Talk:Soviet Armed Forces

Untitled
In order to properly expand and rewrite the article on the Soviet Army Ground Forces, I'm splitting away an article on the Soviet Armed Forces as a whole. Any help's appreciated. Buckshot06 23:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Not correct
Why is'nt the annexation of the three Baltic States in 1940 mentioned here? It was a part of Molotov-Ribbentroph pact also, just as sharing Polen and attacking Finland was.

And the KIA/MIA numbers I am very skeptic too. KIA on Soviet side must be higher. Do NEVER trust soviet sources when it comes to WWII!

The article also says: "Red Army T-34 tanks outclassed any other tanks in the world". This is not correct. German Tiger, and later KoningsTiger was far better. Also others where better than T34. T34 where easy to shoot trough, due to armor of not the higest quality. Only reason T34 reached Berlin, is that it was produced in such high numbers. (only reason why Soviet won the east front, is due to extreme numbers of material and personell, not cleverness, but that is another story). Has this article been written by a russian?? (or a stupid propagandaist, I see the main contributor has been banned from Wikipedia).

Confusing introduction
The introduction is just perplexing.

The Military of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the Armed Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from their establishment, before the USSR itself was formed, by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War in 1918, to the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

I just can't tell what this is saying. From whose establishment? How could it be the armed forces of the USSR before the USSR was formed?

According to the compulsory service law of September 1918, the Soviet Armed Forces as a whole consisted of the Ground Forces, the Air Forces, naval forces, the OGPU, predecessor of the KGB and MVD, and convoy guards.[1]

Impossible to parse. Which was the predecessor of the KGB and MVD, and convoy guards—the Soviet Armed Forces or the OGPU? Or was the convoy guards the fifth element of the Soviet Armed Forces? Why are some of these capitalized and some not?

Later the state security apparatus was made independent.

Is the "state security apparatus" the Armed Forces or the OGPU? What was it made independent from?

After the Second World War the Strategic Rocket Forces and the Air Defense Forces were added, standing first and third in the official Soviet reckoning of comparative importance (with the Ground Forces being second, the Air Forces being fourth, and the Navy fifth).

Were these existing organizations which were added to the "Armed Forces", or were they created after WWII? —Michael Z. 2007-08-05 06:35 Z 

new structure proposal
Here it is


 * 1 Legacy, origins and history


 * 1.1 Russian Civil War
 * 1.2 Party Control of the Armed Forces
 * 1.3 Polish-Soviet War
 * 1.4 Under Stalin's control
 * 1.5 Far East
 * 1.6 Purges
 * 1.7 Great Patriotic War (separate article)


 * Red Army during the Great Patriotic War
 * 1.1 The Scope of the War
 * 1.2 The Polish Campaign
 * 1.3 The Finnish Campaigns
 * 1.4 1st period of GPW
 * 1.5 2nd Period of GPW
 * 1.6 3rd Period of GPW
 * 1.7 The Manchurian Campaign
 * 1.8 post-war Soviet Armed Forces (separate article for Cold War)
 * 1.9 The Korean War
 * 1.10 The Vietnam War
 * 1.11 Foreign military assistance
 * 1.12 The limited contingent in Afghanistan

Transition from Soviet Army to Armed forces of the Russian Federation and former Soviet republics in a separate article


 * 2 Military doctrine (as a process of learning from history)


 * 2.1 Deep Operations
 * 2.2 Stalin's "eagles" (the rise, destruction and rise of the Red Air forces)
 * 2.3 Operational Manoeuvre Groups
 * 2.4 Gorshkov's Navy
 * 2.5 The Strategic Nuclear Forces


 * 3 Organisation (organising for the doctrines)


 * 3.1 Higher command structure
 * 3.2 Administrative structure and Rear Services
 * 3.3 Arms of Service, Service Corps and command establishments
 * 3.4 Peace and Wartime field structures (links to articles on organisation of formations and units)
 * 3.5 Post-GPW changes
 * 3.6 Post-Stalinist changes
 * 3.7 "Nuclear battlefield" impact


