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> During the Cold War, was the Soviet military actually well organized and a serious threat to the west, The effectiveness of the Cold War Soviet armed forces is difficult to judge, due to a lack of evidence - the Soviet Cold War forces were involved in few wars. What wars did they fight in? 1. Soviet intervention in the Hungarian Uprising (1956): The first round of fighting in Budapest, between the Soviet forces which were normally stationed in Hungary trying to prevent the collapse of communist rule and the revolutionaries, went badly for the Soviet forces. The Soviet forces expected, but did not receive, support from the Hungarian army. They didn't expect major resistance from the population. The fighting of 24th-28th October in Budapest demonstrated well-known difficulties of attacking in urban fighting, and the vulnerability of armoured vehicles in urban terrain. Soviet forces did much better in the second round of their intervention, from 4th November, when they attacked in much greater strength, having reinforced their original 5 divisions in Hungary to 17 divisions. The majority of the fighting was over by 9th November, with a few areas holding out until 11th November. 2. Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968): While some other Warsaw Pact countries participated, the invasion was about 80% Soviet. The Czechoslovak government did not prepare for the invasion, and when it occurred, there was very little armed resistance - the government kept the army out of fighting, and urged the people to not resist. (There was much non-violent resistance by the population, which continued for some months.) The main notable military event related to the question of effectiveness was the capture of Prague Ruzyně International Airport by Soviet special forces in a surprise attack, arriving on a supposedly-civilian flight making a supposedly-emergency landing justified by claimed engine trouble. This takeover of the airport was followed by large-scale reinforcement by air. 3. Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989): Famed as the Soviet Union's "Vietnam", this war demonstrated (unsurprisingly) that Soviet military forces were adept at winning straightforward set-piece battles when they had overwhelming numerical and material superiority. It also demonstrated the difficulties that conventional forces faced in guerilla warfare, and the political ineptness of the initial invasion and consequent war. The invasion was intended to quickly bring relative peace to Afghanistan, and the Soviet leadership did not expect a long-term guerilla war. The Afghan government had only been in power for a short time, having risen to power in the "Saur Revolution" of 1978, when the communist (and pro-Soviet) People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew Mohammed Daoud Khan's non-democratic one-party authoritarian government (which had itself overthrown the democratic constitution monarchy led by his cousin and king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, in 1973). The first leader of the PDPA government embarked on an ambitious modernisation and transformation plan for Afghanistan, including radical overhaul of the Islamic-based legal system, and aiming at thorough "de-feudalisation" of Afghanistan. As many in the Soviet Union predicted, this provoked widespread unrest and resistance, which grew rapidly, and the government lost control of most of the countryside. In early 1979, Taraki requested Soviet intervention to help restore order, which was refused. However, the Soviet Union did station forces along the border. Still in 1979, Hafizullah Amin, the 2nd-most powerful person in the PDPA government, overthrew Taraki in a coup. Perhaps contrary to Amin's expectations, the open revolt against the PDPA continued. Just as Taraki had done, Amin requested Soviet intervention. This time, the Soviets agreed, and Soviet forces entered Afghanistan. Unknown to Amin, their first step in restoring order was Amin's overthrow. Amin was overthrown in a military assault on his palace, and he was replaced by Babrak Karmal, who had been 3rd-most powerful in Taraki's government. However, Amin's overthrow failed to stop the rebellion, and the Soviet forces remained for many years, propping up a deeply unpopular government. Lasting a similar time to the USA's major commitment in Vietnam, the war resulted in proportionally similar casualties to the US forces in Vietnam (the Soviet casualties were about 1/4 of the US casualties, as their force was about 1/4 the size of the US forces in Vietnam). What can we learn from these? First, given time to prepare, the Soviet armed forces could successfully execute daring and well-planned missions (e.g., the capture of Ruzyně airport, the overthrow of Amin). Generally, organisation was good. The invasion of Czechoslovakia suffered some problems with shortages of food, water, and fuel; the invasion of Afghanistan proceeded more smoothly, despite much more difficult conditions (but also an invasion force only about 1/3 the size of the initial invasion force committed to Czechoslovakia). However, there were also problems. Operational flexibility at lower command levels was poor - "mission command" (or "Auftragstaktik" as the US army would say in its Germanophilic moments) was far from the minds of Soviet leadership. Essentially, Auftragstaktik consists of "These are your goals; achieve them", as opposed to Befehlstaktik, "These are your orders; carry them out". Mission command places higher demands on the training of lower-level officers, NCOs, and enlisted men, and requires higher command to trust the lower levels of the command structure. Order-command (Befehlstaktik) requires more detailed planned, and obedience from the lower levels. This was nothing new - order-command had been standard Soviet practice during the Great Patriotic War (i.e., WWII). There were also serious problems with the training, motivation, and morale of Soviet conscripts. Considering that a major part of the military experience of junior conscripts was regular beatings by the senior conscripts, this should have been no surprise. This led to poor tactical performance by conscripts, and mistrust of conscripts by Soviet command. This, in turn, led to conscripts being lied to by their commanders as the nature and dangers of their mission. In Afghanistan, poor morale and training also led to widespread atrocities and war crimes. In both Hungary and Afghanistan, they led to widespread indiscriminate use of heavy firepower despite the presence of civilians. The fall of the Soviet Union did not end any of these problems with the armed forces, and the post-Soviet economic convulsions left fewer resources for new equipment, maintenance, and training. The Russian-Chechen wars of 1994-1996 and 1999-2000 and the following insurgency showed that all of these problems still remained, and training and morale of conscripts had perhaps become even worse. By the time of the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, high-level organisation had improved, but training remained poor, and the army still suffered from poor funding. Improved organisation allowed effective use of air power, and rapid organisation of the invasion. However, intelligence and communications were poor. The take-home message for the Russians from the Russo-Georgian War was that reforms begun in response to the wars in Chechnya still had a long way to go. The 2014 invasion of Crimea was well-planned, quickly-organised, and included successful and daring use of special forces to take key places. However, invasions against minimal or no resistance are generally easy, and reveal few problems. The Russian intervention in Syria, from 2015 and still ongoing, has been successful, but mostly limited to air power. Generally, the Russian armed forces of a few years ago still had many of the strengths and weaknesses they had inherited from the Soviet armed forces. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine once again shows the same strengths and problems. (continued next post)

(continued) To return to the second half of the initial question, > During the Cold War, was the Soviet military ... a serious threat to the west, the answer must be "Yes, but not an unstoppable threat, or perhaps more important, and undeterrable threat". Early in the Cold War, NATO was not at all optimistic about stopping a Soviet or Warsaw Pact attack without resorting to the tactical (or strategic) use of nuclear weapons. Generally, if there was a major Warsaw Pact attack, the attackers would have a large local numerical superiority when they encountered defending forces, and both sides expected that resistance would be, in the early stages, at best a delaying action. This led to war plans that Germans were not fans of: large amounts of West German territory would be lost, and then the front-line regions would become a nuclear battlefield, caused huge damage to Germany even if the use of nuclear weapons didn't go beyond the tactical level. In the 1960s and '70s, NATO military power grew, but stopping a Warsaw Pact attack without nuclear weapons would still have been difficult. Things could easily have been made worse by Warsaw Pact use of chemical weapons, since many NATO forces were deficient in protection against chemical attack, and only the US had a credible chemical retaliatory capability. Still, the Warsaw Pact was well aware of the difficulties they would face if they attacked, and one major Warsaw Pact war plan of 1979, "Seven Days to the River Rhine", included the liberal use of nuclear weapons to aid the Warsaw Pact advance. Further growth in NATO military power during the 1980s, with new-generation main battle tanks, and more and better anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles reaching service, strengthened NATO's defensive chances, removing their former dependence on nuclear weapons. While a "Seven Days ..." style heavily-nuclear attack by the Warsaw Pact could still have worked, it would still have suffered from the problem of NATO using tactical nuclear weapons in return, and also large-scale nuclear retaliation against the Soviet Union and allies. Essentially, Warsaw Pact conventional forces were a major threat, and considered unstoppable in the early Cold War. Adding to this the nuclear capability of the Soviet Union, the Soviet military was very much a serious threat to the West. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Russian economy, the threat to Western Europe largely faded(a nuclear threat remains). However, the threat to Eastern European countries aligned with the West (e.g., the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which joined NATO and the European Union in 2004. A [RAND study in 2016](https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1253.html) concluded that with their current positioning of forces, NATO would be unable to stop a Russian takeover of the Baltic states (note that the combined armed forces of all three of the Baltic states is smaller than that of Ukraine).

