In the winter of 1943, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin ordered the return of shoulder straps to the Red Army, which were abolished in the troops after the revolution. Why did the leader of the peoples make such a decision and was it really done to raise the morale, as many people write today? Let's try to understand the issue in order to understand how everything really was in those years that were troubling for the Fatherland.
The leadership took a long time to return the shoulder straps.
The battle of Stalingrad had not yet ended, and the Red Army had just begun to gain its first significant successes, as Stalin ordered the return of shoulder straps to the troops. Many will say that this was done to raise morale, in the end it was still quite a long way to the "radical turning point" in the war. But a logical question immediately arises: if the commander-in-chief in this way only wanted to raise morale, then why was this not done in the most difficult and dramatic months of the war for the Red Army?
This was an important ideological step.
In fact, shoulder straps were not just returned to the army. It was a real complex of ideological measures to "restart" the military uniform and the psychological moment was chosen very correctly. It was not a good idea to return the attributes of the ill-fated tsarism in the face of epaulettes and the words officer (before that there were "comrade commanders") in the early years against the backdrop of heavy fighting, defeats and retreat. But to consolidate the first successes psychologically is another matter.
For example, the word "officer" was first used by Stalin during the war years in the order of November 7, 1942 on the counteroffensive at Stalingrad. This was done in order to re-emphasize the high status of the commander. At the same time, the "officers" officially returned to the Red Army only in 1946, after the transformation of the troops into the "Soviet Army".
The order was also published in newspapers.
As for shoulder straps, their return was accompanied by a publication in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper dated January 7, 1943. A corresponding order came out in it and here is such an explanation to it, a quote:
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Interesting fact: even before the start of World War II, Stalin ordered the republishing of history textbooks for schools and universities. In short, all the changes in the presentation of history boiled down to the thought "not everything in our past was so terrible." By the way, the name “Great Patriotic War” was also invented by Soviet ideologists for a reason. The concept was based on the war of 1812 with Napoleon Bonaparte, which was also called "Patriotic".
The return of shoulder straps was impossible immediately after the revolution.
It is important to understand that although neither Lenin nor Stalin felt any clues to the exhausted tsarist regime, neither one nor the other (contrary to popular horror stories) did not at all deny the heredity of the RSFSR and the USSR from the Russian Empire. In fact, Stalin and his team had been going for a long time to accept their succession, including the army shoulder straps. It was impossible to do this only immediately after "October", when the most furious revolutionaries from among the opposition still remained in the saddle, who could interpret such steps as "restoration of monarchism."
Continuing the theme, the alleged asceticism of Stalin, or with what scope the dachas of the Father of the Nations were settled and protected and not only.
