Central Powers intervention :
146-601: Separatists: Other factions: The White movement (Russian: pre–1918 Бѣлое движеніе / post–1918 Белое движение , romanized : Beloye dvizheniye , IPA: [ˈbʲɛləɪ dvʲɪˈʐenʲɪɪ] ), also known as the Whites (Russian: Бѣлые / Белые , romanized : Beliye ), was one of the main factions of the Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1922. It operated as a loose system of governments and administrations and military formations collectively referred to as
292-570: A "Western" ( French -like) pronunciation had been adopted for many words; for example, ѳеатръ ( ḟeatr , [fʲɪˈatr] , 'theater') became театръ ( teatr , [tʲɪˈatr] ). Attempts to reduce spelling inconsistency culminated in the 1885 standard textbook of Yakov Karlovich Grot , which retained its authority through 21 editions until the Russian Revolution of 1917 . His fusion of the morphological, phonetic, and historic principles of Russian orthography remains valid to this day, though both
438-696: A change: now all of them (except с- ) end with -с before voiceless consonants and with -з before voiced consonants or vowels ( разбить, разораться , but расступиться ). Previously, the prefixes showed concurrence between phonetic (as now) and morphological (always з ) spellings; at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the standard rule was: с-, без-, ч(е)рез- were always written in this way; other prefixes ended with с before voiceless consonants except с and with з otherwise ( разбить, разораться, разступиться , but распасться ). Earlier 19th-century works also sometimes used з before ц, ч, ш, щ . In December 1917,
584-536: A collective committee of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko , Pavel Dybenko , and Nikolai Krylenko . At the same time, Nikolay Dukhonin was acting as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief after Alexander Kerensky fled from Russia. On 12 November 1917 the Soviet government appointed Krylenko as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and because of an "accident" during the forceful displacement of the commander-in-chief, Dukhonin
730-550: A common border between Japanese controlled areas and the Soviet Far East and Mongolia . The Soviets and Japanese, including their respective client states of the Mongolian People's Republic and Manchukuo , disputed the boundaries and accused the other side of border violations. This resulted in a series of escalating border skirmishes and punitive expeditions , including the 1938 Battle of Lake Khasan , and culminated in
876-526: A disproportionate amount of primary school class time was devoted to orthography, rather than phonetics and morphology. Efimov asserted that the existing orthography was essentially unchanged since Grot's codification, and that only by bringing orthography closer to phonetic realization, and eliminating exceptions and variants, could appropriate attention be paid to stylistics and the "development of speech culture". The state's focus on proper instruction in Russian, as
1022-476: A dividing sign became widespread in place of ъ (e.g., под’ём , ад’ютант instead of подъём , адъютант ), and came to be perceived as a part of the reform (even if, from the point of view of the letter of the decree of the Council of People's Commissars , such uses were mistakes). Nonetheless, some academic printings (connected with the publication of old works, documents or printings whose typesettings predated
1168-418: A further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million men, including 7.7 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million prisoners of war (POW) dead (out of 5.2 million total POWs), plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. Officials at
1314-498: A hundred times as many tanks . The Red Army, however, had been hindered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge of 1937, reducing the army's morale and efficiency shortly before the outbreak of the fighting. With over 30,000 of its army officers executed or imprisoned, most of whom were from the highest ranks, the Red Army in 1939 had many inexperienced senior officers. Because of these factors, and high commitment and morale in
1460-450: A major reshuffling took place in the Soviet military administration. On 13 March 1918, the Soviet government accepted the official resignation of Krylenko and the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief was liquidated. On 14 March 1918, Leon Trotsky replaced Podvoisky as the Narkom of War Affairs. On 16 March 1918, Pavel Dybenko was relieved from the office of Narkom of Marine Affairs. On 8 May 1918,
1606-559: A phonemic one. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, miscellaneous adjustments were made ad hoc , as the Russian literary language came to assume its modern and highly standardized form. These included the introduction of the letter ё ( yo ) and the gradual loss of ѵ ( izhitsa , corresponding to the Greek upsilon υ and the Latin y ), in favor of и or і (both of which represented /i/ ); and ѳ ( fita , corresponding to
SECTION 10
#17330854772461752-468: A role as well. The most notable operation on this front, Operation White Sword , saw an unsuccessful advance towards the Russian capital of Petrograd in the autumn of 1919. The defeated anti-Bolshevik Russians went into exile, congregating in Belgrade , Berlin , Paris , Harbin , Istanbul , and Shanghai . They established military and cultural networks that lasted through World War II (1939–1945), e.g.