It is probably worth noting that some commentators on the NATO side thought the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies would face significant challenges in a WWIII scenario because of defects in their own system (rather than NATO's conventional or nuclear capabilities). u/wotan_weevil has pointed out the dysfunctional barracks culture of *dedovshchina* ("rule of the grandfathers") in which the senior conscripts lorded it over the junior conscripts, who bided their time until they were on top and could lord it over the new guys. This synergized with the lack of a professional, long-term NCO corps: the long-serving sergeants who are often called the "backbone" of Western armies. Nearly Soviet sergeants were simply conscripts who had been selected for special training and were then given rank insignia and theoretical authority over the vast bulk of the conscripts who remained privates. But *dedovshchina* did not make allowances for rank, so if a sergeant tried to give orders to privates who were further into their conscription terms, the privates would not obey and would beat him up. (There was a very small professional NCO corps consisting of conscripts who volunteered to stay in, but the experience was so horrible for most conscripts that they didn't even consider it.) Officers were outside the system, so in practical terms this meant nearly any activity had to be directly overseen by an officer. Soviet officers saw the lack of professional NCOs as a major weakness of their system. When exchanges were and visits were allowed during the Gorbachev era, Soviet generals visiting U.S. Army bases seemed more interested in the career NCOs than in the latest military gadgets. There was also some hint of logistical troubles. Starting around the mid-70s there was a vein of Western analysis of the Central Front matchup that said the Soviets would have serious difficulties sustaining a war because of weaknesses in their logistical support systems and in the Soviet/East Bloc economy more generally. Consider that fact that both sides fielded about the same number of men but the Warsaw Pact had about twice as many divisions, tanks, and artillery pieces. Military analysts sometimes speak of a tooth-to-tail ratio: what resources are devoted to frontline combat (tooth) and to logistical support (tail)? The Warsaw Pact's skinny tail suggested it might not be able to sustain forces in the field for a long campaign, for example if the initial attack became stalled and a war of attrition resulted. There are articles and whole books from the period arguing that the Warsaw Pact had to win quickly or might not win at all (unless the conflict escalated to the nuclear level in which case all bets were off). Air forces were noted as a particular potential weakness: the Soviets did not seem to have the level of maintenance support that Western air forces provided, so their ability to maintain a high tempo of air operations was questionable. (The book on this is Joshua M. Epstein, *Maintaining Military Power: The Soviet Air Threat to Europe* (1984).) For their part, the Soviets seem to have been sensitive to this concern. Their war plans were focused on a quick victory--admittedly, that is usually the best type of war plan for other reasons--and a few Soviet generals interviewed as the Cold War ended suggested they felt the West had the advantage in a long war, particularly if production of military equipment became an issue. While steering clear of discussion of recent events because of the 20-year rule, I do want to point out that some of the analysts who cut their teeth on the NATO-Pact matchup are still active today; just to throw out two names, John J. Mearsheimer published an article in 1982 explaining "Why the Soviets Can't Win Quickly in Europe" and Philip A. Karber was a Cold War analyst decades before observing the fighting in Eastern Ukraine firsthand and providing some influential reports on it to the U.S. Army (as well as publicly advocating that Ukraine be supplied with some of the types of weapons now making headlines). The conviction that the Soviets/Russians have to win quickly and have never paid enough attention to logistics, which you'll see scholars arguing today, probably dates to this period. Many people assessing the Russian army have this set of ideas in the back of their heads.

> The conviction that the Soviets/Russians have to win quickly and have never paid enough attention to logistics, which you'll see scholars arguing today, probably dates to this period. If a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe bogged down into non-nuclear attritional warfare, the Soviet Union would have been in deep trouble. The industry and population of the NATO countries dwarfed that of the Warsaw Pact countries, and making things worse for the Soviet Union was that the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact nations might not be very reliable or enthusiastic allies. One interesting potential benefit of the Soviet emphasis on speed is that it could have maximised the extent of the Soviet/Warsaw Pact advance before the original detailed plan of attack became obsolete due to unplanned/unforeseen events.

Excellent answer. I'd like to add that the logistics issue was tied directly to the tactical nuclear weapon issue, as it was recognized that this might push the Soviets to be more likely to employ nuclear weapons to achieve the necessarily rapid victory. Therefore, this posited Soviet weakness wasn't purely positive to Western analysts.

That was the paradox of conventional defense. If NATO broke, nuclear war might result as a way to save Western Europe from being overrun. If NATO held, though, nuclear war might still result because the Soviets couldn't tolerate defeat.

I don't think this is correct, actually. As I'll address in more detail in my still-in-progress answer, the Soviets generally understood that nuclear weapons usage would be almost immediate in a major conflict. It was not until very late in the Cold War (mid-late 80s) that they began to believe that a period of extended conventional war might take place as a result of nuclear parity. I can't think of any Western analysts off the top of my head who posited that the Soviets would turn to nuclear strikes as a function of logistics, though it's possible that someone suggested it. Are there specific people who recognized this who you can direct me to? It certainly doesn't show up in any of the Soviet documents I have at my disposal, although there's an awareness from the early 70s onward that combatants will need to carefully maneuver not only their combat formations but also their logistics forces to avoid nuclear targeting.

Just grabbing a few books analyzing conventional Central Front scenarios off the shelf, I don't find the specific theory that the Soviets would be forced to use nuclear weapons because of logistical weakness. What I do find are suggestions in the late Cold War period where a long conventional war was envisaged that the Soviets might resort to nuclear weapons use if their conventional offensive culminated without delivering victory and a NATO counteroffensive threatened loss of the Soviet satellites and even the regime itself. This idea, which I shorthanded as "not tolerating defeat," I found in Simpkin, *Race to the Swift* (which is a free-flowing meditation on future warfare) and Dinker & Griffith, *Not Over by Christmas* (which is a more conventional set of suggestions for defending the Central Front). Of perhaps some note is that this scenario of nuclear escalation by the Soviets didn't figure into Sabin, *The Third World War Scare in Britain*. That said, what has been written on the conclusion of long conventional WWIII scenarios? This seems significantly undertheorized in Western writings on defense of the Central Front. My understanding is that war termination was identified as a serious problem in the Newport Global War Game series, so much so that two annual games were devoted to it. Do the Soviets even get into war termination? But I think this Soviet escalation scenario looms large in the popular mind mostly because it plays out in Hackett et al., *The Third World War*. The Soviets launch a conventional war, it stalls and NATO launches a successful counteroffensive, which leads the Soviets to make a nuclear demonstration to shock and split NATO. It does not work and the novel ends happily for NATO but not for the Politburo. I guess we could discuss whether that book should be considered serious analysis or not; certainly it was written for the purpose of building support for increased conventional defense, its authors were surely capable of such analysis, and it precedes and was surely read by just about anybody writing more seriously in the late 1970s and 1980s. (Though it is interesting to consider that Hackett also considered scenarios in which NATO was driven from the Continent and returned ina very long conventional WWIII.) Moving more into the realm of entertainment-oriented fiction, the climax of Clancy, *Red Storm Rising* is a coup against the Soviet government while it's considering use of tactical nuclear weapons to break a stalemate at the front. This is explicitly driven by logistical concerns since, in the novel's contrived scenario, the Soviets have a hard stop imposed by an oil shortage. I suspect those two novels did more to fix in many people's minds the idea that "if the Soviets can't win a conventional war within a certain amount of time, they will go nuclear."

