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Revision as of 23:07, 5 April 2008 by Buckshot06 (talk | contribs) (→After the Second World War)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Structure of the Soviet Ground Forces evolved from the early loose groupings and Red Guards of the Bolsheviks, through an increasingly formalised military system through the Russian Civil War, to a regular army in the 1920s. Not fully prepared for the German onslaught of 1941, due to Stalin's purges of the officer corps and some remaining military conservatism, amongst other factors, by the end of the Second World War (the 'Great Patriotic War' to the Soviet population) the Red Army had become the most formidable land force on Earth.
The Red Army was renamed the Soviet Army just after victory. The 500+ rifle divisions that had shed so much blood on the Eastern Front were quickly reduced in number, and the multibrigade tank corps and mechanised corps that had provided the main striking punch were converted to a divisional structure. Cavalry formations were converted into further mechanised divisions, and additional combat support arms added and expanded. The mass, mobilisable, characteristic remained, with the Soviet Ground Forces developing several different tiers of readiness states (A B V etc). During the Cold War the Ground Forces were X, Y, Z in strucural terms.. incl Khruschev's cutbacks (cite numbers as precisely as possible)- ref needed.
Historical Overview
The Soviet ground forces' structural evolution fell into five separate periods:
- formative (1925 - 1936, the legacy of the Imperial Russian Army and the First World War experience that created the Soviet Union, the Civil War, and war with Poland),
- combat (1936 - 1946),
- transformative (1947 - 1961)
- consolidating (1962 - 1984)
- final (1985 - 1993). I will need to send you translated excerpts from a rather large Part I of the paper as we go, ok?
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 today still exist in Russia in this function and under this name.
For Historical section, I'd like to suggest combining the event narrative with doctrinal development, and not just another "List of..." type section. This means actual writing-in of the lessons and mistakes that resulted from, or contributed to development of the Ground Forces
Higher direction - Politburo and MOD
Then go to the Structure and say how decisions were taken at strategic level, including the link to the Politburo,
- An introduction on the relationship between the Party-political policy-setting organs and the General Staff strategic planning roles within the Soviet general strategy and relationship of Ground Forces to other Services
Administrative organisation
Main Staff of the Ground Forces directorates .. technology developmental Directorates, mobilisation, budgets, test centres etc
Conscription, and officer recruitment
In the mid-1920s the territorial principal 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 cadre divisions, in 1937–38.
Rifle forces, artillery, tank forces, engineers, signals, support organisations
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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:
- airborne troops
- anti tank troops
- armoured division staff
- armoured engineer companies
- armoured training regiments
- armoured trains
- armoured units
- army AA units
- army map and military survey
- army propaganda troops
- army dogs units
- artillery observation training units
- artillery observation units
- artillery troops
- artillery training units
- barrier troops
- cavalry units
- chemical troops
- fortification engineers
- fortification signals
- Frunze Military Academy
- general armoured commands
- general command
- machine gun troops
- medical officers and NCO
- medical training units
- medical troops
- Military District and Front command
- military field police
- military justice units
- mobilisation processing personnel
- mortar battalions (MRL)
- motor maintenance troops
- motorcycle units
- motorised troops
- mountain troop divisional staff
- mounted artillery troops
- Officers of the Stavka
- railway engineer training companies
- railway troops
- reconnaissance (mounted)
- reconnaissance (motorised)
- rifle troops
- rifle divisional staff
- rifle training regiments
- rifle and mountaineering units
- rifle unit staff
- sapper troops
- sapper training battalions
- signals training regiment
- signals troops
- ski troops
- smoke training units
- smoke troops
- specialist officers
- supply officers
- technical officers
- transport supply officer
- transport training units
- transport troops
- veterinary officers and NCOs
- veterinary troops
Operational organisation
See also: Formations of the Soviet Armythe section on the organisation, and how that relates to the operational art as a doctrine. Finally, the OOB and how and why the Ground Forces were organised, stationed and equipped in the way that they were.
Two major inheritances influenced the early Red Army operational structure. The first was the militias and Red Guards of the Bolsheviks, and the second was the army in Russia before 1917, the Imperial Russian Army, organised conventionally in armies, corps, divisions, regiments, and battalions.
Russian Civil War
see also OB when available Organisation evolution - multidivision armies with no corps echelon in some cases, eg First Cavalry Army The Rifle Corps was a formation that existed in the pre-Revolution Imperial Russian Army, and was inherited by the Red Army.
