The Soviet Military Experience

Warfare and History

by Roger R. Reese

The Soviet Military Experience is the first general work to place the Soviet army into its true social, political and international contexts.
It focuses on the Bolshevik Party's intention to create an army of a new type, whose aim was both to defend the people and propagate Marxist ideals to the rest of the world. It includes discussion of
* origins of the Workers and Peasant's Red Army
* effects of the Civil War
* Bolshevik regime's use of the military as a school of socialism
* effects of collectivization and rapid industrialisation of the 1920s and 1930s
* Second World War and its profound repercussions
* ethnic tensions within the army
* effect of Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost and Perestroika

Genres: History, Military History, Russian History, Russia, Military Fiction, Soviet Union, War

220 pages, Paperback

First published December 23, 1999

About the author

Roger R. Reese is professor of history at Texas A&M University.

Reviews

[Terry Tucker]

This book is a history of the phases experienced in war and peace by the Soviet Army. The history of the Soviet Military Experience is critical in understanding where and how the Soviet experience also drives the current Russian Army and the legacy it has inherited – in leadership, philosophy, training and equipment.
The History is set chronologically beginning in 1917 and ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The author uses an impressive array of Russian archive material, personal accounts and military publications to show the persistent deficiencies from the period of the Russian Civil War to its intervention in Afghanistan.
These persistent deficiencies are also present in the Russian Army in Ukraine. This history stresses the distinctive political, military and social features of the Red Army and is a great comparison with other Armies which allows the reader to place things in a broader context of Imperial, Post-Imperial and Soviet life.

Prior to the German invasion the Red Army was tested in battle three times. Against the Japanese at Khalkin-Gol in 1939; the two week invasion of Poland in 1939 and Finland. The outcomes of these battles were mixed and Finland was initially a humiliation. The Red Army was tested again in Hungry in 1957, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan, and Chechnya- twice.

All these operations demonstrate persistent deficiencies and inconsistency in results.
The book consists of 7 chapters, a conclusion, notes, index, and bibliography for just over 203 total pages.
It is interesting that the legacy of the Russian Imperial Army has continued to haunt the Russian Army to this day. Here are a few Comparative examples in history with the contemporary Russian Military in the Ukraine.
• The Russian Staff plans extensively for Operations yet makes poor to no attempt at special training for the area of operations they expect to fight.
• Russian/Soviet Logistical planning does not plan well for large scale operations, emergencies and crisis’
• Combat Training and Leadership training is abbreviated which perpetuates high casualty rates which then require quick replacement and recruiting – this is a vicious cycle of inadequate training and replacement which means a high casualty rate.
• Recruiting and training is inadequate to the task of putting out the necessary number of men – which means that soldiers go from induction and minimal standards to combat in about 3-4 months.
• Recruiting methods are more like impressment than conscription and include sending men from Gulags, and prisons.
• Soldiers of the initial invasion force are not militarily or psychologically trained and prepared for the Area of Operations.
• Deep Battle Planning proceeds along three types of operations – Large scale Army Operations; Regimental and Brigade Combined Arms Operations and Small Unit Actions/Ambushes – Yet the training, logistical support and Leadership is never able to adequately synthesize the required knowledge and skill to conduct these operations consistently and successfully.
• The Russian Military continues to rely on overwhelming numbers and force regardless of the casualties.
• The continued practice of lying to the men about the battle purpose and situation.
• An untrained and unprofessional Non-Commissioned Officer Corp
• A lack of dynamic leadership and institutional stagnation – no career path development or mobility
• Units are commanded and led by Officers of a lower rank than the Position calls for.
• Recurring problems of reconnaissance and coordination between units, and commanders. Combined Arms Operations are not synchronized.

[Bubba]

The Soviet military, as Reese explains, began as Bolshevik attempt to create an army of a new type. Shorn of the class inequalities of the Imperial Russian Army, it would be fired up with Marxist zeal, and bring the red gospel to oppressed peoples on the point of its bayonets. However, a volunteer militia composed of Red Guards was not a concept that survived long into the Russian Civil War. Trotsky, as Commisar for War reinstated ranks and military discipline.

In 1920 the Bolsheviks fear of standing armies led to debates on demobilization. The solution was a small professional force backed with a citizen force to be mobilized in times of crisis.

The military suffered greatly in the Great Patriotic War, as it struggled to find its feet in the early years of the conflict. Extreme sacrifice in the service of a state which provided the average soldier with very little training as it fed them desperately into the furnace of war characterized the struggle. When it was over, the military temporarily became an institution highly respected among Soviet citizens.

This prestige ultimately proved detrimental to the military, whose officers began to ape the elitism of their imperial forebears, creating a gulf between them and the conscripts who served under them. Aloof from the needs of their men, officers left senior enlisted to brutalize conscripts, as they had been under the tsars.

Reese delves into these issues and many more, covering the establishment of political officers, the role of Frunze in shaping the force in the '20s, manpower, discipline, leadership, living conditions, inter ethnic relations in the military, and, above all, its shifting ethos, from the Civil War, through the Soviet-Polish War, the Cold War, Afganistan, and the Gorbachev era.

[Leigh Kimmel]

The story of the Soviet armed forces from the idealistic people's militias of the Revolution through the horrors of the Purges that resulted in initial disaster after the Nazi invasion, then victory through seven-figure butcher's bill, and the slow decline during the Cold War to the disaster of Afghanistan and the dissolution of the USSR.

Unfortunately, the book could've benefited from closer copy-editing, since there were a number of cases of missing words (particularly the little words such as pronouns and prepositions) or misspellings that resulted in a legitimate word that made no sense in the context.

[Jonathan]

Tries to put it all in perspective and succeeds in spades. Excellent overview.