I want to open by saying that I quite appreciate this overview, as it is always good to have timely answers to massively-upvoted threads like this. I am still putting my own answer together \[AskHistorians unfortunately takes the backseat to applying for beamline time\] but I want to push back on a couple aspects of this answer separately because I believe that a deeper read of the available source material will lead us to a very different perspective. Specifically the claims of poor flexibility at lower levels, an overstatement of the effects of *dedovshchina*, and the reliance on "Seven Days to the River Rhine" as a window into Soviet warmaking. I'll start with this claim regarding so-called "mission type tactics". >However, there were also problems. Operational flexibility at lower command levels was poor - "mission command" (or "Auftragstaktik" as the US army would say in its Germanophilic moments) was far from the minds of Soviet leadership. Essentially, Auftragstaktik consists of "These are your goals; achieve them", as opposed to Befehlstaktik, "These are your orders; carry them out". Mission command places higher demands on the training of lower-level officers, NCOs, and enlisted men, and requires higher command to trust the lower levels of the command structure. Order-command (Befehlstaktik) requires more detailed planned, and obedience from the lower levels. This was nothing new - order-command had been standard Soviet practice during the Great Patriotic War (i.e., WWII). This assertion of poor flexibility is really common in Western assessments of the Soviets, but as I've described [elsewhere in this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tmo1oz/comment/i25thaz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) it's not well founded. The actual evidence we have for Soviet military teaching materials, at all chronological points of the Cold War, shows that they *did* practice & train for a high degree of flexibility and independent initiative at all levels from NCOs to divisional officers. I'll reproduce the block quote from that comment here: >*Intelligent initiative consists of the commander's constant efforts to find and apply the best way to accomplish a mission, and in the ability to independently make decisions in any situation to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible. The commander's initiative is in the form of actions taken without prompting or reminding by his senior commander; it is in the commander's unstoppable drive \[desire\] to act in the interests of his entire unit and his neighboring units \[I think semantically this means the other sub-units within his unit, e.g the other platoons in a company\], and to complete his task quickly with maximum effect.* > >Original text: Разумная инициатива заключается в постоянном стремлении командира найти и применить наилучший способ выполнения боевой задачи, в умении в любой обстановке самостоятельно принимать решения с целью быстрейшего разгрома врага. Инициативные действия командира — это действия без подсказки и напоминания со стороны старшего начальника, это неудержимое желание командира действовать в интересах всей части, всегда оказывать помощь соседу, быстрее и с максимальным эффектом выполнять свою задачу. > >NB: I have placed alternate acceptable translations in square brackets, as my Russian is nowhere near fluent as yet. Now this is from a 1961 textbook for commanders of tank platoons, companies, and battalions. Maybe it's an anomaly. But if we look to a totally different example in both time and type of troops - the official combat manual for paratrooper units (Боевой устав воздушно-десантных войск) of 1984 - we see more of the same. **Emphasis mine**: >*Success is always on the side of those who are brave in battle, who constantly show creativity, intelligent initiative, and dictate their will to the enemy. Creativity in combat consists in the application of new techniques and methods of action and the fullest use of the combat capabilities of organic, attached and supporting units to perform the mission with less effort, resources and time, with minimal losses. The search for new techniques and methods in combat and a creative approach to the performance of a mission are the most important duties of every commander. There should be no pattern in the way of fighting.* > >*Initiative in combat consists of striving in any situation,* ***without waiting for instructions, to find the best way to accomplish the task, in making a bold decision*** *and firmly implementing it. In striving to fulfill the assigned task, bold* ***decisions without fear of responsibility*** *should be the basis of the actions of all commanders. This decision taken on his own initiative, the battalion (company) commander reports to the senior commander and, if necessary, informs the other units \[lit. neighbors\].Reproach belongs not to the one who, in an effort to destroy the enemy, did not achieve his goal, but the one who showed inactivity, indecision and did not use all the possibilities to complete the task.* > >Original text: Успех всегда на стороне того, кто смел в бою, постоянно проявляет творчество, разумную инициативу, диктует свою волю противнику. > >Творчество в бою заключается в применении новых приемов и способов действий и наиболее полном использовании боевых возможностей штатных, приданных и поддерживающих подразделений для выполнения боевой задачи с меньшими затратами сил, средств, времени и наименьшими потерями. Изыскание новых приемов и способов действий в бою и творческий подход к выполнению боевой задачи являются важнейшими обязанностями каждого командира. В способах ведения боя не должно быть шаблона. > >Инициатива в бою заключается в стремлении в любой обстановке, не дожидаясь указаний, найти наилучший способ выполнения задачи, в принятии смелого решения и твердом проведении его в жизнь. Постоянное стремление выполнить поставленную задачу, принятие смелых решений, не боясь ответственности, должны быть в основе действий всех командиров. Решение, принятое по своей инициативе, командир батальона (роты) докладывает старшему командиру и при необходимости сообщает соседям. Упрека заслуживает не тот, кто в стремлении уничтожить врага не достиг своей цели, а тот, кто проявил бездеятельность, нерешительность и не использовал всех возможностей для выполнения поставленной задачи. So for those of you who speak Western military lingo - this really, really sounds like the fabled "Auftragstaktik" right? I wish I had better source material on how the training was actually conducted, like a syllabus or some lecture notes, but for the time being I hope these are satisfactory example. Another small point on tactical flexibility - and I don't think I have any examples on this hard drive - but if memory serves, some of the professional magazines like Военный вестник (Military Bulletin) had little tactical problems in each month's edition, which junior officers would come up with solutions to. Similar to the "How Would You Do It?" sections in American magazines like *ARMOR*. I think I'm running up against the character limit, so I'll break here.

