Lessons of the Winter War: A Study in the Military Effectiveness of the Red Army, 1939–1940

2008 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 825-852 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger R. Reese
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 962-984
Author(s):  
Aleksei A. Kilichenkov

The author attempts to analyze the totality of ideas and opinions of I.V. Stalin on the development of tank weapons in the 1930s. Documents of RGASPI and RGVA archives were used as the sources. Influenced by a series of ‘military alarms,’ Stalin began to closely engage with issues of tank construction in the late 1920s, and initiated a large-scale program for equipping the Red Army with tanks. The program was to ensure the military-technical superiority of the USSR over its likely opponents, with the goal to compensate for the overall backlog. As the USSR was unable to create its own modern tanks, in 1930 the Soviet leadership purchased several dozen military vehicles abroad. Stalin personally controlled the procurement process, often intervening in the process; he also attended demonstrations of tests vehicles and decided on the number of tanks that were to be produced. At the same time he closely followed the technical innovations in foreign armies. The study of Stalin’s interest in tanks reveals that in the early 1930s, the Soviet leader thought of the tank weapon as an ‘asymmetrical alternative’ to overcome the broader gap in preparation for war. The present article analyses how Stalin read the documents that were sent to him; this analysis demonstrates that Stalin was more likely to seek confirmation for his existing views than to actually use the documents for coming to new conclusions. In general, Stalin’s ideas and opinions on tank issues were based on political, economic and logical considerations rather than on military expertise. One case in point is his support for M.N. Tukhachevskii when the latter called for the massive production of surrogate tanks based on tractors. In the mid-1930s, when the army had already received thousands of new tanks, Stalin shifted his emphasis from issues of equipment to the quality of the personnel, while at the same time demanding a simplification of machinery down to the level of a ‘crewman with skills that are just medium or even lower.’ But on the eve of the war, the Soviet leader again returned to the need for a qualitative and numerical growth of armored forces. Finally, Stalin analysed how tank forces were used during the Winter War against Finland and in the first years of war in Europe, but he remained unable to assess the strike potential of this weapon and its role in the future war with Nazi Germany.


1935 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-151
Author(s):  
V. Gruzdev

On 23 November 1934, the Military Medical Academy of the Red Army solemnly honoured one of its most prominent professors, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Aristovsky, head of the Department of Microbiology, on the occasion of his 25th anniversary of medical, social and scientific and pedagogical activities.


Author(s):  
Denis S. Lapay

The study is devoted to the Moscow Military Railway School activities in the command and control staff qualifying for the Special Corps of Railway Troops during its existence from 1932 to 1941. The relevance of the research is due to the lack of the issues of construction and training studies of the Special Railway Corps military personnel and the little studied aspects of command and control staff training in the Moscow Military Railway School during the period of Russian historiography. Factor analysis of justification of Railway School foundation historical necessity is carried out. We reveal the main activities of the military authorities, management and teaching staff of the school to train specialists for the Railway troops of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. The experience of deploying the material and training base of the military school within a limited time frame is analyzed. The specificities of the school’s variable staffing system are also noted. The background for the school establishment discontinuing is analyzed, and the conclusion is drawn that this reorganization in March 1941 on the eve of the Great Patriotic War is unjustified, as well as the need to restore historical memory of the school.


Author(s):  
Oksana Babenko ◽  

The review presents new publications on the Belarusian and the Polish historiographies of the history of the late Imperial Russia and the Soviet State. Such problems as the number and conditions of detention of foreign prisoners of war in the Belarusian territories of the Russian Empire during the First World War, the influence of the military conflicts of 1914-1921 on the identity of the inhabitants of the Belarusian lands, the initial stage of the formation of academic science in the BSSR, the question of the «invasion» of Poland by the Red Army in September 1939 are highlighted.


Author(s):  
Jörg Baberowski

This chapter examines the aftermath of the Bolsheviks' victory over both the Whites, or counterrevolutionaries, and all rival socialists. The Bolsheviks broke the military resistance of the Whites, crushed the unrest and strikes of the peasants, and even restored the multiethnic empire, which, in the early months of revolution, had largely fallen apart. In spring 1921, when the Red Army marched into Georgia, the Civil War was officially over. For the Bolsheviks, however, military victory was not the end but rather the beginning of a mission, not simply to shake the world but to transform it. Although weapons may have decided the war in favor of the revolutionaries they had not settled the question of power. This chapter considers Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) that would implement economic reforms, the Bolsheviks' failure to carry power into villages, and the dictatorship's lack of support from the proletariat. It also describes the nationalization of the Russian empire and Joseph Stalin's rise to power.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
Denis S. Lapay

The article deals with the training of commanding (technical) staff at schools of military railway technicians’ during the period of military staff training system foundation for the Red Army railway troops in the first half of the 1920s. Topicality of the study is caused by insufficient research of training problems of Red Army railway painter technicians throughout the days of the Civil War ending, the military reform of the 1920s, reorganisation of system of military professional education and stabilisation of a staff contingent. The article reveals the primary activities of the military administration, managing and teaching staff of military railway technicians’ schools in the interests of training technical specialists for the Red Army railway troops. An analysis is made of the disbandment background of mentioned military educational institutions, as well as of the countermeasures taken to preserve them. The finding is about the unreasonableness of the total abolition of military-railway technicians’ schools with the transfer of training junior technical personnel functions directly to the units of railway troops in the format of regimental schools. A brief generalised comparison is made of the Red Army technicians’ historical experience versus the modern training system of junior specialists and technicians of railway troops.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-90
Author(s):  
Boris Valentinovich Petelin ◽  
Vladilena Vadimovna Vorobeva

In the political circles of European countries attempts to reformat the history of World War II has been continuing. Poland is particularly active; there at the official level, as well as in the articles and in the speeches of politicians, political scientists and historians crude attacks against Russia for its commitment to objective assessments of the military past are allowed. Though, as the authors of this article mention, Russian politicians have not always been consistent in evaluation of Soviet-Polish relationships, hoping to reach a certain compromise. If there were any objections, they were mostly unconvincing. Obviously, as the article points, some statements and speeches are not without emotional colouring that is characteristic, when expressing mutual claims. However, the deliberate falsification of historical facts and evidence, from whatever side it occurs, does not meet the interests of the Polish and Russian peoples, in whose memory the heroes of the Red Army and the Polish Resistance have lived and will live. The authors point in the conclusions that it is hard to achieve mutual respect to key problems of World War II because of the overlay of the 18th – 19th centuries, connected with the “partitions of Poland”, the existence of the “Kingdom of Poland” as part of the Russian Empire, Soviet-Polish War of 1920. There can be only one way out, as many Russian and Polish scientists believe – to understand the complex twists and turns of Russo-Polish history, relying on the documents. Otherwise, the number of pseudoscientific, dishonest interpretations will grow.


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