1898-540: A stable nucleus. By 1925, this system provided 46 of the 77 infantry divisions and one of the eleven cavalry divisions. The remainder consisted of regular officers and enlisted personnel serving two-year terms. The territorial system was finally abolished, with all remaining formations converted to the other cadre divisions, in 1937–1938. The Soviet military received ample funding and was innovative in its technology. An American journalist wrote in 1941: Even in American terms
2044-509: A surrender the following day although some Japanese units continued to fight for several more days. A proposed Soviet invasion of Hokkaido , the second largest Japanese island, was originally planned to be part of the territory to be taken but it was cancelled. Military administration after the October Revolution was taken over by the People's Commissariat of War and Marine affairs headed by
2190-468: A tank regiment, a motorized infantry regiment, as well as reconnaissance and artillery battalions. From this humble beginning, the Soviets would go on to create the first operational-level armored formations in history, the 11th and 45th Mechanized Corps , in 1932. These were tank-heavy formations with combat support forces included so they could survive while operating in enemy rear areas without support from
2336-780: The "Armed Forces of the South of Russia" in January 1919. The Southern Front featured massive-scale operations and posed the most dangerous threat to the Bolshevik Government. At first it depended entirely upon volunteers in Russia proper, mostly the Cossacks, among the first to oppose the Bolshevik Government. On 23 June 1918, the Volunteer Army (8,000–9,000 men) began its so-called Second Kuban Campaign with support from Pyotr Krasnov . By September,
2482-678: The Czechoslovak Legions , who were then stranded in Siberia by the Bolshevik Government, who had barred them from leaving Russia, and with the Japanese, who also intervened to help the Whites in the east. Admiral Alexander Kolchak headed the eastern White Army and a provisional Russian government. Despite some significant success in 1919, the Whites were defeated being forced back to Far Eastern Russia, where they continued fighting until October 1922. When
2628-710: The German Empire in its extended occupation of western Russia , the Baltic states , Poland , and Ukraine on the Eastern Front in the closing days of the World War, debating whether or not to ally with it. The Whites wanted to keep from alienating any potential supporters and allies and thus saw an exclusively monarchist position as a detriment to their cause and recruitment. White-movement leaders, such as Anton Denikin , advocated for Russians to create their own government, claiming
2774-530: The Gulag . During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army conscripted 29,574,900 men in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war. Of this total of 34,401,807 it lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) (most captured). Of the 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in the subsequently liberated Soviet territory, and
2920-766: The Harbin and Shanghai Russians . Afterward, the White Russians' anti-communist activists established a home base in the United States, to which numerous refugees emigrated. Moreover, in the 1920s and the 1930s the White movement established organisations outside Russia, which were meant to depose the Soviet government with guerrilla warfare , e.g., the Russian All-Military Union , the Brotherhood of Russian Truth , and
3066-672: The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists , a far-right anticommunist organization founded in 1930 by a group of young White emigres in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Some White émigrés adopted pro-Soviet sympathies and were termed "Soviet patriots". These people formed organizations such as the Mladorossi , the Eurasianists , and the Smenovekhovtsy . A Russian cadet corps was established to prepare
SECTION 20
#17330854772463212-482: The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists . Other organizations either dissolved, or began concentrating exclusively on self-preservation and/or educating the youth. Various youth organizations, such as the Russian Scouts-in-Exteris, promoted providing children with a background in pre-Soviet Russian culture and heritage. Some supported Zog I of Albania during the 1920s and a few independently served with
3358-800: The Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War . White Russians also served alongside the Soviet Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang and the Islamic rebellion in Xinjiang in 1937 . After the February Revolution , in western Russia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania declared themselves independent, but they had substantial Communist or Russian military presence. Civil wars followed, wherein
3504-559: The Osvag [ ru ] ( Russian : ОСВАГ (ОСВедомительное АГентство) , romanized : OSVAG (OSVedomitelnoe AGentstvo) , lit. 'Informing Agency'), made the claim that "the Jews must pay for everything: for the February and October revolutions, for Bolshevism and for the peasants who took their land from the owners". The organization also reissued The Protocols of
3650-453: The People's Commissariat of Education , headed by A. V. Lunacharsky , issued a decree stating, "All state and government institutions and schools without exception should carry out the transition to the new orthography without delay. From 1 January 1918, all government and state publications, both periodical and non-periodical were [ sic ? ] to be printed in the new style." The decree