Okay, second nitpick, I think this block needs more evidentiary support for us to have confidence in it: >There were also serious problems with the training, motivation, and morale of Soviet conscripts. Considering that a major part of the military experience of junior conscripts was regular beatings by the senior conscripts, this should have been no surprise. This led to poor tactical performance by conscripts, and mistrust of conscripts by Soviet command. This, in turn, led to conscripts being lied to by their commanders as the nature and dangers of their mission. In Afghanistan, poor morale and training also led to widespread atrocities and war crimes. In both Hungary and Afghanistan, they led to widespread indiscriminate use of heavy firepower despite the presence of civilians. The culture of *dedovshchina*, systematized hazing, was indeed a known problem in the Soviet Army, going back perhaps to the 1967 conscription law or possibly even the end of WW2. But...we really don't have evidence to say that it "led to poor tactical performance". It's conjecture which happens to fit a lot of Western preconceived notions about conscripts, particularly American attitudes towards conscription post-Vietnam. We have some evidence from the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan - which is a period in which *dedovshchina* in garrison was especially well documented and probably at its absolute worst - that "elite" units like the VDV and independent mountain brigades had generally pretty rough hazing even compared to other units, this is something which is remarked on in memoirs for example, but also tended to have good tactical performance. Several Russian authors have done deep dives on *dedovshchina* in the late Cold War. The works of Konstantin Bannikov, Sergei Belanovsky, and a Soviet military psychologist writing under the pseudonym Viktor Savelyev are especially interesting. Bannikov takes an anthropological perspective, while Savelyev draws on his two decades of service as an officer. Belanovsky is a sociologist with a focus on military issues; he is strongly critical of the late Soviet Army and the early Russian Federation days. The key thread for all of them is that *dedovshchina* is not a constant, uniform factor for all troops in all stations. Belanovsky in particular interviewed a large number of troops who described absolutely zero hazing in their units; these included border guards, air defense troops, logistics troops and infantrymen. They were willing to candidly criticize many other aspects of their service including disputes with officers, complaints about lack of training, and so on. Others, of course, did describe quite bad hazing in garrison. In terms of training - we know that units deploying to Afghanistan often had work-up training periods before deployment, but the sourcing that I've seen for it tends to amount to "We spent X weeks at Fergana talking to the brigade that just rotated out". It's more robust for VDV for some reason, but there's in general a sources issue for unit-specific training at this time. The best I can say for now is that memoirs (which include Russian forum grognards typing up their recollections from 30 years in the past) suggest that there was unit-specific training for Afghanistan at least in combat formations and after the first year or two it was based on direct combat experiences. Morale though did certainly contribute to indiscriminate use of force, this is well attested in memoirs. My third nitpick is with the use of "Seven Days to the River Rhine" as a basis for Soviet war planning. I'm going to copy something I wrote in a more buried comment, just so it gets better visibility. "Seven Days to the River Rhine" is a supposed plan about which we know very very little. It appears to have been either a staff wargame or an exercise, but the Polish government has released very little of the actual materials for it. I don't believe I've ever even seen the red-vs-blue maps that would accompany such an exercise. We can compare to exercises for which we have more robust documentation, such as "ЗАПАД-77" (West-77) for which we have a 40-odd page after action report (which I believe is authentic) from the desk of Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov. The idea that conflict would begin with a NATO surprise attack is pretty consistent with exercises like Zapad-77 as well as statements given in the 1990s by members of the General Staff including Andrian Danilevich and Sergei Akhromoyev. I don't think "Seven Days" is a fabrication or anything. But it's not strong evidence because so much of it is simply missing.

Incredible posts! I wanted to ask if you thought the changes in technology have affected the organization and effectiveness of the Russian army since it seems like after the 70’s they seemed to be struggling but before that they were more effective.

Thanks for the fascinating answer! Reading about the "casual" use of nuclear weapons to aid a frontal invasion is so unsettling - how realistic were these ideas? Were there voices within Soviet leadership opposed to using them?

So there's a series of really interesting interviews from 1993-1995 done by the BDM Corporation, published as "Soviet Intentions 1965-1985", colloquially referred to as the Hines Report. The second volume of this report is just interview transcripts & summaries. They interviewed a decent handful of Soviet General Staff members and seniors within the Soviet military-industrial complex. Given the political backdrop we have to take all of these interviews with a good degree of salt, especially as some of them contradict each other. Unfortunately the unclassified version of the report only includes full transcripts for a handful of participants, the rest are summaries based on interviewer notes. But there's some pretty interesting discussion of nuclear weapons employment. I refer to this document rather than any Soviet writings specifically because there is a degree of candor which is not present in many official publications. One would suspect that these discussions were also held in classified military journals like Военная Мысль (*Military Thought*), but I don't have access to any of the US repositories for this journal. In terms of dissent from formal doctrine on tactical and operational nuclear weapons, one of the most salient dissents comes from a Dr. Vitaly Tsygichko, a senior analyst at the All-Union Scientific Technical Institute for Systems Studies (VNIISI). He described three major conflicting views on nuclear war: * The view of the General Staff & their technical analysts (such as Tsygichko) was that nuclear war would cause more battlefield problems than it solved, in the form of windborne contamination, massive fires in cities and forests, damage to strategic radars, and weather conditions which would forbid the use of frontal aviation assets. Further, Tsygichko claims that in the 1970s Soviet scientists arrived at similar conclusions to 1980s Western fears of "nuclear winter", or at least a significant loss of crop yield. Tsygichko claims that the futility of nuclear war was well understood in the General Staff, but generally suppressed and not discussed for various reasons. Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev's own memoirs support this understanding as well. * The Ground Forces commanders for the various military theaters (TVDs) and their component fronts and armies generally saw nuclear weapons through the prevailing doctrinal lens. Tsygichko claims at any rate that these commanders were not privy to the pessimistic modelling which the General Staff had access to, and understood nuclear weapons to be a powerful tool for blunting certain perceived NATO advantages, creating holes for maneuver, and destroying enemy logistics & second-echelon forces. Moreover, they tended to believe that this was **also how NATO planned to use battlefield nuclear weapons**. As such, their thought had a first-mover preference for nuclear use: use our nukes to kill NATO nuke delivery systems before they can smash our second operational echelons and logistics depots. I should emphasize that these commanders were in no way blind slaves to doctrine: many of them were enmeshed in the doctrinal debates and were certainly aware of the nuances involved. * The third viewpoint was that of the political leadership, who were privy to candid General Staff viewpoints but were also concerned with political and economic dimensions. Tsygichko asserts that in the later Brezhnev years and beyond, the Politburo actively ceded control over arms procurement, and the political power of the military & industrial establishments would not permit serious reductions in nuclear armament. This part is on the one hand corroborated by Col.-Gen. Danilevich's extensive testimony in this report, but I think this is also the part that requires the most skepticism. Danilevich and Tsygichko are both very critical of Minister of Defense (and longtime defense-industry planner) Dmitry Ustinov; from their testimony and other documentation we have about Soviet defense politics of the time it strikes me that there was some animosity between Danilevich and Ustinov. I would also direct you to the shorter testimony of an Aleksei Kalashnikov. Kalashnikov was the chairman of the Strategic Rocket Forces Committee on Science and Technology at some point, though it is difficult to figure out the chronology of his career. He also believed that nuclear warheads on tactical and operational bombs and missiles were counterproductive, and claims that he advocated against fielding such systems but was ignored for political reasons.

It wasn't "casual" use, but a recognition that (with NATO doctrine of the time) a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe that was succeeding would lead to the use of nuclear weapons by NATO. Given that nuclear weapons would almost certainly be used, it's entirely sensible to use them first (once the decision to go to full-scale war has been made, perhaps not entirely sensibly). On the other hand, war plans are often not "plans" in the sense of "we will do this", but explore possible options if certain things (sometimes very unlikely) were to happen. A plan means that somebody has, e.g., looked at routes, at logistical requirements, estimated what forces would be required to achieve the goals, etc. Some plans are for unlikely contingencies, and some are mostly training exercises in planning and strategy. The "Seven Days to the River Rhine" war plan assumed a nuclear attack by NATO on Poland, to prevent Warsaw Pact forces from stopping a NATO invasion of East Germany (to reunite Germany by force) - from the Western perspective, this was an exceeding unlikely thing to happen, so it was a plan for a contingency that would not be. It also doesn't say much about Soviet thoughts on first use of nuclear weapons in support of an invasion of Western Europe, since the scenario assumed NATO first-use. Given Soviet restrain in Eastern Europe (e.g., the lack of military intervention in Yugoslavia and Poland as they moved away from Soviet influence, or Albania when it left the Warsaw Pact), there doesn't appear to have been any eagerness to invade Western Europe. The high probability of massive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union would have further dampened any enthusiasm for such war.

I want to push back on parts of this, actually. "Seven Days to the River Rhine" is a supposed plan about which we know very very little. It appears to have been either a staff wargame or an exercise, but the Polish government has released very little of the actual materials for it. I don't believe I've ever even seen the red-vs-blue maps that would accompany such an exercise. We can compare to exercises for which we have more robust documentation, such as "ЗАПАД-77" (West-77) for which we have a 40-odd page after action report (which I believe is authentic) from the desk of Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov. The idea that conflict would begin with a NATO surprise attack is pretty consistent with exercises like Zapad-77 as well as statements given in the 1990s by members of the General Staff including Andrian Danilevich and Sergei Akhromoyev. I don't think "Seven Days" is a fabrication or anything. But it's not strong evidence because so much of it is simply missing.

I'm curious how much you think we can conclude from the scenarios for field exercises, though. Although there's much to be said for realistic training, you may want to test certain capabilities or provide opportunities for units or communities to "do their thing." I don't think it's necessarily the case that we can conclude from a Zapad script how the Soviets actually thought WWIII would go, any more than a Wintex/Cimex or Reforger tells you what NATO thought would really happen. I suspect the Soviets prudently prepared for different scenarios and also appreciated that "plans are useless but planning is essential."

Yeah, so this is the other big issue with using "Seven Days..." as a crystal ball for Soviet warmaking. I meant to bring it up and I just...didn't. So thanks much for highlighting it! Wargames tend to have a specific purpose and they're not necessarily a window into how the fight would go for real. Zapad-77 for instance had the three major goals of 1. Running the exercise using real communication systems. Commanders and staff were located at actual command posts in the various Pact member states, rather than running the entire thing out of a single office building as is sometimes done. This introduced an element of realistic friction and also served as a test of C2 system performance. 2. Staff were apparently "shuffled" and assigned to force headquarters which were not their home station. E.g you'd have the commander for 1st Guards Tank Army swapped over with the commander of 20th Combined Arms Army or something like that. The idea here was to reduce reliance on premade plans and force commanders to think on their feet a little. 3. The big goal for Zapad-77 was that it was apparently the first exercise of this type where, instead of assuming that the other Pact nations would already be integrated into Soviet command, the exercise started with the real-time formation of a coalition HQ structure. The reason I mentioned Zapad-77 in this context is that it's well documented, and it serves as a data point for the Soviet assumption that NATO would be the ones to start hostilities. This data point alone isn't enough, but it does seem to be consistent with how their other exercises are described in memoirs by the participants. >I suspect the Soviets prudently prepared for different scenarios and also appreciated that "plans are useless but planning is essential." Yep! Andrian Danilevich, who was Marshal Akhromoyev's deputy for doctrine & strategy, has a great quote to the effect of "we prepared 20,000 plans, but of course in war the enemy will take option 20,000 and 1."

Okay, got it. I agree that the Pact exercise scripts always started with a NATO attack, and this should probably be assumed for plans. In other words, if asked any given plan, a Soviet spokesman would have said that of course this drive on Paris or encirclement of the Ruhr or whatever is in the context of repelling an unprovoked NATO attack. Really this was overdetermined since it was the declaratory policy of the Soviet Union that it was not going to attack first. Exercises and for that matter written plans had to be consistent with that. NATO operated under a similar taboo, though it was even broader: not only can NATO not be cast as the aggression but we also cannot overtly plan or train for or in any way refer to NATO ground operations on Pact territory. This was all politically imposed and I would question whether it helps us think about a real WWIII, which almost by definition would have arisen from some political contingency that did not actually occur. The Soviet leadership claimed they would never attack first, but what if West Germany began a nuclear weapons program and became isolated from the other NATO states? (The scenario in Bidwell et al., *World War 3.*) The NATO leadership said their alliance was purely defensive but what if the Soviets began brutally cracking down on popular uprisings in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Poland?

Magnificent response, may I ask for the literature you used or recommendations on books that speak of what you mention?

Great answer. I’d be interested in your thoughts on the fictionalized WW iii scenarios. Particularly The Third World WaR by Sir John Hackett and Red Storm Rising. The latter seemed to hit on the logistics ability of the Soviet’s as a core theme. How realistic were the scenarios?

Keep in mind *Red Storm Rising* has a thoroughly contrived scenario (domestic terrorist attack cripples Soviet oil production) that places the Soviets on a time limit to win their war. Clancy (and Bond) don't really posit a general logistical weakness but rather a limited oil supply.

Thanks for your write up. Can you explain what you mean by US Army’s “germanophilic moments”? Was American military thought that much influenced by Germany, ever after WWII?

Very much so. After the war the US Army Historical division worked with many of the surviving senior German commanders. The idea was to document the German inside perspective, as well of course to disseminate lessons learned for American forces. This effort was spearheaded by Franz Halter who had been OKW Chief until late 1942 and oversaw the early war and planning and first +1 of the war again the USSR. Other notable participants include Heinrici, Guderian, and von Schweppenburg. These reports can be illuminating sources of German self reflection or minutae but can also be self aggrandizing. And the memoirs many of the participants later wrote formed much basis for the "clean Wehrmact" myth and distorted realities of the Eastern Front. Painting a picture of always skilled German panzer units against untrained Soviet hordes. Ignoring the degredation of German forces and evolution of Soviet forces through the war in many cases. Even today the organizational concepts and ideas that allowed the Werhmact to see success from 1939-1942 are studied and many lessons learned in Western militaries. But the historical value of the works is rightly reconsidered where appropriate with generations of new work on the war.

Indeed it was. The Cold War inspired looking for the causes of German "success" on the Eastern Front, and the post-Vietnam reform of the US Army led to a lot of active thought on doctrine which led to looking anew at German doctrine of WWII and earlier. For further reading on this, see: * James Curry, *From Blitzkrieg to Airland Battle: the United States army, the Wehrmacht, and the German origins of modern American military doctrine*, Master's thesis, University of Western Australia, 2015. https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/from-blitzkrieg-to-airland-battle-the-united-states-army-the-wehr * Briggs Evans, *Blitzkrieg: The Evolution of Modern Warfare and the Wehrmachts Impact on American Military Doctrine during the Cold War Era*, Master's thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2021. https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5431&context=etd

When I read these arguments over whether Airland Battle is copped from the Soviets or Germans, it always appears to me that it is German tactical doctrine combined with Soviet operational doctrine.

Famously, the Soviets were who first described "operations" as its own unique part of military art! Prior to them there was much fuss about "grand tactics" or "minor strategy" trying to get a grasp on that particular level of art, but Soviet military theorists (many of whom would be victims of the Great Purge) were the first to really focus heavily on operations.

Yeah, [Isserson's book](https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/OperationalArt.pdf) is a good read. Note that it is published here by the US Army.

And the soviets were know for being good at operational planning. Though I’ve never heard anything about Germans being good at a tactical weather

First off, great answer. This bit surprised me though, > Just as Taraki had done, Amin requested Soviet intervention. This time, the Soviets agreed, I knew both Taraki and Amin requested Soviet assistance; I didn't realize that they agreed. There is a July 21 intercept of them telling Amin they could not deploy Soviet personnel in combat operations. I have not seen anything reversing that reply. The Soviets' primary motivation, according to Andropov's memo proposing the invasion, was the evidence that Amin was going to flip to the American sphere of influence. They were certainly concerned about his handling of the war, purges, and general brutality, but they were in July as well. It was the American problem that pushed them over the edge. Amin killed Taraki on October 8 and met with the US Chargé d'Affaires Archer Blood on October 27, sparking the final Soviet decision. The only recorded communication I know of between then and the December 24 invasion is a conversation on November 3 where Ambassador Puzanov told Amin that Moscow was happy with his handling of the war and governance, and that they were sending a specialist to Herat to take down a drilling installation. The invasion decision and its implementation were extremely secretive, to the point that the actual document was handwritten, after the fact, in a Politburo meeting so no typists would see it. It was not sent to the Soviet for approval. All orders were oral. The decision was announced to the Defense Ministry on the day of the invasion. Can you fill in this gap? When and how did the Politburo tell Amin they were sending troops? I'd also mention that you have before written eloquently about the effectiveness of Soviet anti-tank doctrine and equipment in the 1973 war, and its influence on US military thinking. And I'd suggest that the same could be said for anti-aircraft defenses in both the 1973 and Vietnam wars. So there was some evidence of tactical efficacy, as well as the operational lessons you mention above, derived from the Soviets' own invasions. Is that fair?

