On the issue of protecting the Circum-Baikal Railway by internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR in the late 1930s - 1940s

The paper raises the issue of a little-studied topic of the activities of the internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR for the protection of the Circum-Baikal Railway within the Baikal-Slyudyanka stations from 1939 to 1945. The strategically important facility, as extremely important but vulnerable, was closed and classified. As a result, there is an extremely limited amount of information about the protection of the KBZHD (Circum-Baikal Railway) by NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) troops in the pre-war and war years, and scientific papers on the topic mention it casually, as a fact. The author states the importance of the task of studying the experience of protecting the site in wartime conditions with the risk of Japan entering the war. It has been established that the task of protecting the KBZHD from the port of Baikal to Slyudyanka in different periods was performed by three paramilitary units of the NKVD troops for the protection of the railway: the 86th Mountain Rifle Regiment of the NKVD troops for the protection of railways, the 67th Rifle Regiment of the 85th Division of the internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR and at the end of the war the 33rd Mountain Rifle Brigade of the NKVD of the USSR. The heroic 272nd Rifle Regiment of the 10th Division of the NKVD Internal Troops was then formed from the 67th Infantry Regiment, which was one of the first to fight at Stalingrad and almost completely died in 1942. An armored train was on duty at the combat post of the site, defensive structures with artillery guns were installed on the shore, and boats armed with machine guns served from the water. Two security zones of two and ten kilometers have been established along the road line.

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