Red Army

This article explores an enduring Soviet myth, the myth of Valaam. According to this widely believed story in 1946 or 1947 vagrant disabled veterans were forcibly cleared from the streets of Soviet cities and deported to Valaam, an isolated archipelago of fifty islands, approximately 250 kilometres north of Leningrad. These myths continue to be repeated by both historians and the general public, but little evidence has been provided to support them. This article provides original archival evidence about the myth's two main components: the clearance of disabled veterans from the streets and their subsequent exile to Valaam. For the first time it demonstrates the existence of an invalid's home on Valaam, but which challenges the “facts” of the myth. Attempts were made to clear the disabled vagrants from Leningrad's streets, but these did not occur in 1946 or 1947, and were neither successful nor systematic. Although a residential institution for the elderly and disabled was established on Valaam, which had its own unedifying history, it was not a dumping ground for thousands of disabled veterans cleared from urban areas. The Valaam myth is a classic example of a “false myth”; a story with only a flimsy basis in reality, but which reveals wider truths about the circumstances in which the myth was generated, and the mentalities of the individuals and society which accepted it. Having established the reality behind the myth, this article uses the Valaam myth as a lens for examining the plight of Leningrad's war disabled and the mentalities of those who believed and transmitted the myth. The article argues that these stories thrived because they were plausible, and it offers a number of explanations why Soviet citizens, and Leningraders in particular, believed this myth. Imperial and Soviet Russia had a long history of forced clearance of “socially marginal elements” and precedents of exiling them to isolated islands. Most importantly, Leningraders believed in the existence of a mythical dumping ground for disabled veterans because it accorded with their knowledge of the state's coercive practices and their experiences of the treatment of disabled veterans.

The article is an analysis of: 1) the Kiev operation from late April and early May 1920, 2) Tukhachevsky's first offensive in May 1920, 3) Tukhachevsky's second offensive launched in July 1920. All the three operations were attempts at undertaking strategic and operational initiative during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920. The first offensive pertained to the Polish army, in the subsequent two cases it was the Soviet Western Front. Tukhachevsky's second offensive resulted in the battle of the Bug in late July and early August 1920. By discussing each of the operations, the author presents the fighting potential of the armies involved, the tactical and operational goals, the course of the fighting, the turning points, both parties' planning mistakes and the consequences of the operations.

The article examines the activities of government bodies and the military administration of the USSR in developing the artillery of the Red Army in the period from the mid-1930s. to May 1945. The conclusions presented in the article, based on the account and use of historical experience, can be useful and instructive for the justification and decision-making by the military command authorities of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in modern conditions and allow us to assess with more objectivity the perspective of artillery development-defense of the Fatherland of the kind of troops for the future.

В статье рассматривается деятельность органов государственной власти и военного управления СССР по развитию артиллерии Красной армии в период с середины 1930-х гг. по май 1945 г. Представленные в статье выводы, основанные на учете и использовании исторического опыта, могут быть полезными и поучительным для обоснования и принятия решений органами военного управления Вооруженных Сил Российской Федерации в современных условиях и позволяют с большей объективностью оценивать перспективу развития артиллерии важнейшего для защиты Отечества рода войск на будущее.

In the article the problems connected with mobilization planning, occupying an important role in military construction of the Soviet State during the non-military period are considered.

В статье рассматриваются проблемы, связанные с мобилизационным планированием, занимавшие важную роль в военном строительстве советского государства в межвоенный период.

This article examines women's wartime experiences with a focus on ethnic Latvian and Jewish women volunteers in the Red army in World War II. An estimated 8 percent of the Red army was composed of women, who played a wide array of roles, including as snipers, combat engineers, medics, and frontline journalists. This level of female participation was unique in World War II, but a close examination of the phenomenon shows that motives and means for entry into the Red army at the beginning of the war were not uniform. Our examination of the case of women volunteers from the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic reveals key factors that fed women's fervent desire to "get to the front." It shows particular ways in which the Red army functioned as an unlikely refuge, sheltering women from some of the hardships and threats of life in the Soviet Russian interior, including hunger, loneliness, and a lack of warm clothing, while providing a means of exacting revenge against a mortal enemy. at the same time, it exposed women to extremes of violence and conflict. Dominant Soviet narratives of women in war have presented them in largely marginal roles or have silenced stories that failed to comport with triumphalist and masculine representations of World War II. This work uses the voices of women volunteers in the Latvian Riflemen's Divisions of the Red army to construct an agent-centered history of motives, experiences, and memories.

This thesis explores the history of one German family during World War II, using
the inspiration and background knowledge gained from historic scholarship and literature to create narratives closely following actual experiences and memories to help understand the peculiarities of war narrative and war memory. The sources are interviews with relatives, existing literature on the subject matter, and the writer’s imagination.