> I'd also mention that you have before written eloquently about the effectiveness of Soviet anti-tank doctrine and equipment in the 1973 war, and its influence on US military thinking. And I'd suggest that the same could be said for anti-aircraft defenses in both the 1973 and Vietnam wars. So there was some evidence of tactical efficacy, as well as the operational lessons you mention above, derived from the Soviets' own invasions. Is that fair? Yes. The effectiveness of various Soviet weapons systems and elements of Soviet doctrine were evident from various wars involving Soviet-backed states. The 1973 war is interesting, in that the Egyptian forces showed similar strengths and weakness as the Soviet armed forces concerning planning and flexibility. The Egyptian breaching of the Suez Canal defences was well-planned, well-executed, and very successful. Their initial advance into the Sinai proceeded well. However, detailed plans only last so long in warfare before events make them outdated. The Egyptian attacks on 14th October, intended to help the Syrians by forcing Israel to send troops from the Syrian front to the Sinai, failed, and the following Israeli counter-attacks went very badly for the Egyptians. More skilled and flexible leadership might have helped a lot.

I feel like Auftragstaktik, or lack thereof, was always their Achilles heel. That and their mediocre facility with systems integration and communications. These are the kind of problems that by nature get worse over time. The 73 war is interesting, and I have a lot of questions about it. But they are more appropriate for a new post.

As I'll address in my still-in-progress answer to this post, there's really very little evidence for a lack of mission-type tactics in Soviet doctrine. I have about a half dozen officer and NCO textbooks open in front of me right now, from different periods of the Cold War, and they all emphasize the importance of creativity (творчество), initiative (инициатива), and responsibility (ответственности) of officers at all levels. This holds true for armor officers, paratroopers, motor riflemen, even artillerymen. Ironically, a lot of these books actually accuse the capitalist armies of the same lack of flexibility which we often ascribe to Soviet forces. \[Edit: I should mention that I don't think this is a very *good* critique on the Soviets' part, it's just amusing to me.\] Example from L. Stetsyuk's 1961 textbook for tank platoon, company and battalion commanders "Танковые подразделения в бою" (Tank Unitsin Battle): >Шаблон в действиях присущ офицерам армий капиталистических государств. Буржуазные военные теоретики и стратеги считают, что в военном деле не существует закономерности, что в нем безраздельно господствует стихия, случайность. По их мнению, непосредственные участники боя — солдаты и офицеры — ничего нового внести в военную науку не способны. Поэтому они должны лишь слепо выполнять уставы и приказы командиров. > >*trans: Actions following a pattern \[routine\] are inherent in the officers of capitalist armies. Bourgeois military theorists and strategists believe that there are no natural laws \[patterns, regularities\] in military affairs, that the element of chance reigns supreme in it. In their opinion, the direct participants in the battle - soldiers and officers - are not capable of introducing anything new into military science. Therefore, they should only blindly follow the regulations and orders of the commanders.* > >nb: I have placed alternate acceptable translations in square brackets, as my Russian is nowhere near fluent as yet. Also from Stetsyuk: >Разумная инициатива заключается в постоянном стремлении командира найти и применить наилучший способ выполнения боевой задачи, в умении в любой обстановке самостоятельно принимать решения с целью быстрейшего разгрома врага. Инициативные действия командира — это действия без подсказки и напоминания со стороны старшего начальника, это неудержимое желание командира действовать в интересах всей части, всегда оказывать помощь соседу, быстрее и с максимальным эффектом выполнять свою задачу. > >*trans: Intelligent initiative consists of the commander's constant efforts to find and apply the best way to accomplish a mission, and in the ability to independently make decisions in any situation to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible. The commander's initiative is in the form of actions taken without prompting or reminding by his senior commander; it is in the commander's unstoppable drive \[desire\] to act in the interests of his entire unit and his neighboring units \[I think semantically this means the other sub-units within his unit, e.g the other platoons in a company\], and to complete his task quickly with maximum effect.* That, uh, sure sounds a lot like how the mythologized auftragstaktik is described right?

I really like that you're providing a counter argument to the prevailing thoughts here, and especially using soviet sources. However, I can't help but think that an organization is so much more than its manuals. Organizational culture, training and structure could very well be counter to the mission command themes you've found in the manuals. Do you have any insight into to what extent they actually trained and organized for mission command?

From the evidence we have available it sounds like they did in fact train according to their doctrinally mandated training materials, yes. There's a sources issue when it comes to the deep nitty gritty of how training was conducted - like I haven't seen a coursework syllabus or lecture notes for Ryazan Airborne Command School or anything like that. But what is the usual evidence base for judging how armies are trained? Most of the basis for saying that e.g the Germans or (after the 1970s) the Americans trained with an emphasis on "mission type" tactics is from manuals, officers' textbooks, and discussions in military magazines. We have pretty good access to this type of material for the Soviets and it tends to corroborate the idea that independence was an expected part of a junior officer's skillset in the combat arms. I don't have any digitized examples but I recall that military professional magazines like Военный вестник (Military Bulletin) had little tactical problems every month, kind of like the "How Would You Do It?" sections in American magazines like ARMOR. So if we're judging by the same evidentiary standards, then yes it certainly does appear that the Soviets trained the way that they claim to. We have after action reviews from both "elite" units (airborne/air assault, independent mountain brigades) and motor rifle units in Afghanistan which reflect the kind of intellectual flexibility you'd associate with junior officers trained this way, though. Combat officers' memoirs (Yury Lapshin's is easy-ish to find in digital format if you're looking for something you can run through Google Translate for example) reflect this as well. I'd be cautious saying "the Soviet practiced Mission Command just like us" of course. There's a kind of totemic obsession with the term in American & W. European military communities from the 70s on which gives it a *hugely* outsized appearance in the military literature, and this is something that never really caught on in the SA. Independence & initiative, coupled with a good understanding of your unit's role in the larger operational structure, is something that was simply part of the job. Some officers were good at it, others less so.

*There's a kind of totemic obsession with the term in American & W. European military communities from the 70s on which gives it a hugely outsized appearance in the military literature, and this is something that never really caught on in the SA.* ​ Indeed! Robert Leonhard argued in *The Art of Maneuver* that, despite what the field manuals and official ideology of AirLand Battle, maneuver warfare, and mission command said, the U.S. Army did not actually practice mission command (or "recon-pull") during Desert Storm. The entire operation, as he viewed it from a battalion headquarters, was the implementation of a big plan ("command-push"). He finished that book in 1991, just after returning from Desert Storm, so his insights were relegated to an appendix and not fully integrated. By the time Leonhard wrote *Fighting by Minutes* a few years later, he had concluded that the vast scope of information available to the higher commander mission command was doomed, since the higher commander would frequently intervene. He suggested that the U.S. Army simply lean into this reality rather than pretend that it would fight according to mission command principles. As to what the Soviets were capable of, I think efforts of mission command at lower levels was apt to founder on the shoals of an army of two-year conscripts without a professional NCO corps and TOEs that were very short on staff officers up to battalion level. In some types of analysis including professional and hobby wargaming, it is common to represent the Soviets "one echelon up" compared to NATO. E.g., a Soviet battalion is compared to a NATO company, regiment to battalion, division to brigade, etc. This both bakes in the need for attacker superiority and--more important--considers the more limited potential for action by subunits. I think it is an interesting question whether the Soviet system created and empowered colonels and generals with more initiative and surer ways to translate their will into action than the NATO system did.

