Russian cosmonauts were members of the first crew to live aboard the station, arriving in November 2000, and it is intended that at least one cosmonaut will be aboard the station on a permanent basis. Russian hardware plays an important role in the orbiting laboratory. Russia’s role was increased when the U.S. space plane Challenger burned up on entry in February 2003. The Soyuz “lifeboat” became the only way in or out until regular U.S. flights were resumed.
In addition, the Soviet Union has carried out a comprehensive program of unmanned space science and application missions for both civilian and national security purposes. Spacecraft were sent to Venus and Mars. Other spacecraft provided intelligence information, early warning of missile attack, and navigation and positioning data, and were used for weather forecasting and telecommunications.
In contrast to the United States, the Soviet Union had no space agency. Various design bureaus had influence within the Soviet system, but rivalry among them posed an obstacle to a coherent Soviet space program. The Politburo and the Council of Ministers made policy decisions. After 1965, the government’s Ministry of General Machine Building managed all Soviet space and missile programs; the Ministry of Defense also shaped space efforts. A separate military branch, the Strategic Missile Forces, was in charge of space launchers and strategic missiles. Various institutes of the Soviet Academy of Sciences proposed and managed scientific missions.
After the dissolution of the USSR, Russia created a civilian organization for space activities, the Russian Space Agency, formed in February 1992. It quickly took on increasing responsibility for the management of nonmilitary space activities and, as an added charge, aviation efforts. It later was renamed the Russian Aviation and Space Agency. See also: GAGARIN, YURI ALEXEYEVICH; INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION; MIR SPACE STATION; SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY; SPUTNIK; TSIOLKOVSKY, KON-STANTIN EDUARDOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dickson, Paul. (2001). Sputnik: The Shock of the Century. New York: Walker. Hall, Rex, and Shayler, David J. (2001). The Rocket Men: Vostok and Voshkod, the First Soviet Manned Spaceflights. New York: Springer Verlag. Harvey, Brian. (2001). Russia in Space: the Failed Frontier? New York: Springer Verlag. Oberg, James. (1981). Red Star in Orbit. New York: Random House. Russian Aviation and Space Agency web site. (2002). «http://www.rosaviakosmos.ru/english/eindex .htm». Siddiqi, Asif. (2000). Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
In July 1936, after months of unrest and politically motivated assassinations, a junta of nationalist generals, including Francisco Franco, led an uprising against the Spanish Republic. When Franco had difficulty transporting his forces from Africa to Spain, he appealed for aid from Germany and Italy. Hitler and Mussolini were only too happy to oblige. The Republicans also asked for help from the Western powers and the Soviet Union. Britain, France, and the United States decided to adopt a strict policy of nonintervention, but Josef Stalin began secretly supplying the Republic with the weapons it needed to survive.
Soviet aid, however, came with a price. Stalin provided thousands of Red Army, NKVD, and GRU (secret police) officers who often furthered his aims while acting as advisers for the Republicans. Meanwhile the Spanish government shipped its vast gold reserves to Moscow, where the Soviets deducted the cost of armaments for the war, at exorbitant prices, from the bullion. Yet without Soviet tanks and
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airplanes it is certain that the Republic would have fallen much more quickly than it did.
Stalin and the Stalinist Spanish Communist Party wanted a say over the political future of Spain. From the start of the war, the Soviets pushed the Republicans to eliminate anyone who did not follow the party line. This hunt for Trotskyists was tolerated by the Republican governments in order to retain the favor of their only great power supporter. Most Spanish leaders, however, were able to resist Soviet attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of their country, and steered their own course during the war.
The Soviet Union and the Comintern also took a direct hand in combat. The European Left sent more than 30,000 enthusiastic volunteers to fight for the Republicans, some of whom came to Spain to support a revolution, on the model of the Soviet Union, while others wanted only to defend democracy. A large number of the commanders for these International Brigades were regular Red Army officers, although their origins were disguised and never acknowledged by the Soviet Union. The Internationals, and armaments sent by the Soviets, were critical for the Republicans’ successful defense of Madrid in December 1936. The Republican cause also benefited from Soviet and International participation in other engagements, including the battle of Jarama in February 1937 and the defeat of Italian troops at Guadalajara in March 1937, while Soviet tank operators and pilots were of crucial importance throughout the war.
Of the Soviet soldiers who saw action in the Spanish arena, dozens were recalled to Moscow and executed during the military purges of 1937-1939. At the same time others, such as Konstantin Rokossovsky, Ivan Konev, Alexander Rodimtsev, and Nikolai Kuznetsov, had brilliant careers during World War II and after.
In the end, Soviet aid could not alter the outcome of the war. As the international climate worsened, Stalin decided to withdraw support for the Spanish government in 1938 and by the end of the year could only offer his condolences as the Republic faced utter defeat. See also: COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alpert, Michael. (1994). A New International History of the Spanish Civil War. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
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Howson, Gerald. (1998). Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War. London: J. Murray. Radosh, Ronald, and Habeck, Mary R., eds. (2001). Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Thomas, Hugh. (1977). The Spanish Civil War. New York: Harper and Row.
The twentieth century saw a great upsurge in the interest in and use of military special forces, both in war and for peacekeeping, antiterrorist, and other missions. The Soviets were ardent advocates of such forces, and created many, tasked with a large and varied array of missions. This reflected three main considerations. First of all, small, highly motivated and well-trained units were vital to carry out operations beyond the capabilities of the USSR’s mass conscript army, which demanded speed, precision, or finesse. Secondly, the Soviets approached warfare in an intensely political way, seeing the aim as being not necessarily to win on the battlefield, but to destroy the enemy’s will and ability to fight in the first place. Special forces could play a key role in this. Thirdly, the Soviets regarded their armed forces also as integrated elements of their apparatus of rule, and specialized forces emerged to meet particular needs that had less to do with war-fighting but political control. The post-Soviet regime has upheld this tradition. Indeed, the proportion of special purpose units within the Russian military actually increased, not least because at a time when the majority of the armed forces were virtually unusable, at least these elements retained the discipline, training, and morale to fight.
Special forces of a fashion had existed during the civil war (1918-1921), including the elite Latvian Rifles who guarded Vladimir Lenin, but these units tended to be essentially ad hoc elements of Bolshevik militants and Cossack horsemen. They subsequently either dissolved or were incorporated into the Red Army or police, losing their identity and ?lan in the process. The true genesis of Soviet special purpose forces took place in 1930, when the USSR became only the second nation in history to experiment with a military parachute drop. Excited by the possibilities, the Soviet high command immediately began training paratroop units: The first battalions were formed a year later.
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