ABSTRACT
To varying degrees, Communist Party and Red Army leaders facing the daunting task of organising partisan warfare in the German armies ’rear area knew of or had heard about the theoretical tenets of unconventional warfare which earlier military theorists had developed. In all fairness, however, it must be said that, before 1941, these leaders were preoccupied primarily with reforming and strengthening the Red Army. Therefore, they scarcely bothered considering the necessity for conducting partisan warfare in the near future. In general, they rejected the feasibility of engaging in guerrilla-type popular war. Despite this fact, Soviet military publications issued on the eve of war did contain occasional references to this kind of warfare. For example, in an article in Kommunisticheskii International journal, A. Koplan analysed Chinese guerrillas ’activities against the Japanese in 1940 and reminded readers about the heroic actions of Red partisans, who operated in Siberia during the Russian Civil War in Russia.1