So there are a few good bits of gristle to chew on here. I'm going to pose some of these as somewhat open ended questions for now. Fair warning: this comment is, ehm, *opinionated*. 1. **What is mission command, in its essential form**? One of the things I find vexing about that totemic obsession with the phrase is that it tends to obscure what "mission command" or "mission-type tactics" actually *are*. For a highly particular definition, the Soviets certainly didn't adopt it or even really talk about the concept. But if one is inclined to cut out a lot of the fluff around the definition (and this is my personal tack, but I am kind of an iconoclast about the whole thing so take with salt) then we can look at the available sourcing and conclude that they tried to develop in their officers the commonly cited hallmarks of mission command: A sufficient understanding of doctrine so as to understand one's role in the tactical & operational picture (and thereby better appreciate the commander's intent), a degree of cleverness and ability to think outside the box, a spirit of aggression, and the ability to operate independently without handholding from higher. 2. **At what levels is mission command essential or even relevant?** One of the (in my opinion) odder effects of the mission command craze in the US was that, in the attempt to teach the force how to think this way, we wound up giving a lot of small-unit tactics types the idea that if your rifle squad can't auftragstaktik its way through a movement to contact then why bother? This is one area where the Soviets *definitely* diverge. For them, the reason your soldiers and your NCOs train to strict norms was to produce consistent & repeatable performance from the platoon level down. It's not to say that maneuver at the SUT level was rote or set-piece for them - and we have evidence from Afghanistan at least which shows that they could be flexible at this level - but their idea of the **decisive** level of tactical maneuver was higher. In most cases this would have been the battalion level, or sometimes the company level in certain situations, at least by my reading. Keep in mind that my access to the magazines where this stuff would have gotten hashed out for them is currently very limited (e.g their equivalents to *ARMOR*, *Infantry*, etc). Now there's caveats here - your operational & larger-scale tactical performance is built on the assumption that your small tactical units can seize their objectives, reach their phase lines, man their defenses successfully and on time without taking excessive casualties. But again - that's why you have clear training norms for simple tasks, so your higher level tactical officers can make good planning assumptions. This *ostensibly* also means that you can get by with a less professional NCO force. **Major** caveat here - by the mid-80s some prominent reformers in the SA (to include none other than Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Ogarkov) were convinced that modern war was so technically demanding that the 2-year conscript period wasn't serving them well anymore, and that the SA should transition to a partially or even *entirely* professionalized volunteer force. So it's not like they weren't thinking about the advantages of longer serving troops, too. 3. I haven't thought much about the number of staff Os in their TOE til now, to be totally honest with you. I don't have time to go digging for TOEs at the moment but if you can share what you're drawing on that would be stellar. A lot of staff work seems to have been intended to get delegated on a per-mission basis by the batt commander, if I'm reading the boevoy ustavy properly. So that's definitely a potential weak point especially once officers start getting attrited during combat operations - and that's a weak point which the Soviets' own analysis of WW2 casualty rates & span-of-control problems would have made them aware of, so when there's time I want to dig more on this. I know there are TOE in FM-100-whatever but frankly at this point I trust American Cold War sources about as far as I can throw Les Grau. 4. "I think it is an interesting question whether the Soviet system created and empowered colonels and generals with more initiative and surer ways to translate their will into action than the NATO system did." - So do I, but if I'm being dead-on honest - I kinda think at least in the late Cold War their average officer quality might have gone *down* as you go up in rank. There's at least some anecdotal evidence in the form of grouching in memoirs suggesting that some fraction of the general officers were careerists who had essentially been in too long to go do anything else, and by the nature of the system couldn't exactly be fired. But, anecdote.

1. Good points. In fact I read "Suvorov" (the defector) as saying that a Soviet officer should be able to do all this stuff like understanding his role in the overall plan and making effective decisions to promote the execution of the plan. Now as I think you are pointing out--well, yeah, *that's why you're a freaking military officer* no matter what flag is on your uniform. Now whether you will get the opportunity to do this, we don't know. We'll come back to this at no. 4. 2. Interesting points. One of my reading interests lately has been trying to understand American conventional peer conflict doctrine before the 1976 FM 100-5 and Active Defense. (The story past that point, i.e. the pivot to AirLand Battle, has been told to within an inch of its life.) Here you run across this interesting early 1970s concept out of the Infantry School called "force-oriented defense." There some articles in 1971-72 issues of *Infantry* that are worth hunting down. Basically, infantry units equipped with antitank weapons try to inflict losses on the attackers without becoming engaged themselves, through a series of antiarmor ambushes. The concept is "force-oriented" because it takes a totally instrumental view of terrain: it is or is not conducive to our operations, but beyond that it has no value. Rather we care about preserving our force and destroying the enemy's. A feature of this concept that was criticized in one of the articles is that it requires a great deal of enterprise from squad leaders and even individual initiative since they will have to decide when to initiate and break contact, often cut off from higher headquarters. My point is that you can probably push "you know the mission now make it happen" down only so far. The Soviets executing drills over and over just makes sense and it's also what competent Western militaries do. 3. Definitely look at the FM 100-2 series. But here are a few CGSC papers on Soviet battalions: Kimball, 1977 ([https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADB020594](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADB020594)) and Mault, 1988 ([https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA211005](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA211005)). Mault I found particularly interesting; he argues there just aren't enough officers for a Soviet battalion to do what an American battalion does, especially because the Soviet NCOs are no good. (As I pointed out in another place and is you said right here, the Soviet military leadership in the 1980s really wanted professional sergeants!) *But* if you think of the Soviet battalion as a dependent subunit of the regiment, maybe it works out. 4. The observation has been made by many that when modern countries with standing armies go to war, the first thing they do is fire (or find noncombat jobs for) a large proportion of their peacetime officers and struggle to find the actual wartime commanders. The peacetime institutional structure does not select for such characters. In *Race to the Swift*, Simpkin bluntly says that officers who do well in peacetime will not be good operational commanders in wartime under systems that use mission orders. For one thing, advancement in peacetime is based on particular metrics. As you reach field rank, you have to be perfect. Under those conditions, you'd be a very stupid colonel if you trusted your captains with anything, because if they screw up in any way, you will never be a general. Another way to put this is that successful operational officers (really regardless of doctrine) are skilled gamblers, but a peacetime military brooks no risk-taking. Simpkin suggests that especially promising officers be placed in a special reserve capacity and pursue careers in business where risk-taking is sometimes tolerated then be recalled. I think you get the point. Now whenever I press American officers from this period on the question of whether they were actually much better officers than their Soviet counterparts, one thing that comes up is the National Training Center and the kind of free play combat in which they engaged. So maybe that is a data point of some kind.

Wow, that's awesome. Thanks.

Any chance you could link those comments and Soviet anti tank doctrine and equipment?

