The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-91

Description

From its revolutionary inception in 1917, to its counter-revolutionary demise in 1991, the Red Army played a crucial role in all aspects of Soviet life. This text places the Soviet army into its true social, political and international contexts. Focusing on the Bolshevik Party's intention to create an army of a new type, the army's aim was both to defend the people and propagate Marxist ideals to the rest of the world. Lenin believed that this new people's army would be a tool for social transformation and cohesion. However, this text demonstrates that by the end of the Cold War and collapse of the USSR in 1991, Russian society once again saw their army as the elitist and callous organization which its Bolshevik founders had tried so hard to avoid. This account of the Soviet military experience includes discussion of: the origins of the Workers and Peasants Red Army; the effects of the Civil War; the Bolshevik regime's use of the military as a school of socialism; the effects of collectivization and rapid industrialization of the 1920s and 1930s; World War II and its profound repercussions; the ethnic tensions within the army; and the effect of Gorbachev's policies of "Glasnost" and "Perestroika". The text is organized chronologically and thematically within chapters, and includes a comprehensive bibliography.

"The author of this book has set for himself the extraordinarily ambitious task of describing the Soviet states' efforts to create a fundamentally new type of army and argues that the effort, in the end, failed. He makes interesting use of Soviet archival materials to support his argument and at times shines new light on hitherto little-known, but important, aspects of Soviet military manpower policy and morale.... Even 10 years after the theoretical opening of the Soviet archives to Western researchers, relatively few scholars have attempted to revise our understanding of Soviet history using those sources. Roger R. Reese is to be greatly commended for his efforts in that regard.."
-"Historian
"This book is a marvelous supplement to academic texts on Soviet life; no other author in recent years has tackled he same information in one historical sweep. Recommended for academic libraries."
-"Library Journal, 11/99