3796-614: The Right SRs and the Mensheviks that adhered to the values of parliamentary democracy and maintained democratic anti-Bolshevik governments ( Komuch , Ufa Directory ) until November 1918 and then supported either the Whites or the Bolsheviks or opposed both factions. Following the military defeat of the Whites, remnants and continuations of the movement remained in several organizations, some of which only had narrow support, enduring within
3942-687: The Russian Army on 7 May 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II , and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan . During its operations on the Eastern Front , it accounted for 75–80% of the casualties that the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS suffered during
4088-697: The Russian Constituent Assembly (5–6 January 1918) and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), removing Russia from the First World War. Freed from international obligations, the Red Army confronted an internecine war against a variety of opposing anti-Bolshevik forces, including the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno , the anti-White and anti-Red Green armies , efforts to restore
4234-500: The Russian alphabet and the writing of many individual words have been altered through a complicated but extremely consistent system of spelling rules that tell which of two vowels to use under all conditions. The most recent major reform of Russian spelling was prepared by Aleksey Shakhmatov and implemented shortly after the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917. Shakhmatov headed
4380-600: The Socialist Revolutionary Party , and others who opposed Lenin's Bolshevik coup in October 1917. Depending on the time and place, those White Army supporters might also exchange right-wing allegiance for allegiance to the Red Army. Unlike the Bolsheviks, the White Armies did not share a single ideology, methodology, or political goal. They were led by conservative generals with different agendas and methods, and for
4526-643: The Soviet Union . The army was established in January 1918 by Leon Trotsky to oppose the military forces of the new nation's adversaries during the Russian Civil War , especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army . In February 1946, the Red Army (which embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces alongside the Soviet Navy ) was renamed the " Soviet Army " – which in turn became
White movement - Misplaced Pages Continue
4672-602: The Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 9 August 1945 (three days after the first atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the same day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki , while also being exact three months after the surrender of Germany). It was the largest campaign of the Soviet–Japanese War , which resumed hostilities between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace following
4818-519: The Spelling Dictionary of the Russian Language were published in 1956 but only a few minor orthographic changes were introduced at that time. Those editions gave end to a number of variant spellings that existed in dictionaries and in usage of typographers and best writers at that time. The 1956 codification additionally included a clarification of new rules for punctuation developed during
4964-948: The United States . In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $ 11 billion in materials ($ 180 billion in the 2020 money value): over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386 of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans ); 14,015 aircraft (of which 4,719 were Bell P-39 Airacobras , 2,908 were Douglas A-20 Havocs and 2,400 were Bell P-63 Kingcobras ) and 1.75 million tons of food. Soviet soldiers committed mass rapes in occupied territories, especially in Germany . The wartime rapes were followed by decades of silence. According to historian Antony Beevor , whose books were banned in 2015 from some Russian schools and colleges, NKVD (Soviet secret police) files have revealed that
5110-609: The Wehrmacht in combat. The Axis's numeric superiority rendered the combatants' divisional strength approximately equal. A generation of Soviet commanders (notably Georgy Zhukov ) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow , at Stalingrad , Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive. In 1941, the Soviet government raised the bloodied Red Army's esprit de corps with propaganda stressing
5256-502: The Wehrmacht was especially harsh. Per a 1941 Stalin directive , Red Army officers and soldiers were to "fight to the last" rather than surrender; Stalin stated: "There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors". During and after World War II freed POWs went to special " filtration camps ". Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions . In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by
5402-555: The White Army (Russian: Бѣлая армія / Белая армия , romanized : Belaya armiya ), or the White Guard (Russian: Бѣлая гвардія / Белая гвардия , romanized : Belaya gvardiya ) and was led mainly by the right-leaning and conservative officers of the Russian Empire ; the communist Bolsheviks , also known as the Reds , were regarded as its main enemies. Although
5548-578: The brigade and regimental levels. The commissars also had the task of spying on commanders for political incorrectness . In August 1918, Trotsky authorized General Mikhail Tukhachevsky to place blocking units behind politically unreliable Red Army units, to shoot anyone who retreated without permission. In 1942, during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) Joseph Stalin reintroduced the blocking policy and penal battalions with Order 227 . The Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919 occurred at