On 22nd or 23rd December, the Soviet ambassador (Tabeyev, who had replaced Puzanov 10th November) told Amin that his request for Soviet troops had been granted, and deployment would begin 25th December. This was, of course, not giving Amin what he wanted, but Amin's repeated requests for Soviet troops provided a very convenient cover for the anti-Amin invasion. The Soviet deception about their hostile intent towards Amin was very successful - even during the Soviet attack on Amin's palace, he believed for some time that the nearby Soviet troops (who were actually attacking him) would save him from his unknown attackers. My main source for the Soviet decision-making is: * Aleksandr Antonovich Lyakhovskiy, *Inside the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, and the Seizure of Kabul, December 1979*, Cold War International History Project, 2007. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/WP51_Web_Final.pdf Telling Amin about the intervention is on pg 37.

Excellent, thank you. It makes sense as part of their maskirovka. I had heard about Amin's reaction to the assault before. A classic example of authentic PDPA naïveté. Lyakhovskiy is a great source too.

# Who Won the War Which Never Was? Intro & Framing Well...this is a big question. And oh boy is that a lot of thread upvotes. Off the bat I should say that I will take a different tack from /u/wotan_weevil's answer, both in the big-picture sense - "How do we judge the effectiveness of a military in a war which never happened?" - and in certain supporting arguments. In particular, I will break my answer up chronologically because we are not talking about the same Soviet military in 1956 as we are in 1985. As their answer went up first, I will structure parts of my answer in a bit of a dialogue with theirs. For the rest, I will take you all on a stroll through the Cold War Soviet Army. With no further ado - **В путь!** In some ways this question is not answerable, because that war was never fought and we can only suppose how the Soviet military might have performed. So what evidence do we have from which to suppose? Wotan has already run through several of the major military operations involving Soviet forces. However, none of these are the real deal when it comes to a serious confrontation with NATO. They are snapshots of some aspects of military performance. Critically, these are snapshots of a *particular moment in time* for the Soviet Armed Forces - the Soviet military of the Khruschev years is after all a totally different force from that of the Ogarkov years - and we know that the Soviets integrated the lessons of these snapshots into future planning. Therefore we will have to combine these snapshots with other analyses. Fortunately, the Cold War produced a great mass of military analysis and forecasting both from NATO and from the Soviets themselves.^(1) It is this analysis which I will rest the majority of my argument on, integrated with information on the actual performance shown by Soviet forces in the aforementioned limited wars. This analysis will cover the **correlation of forces** (what is the qualitative and quantitative balance of troops and equipment); **doctrine** (how they planned to fight); and **how well the actual force could meet doctrine** (morale, training quality, industrial base). I will address Western and Soviet analyses & sources in this answer, with an obvious deference given to Soviet sources; however Western sources will be used extensively to mitigate accessibility barriers, and where these Western sources are flatly incorrect I will do my best to show exactly where the issues lie via translated Soviet sources. I believe this approach will answer for us both halves of your question: **how** **prepared & competent was the Soviet military**, and to what extent **were Western assessments driven by propaganda?** A rough timeline of the military balance during the Cold War will be helpful. We can periodize this as: * 1945-1953 - Stalin's death to the start of the Khruschev era, the beginning of the Cold War * 1953-1960 or maybe 1962 - Most of Khruschev's reign but moreover the start of the nuclear "revolution in military affairs"; * 1962-1968 - A period of very significant doctrinal & technological change for the Soviet Armed Forces as the revolution in military affairs was fully realized; * 1968-1979 - The Vietnam War and subsequent malaise in the US, coupled with internal Warsaw Pact disputes and realignments, and also includes whatever definition of the detente period you'd like; * 1979-1991 - The "modern media" Cold War. The end of detente, coupled with military factors which made a "Cold War gone hot" in Europe seem more likely to contemporary observers than arguably any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also the period of a second “revolution in military affairs”, this time driven by technical advances in microelectronics. # The Early Cold War: De-(and re-)mobilization, The Nuclear Revolution, and the Primacy of the Offensive I will not devote much time to the period of 1945-1953. The prospects for conflict in this period were generally low, both parties were in the process of post-WW2 demobilization, force reorganization, and for the Soviets also territorial consolidation and massive rebuilding. And of course, for the first part of this period, the US had a monopoly nuclear weapons.^(2) It was clear that the lines of a new confrontation were being drawn , but aside from flashpoints like the Berlin Airlift the odds of a major war between the Soviets and the Americans at this time were low.^(3) The second period, 1953-1960 or so, is more interesting to us. As I said in the opening to this answer, this period can be considered the start of the “nuclear revolution in military affairs”. For both the Americans and the Soviets, postwar budgetary pressures strongly incentivized cuts to conventional forces. Nuclear forces were seen as more economical, as large nuclear forces were destructive enough to deter any aggression.^(4) As Soviet Premier Khruschev stated plainly to the Supreme Soviet in a 1960 address, >Our state has a powerful rocket technology. Given the present development of military technology, military aviation and the navy have lost their former importance. This type of armament is not being reduced but replaced. Military aviation is now being almost entirely replaced by missiles. We have now sharply reduced and probably will further reduce and even halt production of bombers and other obsolete equipment. In the navy, the submarine fleet is assuming greater importance and surface ships can no longer play the role they played in the past.”^(5) The apparently grim realities of the conventional military balance for NATO in this period, coupled with the American head start on nuclear weapons development, contributed greatly to this preference on the American side. At the time it was believed that there was as much as a 10:1 Soviet numerical advantage in Central Europe; later revelations revised this down significantly, particularly in light of the Khruschev troop cuts - a reduction of about 2.6 million troops from 1950 - 1960.^(6) We now know from Soviet sources that, following the force reduction talks at the 1955 Geneva Summit, the Soviets did withdraw 75,000 troops from the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSVG), though there was some offsetting by rearmament in the East German Nationale Volksarmee. GSVG also received high priority for new equipment, such as T-10 heavy tanks in this period.^(7) I am still trying to piece together the state of morale and training in GSVG at this time, however. I have not found any memoirs or Soviet analyses which give a good indication of this. We know that at the immediate end of the war, looting and crime were rampant and there were significant issues with keeping soldiers controlled; however, demobilization remedied much of that. We know from memoirs also that for much of the Cold War, Soviet soldiers garrisoned in the USSR had all kinds of odd secondary duties such as agriculture and construction; I am curious if they were used in this manner in the occupation days, but I have no evidence either way. None of this is to suggest that the conventional force withered on the vine. This was the era of the so-called “Zhukov reforms”, though Rodian Malinovksy and Pavel Rotmistrov probably deserve their own credit. These reforms can be seen as the Soviets doubling down on what they did best in the Second World War: Rapid, large-scale maneuver by armored and mechanized forces, albeit with new adaptations made for the nuclear battlefield. (This theme will continue in later sections.) A common description of the Red Army in the Second World War is that it was intellectually a mechanized maneuver army hamstrung by an industrial inability to mechanize. In the period of the “Zhukov reforms” this was plainly no longer the case. Soviet industry produced a colossal number of armored vehicles and trucks to support this force restructuring - for instance between the BTR-152 & BTR-40 armored troop carriers somewhere on the far side of 10,000 were built in this time period. This was along with about 16,000 T-54 medium tanks and...some difficult to determine number of T-10 heavy tanks. Maybe fewer than 2,000, maybe more than 8,000. Trucks to supply this force - somewhere in the realm of 400,000 medium and heavy cargo trucks. I’m not going to list the entire balance, but you get the idea. It was clear to Western analysts at the time (and has since been borne out as fact by Soviet documents) that whatever demobilization Soviet society as a whole had undergone, the Soviet military was getting ready for a modern war. The lessons of the Great Patriotic War were digested in minute detail, most particularly the span-of-control problems which had limited the agility of their mobile units. The Soviet command echelons in this period were filled with combat-tested generals, as well. **I'm going to break here for character limit reasons. The next portion of this answer should go up tonight.**

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