 * 4 Personnel


 * 4.1 Rank structure
 * 4.2 General Staff
 * 4.3 Military education
 * 4.4 Officers and enlisted personnel
 * 4.5 Armed Forces culture


 * 5 Weapons and equipment (developing the equipment for the personnel)

(Links to equipment articles by Arm of Service)
 * 5.1 Ground Forces
 * 5.2 Air Forces
 * 5.3 Soviet Navy
 * 5.3 Ministry of Internal Affairs
 * 5.4 Strategic Rocket Forces
 * 5.5 Air Defense Forces


 * 6 Desolution of the Soviet Armed Forces
 * 7 Further reading
 * 8 See also
 * 9 References

--mrg3105 (comms) ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ 01:37, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

why are there two of the same articels?
there is this article and then there is an article called "the red army" that is the same thing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.157.251.230 (talk) 17:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

This is the entire armed forces. Red Army is the land forces only. Buckshot06(prof) 12:59, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

This isn't made clear in the article. Also, the Red Army isn't mentioned after World War II, is there a reason for that? 76.20.12.54 (talk) 04:02, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Infobox
...fails to mention Border Troops and Internal Troops - also part of the Soviet Armed Forces. --129.187.244.28 (talk) 11:19, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Is it Four or Five original services
The first sentence of the second paragraph says that there were Five services originally -- and lists four. 4.154.253.44 (talk) 15:27, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Unit structure missing.
A unit struture and size somparison would be useful. What was the size of a Soviet Army comparted to a German or Western allied one. What is a "front" compare to an "Army Group" etc. --88.153.182.133 (talk) 01:07, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Afghan subheading
There appears to be few to no citations in this subheading... I don't know how to add citation needed tag to that (new!) but maybe someone can revisit that.

Total contradiction
''Of these it lost 6,329,600 KIA, 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 MIA (most captured). Of these 11,444,100, however, 939,700 re-joined the ranks in the subsequently re-took Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. The majority of the losses comprised ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400).[17]''

''The German losses on the Eastern Front comprised an estimated 3,604,800 KIA/MIA (most killed) and 3,576,300 captured (total 7,181,100); the losses of the German Axis allies on the Eastern Front approximated 668,163 KIA/MIA and 799,982 captured (total 1,468,145). Of these 8,649,300, the Soviets released 3,572,600 from captivity after the war, thus the grand total of the Axis losses came to an estimated 5,076,700.''

In the first part, if we are assuming 4.55 million captured Soviets, but 939 thousand later rejoining and 1.8 million released, we come up with approx 1.81 million "loss". But what about those who volunteered then for the Axis? The millions who did so? Of course, nothing is said of this number...

In the second part, if we are assuming 3.57 million captured Germans, and 800 thousand captured Axis, with a return rate of 3.57 million, we calculate a loss of 800 thousand in captivity approximately.

But the numbers conflict with what is written in the next paragraph, i.e.

''A comparison of the losses demonstrates the cruel treatment of the Soviet POWs by the Nazis. The majority of Soviet POWs taken prisoner by the Axis died in captivity. Out of the 5.7 million Soviet POWs taken by the Germans, 3.6 million died in captivity.[18] Of the 3.3 million German POW taken by the Soviets, 374,000 died.[18]''

So we went from 4.55 million captured Soviets in one figure to 5.7 million captured Soviets in the other.

We also went from 1.81 million dying in captivity, without taking into consideration those who went on to fight for the Axis, to 3.6 million dying.

We then went from 3.57 million captured Germans in one figure to 3.3 million

Plus 800 thousand dead Axis in captivity to 374 thousand dead Germans in captivity (which is probably meant to say Axis)

What is going on here, and who is this "historian" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1002:B026:2F40:4CB7:4073:7F55:CE28 (talk) 03:20, 14 May 2020 (UTC)