 Punishment also was used; slackers, malingerers, those avoiding combat with self-inflicted wounds cowards, thieves, and deserters were disciplined with beatings, demotions, undesirable/dangerous duties, and summary execution by NKVD punitive detachments.At the same time, the "osobist" (NKVD military counter-intelligence officers) became a key Red Army figure with the power to condemn to death and to spare the life of any soldier and (almost any) officer of the unit to which he was attached.In 1942, Stalin established the penal battalions composed of "gulag" inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as "tramplers" clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera.