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{{Dablink|For other organizations known as the Red Army, see
Red Army (disambiguation)Chiefly, a Red Army is a communist army. A list of all the past and present known Red Armies in existence throughout the world is below :*The Red Army of the Soviet Union....
.}}
{{Soviet military}}
The
Red Army ({{lang-ru|Рабоче-Крестьянская Красная Армия,
Raboche-
Krest'yanskaya
Krasnaya
Armiya}};
RKKA (
Workers’–Peasants’ Red Army) was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the
Russian Civil WarThe Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power, first in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that...
of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the
Soviet Army.
The 'Red Army' name refers to the traditional color of the workers' movement. This represents, symbolically, the blood shed by the
working classWorking class is a term used in academic sociology and in ordinary conversation to describe, depending on context and speaker, those employed in lower tier jobs as measured by skill, education, and compensation....
in its struggling against
capitalismCapitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor...
, and the belief that all people are equal. On 25 February 1946 (when Soviet national symbols replaced revolutionary national symbols), the Red Army was renamed the Soviet Army (Советская Армия, Sovetskaya Armiya). The Soviet Army was among the largest armies in history, from the 1930s until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
This article covers the
Soviet Ground Forces of the Red and Soviet Armies. See
Soviet Armed ForcesThe Soviet Armed Forces refers to the armed forces of the Russian SFSR , and Soviet Union from their beginnings in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War to its dissolution in December 1991....
for a description of the entire armed forces of the
USSRThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
.
Russian Civil War
{{details|Russian Civil War}}
The
Russian Civil WarThe Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power, first in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that...
(1917–23) occurred in two periods. The
first period: October 1917–November 1918, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the First World War (1914–18)
ArmisticeAn armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace...
, developed from the Bolshevik government’s November 1917
nationalizationNationalization, also spelled nationalisation, is the act of taking an industry or assets into the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being state...
of traditional
CossackCossacks were originally members of military communities in the uninhabited borderland areas in the steppe that lies North of Black Sea...
lands. This provoked General Alexey Maximovich Kaledin’s
Volunteer ArmyThe Volunteer Army was an anti-Bolshevik army in South Russia during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920....
insurrection in the Rover Don region. Also aggravating Russian internal politics was the
Treaty of Brest-LitovskThe Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, at Brest-Litovsk between the Russian SFSR and the Central Powers, marking Russia's exit from World War I....
(March 1918). This allowed direct
Allied intervention in the Russian Civil WarThe Allied intervention was a multi-national military expedition launched in 1918 during the Russian Civil War and World War I. The intervention involved fourteen nations and was conducted over a vast expanse of territory...
, in which twelve foreign countries armed anti-Bolshevik militias. Combat was a series of small-unit actions among the Czechoslovak Legion, the
Polish 5th Rifle DivisionPolish 5th Siberian Rifle Division was a Polish military unit formed in 1919 in Russia during World War I. The division fought during the Polish-Bolshevik War, but as it was attached to the White Russian formations, it is considered to have fought more in the Russian Civil War...
, and the pro-Bolshevik Red
Latvian RiflemenLatvian riflemen were military formations assembled starting 1915 in Latvia in order to defend Baltic territories against Germans in World War I. Initially the battalions were formed by volunteers, and from 1916 by conscription among the Latvian population...
and others. The
second period: January–November 1919, featured the White armies’ successful advances, from the south, under Gen. Anton Denikin, from the east, under Gen. Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak, and from the northwest, under Gen.
Nikolai Nikolaevich YudenichNikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich , was a commander of the Russian Caucasus Army and one of the most successful generals of the Russian Imperial Army during World War I. He was later a leader of the counterrevolution in Northwestern Russia during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920.Yudenich was born in...
, that defeated the Red Army on each front. Trotsky reformed and counterattacked; the Red Army repulsed Gen. Kolchak’s army in June, and the armies of Gen. Denikin and Gen. Yudenich in October. By mid-November, the White Armies almost simultaneously became exhausted, and, in January 1920, Budenny's First Cavalry Army entered
Rostov-on-DonRostov-on-Don is the city and the administrative center of Rostov Oblast and the Southern Federal District of Russia, located on the Don River, just 46 km from the Sea of Azov. Population: -Geography:...
.
To fight the six-year counter-revolutionary Civil War of the White Armies’, the Council of People's Commissars
decreedDecrees were legislative acts of the highest Soviet institutions, primarily of the Council of People's Commissars and of the Supreme Soviet or VTsIK , issued between 1917 and 1924...
the establishment of a formal army on 28 January 1918. At war’s start, the Red Army comprised 299 infantry regiments. Civil warfare intensified after
LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. Lenin...
dissolved the
Russian Constituent AssemblyThe All Russian Constituent Assembly was a democratically elected constitutional body convened in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. It met for 13 hours, from 4 PM to 5 AM 5 January–6 January 1918 . It was elected by popular vote and dissolved by the Bolshevik government...
(5–6 January 1918) and the Soviet government signed the
Treaty of Brest-LitovskThe Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, at Brest-Litovsk between the Russian SFSR and the Central Powers, marking Russia's exit from World War I....
(3 March 1918) removing Russia from the Great War. Free from international war, the Red Army confronted an internecine war with a loose alliance of anti-Communist forces, comprehending the
Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of UkraineThe Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine , popularly called Makhnovchina and also known as the Black Army, was an anarchist army formed largely of Ukrainian and Crimean peasants and workers under the command of the famous anarchist Nestor Makhno during the Russian Civil War.-Nestor Makhno...
, the “Black Army” lead by
Nestor MakhnoNestor Ivanovych Makhno was a Ukrainian anarcho-communist guerrilla leader turned army commander who led an independent anarchist army in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War....
, and the anti-White and anti-Red
Green ArmyThe Green armies, Green Army , or Greens were armed peasant groups which fought against both the Red Army and the White Army in the Russian Civil War. They fought to protect the communities in which they lived from requisitions or reprisals by either side...
, and others. The 23 February 1923 “Red Army Day” has a two-fold, historical significance; the first day of drafting recruits (in Petrograd and
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
) and the first day of combat against the occupying
Imperial GermanThe German Empire is the name commonly used in English to describe Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a German republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II .The term Second Reich...
Army.
On 6 September 1918, the Bolshevik militias consolidated under the supreme command of the
Revolutionary Military Council of the RepublicRevolutionary Military Council of the Republic or Revvoyensoviet Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic or Revvoyensoviet Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic or Revvoyensoviet (Революционный Военный Совет, Revolyutsionny Voyenny Sovyet; Реввоенсовет, Revvoyensovyet; also...
(Revvoyensoviet,
Revolyutsionny Voyenny Sovyet),
People’s Commissar for WarCommissar is the English transliteration of an official title used in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution.The title was mostly associated with a number of Cheka and military functions in many Bolshevik and Soviet government military forces during the Russian Civil War; the White Army widely used...
(1918–24),
Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...
, Chairman, and
Ioakhim VatsetisJukums Vācietis was a Latvian Soviet military commander. He was a rare example of notable Soviet leaders who were not members of the Communist Party ....
,
Commander-in-ChiefA commander-in-chief is the commander of a nation's military forces or significant element of those forces. In the latter case, the force element may be defined as those forces within a particular region or those forces which are associated by function. As a practical term it refers to the...
of the Red Army. Soon afterward he established the
GRUGRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the acronym for the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,...
(military intelligence) to provide political and military intelligence to Red Army commanders. Trotsky founded the Red Army with an initial
Red GuardIn the context of the history of Russia and Soviet Union, Red Guards were armed groups of workers formed in the time frame of the Russian Revolution of 1917. They were the main strike force of the Bolsheviks...
organization, and a core soldiery of Red Guard militiamen and
ChekistThe Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by an aristocrat turned communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
secret policemen; conscription began in June 1918, and opposition to it was violently suppressed. To politically control the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Red Army soldiery, the
ChekaThe Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by an aristocrat turned communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
operated Special Punitive Brigades which suppressed anti-communism, deserters, and enemies of the state. Wartime pragmatism allowed recruiting ex-Tsarist officers and sergeants (non-commissioned officers, NCOs) to the Red Army. Lev Glezarov’s special commission screened and recruited; by mid-August 1920 the Red Army’s former Tsarist troops comprised 48,000 officers, 10,300 administrators, and 214,000 NCOs. At the Civil War’s start, ex-Tsarists comprised 75 per cent of the Red Army officer corps, who were employed as
voenspetsy (military specialists), whose loyalty was occasionally ascertained with hostage families. At war’s end in 1922, ex-Tsarists constituted 83 per cent of the Red Army’s divisional and corps commanders.
The slogan
Exhortation, Organization, and Reprisals expressed the discipline and motivation ensuring the Red Army’s tactical and strategic success. On campaign, the attached Cheka Special Punitive Brigades conducted summary field courts martial and executions of deserters and slackers. Under Commissar
Janis BerzinJānis Bērziņš also Ian Karlovich Berzin or Yan Karlovich Berzin , Latvian and Soviet communist military official and politician.-Early years:...
, the Special Punitive Brigades took hostages from the villages of deserters, to compel their surrender; one in ten was executed. The tactic also suppressed peasant rebellions in Red Army-controlled areas. The loyalty of the political, ethnic, and national varieties of men composing the Red Army was enforced by
political commissarsPolitical officer may be:*Political officer , Occasionally, a synonym for political commissar*Political officer , in the context of the British Empire, for a pseudo-ambassadorial role in areas bordering imperial territories...
attached at the
brigadeA brigade is a military unit that is typically composed of two to five regiments or battalions, depending on the era and nationality of a given army. Usually, a brigade is a sub-component of a division, a larger unit consisting of two or more brigades; however, some brigades are classified as a...
and
regimentA regiment is a military unit, composed of variable numbers of battalions, commanded by a Colonel. A regiment can be broken into two distinct categories, one being an administrative unit which is responsible for non-operational management of battalions , while the other being a deployable combat...
levels, and to spy on subordinate commanders, for
political incorrectnessPolitical correctness is a term denoting language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social offense in gender, racial, cultural, handicap, and age-related usages...
. Despite such power, the political commissars whose Chekist detachments retreated or broke in the face of the enemy earned the death penalty. In August 1918, Trotsky authorized General
Mikhail TukhachevskyMikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky was a Soviet military commander, chief of the Red Army , and one of the most prominent victims of Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s.-Early life:...
to place
blocking unitsBarrier troops, blocking units, or anti-retreat forces are formations of armed soldiers normally placed behind regular troops on a battle line to prevent panic or unauthorized withdrawal or retreat...
behind politically-unreliable Red Army units, to shoot them if they retreated without permission. In 1942, during the Great Patriotic War (1941–45),
Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953...
reintroduced the policy via
penal battalionsPenal battalions, penal companies, etc., are military formations consisting of convicted persons for which military service in such units was either the assigned punishment or an alternative to imprisonment or the death penalty.-Nazi Germany :...
.
Polish-Soviet War
In 1919-1921 the Red Army was also involved in the
Polish-Soviet warThe Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic, four states in post-World War I Europe. The war was the result of the belligerents' desire to expand their territories and their influence...
, in which it reached central Poland in 1920, but then suffered a
defeatThe Battle of Warsaw was the decisive battle of the Polish–Soviet War, which began soon after the end of World War I in 1918 and lasted until the Treaty of Riga .The battle was fought from August 12–25, 1920 as Red Army forces commanded by Mikhail Tukhachevsky approached the Polish...
there, which put an end to the war. During the Polish campaign the Red Army numbered some 5.5 million men, many of which the Army had difficulty supporting, around 581,000 in the two operational fronts, Western and Southwestern. Around 2.5 million men were 'immobilized in the interior' as part of reserve armies.
Doctrinal development in the 1920s and 1930s
After four years of warfare, the Red Army’s defeat of
WrangelBaron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel was an officer in the Imperial Russian army and later commanding general of the anti-bolshevik White Army in Southern Russia in the later stages of the Russian Civil War.-Life:Wrangel was born in Mukuliai , Lithuania , a descendant of the...
in the south allowed the foundation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922. Historian
John EricksonJohn Erickson , was a British historian who wrote extensively on the Second World War, with books on Operation Barbarossa and the Battle of Stalingrad....
dates 1 February 1924, when
Mikhail FrunzeMikhail Vasilyevich Frunze was a Bolshevik leader during and just prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917.-Biography:...
became head of the Red Army Staff, as the ascent of the
General StaffThe General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is the military staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. It is the central organ of the Armed Forces Administration and oversees operational management of the armed forces under the Russian Ministry of Defence.The staff is...
, which dominated Soviet military planning and operations. By 1 October 1924 the Red Army’s strength diminished to 530,000. Divisions of the Soviet Union 1917-1945 details the formations of the Red Army in that time.
In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, Soviet military theoreticians developed the
Deep operationsDeep battle was a military theory developed by the Soviet Union for its armed forces during the 1920s and 1930s. It was developed by a number of influential military writers, such as Vladimir Triandafillov and Mikhail Tukhachevsky who endeavoured to create a military strategy with its own...
doctrine, a direct consequence of their
Polish-Soviet WarThe Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic, four states in post-World War I Europe. The war was the result of the belligerents' desire to expand their territories and their influence...
and Russian Civil War experience. To achieve victory, deep operations comprehend simultaneous
CorpsA Corps is either a large formation, or an administrative grouping of troops within an armed force with a common function such as Artillery or Signals representing an arm of service...
- and
ArmyAn army An army An army (from Latin armata "armed (things)" via Old French armée, "armed" (feminine), in the broadest sense, is the land-based Military of a nation. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps...
-size unit maneuvers of simultaneous parallel attacks throughout the depth of the enemy’s ground forces, inducing catastrophic defensive failure. The deep battle doctrine relies upon aviation and armor advances in the hope that
maneuver warfareManeuver warfare, also spelled manoeuvre warfare, is the term used by military theorists for a concept of warfare that advocates attempting to defeat an adversary by incapacitating their decision-making through shock and disruption brought about by movement...
offers quick, efficient, and decisive victory. Marshal Tukhachevsky said that
aerial warfareAerial warfare is the use of military aircraft and other flying machines in warfare, including military airlift of cargo to further the national interests as was demonstrated in the Berlin Airlift...
must be “employed against targets beyond the range of
infantryInfantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of the Combat Arms they are the backbone of armies...
,
artilleryArtillery is a military combat Arm that employs weapons capable of discharging large projectiles in combat. They are generally capable of adding considerable fire power to the military capability of an armed force...
, and other arms. For maximum tactical effect aircraft should be employed en masse, concentrated in time and space, against targets of the highest tactical importance.”
Red Army Deep Operations were first formally expressed in the 1929 Field Regulations, and codified in the 1936 Provisional Field Regulations (PU-36). The
Great PurgeGreat Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of...
(1937–39) removed many leading officers from the Red Army, including Tukhachevsky and many of his followers, and the doctrine was abandoned until the Second World War.
The Great Patriotic War
{{details|the Great Patriotic War|Great Patriotic War (term)}}
{{details|Eastern Front (World War II)|Eastern Front (World War II)}}
Per the Nazi–Soviet Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (24 August 1939), the
Red Army invaded PolandThe 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II, sixteen days after the beginning of the Nazi German attack on Poland...
on 17 September 1939, after the
Nazi invasionThe Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II...
on 1 September 1939. On 30 November, the Red Army also attacked Finland, in the
Winter WarThe Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939, three months after the German invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
of 1939–40. By autumn 1940, after conquering its portion of Poland, the Third Reich shared an extensive border with USSR, with whom it remained neutrally-bound by their
non-aggression pactA non-aggression pact is an international treaty between two or more states agreeing to avoid war or armed conflict between them and resolve their disputes through peaceful negotiations...
and trade agreements. For Hitler, the circumstance was no dilemma, because the
Drang nach OstenDrang nach Osten was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. The term became a motto...
(“Drive towards the East”) policy secretly remained in force, culminating on 18 December 1940 with
DirectiveDirective may refer to:* European Union directive, a legislative act of the European Union* Directive , a highly-acclaimed poem by Robert Frost...
No. 21, Operation BarbarossaOperation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km front...
, approved on 3 February 1941, and slated for mid-May 1941.
When
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades (4.8 million soldiers), including 166 divisions and 9 brigades (2.9 million soldiers) garrisoned in the western military districts. The Axis deployed on the
Eastern FrontThe Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of war between the European Axis powers, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Finland , and the Soviet Union which encompassed central and eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9...
181 divisions and 18 brigades (5.5 million soldiers). Three Fronts, the Northwestern, Western, and Southwestern conducted the defense of the western borders of the USSR. In the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War the
WehrmachtWehrmacht was the name of the unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe ....
defeated many Red Army units. The Red Army lost millions of men as prisoners and lost much of its pre-war matériel. Stalin increased mobilization, and by 1 August 1941, despite 46 divisions lost in combat, the Red Army’s strength was 401 divisions.
The unprepared Soviet forces suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers (cf. the purges), partial mobilization, and an incomplete reorganization. The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the
purgingGreat Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of...
of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat. The Axis’s numeric superiority rendered the combatants’ divisional strength approximately equal. A generation of Soviet commanders (notably
Georgy ZhukovMarshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, honorary GCB was a Russian career officer in the Red Army who, in the course of World War II, played an important role in leading the Red Army through much of Eastern Europe to liberate the Soviet Union and other nations from the Axis...
) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the
Battle of MoscowThe Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942...
, at
StalingradThe Battle of Stalingrad was a battle of World War II between Nazi Germany and its allies and the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 17 July 1942 and 2 February 1943....
,
KurskThe Battle of Kursk refers to German and Soviet operations on the Eastern Front of World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armoured clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka, and the costliest single day of aerial warfare...
and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive.
In 1941, the Soviet government raised the bloodied Red Army’s
esprit de corps with propaganda eschewing
class struggleClass struggle is the active expression of class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, leading ideologists of communism, wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle".Marx's notion of class has...
for the defense of Motherland and nation, employing historic examplars of Russian courage and bravery against foreign aggressors. The anti-Nazi
Great Patriotic War, was conflated with the Patriotic War of 1812 against
NapoleonNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
, and historical Russian military heroes, such as Alexander Nevski and Mikhail Kutuzov, appeared; repression of the
Russian Orthodox ChurchThe Russian Orthodox Church ; or The Moscow Patriarchate , also known...
(temporarily) ceased, and priests revived the tradition of blessing arms before battle.
To encourage the initiative of Red Army commanders, the CPSU temporarily abolished
political commissarThe political commissar , is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military...
s, re-introduced formal military ranks and decorations, and the Guards-unit concept. Exceptionally heroic or high-performing units earned the
GuardsGuards units are elite units and formations in the armed forces of the former Soviet Union, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. These units were awarded Guards status after distinguishing themselves in service, and are considered to have elite status. The Guards designation originated during the Great...
title (e.g.
1st Guards Special Rifle CorpsThe 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps was a hastily formed Red Army blocking formation active briefly in 1941, during the German advance on Moscow....
,
6th Guards Tank ArmyThe 6th Guards Order of Red Banner Tank Army was a tank army of the Soviet Union's Red Army, first formed during World War II and disbanded in Ukraine in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union....
), an élite designation denoting superior training, matériel, and pay. Negative reinforcement also was used; slackers and malingerers avoiding combat with self-inflicted wounds cowards, thieves, and deserters were disciplined with beatings, demotions, undesirable-dangerous duties, and summary execution by
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
punitive detachments.
In that time, the
osobist (NKVD military counter-intelligence officer) became a key Red Army figure with the power to condemn to death and to spare the life of any soldier and (most any) officer of the unit to which he was attached. In 1942, Stalin established the
penal battalionsPenal battalions, penal companies, etc., are military formations consisting of convicted persons for which military service in such units was either the assigned punishment or an alternative to imprisonment or the death penalty.-Nazi Germany :...
composed of
gulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as
tramplers clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera. Given the dangers, the maximum sentence was three months. Likewise, the Soviet treatment of Red Army personnel captured by the Wehrmacht was especially harsh. A 1941 Stalin directive ordered the suicide of every Red Army officer and soldier rather than surrender; Soviet law regarded all captured Red Army soldiers as traitors. Soviet PoWs whom the Red Army liberated from enemy captivity usually were sentenced to penal battalions.
During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army
conscriptedConscription is a general term for involuntary labor demanded by an established authority. It is most often used in the specific sense of requiring citizens to serve in the armed forces...
29,574,900 men in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war. Of this total of 34,401,807 it lost 6,329,600
KIAKia may refer to:* Kia, Kia is a Persian male name meaning "The Great King". It was also the name of the ruler of the ancient northern Persian state of Tabarestan.* Kia Motors, Automobile manufacturer...
, 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000
MIAMía is a song written by Mexican songwriter Armando Manzanero. Was first released as a double-side single along with the track "Felicidad" in 1969...
(most captured). Of these 11,444,100, however, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in the subsequently liberated Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400.. This is the official total dead, but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million men, including 7.7 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million POW dead (out of 5.2 million total POWs), plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, being ethnic
RussiansThe Russian people are an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
(5,756,000), followed by ethnic
UkrainiansUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group primarily living in Ukraine, or more broadly—citizens of Ukraine...
(1,377,400). However, as many as 8 million of the 34 million mobilized were non-Slavic minority soldiers, and around 45 divisions formed from national minorities served from 1941 to 1943.
The German losses on the Eastern Front comprised an estimated 3,604,800 KIA within the 1937 borders plus 900,000 ethnic Germans and Austrians outside the 1937 border (included in these numbers are men listed as missing in action or unaccounted for after the war) and 3,576,300 men reported captured (total 8,081,100); the losses of the German satellites on the Eastern Front approximated 668,163 KIA/MIA and 799,982 captured (total 1,468,145). Of these 9,549,245, the Soviets released 3,572,600 from captivity after the war, thus the grand total of the Axis losses came to an estimated 5,976,645. As regards prisoners of war, both sides captured large numbers and had many die in captivity - one recent British figure says 3,6 of 6 million Soviet POWs died in German camps, while 300,000 of 3 million German POWs died in Soviet hands.
Shortcomings
Early in the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army fielded some excellent weaponry, especially artillery and tanks. The Red Army’s heavy KV-1 and medium
T-34The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank produced from 1940 to 1958. Although its armour and armament were surpassed by later tanks of the era, it has been often credited as the most effective, efficient and influential design of World War II...
tanks outclassed most Wehrmacht armor until 1943, but in 1941, most Soviet tank units used older models. The Soviet Air Force, though equipped with relatively modern aircraft, initially performed poorly against the
LuftwaffeLuftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1933 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956.Schweizer Luftwaffe is also the name of the Swiss Air...
. The rapid progress of the initial German air and land attacks into the Soviet Union made Red Army logistical support difficult, because many depots, and most of the USSR’s industrial manufacturing base lay in the country’s invaded western half, obliging their reestablishment east of the Ural Mountains. Until then, the Red Army improvised much in lieu of normal weapons and equipment. At the end of the Second World War (1939–45), the Red Army was the largest army in history, possessing more tanks and artillery, and experienced soldiers, commanders, and staff than all other participant forces combined. From which perspective, the British
Chiefs of Staff CommitteeThe Chiefs of Staff Committee is composed of the most senior military personnel in the British Armed Forces.-History:The Chiefs of Staff Committee was initially established as a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1923. It remained as such until the abolition of the CID upon the...
rejected Prime Minister Churchill’s
Operation UnthinkableOperation Unthinkable was a British plan to attack the Soviet Union. The creation of the plan was ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and developed by the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff at the end of World War II....
(1945) as infeasible for deposing the Stalin government, expelling the Red Army from Europe, and destroying the USSR.
The Cold War
{{details|Cold War}}
In 1946, the
Red Army was re-christened the
Soviet Army, progressing from “revolutionary militia” to “regular army” of a sovereign state.
MarshalMarshal of the Soviet Union was the de facto highest military rank of the Soviet Union. ....
Georgi Zhukov became Chief of the Soviet Ground Forces in March 1946, but was quickly succeeded by
Ivan KonevIvan Stepanovich Konev , was a Soviet military commander, who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, liberated much of Eastern Europe from occupation by the Axis Powers, and helped in the capture of Germany's capital, Berlin...
in July, who remained as such until 1950, when the position of Chief of the Soviet Ground Forces was abolished for five years, an organisational gap that “probably was associated in some manner with the
Korean War [1950–53The Korean War is a war that started between North Korea and South Korea on 25 June 1950 and paused with an armistice signed 27 July, 1953...
]”. From 1945 to 1948, the
Soviet Armed ForcesThe Soviet Armed Forces refers to the armed forces of the Russian SFSR , and Soviet Union from their beginnings in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War to its dissolution in December 1991....
were reduced from ca. 11.3 million to ca. 2.8 million men, a demobilisation controlled first, by increasing the number of
military districtMilitary districts are formations of a state's armed forces which are responsible for a certain area of territory. They are often more responsible for administrative than operational matters, and in countries with conscript forces, often handle parts of the conscription cycle.Navies have also used...
s to 33, then reduced to 21, in 1946. Throughout the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
(1945–91), Western intelligence estimates calculated that the Soviet strength remained ca. 2.8 million to ca. 5.3 million men. To maintain said strength range, Soviet law minimally required a three-year military service obligation from every able man of military age, until 1967, when the Ground Forces reduced it to a two-year draft obligation.
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Soviet Military Districts 1990
{{col-begin}}
- Leningrad Military District
The Leningrad Military District is a military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. As the Russian Military of Defence site officially states, it traces its history from the Petersburg Military District of Imperial Russia...
- Belorussian Military District
The Byelorussian Military District was a military district of the Soviet Armed Forces. Originally, the Western Military District, which was formed in April 1924 on the basis of the Russian Civil War era Western Front, was redesignated the Belorussian Military District, with its staff in Smolensk,...
- Baltic Military District
The Baltic Military District was a military district of the Soviet armed forces, formed briefly before the German invasion, and then reformed after World War II and disbanded after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991....
- Carpathian Military District
The Carpathian Military District was a military district of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1945 after the conclusion of the Second World War to 1990-91. It became part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 1991 and was disbanded by being redesignated the Western Operational Command later in the 1990s.Two...
- Kiev Military District
The Kiev Military District was a Russian military district of the Imperial Russian Army and subsequently of the Soviet Armed Forces.-Imperial Russian Army Formation:...
- Odessa Military District
The Odessa Military District was a military district of the Soviet Armed Forces, and was active from around 1939 to the 1990s upon the reorganization of the Ukrainian Ground Forces and Russian intervention into Moldavian Internal Affairs....
- Moscow Military District
The Moscow Military District is a military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Colonel General V.V Gerasimov has commanded the district since February 6 2009.-History:...
- Volga-Urals Military District
The Volga-Ural Military District is a military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formed on 1 September 2001 by the amalgamation of the Volga Military District and the Ural Military District...
- North Caucasus Military District
The North Caucasus Military District is a military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. It now comprises the Republic of Adygeya, the Republic of Dagestan, the Republic of Ingushetia, the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, the Republic of Kalmykia, the Karachayevo-Cherkess Republic, the...
- Transcaucasian Military District
The Transcaucasian Military District, a military district of the Soviet Armed Forces, traces its history to May 1921 and the incorporation of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia into the USSR...
- Turkestan Military District
The Turkestan Military District was a military district of both the Imperial Russian Army and the Soviet Armed Forces, with its headquarters at Tashkent. The District was first created during the 1874 Russian military reform when by order of Minister D.A. Milyutinym the territory of Russia was...
- Siberian Military District
The Siberian Military District is a Military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. In 1998, seven years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the District as it is today was formed by the amalgamation of the previous Siberian and Trans-Baikal Military Districts, and on their merger...
- Transbaikal Military District
The Transbaikal Military District was a military district of first the Military of the Soviet Union and then the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formed on May 17, 1935 and included the Buryat Republic, Chita Oblast, and Yakutia. Chita was the headquarters of the district...
- Far Eastern Military District
The Far Eastern Military District is a military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, which traces its history originally to the East Siberian Military District originally formed in 1918, during the Russian Civil War. Its headquarters are now at Khabarovsk...
- the Central Asian Military District was dissolved in 1988 and the Volga and Urals Military Districts merged around 1991
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To establish and secure the USSR’s eastern European
geopoliticalGeopolitics is the art and practice of using political power over a given territory. Traditionally, the term has applied primarily to the impact of geography on politics, but its usage has evolved over the past century to encompass a wider connotation....
interests, Red Army troops who liberated Eastern Europe from
NaziNational Socialism is a political term that is both vague and ambiguous. As the name suggests, features of nationalism and socialism are combined and interrelated to form an overall National Socialist ideology, although the combination process is neither obvious nor straightforward...
rule, in 1945 remained in place to secure the pro–Soviet régimes
of the (future)
Warsaw PactThe Warsaw Pact is the informal name for the mutual defense Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance subscribed by eight Communist states in Eastern Europe, that was established at the USSR’s initiative and realised on 14 May 1955, in Warsaw, Poland...
(1955–91), the satellite states. and to deter against historical Russian fears of attack from Europe. Elsewhere, they may have assisted the
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
in suppressing anti-Soviet
Western Ukrainian resistanceThe Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a group of Ukrainian nationalist partisans who engaged in a series of guerrilla conflicts during World War II...
(1941–55).
Soviet Army forces on USSR territory were apportioned among
military districtMilitary districts are formations of a state's armed forces which are responsible for a certain area of territory. They are often more responsible for administrative than operational matters, and in countries with conscript forces, often handle parts of the conscription cycle.Navies have also used...
s. There were 32 of them in 1945. 16 districts remained from the mid-1970s to the end of the USSR (see table at right). Yet, the greatest Soviet Army concentration was in the
Group of Soviet Forces in GermanyThe Group of Soviet Forces in Germany , also known as the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany and the Western Group of Forces were the troops of the Soviet Army in East Germany.The Soviet armies permanently stationed in Germany were the predominant land-based military threat to...
, which suppressed the anti-Soviet
Uprising of 1953 in East Germanythumb|Soviet tank in Leipzig on 17 June 1953The Uprising of 1953 in East Germany took place in June 1953. A strike by East Berlin construction workers on June 16 turned into a widespread uprising against the Stalinist German Democratic Republic government the next day...
. East European Groups of Forces were the
Northern Group of ForcesThe Northern Group of Forces was the military formation of the Soviet Army stationed in Poland from the end of Second World War in 1945 until 1993 when they were withdrawn in the aftermath of the fall of Soviet Union.-History:...
in Poland, the
Southern Group of ForcesThe Southern Group of Forces was a Soviet Army formation formed twice following the Second World War, most notably around the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956....
in
HungaryHungary , in English officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state...
, which put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In 1958 soviet troops were withdrawn from
RomaniaRomania is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory...
.
Central Group of ForcesThe Central Group of Forces was a Soviet military formation used to control Soviet troops in Central Europe on two occasions: in Austria and Hungary from 1945-55 and troops stationed in Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring of 1968....
in Czechoslovakia was established after Warsaw Pact intervention against the
Prague SpringThe Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
of 1968. In 1969, at the east end of the Soviet Union, the
Sino-Soviet border conflictThe Sino-Soviet border conflict of 1969 refers to a series of armed border clashes between the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China at the height of the Sino-Soviet split. The most serious of these border clashes occurred in March 1969 in the vicinity of Zhenbao Island on Ussuri River, also...
(1969), prompted establishment of a sixteenth military district, the Central Asian Military District, at
Alma-AtaAlmaty is the largest city in Kazakhstan, with a population of 1,348,500 , which represents 9% of the population of the country....
, Kazakhstan. In 1979, the Soviet Union
entered AfghanistanThe Soviet War in Afghanistan, also known as the Soviet–Afghan War, was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan at their own request, against the Islamist Mujahideen Resistance...
, to support its communist government, provoking a ten-year
mujahideenA Mujahideen is a person who is fighting for freedom. The plural is mujahideen . The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad ....
guerrilla resistance.
After 1956, Premier
Nikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
began reducing the Ground Forces, to build the
Strategic Rocket ForcesThe Strategic Rocket Forces of the Russian Federation or RVSN RF , transliteration: Raketnye voyska strategicheskogo naznacheniya Rossiyskoy Federatsii) are an arm of service of the Russian armed forces that controls Russia's land-based ICBMs...
— emphasizing the Armed Forces’
nuclearA nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion...
capabilities. To accomplish that, he deposed Marshal Zhukov from the Politburo, in 1957, for opposing the reductions with which the Ground Forces were reorganizing for
nuclear warNuclear warfare is battle in which nuclear weapons are used.Nuclear war may also refer to:*Nuclear War *Nuclear War *Nuclear War, an album by Sun Ra*"Nuclear War", a song by Sun Ra...
fare capability. Nonetheless, the forces possessed too few theatre-level nuclear weapons to fulfil war-plan requirements until the mid-1980s. The
General StaffThe General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is the military staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. It is the central organ of the Armed Forces Administration and oversees operational management of the armed forces under the Russian Ministry of Defence.The staff is...
maintained Soviet invasion-of-Western-Europe plans, whose massive scale was published by German researchers at the
National People's ArmyThe National People’s Army was the military of the German Democratic Republic. Since East Germany was at the frontline of the Cold War, the GDR's military was considered to be the most advanced in the whole Warsaw Pact, excluding the Soviet Union...
files.
The Soviet Union dissolves
From 1985 to 1990, Soviet President
Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was the second-to-last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until 1991, and the last head of state of the USSR, serving from 1988 until its collapse in 1991...
(1985–91) attempted to reduce the Soviet Army’s financial straining of the USSR’s economy; he slowly reduced its size, and withdrew it from Afghanistan in 1989. Meanwhile, by the end of 1990, democratic revolutions had dissolved the
Eastern BlocThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
, and Soviet citizens likewise deposed their government of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Unlike his
StalinistStalinism was the political system and ideology of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1928–1953...
predecessors, Gorbachev did not attack the citizenry with the Soviet Army; political crises ensued, and the USSR declined into a (crisis of confidence) government emergency that metamorphosed into a Stalinist coup in summer of 1991.
After the 19–21 August 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt to depose President Gorbachev, the Academy of Soviet Scientists reported that the armed forces did not much participate in the coup launched by the neo-Stalinists in the CPSU. Commanders despatched tanks into Moscow, yet the coup failed.
On 8 December 1991, the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine formally dissolved the USSR, and then constituted the
Commonwealth of Independent States{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Infobox Geopolitical organisation|native_name = Commonwealth of Independent States...
(CIS). Soviet President Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991; the next day, the Supreme Soviet dissolved itself, officially dissolving the USSR on 26 December 1991. In the next eighteen months, inter-republican political efforts to transform the Army of the Soviet Union into the CIS military failed; eventually, the forces stationed in the republics formally became the militaries of the respective republican governments.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Army dissolved and the USSR's successor states divided its assets among themselves. The divide mostly occurred along a regional basis, with Soviet soldiers from Russia becoming part of the new
Russian ArmyThe Russian Ground Forces are the land forces of the Russian Federation, formed from parts of the collapsing Soviet Army in 1992. This in turn, posed many economic challenges coupled with reforms to professionalize the force during the transitional phase that Russia had to endure due to the...
, while Soviet soldiers originating from Kazakhstan became part of the new
Kazakh ArmyThe Military of Kazakhstan is derived from a remnant force of the former Soviet Union. On June 30, 1992, the Soviet Armed Forces' Turkestan Military District disbanded, following the collapse of the Soviet Union....
. As a result, the bulk of the Soviet Ground Forces, including most of the
ScudScud is a series of tactical ballistic missiles developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and exported widely to other countries. The term comes from the NATO reporting name SS-1 Scud which was attached to the missile by Western intelligence agencies...
and Scaleboard
Surface-to-surface missileA surface-to-surface missile is a guided projectile launched from a hand-held, vehicle mounted, trailer mounted or fixed installation or from a ship. They are often powered by a rocket motor or sometimes fired by an explosive charge, since the launching platform is typically stationary or moving...
(SSM) forces, became incorporated in the
Russian Ground ForcesThe Russian Ground Forces are the land forces of the Russian Federation, formed from parts of the collapsing Soviet Army in 1992. This in turn, posed many economic challenges coupled with reforms to professionalize the force during the transitional phase that Russia had to endure due to the...
. By the end of 1992, most remnants of the Soviet Army in former Soviet Republics had disbanded. Military forces garrisoned in Eastern Europe (including the Baltic states) gradually returned home between 1992 and 1994. This list of Soviet Army divisions sketches some of the fates of the individual parts of the Ground Forces.
In mid March 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed himself as the new Russian minister of defense, marking a crucial step in the creation of the new Russian armed forces, comprising the bulk of what was still left of the military. The last vestiges of the old Soviet command structure were finally dissolved in June 1993, when the paper
Commonwealth of Independent States{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Infobox Geopolitical organisation|native_name = Commonwealth of Independent States...
Military Headquarters was reorganized as a staff for facilitating CIS military cooperation.
In the next few years, the former Soviet Ground Forces withdrew from central and Eastern Europe (including the Baltic states), as well as from the newly independent post-Soviet republics of
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan , formally the Republic of Azerbaijan , is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south...
,
ArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
,
UzbekistanUzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union...
,
KazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a country situated in Eurasia that is ranked as the ninth largest country in the world. It is also the world's largest landlocked country. Its territory of 2,727,300 km² is greater than Western Europe...
, and
KyrgyzstanKyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east....
. Now-
Russian Ground ForcesThe Russian Ground Forces are the land forces of the Russian Federation, formed from parts of the collapsing Soviet Army in 1992. This in turn, posed many economic challenges coupled with reforms to professionalize the force during the transitional phase that Russia had to endure due to the...
remained in
TajikistanTajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and People's Republic of China to the east...
,
AbkhaziaAbkhazia is a disputed region on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Since its declaration of independence from Georgia in 1991 during the Georgian–Abkhaz conflict, it is governed as the partially-recognized Republic of Abkhazia.Georgia considers Abkhazia part of its territory and has designated...
, Georgia, and
TransnistriaThe involvement of the Soviet 14th Guards Army in the War of Transnistria was extensive and contributed to the outcome, which left the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic with de facto independence from the Republic of Moldova.-Background:...
.
Organization
{{details|Formations of the Soviet Army}}
At the beginning of its existence, the Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers. However, a decree of May 29, 1918 imposed obligatory military service for men of ages 18 to 40. To service the massive draft, the Bolsheviks formed regional military commissariats (
voyennyy komissariat, abbr.
voyenkomat), which as of 2006 still exist in Russia in this function and under this name. Military commissariats however should not be confused with the institution of military
political commissarThe political commissar , is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military...
s.
In the mid-1920s the territorial principle of manning the Red Army was introduced. In each region able-bodied men were called up for a limited period of active duty in territorial units, which comprised about half the Army's strength, each year, for five years. The first call-up period was for three months, with one month a year thereafter. A regular cadre provided a stable nucleus. By 1925 this system provided 46 of the 77 infantry divisions and one of the eleven cavalry divisions. The remainder consisted of regular officers and enlisted personnel serving two-year terms. The territorial system was finally abolished, with all remaining formations converted to the other cadre divisions, in 1937–38.
Under Stalin's campaign for
mechanizationMechanization or mechanisation is providing human operators with machinery that assist them with the muscular requirements of work. It can also refer to the use of machines to replace manual labor or animals. A step beyond mechanization is automation. The use of hand powered tools is not an...
