London: Arrow Books, 1990 (first published 1989) ISBN 0099682001
An interesting history not only capturing the past, but the moment in time in which it was written. Brian Moynahan has not only given us a history of the USSR through the lens of its armed forces, but also a "state of the union" of those same armed forces at the moment just prior to the collapse of the superpower.
He begins his history with World War I and the catastrophic failures of the Imperial Army, which became one of the driving forces of the Revolution. In fact during the Civil War, the Red Army was officered mostly by ex-Imperial Army men and it was they, along with the absolute ruthlessness of Trotsky, that helped the Bolsheviks claim victory over the disparate and badly organised "White" armies.
Stalin, after his rise was only too aware that whatever legitimacy his regime held, his ability to stay in power relied totally on the Army: which was one of the reasons that he purged it so heavily, not only of ex-Imperial troops, but others as well.
The Nazi attack on the USSR was initially the Red Army's greatest tragedy, but became over the course of the War its greatest triumph. By the time they had reached Berlin, the Red Army was the most powerful force in the World, backed by a huge industrial base. They had learnt from their defeats, and with Eastern Europe as a buffer, were determined that the Russian heartland would never again be invaded.
Moynahan describes the War years well, and the post-war maneuverings with a good journalistic precis, keeping the story moving with just enough detail, describing the Cuban Crisis and interventions in Russia's Eastern neighbours. The Russian's sense of being surrounded by hostile forces led to the Cuban adventure, with Russia's back-down due to both the unexpected (from the Soviet viewpoint) stiffness of spine of the US, and the lack of Soviet long-range military capability to support their transports. The back-down eventually led to the fall of Krushchev, who was the leader that more than anyone else brought forward the USSR's missile forces as the elite arm of Soviet power.
The interventions in Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia were driven almost exclusively by Soviet strategic thinking: they could not allow any independence of thought or action to endanger the buffer and launching pad that those countries were for Soviet Russia. Dissent was dealt with in overwhelming force and much brutality. Moynahan does not cover Korea or Vietnam in much detail at all, given the limited active combat undertaken by members of the Soviet armed forces in these conflicts. The USSR's Afghanistan venture gets good treatment, and Moynahan is perceptive in deciphering what the outcomes would be from that minor (at the time) disaster.
The last section of the book covers the current (as at 1989) state of the armed forces - numbers, equipment, strategy, and the espionage undertaken to keep the Soviets in the hunt technologically. Moynahan points out that the Soviet forces were geared for an offensive war, not one of defence, and he spends some time pondering what the fall of the Berlin Wall meant for that strategy. Of course with the benefit of hindsight we can see that he was writing at the peak moment for Soviet forces, as not long after the publication of this book the whole thing fell apart, politically and militarily.
This is a book of its time, but even for the modern reader there is much in this of use, especially the sections dealing with World War II and the post-war conflicts.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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