Warmatrix

The Red Army, "Krasnaya Armiya" in Russian, was one of the most powerful armies in the modern world for most of the 20th century CE.
In 1917 CE the tsarist Russian state collapsed and the communists took over. They had an armed wing in the form of the Red Guard, which was integrated to a new Red Army a few months later. The new army had a difficult start as it was immediately plunged into the Russian Civil War against 'White' forces: monarchists and capitalists; nationalists of states conquered by Russia; Poles; Japanese; various forces supported by British, French, Americans and others. For five years the communists battled for power and regained territory lost in 1917 CE. It went on to attack westwards, but was decisively halted by the Poles in the Battle of Warsaw.
By the end of the Russian Civil War the Red Army numbered 6.5 million men and women. Some soldiers were volunteers who genuinely believed in communism and showed great devotion. Others were conscripts, some of whom were prone to desert. They were kept in line by strict discipline, a Russian tradition that goes back several centuries. The USSR added a new component to this in the form of a cadre of political commissars who spread propaganda and executed rebels, deserters and slackers. Sometimes they held the families of soldiers hostage. In World War II the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) did the same. Most of the time, political commissars ranked equal with military leaders, sharing command. Though their role was later reduced, the intertwining of warfare, politics and psychology was a constant factor throughout the Red Army's existence.
After the civil war the army was reduced to a little over half a million men. Throughout the 1920's CE and 1930's CE marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, building on ideas of predecessors, devised his 'deep operations' doctrine, which envisioned a fast-moving offensive force with numerous tanks, artillery and close air support. Josef Stalin laid the basis by stimulating the industrialization of the USSR. Despite this, Tukhachevsky met a lot of political resistance and could realize little of his plans. From 1937 CE to 1939 CE the same Stalin, paranoid and afraid of a possible coup by the military, purged half the officer corps, depriving the army of much talent and experience. Tukhachevsky too was executed and the budget for weaponry was cut.
When nazi Germany started to flex its muscles, the USSR started to strengthen the Red Army again. The country invaded Finland in the Winter War, but received a bloody nose. Shortly after the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa before the Soviet military buildup was complete. At the time of the invasion the Red Army once more numbered close to 7 million men, though they were ill-equipped, badly trained and operated as a static defense force rather than Tukhachevsky's offensive army. The Germans overwhelmed them, taking hundreds of thousands of prisoners and nearly brought down the USSR. However the soldiers who were not overcome fought tenaciously and the army tapped deep into its reserves of manpower. The role of the political commissars was diminished; communism was replaced by patriotism; officers were given more freedom; equipment was modernized. In two to three years the army transformed itself into a force that could defeat the invaders. The roles were reversed, the nazis driven back and defeated. The price was high: 35 million men and women served in the army during the war, 11 million of which lost their lives.
For most of its life, especially from World War II onward, the doctrine of the Red Army was what some called 'successive operations', an offensive outlook on war. The idea was to first put the enemy off guard through "maskirovka", i.e. deception, then break his defenses with a strong armored assault and follow up with secondary and even tertiary assaults, to prevent the enemy catching his breath and reorganizing. This generally works well if the attack is strong enough, though is costly in men and machines and can be suicidal against a superior defense. In 1941 CE the Red Army was in no shape to practice this doctrine, but by 1944 CE it showed its effectiveness in Operation Bagration and other offensives.
After World War II the Red Army was renamed to Soviet Army ("Sovetskaya Armiya" in Russian), though unofficially it remained known as Red Army. It was shrunk from 11 million men to 5 million, still the largest army in the world. However it saw little action, as the Cold War that started was dominated by the threat of nuclear weapons. As the USSR was largely landlocked, the Red Army remained the dominant wing of the Soviet armed forces, with a focus on combined arms, using a large numbers of tanks, artillery and mechanized infantry.
Throughout its lifetime, the Red Army was forced to work with limited resources, often in hash terrain and weather. As a result, Soviet weapons tended to be rough, cheap and simple, but reliable. On the human side, the limited budgets and harsh discipline deterred many men from joining. There were never enough volunteers to fill the ranks, though always sufficient numbers of conscripts. Service in the Red Army was quite hostile to them; new recruits were regularly bullied and beaten by veterans.
After a few decades of peacetime duty and small conflicts, the Red Army again saw major action in the the Soviet-Afghan War. In the late 1980's, still fighting that war, the USSR spent 25% of its budget on the military, most of it on the army. Despite that, it could not win the asymmetrical war, just like the USA during the Vietnam War. A few years later, in 1991 CE, the USSR collapsed. The dominant Russian part of the Red Army was transformed to the Russian Ground Forces. Significantly diminished, the army tried to reform into more mobile and professional force, but it took nearly two decades to achieve that goal.