Soviet Armed Forces
The Soviet Armed Forces,[a] also known as the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union,[b] the Red Army (1918–1946) and the Soviet Army (1946–1991), were the armed forces of the Russian SFSR (1917–1922) and the Soviet Union (1922–1991) from their beginnings in the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923 to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In May 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued decrees forming the Russian Armed Forces, which subsumed much of the Soviet Armed Forces. Multiple sections of the former Soviet Armed Forces in the other, smaller Soviet republics gradually came under those republics' control.
Armed Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
23 February 1918
(as the Red Army)
25 February 1946
(as the Soviet Armed Forces)
26 December 1991
(Soviet Union dissolved)
24 December 1993[1] (United Armed Forces disbanded)
Joseph Stalin (1922–1953)
Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–1991)
- Nikolai Podvoisky (1917–1918)
- Yevgeny Shaposhnikov (1991–1993)
- Pavel Lebedev (1921–1924)
- Viktor Samsonov (1991–1992)
18–35
2 years (Army & Air Force)
3 years (Navy)
92,345,764 (1991), age 18–35
4,900,000 (1985)
12,750,000
4.9% (official, 1988)
7.7–11.5% (CIA, Pentagon estimate, 1988)
According to the all-union military service law of September 1925, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of the Ground Forces, the Air Forces, the Navy, the State Political Directorate (OGPU), and the convoy guards.[5] The OGPU was later made independent and amalgamated with the NKVD in 1934, and thus its Internal Troops were under the joint management of the Defence and Interior Commissariats. In 1989, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of the Strategic Rocket Forces, the Ground Forces, the Air Defence Forces, the Air Forces, and the Navy, listed in their official order of importance.[2]
In the USSR, general conscription applied, which meant that all able-bodied males aged eighteen and older were drafted into the armed forces.[6] International observers regarded the armed organizations as collectively one of the strongest such forces in world history.[7] The relative advancement and development of the government's militaries was a key part of the history of the USSR.
In the context of the Cold War, an academic study by the rival U.S. Department of Defense in 1984 found that the Soviets maintained a notable reach across the world and particularly inside Europe. The analysis explicitly concluded that "Soviet armies have always been massive" while "they are also highly modernized, well-equipped, and have great firepower... [as well as] mobility", which meant that "manpower and materiel combined make the present Soviet ground forces a very formidable land army." Although Soviet military strategy in general merited comment, "the ground forces constituted the largest of the five Soviet military services" as of the date the research ended.[7]