Red Army

The Red Army , in Russian КраснаяАрмия , or more exactly Rabotche-krestianskaïa Krasnaïa Armia Рабоче-крестьянскаяКраснаяАрмия - the Red Army of the workmen and peasants, is the Armée setting-up, in old the Russian empire by the new capacity Bolchevik, after the Révolution of October, in order to fight the Contre-révolution Blancs supported by the foreign powers (France, the United Kingdom, Czechoslovakia, the United States, Japan). The red term has a revolutionary connotation and refers to blood.

One year after the end of the Second world war, in 1946, this army will be called the Soviet Armée ( СоветскаяАрмия - Soviétskaïa Armia ), until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

Beginnings during the civil war

After the inversion of the provisional government of Alexandre Kerensky, in the night from October 24th to 25th (6 to the 7 in the Gregorian calendar), the Bolsheviks lay out only of the volunteers of the red Garde and a few units of elite like Finnish of division, to sit their political power. Within sight of the lessons of the Common of Paris (first working insurrection), the Bolsheviks want to have a powerful military instrument, to fight the forces which are hostile for them. As of on January 15th (January 28th), a decree of the the Council of the police chiefs of the people, transforms, the red Guard, in Red Army with the workmen and country , and on February 23rd, take place the first liftings of mass to Petrograd and Moscow and the first combat against the German imperial army. February 23rd becomes one bank holiday in Soviet Union, that of the defenders of the fatherland.

This new armed force is for the moment only one lifting of volunteers, led to the combat by elected officers, certainly justified politically, but deprived of military experiment. The man who will give the impulse to organize it and make it effective to the combat will be Leon Trotsky, police chief with the war of 1918 with 1924. The Military service is made compulsory from 18 to 40 years, by the decree of May 29th, 1918 and one creates military police chiefs or voenkomat (военныйкомиссариат, военкомат) to frame this mobilization. For stage the lack of experience of the executives, one associates military specialists or " to them; военныйспециалист" , selected by a special subcommittee directed by Lev Glezarov (ЛевМарковичГлезаров). These assistants are often recruited among the former officers of the imperial Armée Russian, released for this purpose, but which one makes sure of honesty by a narrow setting under supervision and control of political police chiefs and of the taking of hostage among the families and the close relations. After the rallying of Alexeï Broussilov in 1920, the practice will spread and their manpower will reach the 315 000 in August.

Thanks to this system and its numerical superiority, the Red Army, definitively takes the ascending one on the white troops, in spite of the interventions, sometimes direct, of the foreign powers and its demolished against the Poland. And after the evacuation of the Japanese army in October 1922, it controls finally the extent of the remaining territory of old Russia tsarist, putting fine at the civil war.

If the Red Army unquestionably saved the revolution, it also appears, during the civil war, a frightening repressive instrument already used against the various sections of the Russian people which do not accept the capacity Bolchevik or which nourish a different society project. Very many peasants flee in the forests to avoid enrôlement in the red or white troops, but also them violent forced collections of the two armies. They constitute “green Armées” which face alternatively or simultaneously the Red Army and the white armies. Thousands of country revolts of any scale will be repressed by the Red Army, however made up with the four fifths of peasants. In 1920, Toukhatchevski does not hesitate to bombard the populations with chemical gases to subdue the great revolt of the campaigns of Tambov. In 1920, the troops of Trotski are turned over against their old ally, the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno, and brutally put an end to the experiment Makhnovtchina. It is as with the Red Army as it returns to put an end to independence just conquered certain portions of the old empire of the tsars: it in particular makes it possible to attach of force the news Soviet Union the transitory States of Arménie (1921) and of Georgia (1922), however internationally recognized.

In March 1921, whereas the civil war is not finished, the sailors of Kronstadt, who had previously been distinguished in the revolutionary fight, raise themselves against the Communists, and require the end of the sole party and the return to the capacity of the Soviets and freedoms of the Révolution of February. Parallel to the socialist tonality of the claims, the chiefs of insurgent whose Petritchenko will come into contact with the white armies and the emigration the hope of a military support against the Bolsheviks. As regards Red Army, Toukhatchevski pilot repression. In March 1921, the island of Kronstadt is taken during an attack which makes several thousands of dead in the Red Army and in the sailors, of the hundreds of them are shot on the spot.