5694-532: The death penalty . Simultaneously, Trotsky carried out a mass recruitment of officers from the old Imperial Russian Army , who were employed as military advisors ( voenspetsy ). The Bolsheviks occasionally enforced the loyalty of such recruits by holding their families as hostages. As a result of this initiative, in 1918 75% of the officers were former tsarists . By mid-August 1920 the Red Army's former tsarist personnel included 48,000 officers, 10,300 administrators, and 214,000 non-commissioned officers . When
5840-407: The triumphantly advancing enemy. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies. We have no power to stay the enemy; only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction." The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) can be divided into three periods: At the start of the civil war, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments . The civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved
5986-723: The "Second Soviet-Finnish War") which was a conflict fought by Finland and Germany against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944. In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939. On 30 November, the Red Army also attacked Finland, in the Winter War of 1939–1940. By autumn 1940, after conquering its portion of Poland, Nazi Germany shared an extensive border with
White movement - Misplaced Pages Continue
6132-510: The 18th–20th centuries. Old East Slavic adopted the Cyrillic script , approximately during the 10th century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs . No distinction was drawn between the vernacular language and the liturgical, though the latter was based on South Slavic rather than Eastern Slavic norms. As
6278-451: The 1918 decree, debates and fluctuations have to some degree continued. In December 1942, the use of letter Ё was made mandatory by Decree No. 1825 of the People's Commissariat of Education. Since then, Ё is taught in schools as the seventh letter of the Russian alphabet (before 1942, it was usually considered a modification of Е and not a separate letter). However, the consistent use of Ё did not consolidate its grip in general publication;
6424-542: The 1930s, and which had not been mentioned in the 1918 decree. A notable instance of renewed debate followed A. I. Efimov's 1962 publication of an article in Izvestia . The article proposed extensive reform to move closer to a phonetic representation of the language. Following the renewed discussion in papers and journals, a new Orthographic Commission began work in 1962, under the Russian Language Institute of
6570-411: The 1932–1939 Soviet–Japanese border conflicts . The Red Army, with support from Mongolian forces, overwhelmed the Japanese Kwantung Army and local Chinese forces supporting them. The Soviets advanced on the continent into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo , Mengjiang (the northeast section of present-day Inner Mongolia which was part of another puppet state) and via an amphibious operation
6716-411: The 1936 Provisional Field Regulations (PU-36). The Great Purge of 1937–1939 and the 1941 Red Army Purge removed many leading officers from the Red Army, including Tukhachevsky himself and many of his followers, and the doctrine was abandoned. Thus, at the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 and in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 ( major border conflicts with the Imperial Japanese Army ), the doctrine
6862-416: The 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in liberated Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. The official grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million. Officials at the Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists
7008-408: The Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The Commission published its report, Предложения по усовершенствованию русской орфографии (Proposal for the Improvement of Russian Orthography), in 1964. The publication resulted in widespread debate in newspapers, journals, and on radio and television, as well as over 10,000 letters, all of which were passed to the institute. Responses to the article pointed to
7154-408: The All-Russian Chief Headquarters was created, headed by Nikolai Stogov and later Alexander Svechin . On 2 September 1918, the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) was established as the main military administration under Leon Trotsky, the Narkom of War Affairs. On 6 September 1918 alongside the chief headquarters, the Field Headquarters of RMC was created, initially headed by Nikolai Rattel . On
7300-430: The Army. The Council of People's Commissars appointed itself the supreme head of the Red Army, delegating command and administration of the army to the Commissariat for Military Affairs and the Special All-Russian College within this commissariat. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy. Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko , commissar for
7446-410: The Assembly for Considering Simplification of the Orthography whose proposals of 11 May 1917 formed the basis of the new rules soon adopted by the Ministry of Popular Education. Russian orthography was made simpler and easier by unifying several adjectival and pronominal inflections, conflating the letter ѣ ( Yat ) with е , ѳ with ф , and і and ѵ with и . Additionally,
SECTION 50
#17330854772467592-455: The Bolshevik Revolution took place there were few machines in Russia. Marx said Communism must come in a highly industrialized society. The Bolsheviks identified their dreams of socialist happiness with machines which would multiply production and reduce hours of labour until everyone would have everything he needed and would work only as much as he wished. Somehow this has not come about, but the Russians still worship machines, and this helped make
