Stalin issues Order No. 227: “No more steps back” (Ни шагу назад!; Russian: “ni shàgu nazàd!”). This follows Order No. 270 of August 1941, which equated surrender with desertion, under penalty of execution on the spot (10,000 since the beginning of the conflict) and the arrest of one’s family. The request for the armies to maintain blocking detachments was withdrawn after only three months, on October 29, 1942. Their formation was considered a waste of men, and since the aim was to galvanize the Red Army’s morale and emphasize patriotism, and many officers stopped consistently enforcing the order (seeing its negative effect on the troops), the idea of blocking detachments was quietly abandoned. On November 20, 1944, the blocking detachments were officially demobilized.