1922-41
see also OB when available First suggestions for creation of large mechanised or tank formations in the Soviet Union were suggested based on development of doctrine for publication as PU-36, the field regulations largely authored by Marshal Tukhachevsky, and was created where "In the attack tanks must be employed in mass", envisaged as "Strategic cavalry". Although the name of "mechanised" may seem to the modern reader as referring to the infantry components of the Corps, in 1936 they referred to armoured vehicles only with the word "motorised" referring to the units equipped with trucks.
Wartime
see also OBs when available War experience prompted changes to the way front-line forces were organized. After six months of combat against the Germans, STAVKA abolished the Rifle Corps intermediate level between the Army and Division 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 Moscow in the summer of 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 Years' Day 1944. Actual strengths of front-line 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 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 corps were fielded in order to employ armor en 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.
After the Second World War
see also OBs when available
- Front — the largest wartime field formation, equivalent to an army group in many other forces
Army — the largest peacetime field formation. Each is designated a combined arms army or tank army. During WWII the Fortified Region usually corresponded to an Army frontage formation.
- Corps — Rifle, Cavalry, Artillery, Mechanised, Tank, and Airborne Corps.
- Division — originally rifle or cavalry, later motor-rifle, tank, artillery, aviation, sapper or airborne. See divisions of the Soviet Union 1917-1945, list of Soviet Army divisions 1989-91
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 Corps 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. From 1970 to 1983, a motor rifle regiment was added to tank divisions and an independent tank battalion to motor rifle divisions, and major increases in artillery, mortars, and armoured personnel carriers, in line with the evolution of Soviet doctrine, which began to recognise the need for a conventional phrase, away from the previously expected purely nuclear operations. In the last years of the Soviet Union, the political decision by Gorbachev to reoriented military doctrine defensively meant further structural changes, which stripped field formations of some of their more overtly offensive weaponry, while being bitterly controversial amongst the Soviet military establishment
By the middle of the 1980s the Ground Forces contained about 210 manoeuvre 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 War period would have seen Armies of four to five divisions operating in Fronts made up of around four armies (and roughly equivalent to Western Army Groups). 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 Baku to handle southern operations, and in the Soviet Far East.
Criticisms(?)
(vi) Lastly, you can include a section on "Suvorov" and his views as criticisms, something other articles on Armies lack completely as if no one has ever criticises then.
Sources and References
- Marshal Grigory Kulik and his horses - need ref
- This is a judgement which will need sourcing and maybe changing, but will do for now.
- Виталий Феськов © 2008 Военно-исторический журнал "Военный Рубеж"
- Scott and Scott, 1979, p.5
- Scott and Scott, 1979, p.12
- David Glantz, Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War 1941–43, University Press of Kansas, 2005, p.717 note 5.
- p.179, Simpkin
- ibid., p180.
- Glantz, Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War 1941–43, University Press of Kansas, 2005, p.179
- David Glantz, 2005, p.189
- Glantz, 2005, p.217–230
- Mark L Urban, Soviet Land Power
- British Army, Army Field Manual Vol. II, Part 2, Soviet Operations, 1986, Army Code No.73157 (Part 2), p. 3-4 & 3-5. (Declassified; original classificated 'Restricted'.)
- Odom, 1998, p.118-123, 161
- M J Orr, The Russian Ground Forces and Reform 1992–2002, January 2003, Conflict Studies Research Centre, UK Defence Academy, Sandhurst, p.1
- M J Orr, 2003, p.1 and David C Isby, Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army, Jane's Publishing Company, 1988, p.30
- Viktor Suvorov, Inside the Soviet Army, Hamish Hamilton, 1982, gives this title, Odom (1998) also discusses this development
- The Soviet Army: Troops, Organization, and Equipment. FM 100-2-3, June 1991. Washington DC: United States Department of the Army.
- Fomin, N.N., Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (Template:Lang-ru), Moscow, 1978
- Simpkin, R., Deep battle: The brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii, Brassey's, London, 1987
- Glantz, David. Soviet Military Operational Art - In pursuit of deep battle. I would highly recommend it as it recapitulates the Simpkin research, and adds to it in a relatively slim volume. Somewhat more readable also because Simpkin wrote not only in the British style, but one from another era.