"Convolutions In Cardboard"

For this first column on the Soviet military in Europa there are a lot of possible topics to cover; general knowledge of the "Big Red Army" in World War II is rare, confused, and frequently dead wrong. However, many of the details of equipment, organizations, and numbers will come out as we cover specific units in detail. So, to provide continuity with the article that have already covered the U.S. 1st Infantry Division (TEN 1) and the German 1st Infantry Division (TEN 4), this piece will cover the Soviet 1st Rifle Division--the Moscow Proletaria Division. There are two problems everyone has to be aware of before we go any further. First, while German, U.S., British, and other Western armies original documents are available to the histori an/wargamer, that is emphatically NOT true of the Soviet Army. There are hundreds of unit histories from brigade to army level published, and thousands of articles in various Soviet journals on the war, and German intelligence, reports from the war on micro film in the U.S. National Archives, but the primary source material, the Soviet archives, are closed. Thus coverage is spotty. A good unit history or a scholarly article in the Voenn Istorichekii Zhurnal ("Military History Journal") may give exact data on a given outfit, but many unit historie s a of the "What fun we had slaughtering fascists" variety, and practically useless. Second, the histories of many Soviet units are far more complex then their foreign counterparts, and the history of the 1st Rifle Division, one of the most famous units in the Soviet Army, is a good example. The 1st Rifle Division named in honor of the Moscow Proletariat (workers), was formed at Moscow on 29 December 1926 and served as a parade or "showpiece" unit in Moscow Military District until June 1941. In September 1939 it was alerted for possible action in the occupation of Poland but did not, apparently, actually move out. When the Soviet army began its expansion in SeptemberDecember 1939, the original 2d and 3d Rifle Regiments were used as cadres for the forming 115th and 126th Rifle Divisions. The 1st Rifle Regiment stayed with the division, which was rebuilt with the 6th, 175th, and 356th Rifle Regiments. At this time, in late 1939, all the rifle regiment numbers in the Soviet Army were scrambled; previously they had been almost entirely in sequence, with 1st Division having regiments 1, 2, and 3, and so on.

In November 1939 the Soviet High Command decided to disband the mechanized corps formed in the late 1930s in the light of (mistaken) lessons from the Spanish Civil War. To provide some solid base for the individual tank brigades and horse cavalry divisions making breakthrough movements, they also decided to form fifteen "Mechanized Divisions." The first four were converted from existing rifle divisions starting in May 1940, and one of them was the 1st Rifle Division.

These mechanized divisions were each to have two motorized rifle regiments, an artillery regiment, and a tank regiment. By converting the 12th (light) Tank Brigade to the 12th Tank Regiment, the 1st Moscow Proletariat Mechanized Division was formed with 6th and 175th mot Rifle Regiments, 12th Tank Regiment with 225 BT-7m tanks, 13th Artillery Regiment, 300th AA Battalion, 123d AT Battalion, and 93d Reconnaissance Battalion.

In June 1940 the lessons of the Battle of France hit the Soviet Union, and they began hastily forming tank divisions and reforming mechanized corps, this time with 1031 tanks each in two tank divisions and one mech division. As the 7th Mechanized Corps formed up in Moscow Military District, 1st Mech Division was assigned to it. On 22 June 1941 the division was stationed just outside Moscow, subordinate to 7th Mech Corps HQ, which was in turn under 20th Army--a HQ that had just started forming in April 1941. The 1st Mech Division at this time was slightly overstrength: 12,000 men, 30T-34s, 10 KV tanks, 225 BT-7m and BT-8 light tanks, 54 122mm howitzers, and 18 45mm AT guns. Considering that the average rifie division at the frontier only had 8-10,000 men, and the mech divisions were not authorized any heavy or medium tanks, this was obviously a privileged unit.

The 1st Mech was ordered west on 22 June 1941 and promptly ran out from under 7th Mech Corps, which never controlled it again. When 1st Mech went into action against Guderian's spearheads at Bobruisk, the Bobruisk Tank Officer's School with a training battalion of T-34s attached itself to the division, so the 8-6-8 rating in Europa is justified by more than just the formal strength of the division. As Western Front retreated past Smolensk, the 115th Tank Regiment from the 57th Tank Division was also added to replace tank losses in the division, and with two tank regiments, on 18 August it was renamed (but not reequipped) as the 1st Tank Division--to the utter confusion of German OB analysts!

On 31 August 1941 the division won the Order of the Red Banner, and on 22 September 1941 the 1st Mechanized (Tank) Division became the 1st Guards Motorized Rifle Division. The subordinate units did not receive their Guards titles until later in 1942, at which time the 6th and 175th became the 1st and 3d Gds mot Rifle Regiments, and 13th became the 35th Gds Artillery Regiment. Because tank regiments only had 30-40 tanks in late 1941, 12th Tank Regiment was redesignated 5th Tank Brigade to emphasize the intention to keep this unit heavily armored, and never received a Guards designation. On 21 October the 1st Gds MRD had 9206 men, 31 tanks, 10 armored cars, 44 artillery pieces, 40 mortars, 20 AA guns, and 950 trucks and cars: given the desperate nature of the Soviet forces at that time, a very powerful division.

In October 1942 the 1st Guards Rifle Division, which had also been formed in September 1941 from 100th Rifle Division, began forming 1st Guards Mechanized Corps. This left the premier Guards rifle designation empty, so in January 1943 the 1st Guards Motorized was "demotorized" and redesignated the 1st Guards Rifle Division. With that title it ended the war, but the "1st Rifle Division" story doesn't end there.

In June 1942 another 1st Rifle Division was formed in Kuibyshev with 408th, 412th, 415th Rifle Regiments and 1026th Artillery Regiment. This unit served with 5th Reserve Army, 65th Army and 1st Guards Army at Stalingrad, and so distinguished itself that on 31 December 1942 it became the 58th Guards Rifle Division.

Never letting a lucky unit title go to waste, in January 1944 yet another 1st Rifle Division was formed, this time at Nevel by 1st Baltic Front command from 31st and 100th Rifle Brigades. The rifle regiments and artillery regiment formed took the same numbers again: 408th, 412th, 415th, and 1026th. This unit ended the war in Germany with 70th Army.

Thus, the original 1st Rifle Division, a nonmotorized prewar 4-6 or possibly 5-6 unit, became a mechanized division in 1940 (8-6-8), a tank division briefly in 1941, a Guards motorized rifie division in 1941 (5-10), and then a Guards rifle division in 1943 (6-6), while another division, the original 1st Gds Rifle Division, became a Guards mechanized corps, and two other divisions carded the original 1st Rifle Division title during 1942 and 1944-45.

And remember, this is one of the more well-documented units in the Soviet Army! Consider that over 700 divisions were formed by the Soviets during the war, many of them almost completely undocumented, and the problem of the Soviet OB becomes very evident. Behind the mass of 3-6, 4-6, 5-6, 6-6, and 7-6 rifle divisions, there are hundreds of variations on how divisions were formed, reformed, and, too often, disbanded or renamed.

More 1sts:

US 1st Infantry Division (Europa #1)
German 1st Infantry Division (Europa #4)
1st Moscow Proletariat Rifle Division (Europa #5)