and random unit histories for some of the MVD divisions...
67th CONVOY DIVISION
This division, based in Arkhangelsk on the White Sea coast in northwestern Russia, operated a series of labor camps spread out over several hundred miles of subarctic forest and swamps. Many of these camps had been established in the 1930s, and by the outbreak of the war they had well established railroad and forestry enterprises. Deaths by starvation and exposure, rampant in the Stalin era, were but a distant memory by the 1990s and small villages had been long established outside nearly all the camps, populated by guards and prison staff (often many generations of families worked in the local camps) and even some former prisoners. The war in China initially had little effect on the division; one of its two special motorized militia battalions was deployed as part of the 6th Operational Division and by late 1995 the first Chinese POWs arrived in the division's camps after train trips lasting nearly a month. As the war continued the trains of POWs continued arriving, eventually filling the camps with South Koreans, Iranians, British, American, Danish and POWs from a dozen other nations. in addition to the Chinese. The younger guards in 1995 and 1996 were gradually sent to the front, sometimes replaced by recovering soldiers (not necessarily even MVD troops), more frequently not being replaced as the Soviet war machine demanded ever increasing numbers of men. Soviet prisoners were gradually released or sent to the rear areas directly behind the front; the division sent a contingent of 1000 Soviet prisoners to Murmansk to assist with handling munitions and supplies headed to the front; further contingents followed to dig fortifications on the Litsa River line, repair railroads and roads damaged by NATO bombing and support military operations. Eventually Chinese, Korean and Iranian prisoners were sent to the Kola, as the supply of Soviet citizens dried up; NATO prisoners were not sent due to the risk of escape. Other POW contingents instead labored in mines throughout the north, cutting timber (wood pulp was an important raw material for nitrocellulose, used in gunpowder and for solid rocket fuel), at the Severodvinsk submarine construction yard and at the nearby Plesetsk Cosmodrome. The division started to take direct casualties as the nuclear exchange heated up; Severodvinsk and Plesetsk were struck by American nuclear weapons as well as air defense sites in the region, which were targeted to allow USAF cruise missiles and bombers to reach deeper into the USSR. Casualties rapidly rose as radiation sickness was joined by the traditional killers of prisoners in the region - cold and starvation - as the Soviet transportation system broke down, cutting off the supply of fuel and food. The division broke down in this chaotic situation; by the winter of 1998-1999 only a handful of widely scattered contingents of guards remained, based out of the remaining labor camps and their adjacent villages. Nominally loyal, in reality they were isolated and generally forgotten, their few remaining prisoners vital to the local subsistence agricultural economy, warmed through the long, dark winters by wood cut by the prisoners from the endless forests.
92nd CONVOY DIVISION
A unit responsible for operating labor camps throughout the Soviet Far East, including the notorious Kolyma gold mining complex, in which over 500,000 prisoners perished from the 1930s to the 1950s, and the eastern portion of the BAM. Construction on the BAM, which opened to its first through traffic in 1991, continued throughout the early part of the war, constructing additional tunnels, sidings and support facilities. This division’s camps grew very large from 1995, absorbing tens of thousands of Chinese POWs who were put to work in the mines, timber industry and on construction projects throughout the Far East and Sakhalin, all of which had suffered from labor shortages for decades despite propaganda and financial incentives for Soviet citizens to relocate from the European portions of the USSR. From its headquarters in Khabarovsk this division supported the Soviet economy while absorbing the first wave of POWs from the war in China, who quickly outnumbered Soviet prisoners in the camps. In early 1997 the first American POWs, captured in Korea by the Yalu Front and North Korean People’s Army, arrived in the division’s camps, followed in late summer by additional Americans and Canadians captured in Alaska. The division also maintained a handful of guard units that protected munitions plants and industrial facilities in the region, while its two special motorized militia battalions maintained order in the cities of the region. One of those battalions was destroyed by the American nuclear strike on the Petropavlovsk naval base. The breakdown of the communications and transportation network in 1997 and 1998 took a heavy toll on the division; its northernmost units disintegrated in the cold and hunger while others drifted apart. By June 1998 the division had lost two-thirds of its subordinate units and camps and the countryside was teeming with escaped Chinese prisoners attempting to return home. The remaining camps and units, however, were able to exploit the milder climate and abundant natural resources of the region with their large labor force (weakened by radiation sickness and famine) to remain intact and barter with other military units for needed supplies; eventually the division’s camps provided nearly one third of 1st Far Eastern Front’s food supply. As the Transbaikal, Far East and Manchuria drifted away from central Soviet control the division remained in place, loyal to the local military command.
Subordination: Far Eastern TVD
Current Location: camps located in Ussuri and Amur valleys and Sikhote-Alin mountains
Manpower: 1750
and
A conscript of the 559th Guard regiment, 96th Guard Division checks a truck bringing materials to the Solikamsk munitions plant, April 1997.
96th GUARD DIVISION
Another MVD guard division, headquartered in Novouralsk (more commonly referred to as Sverdlovsk-44), this unit shared responsibility for protecting facilities in the eastern Urals with the 93rd Guard Division. The division headquarters and three of its regiments were co-located with uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons production facilities; other units of the division protected munitions and AFV production plants, the chemical weapon plant and depot at Krasnouralsk, steel mills and oil refineries. As with other guard divisions, the formation’s personnel were frequently changed, with older reservists or recovering wounded troops replacing younger, fit troops, who were sent to the front rather than stare out at empty Siberian forests. The division took losses from nuclear strikes on its facilities. The division commander and his staff, however, had established a secure backup facility in an abandoned mine which enabled the unit headquarters to remain intact throughout the nuclear strikes and subsequent fallout and harsh winter. In 1998 and 1999 the division abandoned facilities which had fallen into disuse, rallying around the chemical weapons depot and securing a pair of small hydroelectric plants. By prewar standards, their combined 9 MW of power was miniscule, but in the post-war period they were invaluable in enabling the unit to survive. The division was able to restore its remaining subunits to full strength by rallying survivors of the 93rd Division and by absorbing assorted local militias and passing stragglers into the division. The division maintained a small enclave of Soviet rule in the northern Urals, eking out an existence from the electrical plants and remnants of Urals industrial complex.
Subordination: Ural MVD District
Current Location: HQ in Serov, detachments in Krasnouralsk, Verkhoturye and Kushva
Manpower: 2500