, the army formed its first mechanized unit in 1930. The 1st Mechanized Brigade, consisting of a tank regiment, a motorized infantry regiment, and reconnaissance and artillery battalions. From this humble beginning, the Soviets would go on to create the first operational-level armored formations in history, the 11th and 45th Mechanized Corps, in 1932. These were tank-heavy formations with combat support forces included so they could survive while operating in enemy rear areas without support from a parent
frontA front was a major military organization in the Soviet Army during the Second World War, roughly equivalent to an army group in the militaries of most other countries except Germany...
.
Impressed by the German campaign of 1940 against France, the Soviet
NKONKO can refer to:* Navy Knowledge Online accessible only to qualifying personnel. See documentation on login page.* The N'Ko script and written language of West Africa...
ordered the creation of nine mechanized corps on July 6, 1940. Between February and March 1941 another twenty would be ordered, and all larger than those of Tukhachevsky. Although, on paper, by 1941 the Red Army's 29 mechanized corps had no less than 29,899 tanks they proved to be a paper tiger. There were actually only 17,000 tanks available at the time, meaning several of the new mechanized corps were under strength. The pressure placed on factories and military planners to show production numbers also led to a situation where the majority of armored vehicles were obsolescent models, critically lacking in spare parts and support equipment, and nearly three quarters were overdue for major maintenance. By June 22 1941 there were only 1,475 T-34s and KV series tanks available to the Red Army, and these were too dispersed along the front to provide enough mass for even local success. To put this into perspective, the
3rd Mechanized CorpsThe 20th Motor Rifle Division is a formation of the Russian Ground Forces, originally formed within the Soviet Red Army as the 3rd Mechanised Corps....
in Lithuania was formed up of a total of 460 tanks; 109 of these were newer KV-1s and T-34s. This corps would prove to be one of the lucky few with a substantial number of newer tanks. However, the 4th Army was composed of 520 tanks, all of which were the obsolete T-26, as opposed to the authorized strength of 1,031 newer medium tanks. This problem was universal throughout the Red Army. This fact would play a crucial role in the initial defeats of the Red Army in 1941 at the hands of the German armed forces.
Command, Arms of Service, and Service Corps of the RKKA
{{Unreferenced section|date=March 2008}}
Like other armies, the Red Army used administrative departments (called Directorates) to develop, train and equip the many combat Arms of Service troops and their Service Corps support echelons. These were:
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Headquarters and Staff
- Stavka
Stavka was the term used to refer to command element of armed forces from the time of the Kievan Rus′, more formally during the history of Imperial Russia as administrative staff and General Headquarters during late 19th Century Imperial Russian armed forces and those of the Soviet Union...
& HQ directorates
- Soviet military academies
There were a number of military academies in the Soviet Union of different specialties.Unlike Western military academies such as West Point, Soviet, now Russian, military and police institutions referred to as "academy" are post-graduate professional schools for experienced commissioned officers...
- army map and military survey service
- Rear Services ('Tyl')
- Construction and administrative troops
- Civil defence troops
- Intelligence
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the acronym for the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,...
{{col-4}}
Combat branches
- Rifle Troops
The rifles troops often called rifle troops in English, is name for the Russian infantry combat Arm of Service that, since 1857, had been armed with rifles as their primary firearm...
- Soviet cavalry
Cavalry were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback in combat. Cavalry were historically the second oldest and most mobile of the combat arms...
- reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is a military and medical term denoting exploration conducted to gain information. Militarily, its shorthand Canadian and British form is recce , its American usage form is recon...
troops
- Soviet armoured forces
- Soviet artillery
Artillery is a military combat Arm that employs weapons capable of discharging large projectiles in combat. They are generally capable of adding considerable fire power to the military capability of an armed force...
troops
- The Soviet Airborne Troops
The Russian Airborne Troops or VDV is an arm of service of the Armed forces of the Russian Federation, on a par with the Strategic Rocket Forces and the Russian Space Forces...
{{col-4}}
Combat support branches
- Soviet sapper troops (combat engineers)
- Soviet signals
Military communications, or Signals , is a field of military activities, tactics and equipment dealing with communications...
troops
- chemical
Chemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons to kill, injure, or incapacitate an enemy....
troops
- NKVD troops including the Blocking Detachments (not actually a part either of the RKKA or Soviet Army)
{{col-4}}
Combat service support branches
- medical troops
Medical Corps may refer to any of the following organizations:In the British Armed Forces and Commonwealth of Nations:* Royal Army Medical Corps, a specialist corps of the Army Medical Services that provides medical care to British Army personnel...
- electrical-technical engineers
- military justice and military police
Military police are normally the police of a military organization.Military police may refer to:* a section of the military solely responsible for policing the armed forces...
- Transport Troops
- railway troops
Military railways are a form of transport communication technology used by the military forces for movement of strategically significant forces, bulk cargo or as a platform for military systems....
- Soviet veterinary troops
- supply and administration troops
- military music troops
{{col-end}}
Wartime
{{See also|Red Army's tactics in World War II}}
War experience prompted changes to the way frontline forces were organized. After six months of combat against the Germans,
STAVKAStavka was the term used to refer to command element of armed forces from the time of the Kievan Rus′, more formally during the history of Imperial Russia as administrative staff and General Headquarters during late 19th Century Imperial Russian armed forces and those of the Soviet Union...
abolished the Rifle Corps intermediate level between the
ArmyAn army, besides the generalized meanings of ‘a country's armed forces’ or its ‘land forces’, is a type of formation in militaries of various countries, including the Soviet Union. This article serves a central point of reference for Soviet armies without individual articles, and explains some of...
and
DivisionA division is a large military unit or formation usually consisting of between ten to thirty thousand soldiers. In most armies, a division is composed of several regiments or brigades, and in turn several divisions make up a corps...
level because, while useful in theory, in the inexperienced state of the Red Army, they proved ineffective in practice. Following victory in the
Battle of MoscowThe Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942...
in January 1942, the high command began to reintroduce Rifle Corps into its most experienced formations. The total number of Rifle Corps started at 62 on 22 June 1941, dropped to six by 1 January 1942, but then increased to 34 by February 1943, and 161 by New Year's Day 1944. Actual strengths of front-line rifle divisions, authorized to contain 11,000 men in July 1941, were mostly no more than 50% of established strengths during 1941, and divisions were often worn down on continuous operations to hundreds of men or even less.
On the outbreak of war the Red Army deployed mechanized corps and tank divisions whose development has been described above. The German attack battered many severely, and in the course of 1941 virtually all (barring two in the
Transbaikal Military DistrictThe Transbaikal Military District was a military district of first the Military of the Soviet Union and then the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formed on May 17, 1935 and included the Buryat Republic, Chita Oblast, and Yakutia. Chita was the headquarters of the district...
) were disbanded. It was much easier to coordinate smaller forces, and separate tank brigades and battalions were substituted. It was late 1942 and early 1943 before larger
tank formations of corps sizeA tank corps was a Soviet armoured formation used since the beginning of World War II.-Pre-War Development of Soviet Mechanized Forces:In Soviet Russia, the so called armored forces preceded the Tank Corps. They consisted of the automated armored units made of armored vehicles and armored trains...
were fielded in order to employ armor in mass again. By mid 1942 these corps were being grouped together into Tank Armies whose strength by the end of the war could be up to 700 tanks and 50,000 men.
{{Fronts of the Red Army in World War II}}
After the Second World War
At the end of the Great Patriotic War the Red Army had over 500 rifle divisions and about a tenth that number of tank formations. Their experience of war gave the Soviets such faith in tank forces that from that point the number of tank divisions remained virtually unchanged, whereas the wartime infantry force was cut by two-thirds. The
Tank CorpsA tank corps was a Soviet armoured formation used since the beginning of World War II.-Pre-War Development of Soviet Mechanized Forces:In Soviet Russia, the so called armored forces preceded the Tank Corps. They consisted of the automated armored units made of armored vehicles and armored trains...
of the late war period were converted to tank divisions, and from 1957 the Rifle Divisions were converted to Motor Rifle Divisions (MRDs). MRDs had three motorized rifle regiments and a tank regiment, for a total of ten motor rifle battalions and six tank battalions; tank divisions had the proportions reversed.
