Reviews for The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-1991

The average rating for The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-1991 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-09-14 00:00:00 randall skiles 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.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-08-09 00:00:00 Marc-Andre Frechette Tries to put it all in perspective and succeeds in spades. Excellent overview.