 | You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in Russian. (February 2014)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
| Soviet Ground Forces | |
|---|---|
| Советские сухопутные войска | |
 Soviet Ground Forces cockade | |
| Founded | 25 February 1946 |
| Disbanded | 14 February 1992 |
| Country |
|
| Type | Army |
| Role | Land warfare |
| Size |
|
| Nickname | "Red Army" |
| Mottos | За нашу Советскую Родину! Za nashu Sovetskuyu Rodinu! "For our Soviet Motherland!" |
| Colors | Red and yellow |
| Equipment | |
| Engagements | See list
|
| Commanders | |
| Notable commanders | Georgy Zhukov |
| Soviet Armed Forces |
|---|
 |
| Components |
| Ranks of the Soviet Military |
| History of the Soviet Military |
TheSoviet Ground Forces (Russian:Советские сухопутные войска,romanized: Sovetskiye sukhoputnye voyska)[2] was theland warfareservice branch of theSoviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992. It was preceded by theRed Army.
After theSoviet Unionceased to exist in December 1991, the Ground Forces remained under the command of theCommonwealth of Independent States until it was formally abolished on 14 February 1992. The Soviet Ground Forces were principally succeeded by theRussian Ground Forces in Russian territory. Outside of Russia, many units and formations were taken over by thepost-Soviet states; some were withdrawn to Russia, and some dissolved amid conflict, notably in theCaucasus.
While the Ground Forces are commonly referred to in English language sources as theSoviet Army,[a] in Soviet military parlance the termarmiya (army) referred to the combined land and air components of the Soviet Armed Forces, encompassing the Ground Forces as well as theStrategic Rocket Forces, theAir Defence Forces, and theAir Forces.[3][4]
Atthe end ofWorld War II the Red Army had over 500 rifledivisions and about a tenth that number of tank formations.[5] Their war experience gave the Soviets such faith in tank forces that the infantry force was cut significantly. A total of 130 rifle divisions were disbanded in the Groups of Forces in Eastern Europe in summer 1945, as well as2nd Guards Airborne Division, and by the end of 1946, another 193 rifle divisions ceased to exist.[6] Five or more rifle divisions disbanded contributed to the formation ofNKVD convoy divisions, some used for escorting Japaneseprisoners of war. TheTank 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 rifleregiments and a tank regiment, for a total of ten motor riflebattalions and six tank battalions; tank divisions had the proportions reversed.
The Land Forces Main Command was created for the first time in March 1946.Marshal of the Soviet UnionGeorgy Zhukov became Chief of the Soviet Ground Forces in March 1946, but was quickly succeeded byIvan Konev in July 1946.[7] By September 1946, the army decreased from 5 million soldiers to 2.7 million in the Soviet Union and from 2 million to 1.5 million in Europe.[8] Four years later the Main Command was disbanded, an organisational gap that "probably was associated in some manner with theKorean War".[9] The Main Command was reformed in 1955. On 24 February 1964, the Defense Council of the Soviet Union decided to disband the Ground Forces Main Command, with almost the same wording as in 1950 (the corresponding order of the USSR Minister of Defense on disbandment was signed on 7 March 1964). Its functions were transferred to the General Staff, while the chiefs of the combat arms and specialised forces came under the direct command of theMinister of Defence.[10] The Main Command was then recreated again in November 1967.[11] Army GeneralIvan Pavlovsky was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Ground Forces with effect from 5 November 1967.[7]
From 1945 to 1948, theSoviet Armed Forces were reduced from about 11.3 million to about 2.8 million men,[12] a demobilisation controlled first, by increasing the number ofmilitary districts to 33, then reduced to 21 in 1946.[13] The personnel strength of the Ground Forces was reduced from 9.8 million to 2.4 million.[14]
To establish and secure the USSR's eastern European geopolitical interests, Red Army troops who liberatedeastern Europe fromNazi rule in 1945 remained in place to secure pro-Soviet régimes in Eastern Europe and to protect against attack from Europe. Elsewhere, they may have assisted theNKVD in suppressing anti-Soviet resistance inWestern Ukraine (1941–1955) and theForest Brothers in the threeBaltic states.[15] Soviet troops, including the39th Army, remained atPort Arthur andDalian on the northeast Chinese coast until 1955. Control was then handed over to the new Chinese communist government.[citation needed]
Within the Soviet Union, the troops and formations of the Ground Forces were divided among the military districts. There were 32 of them in 1945. Sixteen districts remained from the mid-1970s to the end of the USSR (see table). Yet, the greatest Soviet Army concentration was in theGroup of Soviet Forces in Germany, which suppressed the anti-SovietUprising of 1953 in East Germany. East European Groups of Forces were theNorthern Group of Forces in Poland, and theSouthern Group of Forces inHungary, which put down theHungarian Revolution of 1956. In 1958, Soviet troops were withdrawn fromRomania. TheCentral Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia was established afterWarsaw Pact intervention against the Prague Spring of 1968. In 1969, in the far east of the Soviet Union, theSino-Soviet border conflict (1969) prompted establishment of a 16th military district, the Central Asian Military District, atAlma-Ata, Kazakhstan.[13]