Inter-war period

With leaving the civil war, manpower of the Red Army are very important. However of many problems arise as for the armament and the equipment, in particular the modern absence of material like tanks, a effective Artillerie and an aviation of combat. The effort to obtain this equipment will be launched at the time of the first five-year plan of 1928 and continued at the time of the two following. The Red Army will become for this period an army of point in certain fields, like the use of Parachutistes or armoured tanks. Some of its achievements can be regarded as the best of their time, such as for example, the hunter Polikarpov I-16 or even the fast tanks of the series BT. To make up for lost time, all is good for the Soviets: purchase of foreign material, co-operation with the Germans, espionage… The result is however certain, the Red Army aligning in the middle of the Années 1930 more tanks and planes that any other army in the world.

The structure of the Red Army, forged during the civil war, has of this fact some specificities. The mistrust of the Bolsheviks towards the executives of the old army of the Tsar caused the abolition of the term of officer and the badges of ranks, with the profit of that of commander. The rows are purely functional. One finds thus commanders of division, equivalent of the major generals. In 1924, a new parallel hierarchical system is set up. It is based on fourteen categories of service, obtained according to the experiment and from the qualification of the executives and extending from K1 with K14. Thereafter, certain traditional names, as that of lieutenant will be given to the honor, on September 22nd 1935. During this reform, the categories of service are abandoned for ranks mixing functional and traditional names. May 7th 1940, designations of General and Admiral are reintroduced. At the beginning of 1942, they are also applied to the technical and administrative bodies. Only still the ranks of police chiefs remain who will be abolished in October. Finally, at the beginning of 1943, the term of officer is again used, the shoulder pads put on again to the last style and the last functional ranks (still of use in the medical community and veterinary surgeon) transformed into traditional ranks. Since 1943, the ranks evolved/moved little in the Red Army and they remain in force in the Russian Armée. However the functional ranks, as commander of battalion, remain often used within an abstract framework.

The Japanese threat

The intervention of the Japan in Mandchourie with the beginning of the year 1930 causes a rise of tension between the Soviet Union and the Japanese. The Soviets and the Mongolia then will decide on a co-operation in the field of the defense which will be formalized in the treaty of ten years friendship, signed the March 12th 1936. After several border incidents, the tension will end up emerging, in August and September 1939, on a open conflict, with Kalkhin-Gol (NB. Incidental of Nomonhan , for the Japanese), where the Soviet forces ordered by Joukov will inflict a door and humiliating demolished with the Japanese forces. It should be noted that it is during these battles in the plains of Mongolia that the Soviets used, for the first time, of strong units of tanks, independent armor-plated brigades, and reflect at the point a specific tactic of combat based on an intensive co-operation between the armor-plated forces and the Artillerie of countryside. It is as during these engagements as Soviet aviation developed new tactics of use of the air forces like forces support of the troops on the ground, which will lead later on to the use of the aviation of attack and the settling of Ilyouchine It-2 " Sturmovik". This reverse undergone by the Japanese imperial Army explains, surely mainly, the reserve of Japan to attack the Soviet Union during the Second world war. Indeed, after with this defeat, the Japanese High-command saw a renewal of the influence of the authorities of the imperial Navy for which the top priority was to seize the territories of the Southeast Asia and its enormous natural oil energy and raw materials which were so much lacking with the Japan. From where change of the Japanese strategic goals and slip of its opposition to the E. - U., instead of the Soviet Union.

Great purgings

Under Stalin at the end of the Years 1930, the Red Army was the subject of very important political purgings, in particular during the Procès of Moscow.

Between June 1937 and July 1938 were carried out or interned:

3 marshals on 5
13 generals on 15
8 admirals on 9
50 lieutenant-generals of army on 57
154 major generals on 186
16 political police chiefs of army on 16
: 20000 with: 30000 intermediate officers

For what it is necessary to add the 11 police chiefs associated to Defense and 98 of the 108 members of the supreme Soviet military. Even a nest of 12 " was discovered; spies counter-revolutionaries " in the Choruses of the Red Army.

