After the war, the armed forces demobilized to their prewar strength of about four million and were assigned to the occupation of Eastern Europe. Conscription remained in force. During the late 1950s, under Nikita Khrushchev, who stressed nuclear rather than conventional military power, the army’s strength was cut to around three million. Leonid Brezhnev restored the size of the armed force to more than four million. During the Cold War, pride of place in the Soviet military shifted to the newly created Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF), which controlled the ground-based nuclear missile forces. In addition to the SRF, the air force had bomber-delivered nuclear weapons and the navy had missile-equipped submarines. The army, with the exception of the airborne forces, became an almost exclusively motorized and mechanized force.
The Soviet army’s last war was fought in Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. Brought in to save the fledgling Afghan communist government, which had provoked a civil war through its use of coercion and class conflict to create a socialist state, the Soviet army expected to defeat the rebels in a short campaign and then withdraw. Instead, the conflict degenerated into a guerilla war against disparate Afghan tribes that had declared a holy war, or jihad, against the Soviet army, which was unable to bring its strength in armor, artillery, or nuclear weapons to bear. The Afghan rebels, or mujahideen, with safe havens in neighboring Iran and Pakistan, received arms and ammunition from the United States, enabling them to prolong the struggle indefinitely. The Soviet high command capped the commitment of troops to the war at 150,000, for the most part treating it as a sideshow while keeping its main focus on a possible war with NATO. The conflict was finally brought to a negotiated end after the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, with nearly 15,000 men killed in vain.
Gorbachev’s policy of rapprochement with the West had a major impact on the Soviet armed forces. Between 1989 and 1991 their numbers were slashed by one million, with more cuts projected for the coming years. The defense budget was cut, the army and air force were withdrawn from Eastern Europe, naval ship building virtually ceased, and the number of nuclear missiles and warheads was reduced-all over the objections of the military high command. Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or openness, exposed the horrible conditions of service for soldiers, particularly the extent and severity of hazing, which contributed to a dramatic increase in desertions and avoidance of conscription. The prestige of the military dropped precipitously, leading to serious morale problems in the officer corps. Motivated in part by a desire to restore the power, prestige, and influence of the military in politics and society, the minister of defense, Dmitry Iazov, aided and abetted the coup against Gorbachev in August 1991. The coup failed when the commanders of the armored and airborne divisions ordered into Moscow refused to support it.
THE POST-SOVIET ARMY
The formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 led to the dismemberment of the Soviet armed forces and the creation of numerous national armies and navies. Conventional weapons, aircraft, and surface ships were shared out among the new nations, but the Russian Federation took all of the nuclear weapons. The army of the Russian Federation sees itself as heir to the traditions and heritage of the tsarist and Soviet armies. Although there are advocates of a professional force, the Russian army remains dependent on conscription to fill its ranks. Thousands of officers resigned from the armed forces
and thousands of non-Russians transferred their loyalty and services to the emerging armies of the newly independent states. The political administration was promptly abolished after the coup. During the 1990s, the new Russian army fought two small, bloody, and inconclusive wars in Chechnya, a former Soviet republic that sought independence from Moscow. See also: ADMINISTRATION, MILITARY; AFGHANISTAN, RELATIONS WITH; CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; COLD WAR; MILITARY DOCTRINE; MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX; OPERATION BARBAROSSA; PURGES, THE GREAT; SOVIET-FINNISH WAR; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexiev, Alexander. (1988). Inside the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Santa Monica, CA: Rand. Erickson, John. (1975). The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany. London: Weidenfeld amp; Nicolson. Erickson, John. (1983). The Road to Berlin: Continuing the History of Stalin’s War With Germany. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Erickson, John. (2001). The Soviet High Command: A Military-Political History, 1918-1941, 3rd ed. London: Frank Cass. Jones, Ellen. (1975). Red Army and Society: A Sociology of the Soviet Military. Boston: Allen amp; Unwin. Reese, Roger R. (2000). The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-1991. London: Rout- ledge. Scott, Harriet F., and Scott, William F. (1981). The Armed Forces of the USSR, 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Von Hagen, Mark.(1990). Soldier in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. White, D. Fedotoff. (1944). The Growth of the Red Army. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ROGER R. REESE
(1859-1943), Russian historian and publicist; Russian liberal leader.
Milyukov was born in Moscow. He studied at the First Gymnasium of Moscow and the department of history and philology at Moscow University (1877-1882). His tutors were Vassily Kliuchevsky and Paul Vinogradov. After graduating from the university, Milyukov remained in the department of Russian history in order to prepare to become a professor. From 1886 to 1895, he held the position of assistant professor in the department of Russian history at Moscow University. In 1892 he defended his master’s thesis based on the book State Economy and the Reform of Peter the Great (St. Petersburg, 1892). In the area of historical methodology Milyukov shared the views of posi-tivists. The most important of Milyukov’s historical works was Essays on the History of Russian Culture (St. Petersburg, 1896-1903). Milyukov suggested that Russia is following the same path as Western Europe, but its development is characterized by slowness. In contrast to the West, Russia’s social and economic development was generally initiated by the government, going from the top down. Milyukov is the author of o ne of the first courses of Russian historiography: Main Currents in Russian Historical Thought (Moscow, 1897). In 1895, he was fired from the Moscow University for his public lectures on the social movement in Russia and sent to Ri-azan, and then for two years (1897-1899) abroad.
In 1900 he was arrested for attending the meeting honoring the late revolutionary Petr Lavrov in St. Petersburg. He was sentenced to six months of incarceration, but was released early at the petition of Kliuchevsky before emperor Nicholas II. In 1902, Milyukov published a program article “From Russian Constitutionalists in the Osvobozhdenie” (“Liberation”), magazine of Russian liberals, issued abroad. Between 1902 and 1905, Milyukov spent a large amount of time abroad, traveling, and lecturing in the United States at the invitation of Charles Crane. Milyukov’s lectures were published as Russia and Its Crisis (Chicago, 1905).
In 1905 Milyukov returned to Russia and took part in the liberation movement as one of the organizers and chairman of the Union of Unions. On August, 1905, he was arrested, but after a month-long incarceration was released without having been charged. In October of 1905 Milyukov became one of the organizers of the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party. His reaction towards the October Manifesto was skeptical and he believed it necessary to continue to battle the government. Due to formal issues, he could not run for a place in the First and Second Dumas, but he was basically the head of the Kadet Faction. From 1906, Milyukov was the editor of the Rech (Speech) newspaper, the central organ of the Cadet Party. From 1907, he was the chairman of the Party’s central committee. From 1907 to 1912, he was a member of the third Duma, elected in St. Petersburg. He favored the tac941
MILYUTIN, DMITRY ALEXEYEVICH
tics of “the preservation of the Duma,” fearing its dissolution by the tsar. He became a renowned expert in the matters of foreign policy. In the Duma, he gave seventy-three speeches, which total approximately seven hundred large pages. In 1912 Milyukov was reelected to the Duma, once again from St. Petersburg.
After the beginning of World War I, Milyukov assumed a patriotic position and put forth the motto of a “holy union” with the government for the period of the war. He believed it necessary for Russia to acquire, as a result of the war, Bosporus and the Dardanelles. In August of 1915, Milyukov, was one of the organizers and leaders of the oppositionist interparty Progressive Bloc, created with the aim of pressuring the government in the interests of a more effective war strategy. On November 1, 1916, Milyukov made a speech in the Duma that contained direct