From 1947 to 1989, Western intelligence agencies estimated that the Soviet Ground Forces' strength remained c. 2.8 million to c. 5.3 million men.[12] In 1989 the Ground Forces had two million men.[16] To maintain those numbers, Soviet law 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.[17] By the 1970s, the change to a two-year system seems to have created the hazing practice known asdedovshchina, "rule of the grandfathers", which destroyed the status of most NCOs.[18] Instead the Soviet system relied very heavily on junior officers.[19] Soviet Armed Forces life could be "grim and dangerous": a Western researcher talking to former Soviet officers was told, in effect that this was because they did not "value human life".[20]
By the middle of the 1980s, the Ground Forces containedabout 210 divisions. About three-quarters were motor rifle divisions and the remainder tank divisions.[21] 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. By 1983, Soviet divisions were divided into either "Ready" or "Not Ready" categories, each with three subcategories.[22] The internal military districts usually contained only one or two fully Ready divisions, with the remainder lower strength formations. The Soviet system anticipated a war preparation period which would bring the strength of the Ground Forces up to about three million.[23]
Soviet planning for most of theCold War period would have seenArmies of four to five divisions operating inFronts made up of around four armies (and roughly equivalent to WesternArmy Groups). On 8 February 1979, the first of the new High Commands, for the Far East, was created atUlan-Ude in Buryatia underArmy GeneralVasily Petrov.[24][25] In September 1984, three more were established to control multi-Front operations in Europe (the Western and South-Western Strategic Directions) and atBaku to supervise three southern military districts.[26] Western analysts expected these new headquarters to control multiple Fronts in time of war, and usually a Soviet Navy Fleet.
From the 1950s to the 1980s the branches ("rods") of the Ground Forces included theMotor Rifle Troops; theSoviet Airborne Forces, from April 1956 to March 1964; Air Assault Troops (Airborne Assault Formations of the Ground Forces of the USSR [ru], from 1968 to August 1990); theTank Troops; theRocket Forces and Artillery (from 1961);Army Aviation (seeru:Армейская авиация Российской Федерации), until December 1990;Signals Troops; theEngineer Troops; theAir Defence Troops of the Ground Forces; the Chemical Troops; and the Rear of the Ground Forces.[27]
In 1955, the Soviet Union established theWarsaw Pact with its Eastern European socialist allies, solidifying military coordination between Soviet forces and their socialist counterparts. The Ground Forces created and directed the Eastern European armies in its image for the remainder of the Cold War, shaping them for a potential confrontation with theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). After 1956,Nikita Khrushchev,General Secretary of the Communist Party, reduced the Ground Forces to build up theStrategic Rocket Forces, emphasizing the armed forces'nuclear capabilities. He removed MarshalGeorgy Zhukov from thePolitburo in 1957 for opposing these reductions in the Ground Forces.[28] Nonetheless, Soviet forces possessed too few theater-level nuclear weapons to fulfill war-plan requirements until the mid-1980s.[29] TheGeneral Staff maintained plans to invade Western Europe whose massive scale was only made publicly available after researchers gained access to Eastern Bloc files following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[30][31][32][33]
The Red Army advanced intonorthern Korea in 1945 after the end ofWorld War II, with the intention of aiding in the process of rebuilding the country.[34] MarshalsKirill Meretskov andTerentii Shtykov explained toJoseph Stalin the necessity of Soviet help in building infrastructure and industry in northern Korea.[35] Additionally, the Soviets aided in the creation of theNorth Korean People's Army andKorean People's Air Force. The Soviets believed it would be strategic to the Soviet Union to support Korea's growth directly. When northern Korea eventually wished to invadeSouth Korea in 1950,Kim Il Sung traveled to Moscow to gain approval from Stalin. It was granted with full support, leading to the full-scale invasion of South Korea on 25 June.[36]
TheSoviet Union supplied North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and other military equipment. Soviet crews fired Soviet-madesurface-to-air missiles at U.S.F-4 Phantoms, which were shot down overThanh Hóa in 1965. Over a dozen Soviet soldiers lost their lives in this conflict. Following thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991,Russian Federation officials acknowledged that the Soviet Union had stationed up to 3,000 troops in Vietnam during the war.[37]
Some Russian sources give more specific numbers. Between 1953 and 1991, the hardware donated by the Soviet Union included 2,000 tanks, 1,700APCs, 7,000 artillery guns, over 5,000 anti-aircraft guns, 158 surface-to-air missile launchers, and 120 helicopters. During the war, the Soviets sent North Vietnam annual arms shipments worth $450 million.[38] From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in Vietnam was observed by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces. In addition, Soviet military schools and academies began training Vietnamese soldiers—in all more than 10,000 military personnel.[39]