7738-415: The Bolsheviks in January 1918) could be convened. They worked to remove Soviet organizations and functionaries in White-controlled territory. Overall, the White Army was nationalistic and rejected ethnic particularism and separatism . The White Army generally believed in a united multinational Russia and opposed separatists who wanted to create nation-states. The propaganda service of the Volunteer Army,
7884-470: The Civil War. The Volunteer Army in South Russia became the most prominent and the largest of the various and disparate White forces. Starting off as a small and well-organized military in January 1918, the Volunteer Army soon grew. The Kuban Cossacks joined the White Army and conscription of both peasants and Cossacks began. In late February 1918, 4,000 soldiers under the command of General Aleksei Kaledin were forced to retreat from Rostov-on-Don due to
8030-543: The Dungan Cavalry Regiment commanded by the Dungan Magaza Masanchi . It also co-operated with armed Bolshevik Party-oriented volunteer units, the Forces of Special Purpose from 1919 to 1925. The slogan "exhortation, organization, and reprisals" expressed the discipline and motivation which helped ensure the Red Army's tactical and strategic success. On campaign, the attached Cheka special punitive brigades conducted summary field court-martial and executions of deserters and slackers. Under Commissar Yan Karlovich Berzin ,
8176-451: The Eastern Front consisted of an estimated 3,604,800 KIA/MIA within the 1937 borders plus 900,000 ethnic Germans and Austrians outside the 1937 border (included in these numbers are men listed as missing in action or unaccounted for after the war) and 3,576,300 men reported captured (total 8,081,100); the losses of the German satellites on the Eastern Front approximated 668,163 KIA/MIA and 799,982 captured (total 1,468,145). Of these 9,549,245,
8322-437: The Elders of Zion . Although Denikin's troops committed only 17.2% of the pogroms (most of which were carried out by Ukrainian nationalists or by rebel armies not affiliated with any side), "white" officers praise soldiers who commit anti-Semitic crimes, some of whom even receive bonuses. British parliamentary influential leader Winston Churchill (1874–1965) personally warned General Anton Denikin (1872–1947), formerly of
8468-408: The Finnish forces, Finland was able to resist the Soviet invasion for much longer than the Soviets expected. Finnish forces inflicted stunning losses on the Red Army for the first three months of the war while suffering very few losses themselves. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty . Finland ceded 9% of its pre-war territory and 30% of its economic assets to
8614-441: The Greek theta θ ), in favor of ф or т . (The standard Russian language neither has nor ever had a voiceless dental fricative . The ѳ was used only for foreign words, particularly Greek.) By 1917, the only two words still spelled with ѵ in common use were мѵро ( müro , [ˈmʲirə] , ' chrism ') and сѵнодъ ( sünod , [sʲɪˈnot] , 'synod'). The ѳ remained more common, though it became quite rare as
8760-513: The Imperial Army and later a major White military leader, whose forces effected pogroms and persecutions against the Jews: [M]y task in winning support in Parliament for the Russian Nationalist cause will be infinitely harder if well-authenticated complaints continue to be received from Jews in the zone of the Volunteer Armies. However, Denikin did not dare to confront his officers and remained content with vague formal condemnations. Aside from being anti-Bolshevik and anti-communist and patriotic,
8906-405: The Imperial Russian Army was being taken apart, "it became apparent that the rag-tag Red Guard units and elements of the imperial army who had gone over the side of the Bolsheviks were quite inadequate to the task of defending the new government against external foes." Therefore, the Council of People's Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918. They envisioned a body "formed from
SECTION 60
#17330854772469052-427: The Japanese withdrew, the Soviet army of the Far Eastern Republic retook the territory. The Civil War was officially declared over at this point, although Anatoly Pepelyayev still controlled the Ayano-Maysky District at that time. Pepelyayev's Yakut revolt , which concluded on 16 June 1923, represented the last military action in Russia by a White Army. It ended with the defeat of the final anti-communist enclave in
9198-399: The Manchurian Chinese Eastern Railway , and successfully installed a pro-Soviet regime in Xinjiang . The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts , also known as the "Soviet–Japanese Border War" or the first "Soviet–Japanese War", was a series of minor and major conflicts fought between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan from 1932 to 1939. Japan's expansion into Northeast China created
9344-418: The NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated POWs, and other displaced persons , which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to
9490-487: The Red Army due to military and ideological disunity, as well as the determination and increasing unity of the Red Army. The White Army operated in three main theatres : White organising in the South started on 15 November 1917, ( Old Style ) under General Mikhail Alekseyev . In December 1917, General Lavr Kornilov took over the military command of the newly named Volunteer Army until his death in April 1918, after which General Anton Denikin took over, becoming head of
