I wanna fact check a video game, Company of Heroes 2. Every faction in the game has a sort of mainline rifle unit, usually with a grenade ability. British soldiers get Mills bombs, Americans the classic pineapple grenade, German soldiers actually get rifle grenades instead of the normal Model 24. What I wanted to double check though was the Russian units, they don't get access to any kind of manufactured fragmentation grenades instead they get molotov cocktails and hand thrown anti-tank grenades. Russian fragmentation grenades are in the game but they are locked behind special units, Red Guards presented as elite units comperable to American ranger units, shock troops based off assault engineers, and curiously partisan units presented in civilian clothing and with a mixture of Russian and stolen German weaponry. Were frag grenades just not commonly used by the red army for whatever reason or is this just a quirk of game play?
I really wanted to take this on because I also LOVE coh2. Think I just got over 500 hours recently.
So firstly, the main reason that any unit in the game has what it has is for balance reasons. All the infantry of WW2 had access to the variety of the munie abilities[1] seen in game and the more important factor was time and location as to weather or not an army outfitted its men with whatever weapon. For instance, my main faction the soviets would never have had a KV-2 and ISU-152 on the field at the same time. Only a few hundred of each were made, and a very small amount of KV-2’s t that.
This is all to just say the game is very anarchistic and generally based in history, not historical.
Now on to the real question about Soviet material.
The F1 or lemon was the main frag grenade of the red army comparable with the UKF mills bomb or the USF Mk-2. There were a variety of other grenades, the shock troopers and partisans[2] use the rg42 I believe, and the guards use the rgd-33. So, by no means is there a lack of options for which to base a soviet grenade off of.
Now as to actual to numbers of produced units, I can sadly find very few numbers. I’ve reached out to my University’s librarian who I’ve done research with before and I’m waiting to hear back from him if he finds any leads, and as I’ve left this long enough I’m going to go ahead and post it. However, as the USSR’s war time production only lagged behind the other majors in non-tank vehicle production, and in some areas outstripped their peers namely in small arms and artillery, its safe (though not certain) to say they matched the USA’s insane 50 million grenades produced.
I did however find this funny line on the difference between soviet trainees
“They squeeze the grenade so that juice almost drips from it; they do not hear commands and exhortations; they can throw a pin instead of a grenade and go from the firing line with a grenade in hand instead of a pin; can, swinging so that they have enough strength to throw a grenade to the other end of the landfill, throw it half a meter and stupidly look at their feet instead of running. A grenade in such hands is really deadly for others.
It is curious that such personalities are not found among the female sex. The women here are diligent, neat and diligent. Emotions do not visit them at this moment. But after the throw, they willingly chirp among their friends about the fear they have experienced, about the trembling veins.”
This is however based on a poor translation which unfortunately is quite common when dealing with anything Russian, as quality translations are not always available, especially if you are looking at niche topics.
[1] (for those not in the coh2 community a game play mechanic is to build up munitions to be spent on cool down abilities, often called munnie call ins.
[2] I’ve never actually used partisans in game, so I am not sure what icon or model grenades is used in game but in real life they used a simpler variety of the rg42 and of course whatever else came into the hands.