Gates of Leningrad:
The People’s Militia
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
April 2021

From the very first hours of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, factory workers and party cadres took up their caches of arms and fought the invaders. Most large factories had their own militia units, though with very little training or organization. Two days later, the Council of People’s Kommissars made it official, calling on civilians to enroll in volunteer militia battalions to provide rear-area security.

Leningrad and Moscow led the way, and over the coming days the Communist Party apparatus swung into operation to recruit volunteers, vet them for physical health and political reliability (which included an avoidance of drunkards), and assign them to battalions. Essential industrial workers - often also young, healthy and dedicated to the Party - were also excused, sometimes forcefully. In addition to forming its own units, the NKVD provided instructors and cadres for the militia.

In Leningrad, Party boss A.A. Zhdanov formed the Leningrad People’s Militia Army, which began a hasty training program for the masses of volunteers. By 2 July the number of volunteers in Leningrad alone topped 45,000, and reached 160,000 by September. Overall, more than 300,000 militia were enrolled by the end of July. Not all of these men (and some women) were volunteers; newly-enlisted Red Army conscripts were re-directed to the militia in districts that lacked the capacity to train them.

Leningrad militiamen with their machine gun.

Initially formed into battalions, the militia began to fill out its own divisions including artillery. By the end of July, sixty divisions had been formed, with twelve each from Leningrad and Moscow and eight more from Kiev. In addition, the militia provided over 100 independent regiments and machine-gun battalions; the 6th Leningrad Rifle Division of the People’s Militia also included a tank battalion equipped with hastily-modified armored trucks. Other militia members were re-assigned to the growing partisan movement and infiltrated behind the advancing German front.

Red Army arsenals were bursting with surplus weapons, and initially these were issued to the militia formations: British-, French- and Italian-made rifles supplied to the Tsarists during the First World War or the Whites during the Civil War, machine guns of similar origin, weapons captured from the Central Powers or from Finland, Poland and Romania during the recent acquisitions of territory (captured weaponry of the Baltic States’ armies had been retained by their former regiments when they had been forcibly incorporated into the Red Army). Artillery was mostly Soviet- or Russian-made, except for several hundred French 75mm quick-firing field guns.

Those weapons did not, for the most part, accompany the militia into battle. Before heading to the front, the militia units handed over the museum pieces on which they’d trained and received new standard small arms, machine guns, mortars and artillery pieces. The militia generally had sufficient rifles, light mortars machine guns, enough machine guns to organize dozens of separate machine-gun battalions. The militia faced shortages of medium and heavy mortars, except the Leningrad formations; Leningrad factories eventually churned out sufficient tubes to put all of the Leningrad militia over their paper establishment in mortars.

A home-made armored truck of the 6th Leningrad Rifle Division of the People’s Militia.

Artillery proved more difficult to provide, at least the lighter guns. The militia divisions only had one battery of 122mm howitzers, and most of the Moscow and Leningrad divisions received these. The 76.2mm divisional guns were in very good supply, with most divisions receiving their full allotment (reduced compared to regular divisions), but the stubby 76.2mm regimental howitzers were more difficult to come by. Very few divisions had their 45mm anti-tank guns, a substantial problem for formations with only semi-trained riflemen now expected to face the German panzers.

The militia formations faced severe shortages of communications gear, pioneer tools, binoculars and other equipment. Even rifles and pistols fell short of requirements in some divisions, and anti-tank mines were in very short supply. They did not receive uniforms, but wore their civilian clothing. Even so, the militia began to move out in July after roughly a month of training to face the invaders.

On the Leningrad front, the militia divisions dug in along the line of the Luga River. They had a brief respite while the Germans pulled their own forces together, but when the enemy struck in August things went badly for the militia. While some militiamen fought fanatically, others ran in panic from the enemy, particularly when that enemy included tanks. Within days most of the militia divisions on the front line had lost over half of their strength.

“I do not know how to command,” one tearful battalion commander confessed to his regiment’s colonel and the regimental political officer, “and did not want many soldiers to be killed through my fault, so I decided to retreat without an order.”

Recognizing the special circumstances of a militia unit, the kommissar sent the unfortunate officer back to his battalion with orders to work harder, rather than have him shot out of hand as likely would have happened in a regular formation.

Militiamen share a joke and a smoke with Baltic Fleet Marines on the Neva Bridge.

The militia divisions crumbled within days of the start of heavy combat, doing little to slow the German advance. But they did slow it, and ultimately Leningrad would not fall to the Axis. Many of the survivors joined the partisan movement; others, taken prisoner by the Germans, were massacred.

The Moscow militia divisions saw their own introduction to intense combat in October. They had had somewhat more time to train, but performed no better than the Leningrad divisions. They could do little to stop the Germans, given their lack of anti-tank weapons, small-unit leadership, unit cohesion and general training.

By late autumn, most of the militia divisions had been destroyed, disbanded or converted into regular rifle divisions. Some had fought well (the 2nd Leningrad Guards Rifle in particular) while others had suffered catastrophic losses. In July the 3rd Leningrad Rifle took 11,000 men into battle against the Finns along the Svir River north-east of Leningrad; when withdrawn from the front in October, 320 of them remained.

The People’s Militia has never appeared in a Panzer Grenadier game; they make their debut in Gates of Leningrad. They have their own unique livery but use RKKA leaders; they’re not very good and not very well-armed, but at times they’re all that stands in the way of evil’s triumph.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published vast tracts of books, games and articles on historical subjects. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children and his dog, Leopold.