Tag #147165 - Interview #77954 (Miron Manilov)

I became a member of the Party in the reserve regiment. In early 1944, our entire reserve regiment was sent to Barnaul, Altai Mountains [3,000 km north-east of Moscow]. By that time there were a few combatant officers as we had severe casualties. There were a lot of political officers of the squads, battalions and regiments. They were considered to be our ideological leaders, and they hardly took part in any battles. Stalin issued an order to retrain most of the political officers for them to become line officers. Our regiment was involved in retraining former political officers. I was the commander of the squad.