The majority of the historians estimate that these purgings decapitated its staff and decreased by it considerably the capacity of response the day before the Second world war. Another point of view tends to relativize the extent of the purging by showing that an important part of the purged officers were political police chiefs and not military executives itself, to even consider that led on a " bonne" reorganization (“ we believed that Stalin would ruin the Red Army. It is the opposite which is true. The Bolchevism can thus turn all its force against its enemy ”, Joseph Goebbels, 1943). There does not remain less clear about it than the promoters of the armoured tanks, behind Toukhatchevski, were eliminated in priority, while the unconditional defenders of the cavalry survived (Boudienny, Kliment Vorochilov, Koulik). Existing armor-plated divisions were dissolved to be restored only the day before the invasion. Research on new armaments as the radar was very disturbed by the arrests, just as the military intelligence services. In spring 1941, the Marshal Koulik, very near to Stalin, still fought the anti-tank guns, the T-34 and the Katioucha (" Rocket launchers ") and the horse-drawn artillery with the rockets preferred openly. He wanted to even return to a model of gun in force during the Great War and made stop and torture the Minister for the Armament, Boris Vannikov, who had dared to contradict it. The Spanish historian Bartolomeo Benassar even estimates that the reserve of the Russian police chiefs to fully use their armoured tanks, in 1937, during the Guerre of Spain, because their use was too related to the outlaw Toukhatchevski, prevented the Spanish Republic from exploiting military successes and made him lose its last chances to still carry it on Franco.

The Second world war

The Polish September 1939 campaign

In accordance with the secret protocol of the Pact Molotov-Ribbentrop, the Red Army crosses the Polish border, the September 17th 1939. It would seem that 466 516 men were implied in this operation. During this program, it meets little resistance. The losses would be of 1 475 killed and 2 383 wounded. The Soviets will announce to have disarmed 452 536 men, but it seems however that much was militiamans. Modern Polish sources as Wielka Encyklopedia PWN speak about approximately 240 000 prisoners. The Soviet troops, respecting the treaty with the Germans, stop on the Ligne Curzon and a common military parade takes place with Brest-Litovsk, on September 23rd.

The war of Winter

The patriotic Great War

However the recasting of the Red Army is a long term job. So that, on June 22nd 1941, when the Third Reich encouraged by this apparent weakness decides to invade the Soviet Union while launching the Opération Barbarossa, it is well far from being completed. The new materials exist, but they are badly known troops. Great mechanized units are in formation, within sight of the results of the German Blitzkrieg in the west, but they miss cohesion and of experiment.

The power struggle is moreover very in discredit for the Soviets: on their 303 divisions and their 29 brigades, only 166 divisions and 9 brigades, is 2,9 million men, are deployed in the military districts of the west vis-a-vis the Axe which adds up 5,5 million men gathered in 181 divisions and 18 brigades. Combined with the strategic and tactical surprise, the higher experiment and tactics of those, the effect on the Red Army is disastrous: it must move back several hundreds of kilometers towards the interior of its territory and loses a considerable manpower and a material during great surroundings, throughout the summer 1941. It accepted from the material aid and logistic allies with the program Lend-Lease.

In spite of these colossal losses, of an aviation destroyed in the first weeks of war, the Red Army manages to survive as a fighting force and even to counter-attack on several occasions towards the end of the summer and during the autumn, as with Smolensk and Rostov. This resistance will allow, associated with a Russian traditional policy with burned ground, the arrival of the winter and the lengthening of the lines of German communications, to carry out a victorious counter-offensive, in front of the capital even of the Soviet Union, Moscow. The repatriation of the forces aguerries deployed in the Far East, thanks to the insurance of Richard Sorge of Japanese neutrality, will play a determining role there. However, the offensive is continued too far and too a long time because of insistence of Stalin, causing many useless losses. So that in spring, the Red Army is found again in position of weakness.

