Some context: I listened recently to Dan Carlin's "Ghosts of the Ostfront". At one point he cites Order 270 as an example of how totalitarian regimes operate, specifically citing this passage:
That commanders and political officers who, during combat tear off their insignia and desert to the rear or surrender to the enemy, be considered malicious deserters whose families are subject to arrest as a family, for violation of an oath and betrayal of their homeland.
The tone he took was something that, you couldn't really resist in a totalitarian regime because you and your family would be shot. I wanted to test this assertion, though, because there's a trend in trying to excuse e.g. Nazi war criminals by saying "they were made to do it". Sometimes investigation suggests regimes weren't actually all that strict in getting people involved in horrible acts. So I it's worth investigating the validity of these claims about how punishing totalitarian regimes were.
So my question is: did Stalin's regime target the families of officers who deserted? Specifically, families who were targeted purely for reprisal. I can find evidence of Stalin going after families, for instance the wife of his son:
Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, wrote in her memoirs that her father believed his son had deliberately surrendered to the Germans after being encouraged to do so by his wife. Stalin, she wrote, had Yulia imprisoned and interrogated as a result.
However, we can see here that Stalin's action might have been motivated out of her encouragement, so I don't think you can ascribe this action purely to Order 270. So I'm wondering if there were any people who were basically pro-Stalinist staunch socialist who were arrested on terms of Order 270.
Also, I'm curious as well just as to how Order 270 was enforced. Do we know how many officers were punished as a result of this order specifically? Do we know how many families were affected as a result of deserting loved ones?
The image of Soviet troops being forced to advance by threat of machine gun fire is largely a myth.
Penal battalions (shtrafbats) were created in the Soviet army by Order 227 (July 1942) to place men who have committed some sort of infraction, committed a crime or displayed cowardice. These battalions were mostly used to send into more dangerous situations than regular units (clearing minefields, leading assaults and taking dangerous positions, etc.).
Penal battalions were guarded by SMERSH units. SMERSH was an organization - three organizations, actually - whose purpose was to handle counterintelligence activities on the front line, and included not just the apprehension of suspected spies but deserters as well. One division of SMERSH was under NKVD control, and these groups would police the penal battalions to ensure that they were doing their job. SMERSH had the authority, under Order 270, 227 and others, to apprehend suspected spies and deserters, and in some instances execute deserters on the spot. It also must be added that it was possible for those in penal battalions to perform their duties and be "repatriated" back into normal units.
So normal units were disciplined by the fear of being placed in penal battalions, and penal battalions were disciplined by the fear of being arrested or killed by NKVD SMERSH detachments.
It should be kept in mind that Order 270 was issued in August 1941, with Order 227 following in July 1942 and quietly being withdrawn towards the end of 1942 for its ineffectiveness, though the penal battalions remained. SMERSH wasn't officially created until April 1943 (though existed in some form in late 1942).
Total penal battalion convictions from 1942 to 1945 were 427,910, less than 2% of the 34.5 million who served in the Soviet military. So the definite fact is that, should the popular narrative be true, it would have affected a very small portion of the Soviet military.