By the middle of the 1980s the Ground Forces contained about 210 divisions. About three-quarters were motor rifle divisions and the remainder tank divisions. There were also a large number of artillery divisions, separate artillery brigades, engineer formations, and other combat support formations. However only relatively few formations were fully war ready. Three readiness categories, A, B, and V, after the first three letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, were in force. The Category A divisions were certified combat-ready and were fully equipped. B and V divisions were lower-readiness, 50–75% (requiring at least 72 hours of preparation) and 10–33% (requiring two months) respectively. The internal military districts usually contained only one or two A divisions, with the remainder B and V series formations.
Soviet planning for most of the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
period would have seen
ArmiesAn army, besides the generalized meanings of ‘a country's armed forces’ or its ‘land forces’, is a type of formation in militaries of various countries, including the Soviet Union. This article serves a central point of reference for Soviet armies without individual articles, and explains some of...
of four to five divisions operating in
FrontsA front was a major military organization in the Soviet Army during the Second World War, roughly equivalent to an army group in the militaries of most other countries except Germany...
made up of around four armies (and roughly equivalent to Western
Army GroupAn army group is a military organization consisting of several field armies, which is self-sufficient for indefinite periods. It is usually responsible for a particular geographic area...
s). In the late 1970s and early 1980s new High Commands in the Strategic Directions were created to control multi-Front operations in Europe (the Western and South-Western Strategic Directions) and at
BakuBaku , sometimes known as Baqy, Baky, Baki or Bakou, is the capital, the largest city, and the largest port of Azerbaijan and all the Caucasus. Located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, the city consists of two principal parts: the downtown and the old Inner City...
to handle southern operations, and in the Soviet Far East.
Personnel
The Bolshevik authorities assigned to every unit of the Red Army a
political commissarThe political commissar , is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military...
, or
politruk, who had the authority to override unit commanders' decisions if they ran counter to the principles of the
Communist PartyA political party described as a communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government. The name originates from the 1848 tract Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels...
. Although this sometimes resulted in inefficient command, the Party leadership considered political control over the military necessary, as the Army relied more and more on experienced officers from the pre-revolutionary
TsarTsar or czar , occasionally spelled csar or Tzar in English, is a Slavic term with Bulgarian origins used to designate certain monarchs...
ist period. This system was abolished in 1925, as there were by that time enough trained Communist officers that counter-signing of all orders was no longer necessary.
Ranks and titles
{{Main|Military ranks of the Soviet Union}}
The early Red Army abandoned the institution of a professional
officer corpsAn officer is a member of an armed force who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...
as a "heritage of tsarism" in the course of the Revolution. In particular, the Bolsheviks condemned the use of the word "
officerAn officer is a member of an armed force who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...
" and used the word "
commanderCommander is a military rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service...
" instead. The Red Army abandoned
epauletteEpaulette is a French word meaning "little shoulder" . Epaulettes are a type of ornamental shoulder piece or decoration used as insignia or rank by the military and other organizations...
s and
rankMilitary rank is a system of hierarchical relationships in armed forces or civil institutions organized along military lines. Usually, uniforms denote the bearer's rank by particular insignia affixed to the uniforms...
s, using purely functional
titleA title is a prefix or suffix added to a person's name to signify either veneration, an official position or a professional or academic qualification. In some languages, titles may even be inserted between a first and last name...
s such as "Division Commander", "Corps Commander", and similar titles.
On September 22, 1935 the Red Army abandoned service categories and introduced personal ranks. These ranks, however, used a unique mix of functional titles and traditional ranks. For example, the ranks included "
LieutenantLieutenant is a military, naval, paramilitary, fire service, emergency medical services or police officer rank....
" and "
ComdivComdiv was a military rank in the Red Army until the end of the 1930s....
" (Комдив, Division Commander). Further complications ensued from the functional and categorical ranks for political officers (e.g., "Brigade Commissar", "Army Commissar 2nd Rank"), for technical corps (e.g., "Engineer 3rd Rank", "Division Engineer"), for administrative, medical and other non-combatant branches.
The
Marshal of the Soviet UnionMarshal of the Soviet Union was the de facto highest military rank of the Soviet Union. ....
(Маршал Советского Союза) rank was introduced on the September 22, 1935. On May 7, 1940 further modifications to rationalise the ranks system were made on the proposal by Marshal
VoroshilovVoroshilov may refer to:* Kliment Voroshilov , Marshal of the Soviet Union.* Luhansk, Ukraine .* Ussuriysk, Russian Far East .* KV tank ....
: the ranks of "
GeneralA general officer is an officer of high military rank. The term or equivalent is used by nearly every country in the world. General can be used as a generic term for all grades of general officer, or it can specifically refer to a single rank that is simply called general.-All general officer...
" and "
AdmiralAdmiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above Vice Admiral and below Admiral of the Fleet/Fleet Admiral. It is usually abbreviated to "Adm." or "ADM"...
" replaced the senior functional ranks of
CombrigCombrig was a military rank used in the Red Army for commanders of brigades between 1935 and 1940 . Kombrigs were senior to polkovniks and junior to komdivs...
,
ComdivComdiv was a military rank in the Red Army until the end of the 1930s....
,
ComcorComcor was a military rank in the Red Army until the end of the 1930s....
,
ComandarmComandarm was a military rank in the Red Army until the end of the 1930s....
in the RKKA and Flagman 1st rank etc. in the Red Navy; the other senior functional ranks ("Division Commissar", "Division Engineer", etc) remained unaffected. The Arm or Service distinctions remained (e.g. General of Cavalry, Marshal of Armoured Troops). For the most part the new system restored that used by the
Imperial Russian ArmyThe Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917.-Precursors: Regiments of the New Order:...
at the conclusion of its participation in WWI.
In early 1943 a unification of the system saw the abolition of all the remaining functional ranks. The word "officer" became officially endorsed, together with the
epauletteEpaulette is a French word meaning "little shoulder" . Epaulettes are a type of ornamental shoulder piece or decoration used as insignia or rank by the military and other organizations...
s that superseded the previous rank
insigniaInsignia is a symbol or token of personal power, status or office, or of an official body of government or jurisdiction...
. The ranks and insignia of 1943 did not change much until the last days of the USSR; the contemporary Russian Army uses largely the same system.
Military education
{{Main|Soviet military academies}}
During the
Civil WarThe Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power, first in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that...
the commander cadres were trained at the
General Staff AcademyGeneral Staff Academy may refer to one of the following.*Soviet General Staff Academy, now the Russian Federation's General Staff Academy*General Staff Academy...
of the RKKA (the Nicholas General Staff Academy of the Russian Empire), which became the Frunze Military Academy in the 1920s. Senior and supreme commanders were trained at the Higher Military Academic Courses, renamed the Advanced Courses for Supreme Command in 1925; the 1931 establishment of an Operations Faculty at the Frunze Military Academy supplemented these courses. The General Staff Academy was reinstated on 2 April 1936, and became the principal military school for the senior and supreme commanders of the Red Army.
Purges
The late 1930s saw the so-called
Purges of the Red Army Cadres, which occurred concurrently with Stalin's
Great PurgeGreat Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of...
of Soviet society. In 1936 and 1937, at the orders of Stalin, thousands of Red Army officers were dismissed from their commands. The purges had the objective of cleansing the Red Army of the "politically unreliable elements", mainly among higher-ranking officers. This inevitably provided a convenient pretext for the settling of personal vendettas or to eliminate competition by officers seeking the same command. Many army, corps, and divisional commanders were sacked, most were imprisoned or sent to labor camps; others were executed. Among the victims was the Red Army's primary military theorist, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, perceived by Stalin as a potential political rival. Officers who remained soon found all of their decisions being closely examined by political officers, even in mundane matters such as record-keeping and field training exercises. An atmosphere of fear and unwillingness to take the initiative soon pervaded the Red Army; suicide rates among junior officers rose to record levels. Most historians believe that the purges significantly impaired the combat capabilities of the Red Army. However, the extent of the consequential damage attributable to them is still debated.