Benefitting from this opportunity, the forces of the Axis reconstituted tackle the southern part of the face to cut the the Volga and to seize the the Caucasus and its rich person oil-bearing fields . Only a heroic resistance, at the time of the Bataille of Stalingrad will save the Soviet Union of a perhaps fatal defeat. Nevertheless, more tested and better ordered Soviet forces will pass to against offensive with the arrival of the winter 1942. During the Uranus operation, they then encircle the 6th German army and part of the 4th armor-plated army. This victory, is a prelude to with a general offensive, practically rejects the Germans on their starting line of the beginning of the summer. Only the takeover by force of Von Manstein, during the Second battle of Kharkov, will save the Groupe of Southern armies of the destruction and will make it possible to stabilize the face. Wehrmacht will then try to take again the initiative at the time of the Bataille of Koursk, but this attempt will turn short and the Red Army will attack in its turn, rejecting the Germans until the Dniepr.

From now on, the course of the war is exploited the face is. The offensive of Soviet summer of 1944 coinciding with the unloading of the Western allies in France, it causes the collapse of the center of the face, followed by another thorough towards the south which causes the reversal of the Romania and of the Bulgaria.

The Red Army, catch initially with deprived, made enormous sacrifices at the time of the Second world war which made it possible to stop the German armies and ensured a great popularity in the world to him.

It took part in all the engagements on the Front of the East, the June 21st 1941 with the May 8th 1945, in particular the Bataille of Stalingrad (during the winter 1942 - 1943) and the Bataille of Berlin (in spring 1945).

It was pointed out by its brutality and the war crimes which it subjected the German civil populations of the areas that it conquered, mainly by revenge on the innumerable crimes and ill treatments which the German authorities had subjected the Soviet population (it is to note that the soldiers of 1st and second faces of Ukraine, according to the name given in 1943, are originating for a good portion, in 1945, areas devastated by Wehrmacht and the S - there is habit to speak about Oradour/Glane per day during 3 years, to give an idea of the number of destroyed villages).

The operation storm of August

The Cold war

The war of Afghanistan

End of the USSR and the Soviet Army

Of 1985 with 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev endeavors to reduce manpower and the economic weight of the army. In addition to the withdrawal of Afghanistan, the reduction of the forces stationed in Eastern Europe was quickly carried out, leaving the Socialist governments places from there vis-a-vis their destiny. The absence of the Soviet forces allowed the liberalization which they had prevented before as in 1968, which caused their successive withdrawals of the Warsaw Pact during the year 1991 and the dissolution of this last, on July 1st.

In the USSR, the Lithuania was the first to choose the way of the secession as of March 1990. Gradually the other republics announced their intention to make in the same way, which led to one period of tension and the establishment of the state of emergency in the middle of the year 1991.

An attempt at coup d'etat of the communist old guard short turned in August, for lack of determination on behalf of the insurrectionists. The army deployed in the streets of Moscow does not seem to have received the order to draw on the population, but simply to protect this one while being spread. The only incident took place during a jet of Kingpin on a tank which caused an accidental death. After the failure of this reaction, the authority of the Soviet Union ceased practically fact on the Republics, and the December 8th, the document between the Russia, the Ukraine and the Bielorussia, declaring the dissolution of the USSR and the creation of the Communauté of the independent States (CEI) was signed.

The Red Army was then dismantled between the various new States, according to the national origin of the quotas. End 1992, the remainders of the Soviet Army stationed in the Republics had been dissolved and the last forces based in Europe and in the Baltic States were withdrawn gradually from 1991 with 1994. The Russian soldiers, by far most, then constituted the Armed forces of the federation of Russia which inherited the majority of the equipment, in particular the totality of the nuclear arsenal of the red ex-Army.

Evolution of the density of a division of the Soviet army or the art of dispersion

If any offensive action implies strong concentrations of troops, the threat of the massive weapons of destruction during the cold war n the other hand requires the broadest dispersion of the men after the occupation of the ground. It is the essential reason for which, on the one hand, the size of division enlarged (15 000 men take place of 5 000 men), whereas the load factor passed from 500 to 8 men only to the square kilometer.

See too

Armed Russian
Soviet Navy
VVS
Spetsnaz
Choruses with the Red Army

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