The Military History of the Soviet Union

The Military History of the Soviet Union PDF Author: R. Higham
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230108210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
This volume provides an introduction to the history of the Soviet armed forces from 1917 to 1991. The authors highlight the many facets of the Cold War, including the rise of the Soviet Navy after the Great Patriotic War and the collapse of the Soviet Union which marks its twentieth anniversary in 2011.

The Military History of the Soviet Union

The Military History of the Soviet Union PDF Author: R. Higham
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230108210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
This volume provides an introduction to the history of the Soviet armed forces from 1917 to 1991. The authors highlight the many facets of the Cold War, including the rise of the Soviet Navy after the Great Patriotic War and the collapse of the Soviet Union which marks its twentieth anniversary in 2011.

A Military History of Russia

A Military History of Russia PDF Author: David Stone
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
"Integrating military history into the broader themes of Russian history, and drawing comparisons to developments in Europe, Stone traces Russia's fascinating military history, and its long struggle to master Western military technology without Western social and political institutions. Starting with the military dimensions of the emergence of Muscovy and the disastrous reign of Ivan the Terrible, he traces Russia's emergence as a great power under Peter the Great, and her mixed record following her triumph in the Napoleonic wars. The Russian Revolution created a new Soviet Russia, but this book shows how the Soviet Union's harrowing experience in World War II owed much to Imperial Russian precedents."--BOOK JACKET.

Soviet Blitzkrieg

Soviet Blitzkrieg PDF Author: Walter S. Dunn Jr.
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 1461751691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Two weeks after the Americans, British, and Canadians invaded Western Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Soviet Union launched Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front, its massive attempt to clear German forces from Belarus. In one of the largest military campaigns of all time, involving 2 million Soviets and 800,000 Germans, the Red Army advanced 170 miles in two weeks and destroyed German Army Group Center. Using recently declassified Soviet documents as well as German and Soviet unit histories, Dunn recounts this landmark operation of World War II.

The Role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War

The Role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War PDF Author: Boris Sokolov
Publisher: Helion and Company
ISBN: 1909384712
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book investigates several controversial issues regarding the role of the Soviet Union and the performance of the Soviet government and Red Army, to which the author provides some provocative answers. The primary question explored by the author, however, regards the effectiveness of both the Red Army and of the Soviet military economy. Dr. Sokolov argues that the chief defect of the Soviet military economy was the disproportionate emphasis on the production of tanks and aircraft at the expense of transportation means and the means of command and control. This leads the author to look at the role of Lend-Lease during the war. Through the delivery of radio sets, trucks, jeeps, locomotives, fuel, explosives and so on, the author concludes that Lend-Lease was critical to the Red Army, and that the Soviet Union would not have been able to wage a long war against Germany without the Lend-Lease supplies - a conclusion that defies decades of Soviet claims to the contrary. Finally, the author looks at the still very controversial and hot topic of Red Army losses in the war, which was taboo for decades, arguing that this is an effective measure of the Red Army's military performance. He and other scholars have estimated that the Red Army's losses were on the scale of 27 million, three times larger than the official estimates, and approximately 10 times greater than the German losses on the Eastern Front. He argues that such horrendous casualties and such an unfavorable ratio for the Red Army were the result of the relatively low value placed on human life in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and the much more destructive nature of the Soviet totalitarian regime as compared with the Third Reich, which cowed the Soviet generals and officers into total subservience. Due to the elimination of all political opposition and the total control over people's lives, soldiers and civilians could not protest against the crude tactics that resulted in such a very high rate of losses. Dr. Boris Sokolov is a prolific author and a member of the Russian branch of PEN International, which celebrates literature and promotes freedom of expression. In 2008, Dr. Sokolov was forced to resign as Professor of Social Anthropology from his post at the Russian State Social University in Moscow at the demand of President Medvedev's administration after publishing an article about the 2008 Russian-Georgian War. The author of 69 books (as of 2012), his work has focused on the history of the Second World War and has also written biographies of such prominent military and political leaders as Bulgakov, Stalin, Molotov, Beria, Tukhachevsky, Rokossovsky and Zhukov. In addition, he has written numerous articles on history, philology, political science and economics. A prominent specialist in the problems of military losses, military economy and strategy, he has given lectures in Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Denmark, and his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages. He currently resides in Moscow and is working on a biography of Marshal Rodion Malinovsky. Stuart Britton is a freelance translator and editor residing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He has been responsible for making a growing number of Russian titles available to readers of the English language, consisting primarily of memoirs by Red Army veterans and recent historical research concerning the Eastern Front of the Second World War and Soviet air operations in the Korean War. Notable recent titles include Valeriy Zamulin's award-winning 'Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative ' (Helion, 2011), Boris Gorbachevsky's 'Through the Maelstrom: A Red Army Soldier's War on the Eastern Front 1942-45' (University Press of Kansas, 2008) and Yuri Sutiagin's and Igor Seidov's 'MiG Menace Over Korea: The Story of Soviet Fighter Ace Nikolai Sutiagin' (Pen & Sword Aviation, 2009). Future books will include Svetlana Gerasimova's analysis of the prolonged and savage fighting against Army Group Center in 1942-43 to liberate the city of Rzhev, and more of Igor Seidov's studies of the Soviet side of the air war in Korea, 1951-1953.

