It had been traditional since tsarist times to boost the number of fighters and support troops by adopting male orphans (called "sons of the regiment") into a unit. The Soviet Army continued the practice during World War II, but because these adoptions were unofficial, it is not possible to know exactly how many thousands of children, ages around 6 to 16, were involved. Many of them fought on the front lines. While the Imperial Army adopted only male orphans, during World War II the Red Army began adopting young parentless girls. Besides being fighters, orphans also served as medical corpsmen and radio operators. Sometimes they were outfitted in miniature uniforms and awarded medals "for valor and service."
Prisoners were another source of manpower, in military and civilian life, in war and peace. After the German invasion, hundreds of thousands of men, including recently "purged" officers, were released from prison camps and exile in order to fight or work in industries. Sometimes their wartime assignments matched their preprison lives in weird ways, as when the playwright Nikolay Erdman, arrested and sentenced to exile for writing satirical fables, was freed into a secret police song-and-dance ensemble as a "literary consultant." His job was to write sketches intended to pump up soldiers' morale. Alexander Gorbatov was released just before the German invasion in 1941. After he was freed, Gorbatov met with the Commissar of Defense, who expressed his pleasure that the former officer was still alive, encouraged him to "have a rest, get better," and informed him that his former army rank and 30 months' back pay were waiting for him. When the war ended, Gorbatov, a general who tried to fight well and keep his troops' casualties low, was promoted to Commandant of Berlin.'’'’
A kind of impromptu mobilization was common during the Civil War and World War II, when battlefront units increased their numbers by forcing able-bodied men who happened to live in the area into combat, without military training, uniforms, or weapons. Sometimes authorities went
Searching for recruits by landing a helicopter in remote terrain. "[They] look around, see a guy of approximately military age, and just take him."
Because of this, one guy was brought to our construction battalion who actually was an Iranian citizen. He had crossed the border in the mountains—some of them don't even know a border exists there—and they caught him and put him in service____He served with us for a year and a half before they got it straightened out.'’"
World History
