ABSTRACT
As a result of the curtailment of planning for partisan warfare in the late 1930s and the repression of many of those involved in it, immediately after the German invasion of 22 June 1941 the Soviet Union was relatively unprepared for the waging of irregular warfare in the enemy rear. That is not to say that irregular warfare was completely ignored by the Soviet military establishment, although, in a climate where the suggestion that a future war involving the Soviet Union might take place on Soviet territory was unacceptable and even dangerous, discussion had to be indirect. It is worthy of note that on the outbreak of war an article appeared in the Military-Historical Journal on ‘Partisan Detachments in the Patriotic War of 1812’, an article no doubt written and probably submitted for publication prior to the German invasion.1