The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver

The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver PDF Author: David Glantz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135183546
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
First Published in 1991. This book addresses a critical aspect of Soviet maneuver theory that has been almost totally neglected in Western analysis, specifically, Soviet concern for tactical maneuver. Since the 1930s, the Soviets have consistently argued that operational maneuver can be successful only if conducted in conjunction with equally successful tactical maneuver, carried out primarily by forward detach­ments. Forward detachments, the primary tactical maneuver forces tasked with performing critical combat functions, emerged in theory in the 1930s and flourished on the basis of virtually untested concepts until the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, when the Soviet mobile force structure was destroyed in a matter of weeks. Forward detachments again emerged after the Stalin­ grad Operation in 1943, when the Soviet General Staff required their use to spearhead all operations by mobile forces. After mid-1943, forward detach­ments led the operations of all tank armies and tank and mechanized corps, particularly during exploitation operations. By war's end all forces, mobile and rifle alike, employed forward detachments to lead their operations during the exploitation stage of operations. Forward detachments preempted enemy defenses and collectively formed a coordinated network of forward mobile units which provided coherence to the vast array of advancing Soviet mobile and rifle forces. In the late 1960s, the forward detachment received renewed attention as a critical element which could assist in the conduct of operational maneuver. Today, the Soviets believe that forward detachment operations are the key to conducting successful operations on a battlefield increasingly threatened by deadly high-precision weaponry. Tailored, flexible, battalion-size forward detachments, along with their operational counterparts (corps and brigades), may, in fact, be the model upon which the future Soviet force structure will be based. This volume surveys in detail the conceptual and organizational evolution of the forward detachment as the premier Soviet tactical maneuver force. It vividly demonstrates why forward detachments are suited by their versatile nature to be a precursor of future restructured Soviet units in general.

A History of the Soviet Union

A History of the Soviet Union PDF Author: Geoffrey A. Hosking
Publisher: London : Fontana Press : Collins
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description


Hammer and Rifle

Hammer and Rifle PDF Author: David R. Stone
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Analysis of the central role of militarization in the devel opment of state, society and economy in the U.S.S.R. between the end of the "New Economic Plan" in 1926 and the conclusion of the first "Five-Year Plan" in 1933.

The Soviet High Command

The Soviet High Command PDF Author: John Erickson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780714651781
Category : Soviet Union
Languages : en
Pages : 934

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Book Description
This study documents the history of the Workers-Peasants Red Army from its origins in the post-revolutionary Civil War to the battle for Moscow in December 1941. Drawing from Soviet military histories, specialist monographs, Red Army publications, memoirs, and documentary collections on Soviet military organization and Army-Party relations, Erickson (emeritus, defense studies, U. or Edinburgh) considers such events as the secret collaboration with the Reichswehr, the military build-up in the Far East, the Tukhachevsky affair, Stalinist purges, and the Winter War in Finland. This edition features a new preface by the author. c. Book News Inc.

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg PDF Author: Francine Hirsch
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199377936
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
The Nuremberg Trials (IMT), most notable for their aim to bring perpetrators of Nazi war crimes to justice in the wake of World War II, paved the way for global conversations about genocide, justice, and human rights that continue to this day. As Francine Hirsch reveals in this new history of the trials, a central part of the story has been ignored or forgotten: the critical role the Soviet Union played in making them happen in the first place. While there were practical reasons for this omission--until recently, critical Soviet documents about Nuremberg were buried in the former Soviet archives, and even Russian researchers had limited access--Hirsch shows that there were political reasons as well. The Soviet Union was regarded by its wartime Allies not just as a fellow victor but a rival, and it was not in the interests of the Western powers to highlight the Soviet contribution to postwar justice. Stalin's Show Trials of the 1930s had both provided a model for Nuremberg and made a mockery of it, undermining any pretense of fairness and justice. Further complicating matters was the fact that the Soviets had allied with the Nazis before being invaded by them. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 hung over the courtroom, as did the fact that the everyone knew that the Soviet prosecution had presented the court with falsified evidence about the Katyn massacre of Polish officers, attempting to pin one of their own major war crimes on the Nazis. For lead American prosecutor Robert Jackson and his colleagues, focusing too much on the Soviet role in the trials threatened the overall credibility of the IMT and possibly even the collective memory of the war. Soviet Justice at Nuremberg illuminates the ironies of Stalin's henchmen presiding in moral judgment over the Nazis. In effect, the Nazis had learned mass-suppression and mass-murder techniques from the Soviets, their former allies, and now the latter were judging them for crimes they had themselves committed. Yet the Soviets had borne the brunt of the fighting--and the losses--in World War II, and this gave them undeniable authority. Moreover, Soviet jurists were the first to conceive of a legal framework for viewing war as a crime, and without that framework the IMT would have had no basis. In short, there would be no denying their place at the tribunal, nor their determination to make the most of it. Illuminating the shifting relationships between the four countries involved (the U.S., Great Britain, France, and the U.S.S.R.) Hirsch's book shows how each was not just facing off against the Nazi defendants, but against each other and offers a new history of Nuremberg.

The Stuff of Soldiers

The Stuff of Soldiers PDF Author: Brandon M. Schechter
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501739816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
The Stuff of Soldiers uses everyday objects to tell the story of the Great Patriotic War as never before. Brandon M. Schechter attends to a diverse array of things—from spoons to tanks—to show how a wide array of citizens became soldiers, and how the provisioning of material goods separated soldiers from civilians. Through a fascinating examination of leaflets, proclamations, newspapers, manuals, letters to and from the front, diaries, and interviews, The Stuff of Soldiers reveals how the use of everyday items made it possible to wage war. The dazzling range of documents showcases ethnic diversity, women's particular problems at the front, and vivid descriptions of violence and looting. Each chapter features a series of related objects: weapons, uniforms, rations, and even the knick-knacks in a soldier's rucksack. These objects narrate the experience of people at war, illuminating the changes taking place in Soviet society over the course of the most destructive conflict in recorded history. Schechter argues that spoons, shovels, belts, and watches held as much meaning to the waging of war as guns and tanks. In The Stuff of Soldiers, he describes the transformative potential of material things to create a modern culture, citizen, and soldier during World War II.