Back الأمر رقم 227 Arabic Указ №227 Bulgarian Rozkaz č. 227 Czech Ordre nr. 227 Danish Befehl Nr. 227 German Orden 227 Spanish Käsk nr. 227 Estonian فرمان شماره ۲۲۷ Persian Käsky nro 227 Finnish Ordre no 227 French

Order No. 227

Soviet postage stamp depicting a politruk throwing a grenade with the phrase "Not a Step Back!".

Order No. 227 (Russian: Приказ № 227, romanized: Prikaz No. 227) was an order issued on 28 July 1942 by Joseph Stalin, who was acting as the People's Commissar of Defence. It is known for its line "Not a step back!" (Ни шагу назад!, Ni shagu nazad!),[1] which became the primary slogan of the Soviet press in summer 1942.[2]

Order No. 227 established that each front must create one to three penal battalions (Russian: штрафной батальон, romanized: shtrafnoy batalyon, lit. 'penalty battalion', commonly known as штрафбат, shtrafbat) of up to 800 middle-ranking commanders and high-ranking commanders accused of disciplinary problems, which were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front lines.[3] From 1942 to 1945, a total of 422,700 Red Army personnel were sentenced to penal battalions as a result of courts-martial.[4] The order also directed that each army must create "blocking detachments" at the rear that would shoot "panic-mongers and cowards".[2] In the first three months, blocking detachments shot 1,000 penal troops and sent 24,000 to penal battalions.[5] By October 1942, the idea of regular blocking detachments was unofficially dropped.[2][6]

Intended to galvanise the morale of the hard-pressed Red Army and emphasize patriotism, it had a generally detrimental effect and was not consistently implemented by commanders who viewed diverting troops to create blocking detachments as a waste of manpower. On 29 October 1944, blocking detachments were officially disbanded by Stalin's order No. 349 citing the changed situation at the front.[7][8]

  1. ^ "Order No. 227, July 28, 1942, J. Stalin". TracesOfWar.com. 1942-07-28. Retrieved 2020-12-07.
  2. ^ a b c Roberts, Geoffrey (2006). Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. p. 132. ISBN 0-300-11204-1. OCLC 71164004.
  3. ^ Toppe, Alfred (1998). Night Combat. Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-7881-7080-5.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Krivosheev was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Merridale was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Starikov, Nikolai (19 May 2012). "Ложь и правда о заградотрядах" [Lies and the truth about the detachments] (in Russian). Retrieved 15 September 2018.
  8. ^ "ПРИКАЗ О РАСФОРМИРОВАНИИ ОТДЕЛЬНЫХ ЗАГРАДИТЕЛЬНЫХ ОТРЯДОВ № 0349 29 октября 1944" [Order for the Reforming of the Separate Blocking Detachments: No. 349, 29 October 1944]. Combat operations of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War (in Russian).

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