75th Stalin Volunteer Separate Infantry Brigade of Omsk Siberians: History and Commemoration

Abstract

The article analyzes the history, historiography, and commemoration of the 75th Stalin volunteer separate rifle brigade of Omsk-Siberians. It explores three interrelated questions. First, how significant was Stalin’s name for the Omsk volunteers during the formation of the 75th brigade, and was it subsequently important for the soldiers and officers of the 65th Guards Division throughout its combat history? Second, how was the history of the Stalinist Siberian volunteers reflected in Russian historiography, and why do historians continue to replicate the Soviet times falsification of the name of the glorified part? Third, how did anti-Stalinist Soviet policy affect modern places of commemoration in Omsk? The study was carried out using military and party-state documentation, memoirs of brigade veterans, periodicals, and photographic documents. An analysis of these sources shows that Stalin’s name played a large role in mobilizing Omsk volunteers into the people’s militia during the formation of the 75th Stalin Volunteer Separate Siberian Infantry Brigade, which became part of the Stalin Siberian Volunteer Infantry Corps. Throughout the war, it was one of the main symbols that supported the steadfastness and heroism of the Siberian warriors who won the right to become the “Stalinist Guard” and proudly self-determined themselves in this capacity. Since Khrushchev’s times, in Russian historiography, the creation of the Stalinist people’s militia in Omsk has traditionally been hushed up or falsified, which has become a tradition for Russian historical science. The state of historical knowledge has determined that modern Omsk places of memory dedicated to the history of the 75th brigade do not fully bear the historical truth about it, continuing the one laid down in the time of N. S. Khrushchev’s tradition of falsifying history.