The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-1991 / Edition 1

by Roger R. Reese

Overview

The Soviet Military Experience is the first general work to place the Soviet army into its true social, political and international contexts.
It focuses on the Bolshevik Party's intention to create an army of a new type, whose aim was both to defend the people and propagate Marxist ideals to the rest of the world. It includes discussion of the:
* origins of the Workers and Peasant's Red Army
* effects of the Civil War
* Bolshevik regime's use of the military as a school of socialism
* effects of collectivization and rapid industrialisation of the 1920s and 1930s
* Second World War and its profound repercussions
* ethnic tensions within the army
* effect of Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost and Perestroika

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415217200
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/23/1999
Series:	Warfare and History
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Reese, Roger R.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements, List of abbreviations, List of Russian words and phrases, Map, Introduction, 1. The birth of the Red Army, 2. The Civil War, and Polish–Soviet War, 1917–21, 3. The Red Army between the wars, 1922–39, 4. PUR and the Army: the political side of military service, 5. The Red Army and the Second World War, 1939–45, 6. The cold war years, 1946–91, 7. The war in Afghanistan and the Gorbachev era, 1979–91, Conclusion, Notes, Select bibliography, Index

Editorial Reviews

After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which began with dissatisfied tsarist troops, Lenin tried to create a new type of army with volunteers and loyal party apparatchiks--an experiment that ended with perestroika and the troops much as they had been under the tsars. Reese (history, Texas A&M; Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers: A Social History of the Red Army, 1925-1941) traces the origins of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in its battles with the White Armies and its alliances with outlaw guerrilla bands. He chronicles the regime's use of the military as a school of socialism, with unfortunate consequences both for society and for the army's morale and fighting capability; the army's coming of age during World War II; and the long road to stagnation culminating in the 1991 coup against Gorbachev. This book is a marvelous supplement to academic texts on Soviet life; no other author in recent years has tackled the same information in one historical sweep. Recommended for academic libraries.--Harry V. Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. Syst., Iola Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

'Roger Reese has written a multi-faceted and well-considered study of the development of the Soviet armed forces.' - SEER

'This is a valuable and lively intorduction to an important subject.' - War in History

From the Publisher