Pictured: Lieutenant-General V. I. Chuikov after the victory at Stalingrad, displaying the Guards designation badge along with his two Order of the Red Banner medals.
Red Army soldiers who were referred to as "Guardsmen" enjoyed great prestige and increased pay in addition to wearing the unique Guards badge, and were also proud of their military achievements. Combatants in Guard units were selected from Red Army units which distinguished themselves by excellent training, discipline, and fighting courage. Chuikov’s 62nd Army was awarded the honor of being promoted to a Guards Army on 16 April 1943, which came with a new numerical designation of 8. Interestingly, Vasily Ivanovich was 8th in the birth order of his siblings, and 8 is considered to be a very fortunate number in China where he spent years in service representing the Soviet Union.
In Marshal Chuikov’s book titled The Fall of Berlin, he described the importance of being a Guards-designated army as well as his sense of pride in being the commander of such an elite force:
“Our army had always fought on the main line of advance, and had carried out every assignment as it should be done, like Guardsmen. Now, in a new situation, on a new front, it must take up the place due to it. The prospect now before us was of showing in practice, in the very first attack we made, what Guards regiments could do. Practically every man feels a heightened sense of his own dignity when he faces a new situation and has new duties to measure up to.
Nature has not left me devoid of such feelings. Incidentally I do not believe people who assume an unreal modesty and allege that they do not think of themselves, of their own dignity. Nonsense? In warfare the absence of feelings of self-assertion makes a man indifferent, uninterested. Could I, in this new situation, be indifferent to the fighting fame of my regiments? Of course not. If it were otherwise, better to hand your army over to another and go on the retired list” (26).
In a book review crafted by R. Kolkowiez printed in the American journal Problems of Communism in 1969, the author commented that Chuikov was “not a modest man,” citing the italicized portion of Vasily Ivanovich’s passage from The Fall of Berlin (44). However, it seems that another assessment is more appropriate here. The 8th Guards Army had accomplished much before they arrived in Poland and Germany, and accounts of their battle successes spread globally via news sources. The 62nd (later 8th Guards) Army—the defenders of Stalingrad—were celebrated far and wide. A high morale and sense of pride grew within the soldiers akin to the concept of self-efficacy in psychological studies. A person's perception of self-efficacy refers to a belief that they are able to execute behaviors producing specific performance outcomes consistently. It is not a characteristic leading to hubris but is a quality of people who possess confidence in their strengths, knowledge, training, and abilities.
With this confidence comes a sense of accountability, especially in situations like the ones faced by these warriors. Chuikov realized that the tasks ahead of the 8th Guards Army—to eventually take the city of Berlin as part of the 1st Belorussian Front and end the war in Europe—would require every ounce of intensity and power he and his soldiers could muster over an extended period of time. His statement reflected this realization—much would be expected of them as they moved closer to the lair of the Fascists…