Recently declassified data indicate that in 1937, at the height of the Purges, the Red Army had 114,300 officers, of whom 11,034 were dismissed.{{Citation needed|date=October 2008}} In 1938, the Red Army had 179,000 officers, 56% more than in 1937, of whom a further 6,742 were sacked.{{Citation needed|date=February 2007}} In the highest echelons of the Red Army the Purges removed 3 of 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army generals, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps generals, 154 out of 186 division generals, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.
The result was that the Red Army officer corps in 1941 had many inexperienced senior officers. While 60% of regimental commanders had two years or more of command experience in June 1941, and almost 80% of rifle division commanders, only 20% of corps commanders, and 5% or fewer army and military district commanders, had the same level of experience.
The significant growth of the Red Army during the high point of the purges may have worsened matters. In 1937, the Red Army numbered around 1.3 million, increasing to almost three times that number by June 1941. The rapid growth of the army necessitated in turn the rapid promotion of officers regardless of experience or training. Junior officers were appointed to fill the ranks of the senior leadership, many of whom lacked broad experience. This action in turn resulted in many openings at the lower level of the officer corps, which were filled by new graduates from the service academies. In 1937, the entire junior class of one academy was graduated a year early to fill vacancies in the Red Army. Hamstrung by inexperience and fear of reprisals, many of these new officers failed to impress the large numbers of incoming draftees to the ranks; complaints of insubordination rose to the top of offenses punished in 1941, and may have exacerbated instances of Red Army soldiers deserting their units during the initial phases of the German offensive of that year.
By 1940, Stalin began to relent, restoring approximately one-third of previously dismissed officers to duty. However, the effect of the purges would soon manifest itself in the
Winter WarThe Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939, three months after the German invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
of 1940, where Red Army forces generally performed poorly against the much smaller Finnish Army.
Manpower
The Ground Forces were manned through conscription for a term of service, based on the All-union service laws of 1925 and 1939 in the first decades of the Soviet Union. According to 1949 service law service terms were 3 years in the ground forces (and 4 years in the navy). The final 1967 military service law reduced the term of service from three to two years (3 years in the navy). A bi-annual draft in May and November was intruced then, also, replacing the annual draft in fall. This system was administered through the thousands of military commissariats (военный комиссариат, военкомат (voyenkomat)) located throughout the Soviet Union. Between January and May of every year, every young Soviet male citizen was required to report to the local voyenkomat for assessment for military service, following a summons based on lists from every school and employer in the area. The voyenkomat worked to quotas sent out by a department of the General Staff, listing how young men are required by each service and branch of the Armed Forces. The new conscripts were then picked up by an officer from their future unit and usually sent by train across the country. On arrival, they would begin the Young Soldiers' course, and become part of the system of senior rule, known as
dedovshchinaDedovshchina is the name given to the informal system of subjugation of new junior conscripts for the Russian armed forces, Interior Ministry, and FSB border guards to brutalization by the conscripts of the last year of service as well as NCOs and officers...
, literally "rule by the grandfathers." There were only a very small number of professional non-commissioned officers (NCOs), as most NCOs were conscripts sent on short courses to prepare them for squad or crew leaders and platoon sergeants' positions. These conscript NCOs were supplemented by
praporshchikPraporshchik was originally a name of a junior officer position in the military of the Russian Empire equivalent to ensign. The rank was abolished 1917 by Bolsheviks and restored in 1970s in the former USSR for non-commissioned officers and was equivalent to warrant officer rank.It was first...
warrant officers, positions created in the 1960s to support the increased variety of skills required for modern weapons.
Weapons and equipment
The Soviet Union expanded its indigenous arms industry as part of Stalin's industrialization program in the 1920s and 1930s.
Notable Soviet tanks include the
T-34The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank produced from 1940 to 1958. Although its armour and armament were surpassed by later tanks of the era, it has been often credited as the most effective, efficient and influential design of World War II...
, T-54 and T-55,
T-62The T-62 is a Soviet main battle tank, a further development of the T-55. Its 115 mm gun was the first smoothbore tank gun in use.The T-62 was produced between 1961 and 1975. It became a standard tank in the Soviet arsenal, partly replacing the T-55, although that tank continued to be...
, T-64,
T-72The T-72 is a Soviet-designed main battle tank that entered production in 1971. It is a further development of the T-62 with some features of the T-64A and has been further developed as the T-90...
, and
T-80The T-80 is a main battle tank designed and manufactured in the former Soviet Union. A development of the T-64, it entered service in 1976 and was the first production tank to be equipped with a gas turbine engine for main propulsion...
, as well as post-Soviet variants of the T-72 and T-80 such as the
T-90The T-90 is a Russian main battle tank derived from the T-72, and is currently the most modern tank in service with the Russian Ground Forces, Naval Infantry and the Indian Army. The successor to T-72BM, the T-90 uses the gun and 1G46 gunner sights from the T-80U, a new engine, and thermal sights...
and
T-84The T-84 is a Ukrainian main battle tank, a development of the Soviet T-80 main battle tank. It was first built in 1994 and entered service in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 1999. The T-84 is based on the diesel-engined T-80 version, the T-80UD...
. Small arms used during the Second World War included, for example, the
Mosin-NagantThe Mosin–Nagant is a bolt-action, internal magazine fed, military rifle that was used by the armed forces of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and various other nations, most of them from Eastern bloc...
Rifle, which was also used as a sniper rifle and the
PPShThe PPSh-41 submachine gun was one of the most mass produced weapons of its type of World War II. It was designed by Georgi Shpagin as an inexpensive alternative to the PPD-40. The PPSh operated with simple blowback action, had a box or drum magazine, and fired the 7.62x25mm pistol round...
sub-machine gun. But, throughout the late 1950s to the 1970s, the primary infantry weapon was the
AKMThe AKM is a 7.62mm assault rifle designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is an upgraded version of the AK-47 rifle and was developed in the 1950s...
(derived from the
AK-47The AK-47 is a selective fire, gas operated 7.62mm assault rifle developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the 1940s. Six decades later, the AK-47 and its variants and derivatives remain in service throughout the world...
), followed by the
AK-74The AK-74 is a 5.45mm assault rifle developed in the early 1970s in the Soviet Union. It was developed from the earlier AKM and introduced in 1974.The rifle first saw service with Soviet forces engaged in the Afghanistan conflict...
, as well as a number of
general purposeA general purpose machine gun in concept is a multi-purpose weapon, a machine gun intended to fill the role of either a light machine gun or medium machine gun, while at the same time being man-portable. However, performance in either role may be inferior to a weapon specifically designed for that...
and
heavy machine gunThe heavy machine gun is a larger class of machine gun generally recognized to refer to two separate stages of machine gun development. The term was originally used to refer to the early generation of machine guns which came into widespread use in World War I...
s.
Military doctrine
The Soviet meaning of military doctrine was much different from U.S. military usage of the term.
Minister of Defence of Soviet Union-People's Commissariat of Military and Sea Affairs of the USSR:People's Commissars:* Nikolai Podvoisky 8 November 1917 – 13 March 1918* Lev Kamenev 13 March 1918 – 28 August 1919* Leon Trotsky 29 August 1919 – 15 January 1925...
Marshal
Andrei GrechkoAndrei Antonovich Grechko was a Soviet general, Marshal of the Soviet Union and Minister of Defense.-Biography:...
defined it in 1975 as 'a system of views on the nature of war and methods of waging it, and on the preparation of the country and army for war, officially adopted in a given state and its armed forces.' Soviet theorists emphasized both the political and 'military-technical' sides of military doctrine, while from the Soviet point of view, Westerners ignored the political side. However the political side of Soviet military doctrine, Western commentators Harriet F Scott and William Scott said, 'best explained Soviet moves in the international arena'.