DEATH TO THE FASCIST HORDES!

The nest reminds me of the NKVD blocking troops willing to blast anyone would move as much as a millimeter backwards and do they actually lay down a base of fire when NOT blasting "cowards"?

ezekill said:

The nest reminds me of the NKVD blocking troops willing to blast anyone would move as much as a millimeter backwards and

This gets exaggerated. Most of the time, these blocking troops simply rounded up the occasional deserter and sent them back either to their unit or to a penal battalion, depending on the details and how lenient the unit's political commissar was feeling that day.

That said, the stories of blocking troops outright mowing down Red Army soldiers retreating without orders is certainly rooted in factual events.

I should observe that the uniforms here are definitely not NKVD. The most obvious different is the NKVD troops wore blue caps with a scarlet line going around the middle and had red shoulder pads, not those neck lapels. Though that does not preclude them getting being part of a blocking detachment, given that those were informal (and later on, semi-formal) small units made up of the most reliable soldiers in a rifle regiment.

do they actually lay down a base of fire when NOT blasting "cowards"?

Generally yes. As I noted above, the blocking detachments, if not NKVD, were generally a company-sized unit made up of the most reliable men in the rifle regiment and deployed in the back-most tactical defensive position. They essentially made up the last line of defense for the regiment.