Leningrad People's Militia Army Explained

Unit Name:Leningrad People's Militia Army
Dates:1941
Branch:People's Militia
Type:rifle troops
Size:ten divisions, 17 machine-gun-artillery battalions, two tank battalions and other units
Command Structure:Northern Front
Garrison:Leningrad and environs
Anniversaries:27 June
Commander1:General Major A.I. Subbotin

The Leningrad People's Militia Army (Russian: Армия Ленинградского Народного Ополчения) (commander General Major A.I. Subbotin) was initially an all-volunteer formation of the Soviet Union raised during the Second World War for defense of Leningrad.

Overview

The Army began its creation on 27 June 1941 mostly from the previously raised 168 destroyer battalions intended to deal with expected enemy saboteurs and parachutists, reporting directly to the commander of Northern Front (Soviet Union). The personnel was drawn from the reserve officer cadres, retired officers, workers and students of Leningrad.

The initial intention was to create an army with seven divisions, but eventually 10 divisions were raised.[1] The Army began formation on 29 June, and by 2 July, 45,183 people had been accepted as volunteers, with a proposal for a 200,000-strong Army being made by the city Communist Party Committee with a view of expansion to 15 divisions according to the number of rayons in the city. By 4 July, the number of volunteers had increased to 77,413б, and by 6 July reached 96,776.

Initially it consisted of four People's Militia divisions, but 10 were eventually raised.

Division structure

The structure of eight of these was based on the field rifle divisions with three rifle regiments, one artillery regiment structure, and other units for a total of about 10-11,000 personnel.

Army order of battle

The incomplete list of the Army units includes:

227 partisan detachments were also created, but only 67 were sent into combat with a total of 2,886 personnel to operate behind German lines.

Combat history

The Army units, in cooperation with the regular Red Army formations, participated in fighting on the approaches to Leningrad and the entire Leningrad Strategic Defensive in the area of Narva - Pskov - Novgorod, primarily against the 18th Army of the Army Group North. The fighting was extremely vicious, and most divisions were reduced to 50% of their initial strength by the time they were amalgamated or integrated into the regular Red Army formations at the end of September.

On the 23 September 1941 all the divisions of the Leningrad Narodnoe Opolcheniye Army divisions were used to form Red Army units mostly within the Leningrad Front.

Sources

Notes and References

  1. http://centralsector.narod.ru/no_c.htm#1x Narodnoe Opolcheniye in the Battle for Leningrad (A short chronology) compiled by candidate of historical sciences Yu.N. Yablochkin, taken from a reader "Opolchentsy", lENIZDAT (PUB.), 1975 (НАРОДНОЕ ОПОЛЧЕНИЕ В БИТВЕ ЗА ЛЕНИНГРАД (Краткая хроника) Составлена канд. ист. наук Ю. Н. Яблочкиным. Из сборника "Ополченцы", (Лениздат, 1975)
  2. http://centralsector.narod.ru/form/lano.htm called “guards” because they were allocated almost uniformly the factory worker personnel who had formed the Red Guards during the Revolution
  3. http://centralsector.narod.ru/form/lano.htm Центральный сектор Красногвардейского укрепленного района (Гатчина)
  4. Web site: Ижорские заводы :: Энциклопедия Санкт-Петербурга . 2008-04-29 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20080103221232/http://www.encspb.ru/article.php?kod=2804001188 . 2008-01-03 . history of the Izhorsk Factories (in Russian)

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