Monday, July 28, 2025

Joseph Stalin’s Order 227 'Not a step back’ worked

On this day, July 28, 1942 Soviet

leader Joseph Stalin issued Order 227.

At the time the Germans were making steady advances across the Soviet Union. Order 227  proclaimed that all those who retreated or left their posts without explicit orders were to be tried by a military court. Punishment ranged from service in a penal battalion, imprisonment in a Gulag or most frequently execution.

The postage stamp shows a Soviet commissar throwing a grenade with  ‘not a step back’ written on it.

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