TheKGB had also helped develop thesignals intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities of the North Vietnamese, through an operation known as Vostok (also known as Phương Đông, meaning "Orient" and named after theVostok 1).[40] The Vostok program was acounterintelligence andespionage program. These programs were pivotal in detecting and defeating CIA and South Vietnamese commando teams sent into North Vietnam, as they were detected and captured.[40] The Soviets helped theMinistry of Public Security recruit foreigners within high-level diplomatic circles among the Western-allies of the US, under a clandestine program known as "B12,MM" which produced thousands of high-level documents for nearly a decade, including targets of B-52 strikes.[40] In 1975, the SIGINT services had broken information from Western US-allies in Saigon, determining that the US would not intervene to save South Vietnam from collapse.[40]
In 1979, the Soviet Unioninvaded Afghanistan to prop up its puppet government, provoking a 10-yearAfghan mujahideen guerrilla resistance.[41] Between 850,000 and 1.5 million civilians were killed[42][43] and millions of Afghans fled the country as refugees, mostly toPakistan andIran.
Prior to the arrival of Soviet troops, the pro-SovietNur Mohammad Taraki government took power in a 1978 coup and initiated a series of radical modernization reforms throughout the country.[44][self-published source?] Vigorously suppressing any opposition from among the traditional Muslim Afghans, the government arrested thousands and executed as many as 27,000 political prisoners. By April 1979 large parts of the country were in open rebellion and by December the government had lost control of territory outside of the cities.[45] In response to Afghan government requests, the Soviet government under leaderLeonid Brezhnev first sent covert troops to advise and support the Afghan government, but, on December 24, 1979, began the firstdeployment of the40th Army.[46] Arriving in the capitalKabul on 27 December, they staged acoup,[47] killing the presidentHafizullah Amin, and installing a rival socialistBabrak Karmal, who was viewed as more moderate and fit to lead the nation.[45]
While the Soviet government initially hoped to secure Afghanistan's towns and road networks, stabilize the communist regime, and withdraw from the region within the span of one year, they experienced major difficulties in the region, due to rough terrain and fierce guerrilla resistance. Soviet presence would reach near 115,000 troops by the mid-1980s, and the complications of the war increased, causing a high amount of military, economic, and political cost.[48] AfterSoviet general secretaryMikhail Gorbachev realized the economic, diplomatic, and human toll the war was placing on the Soviet Union, he announced the withdrawal of six regiment of troops (about 7,000 men) on 28 July 1986.[49] In January 1988 Foreign MinisterEduard Shevardnadze announced that it was hoped that "1988 would be the last year of the Soviet troops stay"; the forces pulled out in the bitter winter cold of January–February 1989.
The cost for the military due to the war is estimated to have been roughly 15 billion rubles in 1989. The combat casualties estimates at 30,000–35,000. During 1984–1985, more than 300 aircraft were lost, and thus a significant military cost of the war is attributed to air operations. Since the first year, the government spend roughly 2.5–3.0% of the yearly military budget on funding the war in Afghanistan, increasing steadily in cost until its peak in 1986.[50]
The Soviet Army also suffered from deep losses in morale and public approval due to the conflict and its failure. Many injured and disabled veterans of the war returned to the Soviet Union facing public scrutiny and difficulty re-entering civilian society, creating a new social group known as "Afgantsy". These men would become influential in popular culture and politics of the time.[51]
The extent military districts in 1990 were:[52]
From 1985 to 1991, General Secretary Gorbachev attempted to reduce the strain the Armed Forces were placing on theEconomy of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev slowly reduced the size of the Armed Forces, including through a unilateral force reduction announcement of 500,000 in December 1988.[53] A total of 50,000 personnel were to come from Eastern Europe, the forces in Mongolia (totaling five divisions and 75,000 troops) were to be reduced, but the remainder was to come from units inside the Soviet Union. There were major problems encountered in trying to organise the return of 500,000 personnel into civilian life, including where the returned soldiers were to live, housing, jobs, and training assistance. Then the developing withdrawalsfrom Czechoslovakia andfrom Hungary and the changes implicit in theConventional Forces in Europe treaty began to spark more disruption. The withdrawals became extremely chaotic; there was significant hardship for officers and their families, and "large numbers of weapons and vast stocks of equipment simply disappeared through theft, misappropriation and the black market."[54]
In February 1989,Defence MinisterDmitri Yazov outlined five major planned changes inIzvestiya, the Soviet officialnewspaper of record.[55] First, the combined arms formations, divisions and armies, would be reorganised, and as a result division numbers would be reduced almost by half; second, tank regiments would be removed from all the motor rifle (mechanised infantry) divisions inEast Germany and Czechoslovakia, and tank divisions would also lose a tank regiment; air assault andriver crossing units would be removed from both East Germany and Czechoslovakia; fourth, defensive systems and units would rise in number under the new divisional organisation; and finally the troop level in theEuropean part of the USSR would drop by 200,000, and by 60,000 in the southern part of the USSR. A number of motor-rifle formations would be converted into machine gun and artillery forces intended for defensive purposes only. Three-quarters of the troops inMongolia would be withdrawn and disbanded, including all the air force units there.
