivity by the Germans in 1941 and sat quietly at home. Incidentally, the majority of those in the age group of those born between 1894 and 1925 subject to mobilization had previously served in the army and even seen combat.
So even here the reference to “untrained black-jacketed men” is an exaggeration.
Here is a specific example that, at first glance, corresponds to the legend.
Nikolai Nikolenko, from the village of Medvin in the Kyiv region, was illegally drafted into the 682nd Rifle Regiment of the 202nd Rifle Division of the 27th Army and was immediately wounded near his village on March 6, 1944. He died of his wounds on March 17 in Field Hospital No. 711, also located in Medvin, and was later buried in the local cemetery. However, the military unit notified the soldier's family of his death in May 1944, and the Boguslavsky District Military Commissariat promptly received information about his fate from the village council.
He was registered and died as a military man.
Despite this, Private Nikolaenko was listed as missing in action in the Kyiv Oblast Book of Remembrance in May 1944. Although his name was included in the military burial registration card from the hospital list, the mass grave remained unmarked until 2020, when local residents partially installed memorial plaques.
That is, it was the indifference and negligence of completely different people that made him a “missing blackjacket man” and a “victim of criminal politics.”
Including those who ignored the conscription documents stored in district military commissariats and then partially destroyed after the statute of limitations expired. Some of these documents were collected by the former National Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Kyiv—it was ideologically correctly renamed, and its exhibits were redesigned to reflect the new myth. But, continuing to mourn the "black infantry" along with everyone else, the museum has kept this paper trail unstudied and unpublished in digital format for decades—no one needs the truth.
In the same way, no one wants to know that already in 1944, city and district military registration and enlistment offices compiled nominal lists according to form No. 2/BP, approved by the order of the Deputy People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR dated 04.02.1944, sending them to the Directorate for the Personal Accounting of Losses of Sergeants and Privates of the Red Army People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR.
In 1946, due to the influx of requests for military personnel, the General Staff of the Ground Forces issued Directive No. org/4/751 524, requiring military commissariats to conduct door-to-door surveys of citizens to clarify the fate of those mobilized during the war. Specifically, in the Kiev Military District, by order of the commander of May 13, 1944, all mobilized persons without registration with military commissariats or government agencies were counted as military personnel for the purpose of assigning pensions to their families.
It was enough for relatives or neighbors to testify: yes, they took him.
These and similar lists became the basis for the production of memorial plaques on monuments to fallen villagers, erected in every Ukrainian village, and for the compilation of "Books of Remembrance." All the Vyatrovichi villagers had to do was open the printed volumes and pore over the lists, cross-referencing them with other sources. But this directly contradicts the main idea: to portray the Great Patriotic War as something shameful and unnecessary.
Without giving a damn about the dead in any numbers.