The Armed Forces were extensively involved in the 19–21 August1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt to depose President Gorbachev.[56] Commanders despatched tanks into Moscow, yet the coup failed.
On 8 December 1991, the presidents ofRussia,Belarus, andUkraine formallydissolved the USSR, and then constituted theCommonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Soviet President Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991; the next day, the USSR itself was dissolved. During the next 18 months, inter-republican political efforts to transform the Army of the Soviet Union into the CIS Armed Forces failed; eventually, the forces stationed in the republics became the basis of the successor states' armed forces.
After thedissolution of the Soviet Union, the Ground Forces dissolved and the fifteen Sovietsuccessor states divided their assets among themselves. The divide mostly occurred along a regional basis, with Soviet soldiers from Russia becoming part of the newRussian Ground Forces, while Soviet soldiers originating fromKazakhstan became part of the newKazakh Armed Forces. As a result, the bulk of the Soviet Ground Forces, including most of theScud andScaleboardsurface-to-surface missile (SSM) forces, became incorporated in theRussian Ground Forces. 1992 estimates showed five SSM brigades with 96 missile vehicles inBelarus and 12 SSM brigades with 204 missile vehicles inUkraine, compared to 24 SSM brigades with over 900 missile vehicles under Russian Ground Forces' control, some in other former Soviet republics.[57] By the end of 1992, most remnants of the Soviet Army in former Soviet Republics had disbanded or dispersed. Forces in the formerSatellite states of Eastern Europe (including theGermany; Poland, and theBaltic states) gradually returned home between 1992 and 1994.
Thelist of Soviet Army divisions sketches some of the fates of the individual parts of the Ground Forces.
In mid-March 1992, Russian PresidentBoris Yeltsin appointed himself as the new Russian minister of defence, marking a crucial step in the creation of the newRussian Armed Forces, comprising the bulk of what was left of the Soviet Armed Forces. The last vestiges of the old Soviet command structure were finally dissolved in June 1993, when the paperCommonwealth of Independent States Military Headquarters was reorganized as a staff for facilitating CIS military cooperation.[58]
In the next few years, the former Soviet Ground Forces withdrew from central and Eastern Europe (including theBaltic states), as well as from the newly independent post-Soviet republics ofAzerbaijan,Armenia,Uzbekistan,Kazakhstan,Turkmenistan andKyrgyzstan. Now-Russian Ground Forces remained inTajikistan,Georgia andTransnistria (inMoldova).
After thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a considerable number of weapons were transferred to the national forces of emerging states on the periphery of the former Soviet Union, such asArmenia,Azerbaijan andTajikistan.[59] Similarly, weapons and other military equipment were also left behind in theSoviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989.[59] Some of these items were sold on the black market or through weapons merchants, whereof, in turn, some ended up interrorist organizations such asal-Qaeda.[59] A 1999 book argued that the greatest opportunity for terrorist organizations to procure weapons was in the former Soviet Union.[60]
In 2007, theWorld Bank estimated that out of the 500 million total firearms available worldwide, 100 million were of theKalashnikov family, and 75 million wereAK-47s.[61] However, only about 5 million of these were manufactured in the former USSR.[62]
In 1990 and 1991, the Soviet Ground Forces were estimated to possess the following equipment. The 1991 estimates are drawn from theIISS Military Balance and follow theConventional Forces in Europe data exchange which revealed figures of November 1990.
TheStockholm International Peace Research Institute reported in 1992 that the USSR had previously had over 20,000 tanks, 30,000 armoured combat vehicles, at least 13,000 artillery pieces, and just under 1,500 helicopters.[64]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