9636-460: The Red Army finally achieving a Soviet-Mongolian victory over Japan and Manchukuo at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in September 1939. The Soviet Union and Japan agreed to a ceasefire. Later the two sides signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact on 13 April 1941, which resolved the dispute and returned the borders to status quo ante bellum . The Winter War ( Finnish : talvisota , Swedish : finska vinterkriget , Russian: Зи́мняя война́ )
9782-481: The Red Army numbered some 6.5 million men, many of whom the Army had difficulty supporting, around 581,000 in the two operational fronts, western and southwestern. Around 2.5 million men and women were mobilized in the interior as part of reserve armies. The XI Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP (b)) adopted a resolution on the strengthening of the Red Army. It decided to establish strictly organized military, educational and economic conditions in
9928-464: The Red Army the most highly mechanized in the world, except perhaps the German Army now. Like Americans, the Russians admire size, bigness, large numbers. They took pride in building a vast army of tanks, some of them the largest in the world, armored cars, airplanes, motorized guns, and every variety of mechanical weapons. Under Stalin's campaign for mechanization, the army formed its first mechanized unit in 1930. The 1st Mechanized Brigade consisted of
10074-404: The Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations and assistance with farm work. Some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army; men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away, they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages. In some cases, the money they earned would go towards tanks for
10220-474: The Red Army with an initial Red Guard organization and a core soldiery of Red Guard militiamen and the Cheka secret police. Conscription began in June 1918, and opposition to it was violently suppressed. To control the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Red Army soldiery, the Cheka operated special punitive brigades which suppressed anti-communists , deserters , and " enemies of the state ". The Red Army used special regiments for ethnic minorities, such as
10366-483: The Red Army's defeat of Pyotr Wrangel in the south in 1920 allowed the foundation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922. Historian John Erickson sees 1 February 1924, when Mikhail Frunze became head of the Red Army staff, as marking the ascent of the general staff , which came to dominate Soviet military planning and operations. By 1 October 1924 the Red Army's strength had diminished to 530,000. The list of Soviet divisions 1917–1945 details
10512-411: The Red Army's strength was 401 divisions. The Soviet forces were apparently unprepared despite numerous warnings from a variety of sources. They suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, and an incomplete reorganization. The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored
10658-556: The Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). As many as 8 million of the 34 million mobilized were non-Slavic minority soldiers, and around 45 divisions formed from national minorities served from 1941 to 1943. The German losses on
10804-466: The Russian White Army made the point moot in this dispute. The countries remained independent and governed by non-Communist governments. Reforms of Russian orthography#Post-revolution reform Russian orthography has been reformed officially and unofficially by changing the Russian alphabet over the course of the history of the Russian language . Several important reforms happened in
10950-836: The Slavo-British Aviation Corps (S.B.A.C.). The Russian ace Alexander Kazakov operated within this unit. The White movement's leaders and first members came mainly from the ranks of military officers. Many came from outside the nobility, such as generals Mikhail Alekseyev and Anton Denikin , who originated in serf families, or General Lavr Kornilov , a Cossack. The White generals never mastered administration; they often utilized "prerevolutionary functionaries" or "military officers with monarchististic inclinations" for administering White-controlled regions. The White Armies were often lawless and disordered. Also, White-controlled territories had multiple different and varying currencies with unstable exchange-rates. The chief currency,
11096-575: The Soviet Union made Red Army logistical support difficult because many depots (and most of the USSR's industrial manufacturing base) lay in the country's invaded western areas, obliging their re-establishment east of the Ural Mountains. Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps from the United States began appearing in large numbers in 1942. Until then, the Red Army was often required to improvise or go without weapons, vehicles, and other equipment. The 1941 decision to physically move their manufacturing capacity east of
11242-522: The Soviet Union. Soviet losses on the front were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. The Soviet forces did not accomplish their objective of the total conquest of Finland but did receive territory in Karelia , Petsamo , and Salla . The Finns retained their sovereignty and improved their international reputation, which bolstered their morale in the Continuation War (also known as
11388-436: The Soviet defence budget was large. In 1940 it was the equivalent of $ 11,000,000,000, and represented one-third of the national expenditure. Measure this against the fact that the infinitely richer United States will approximate the expenditure of that much yearly only in 1942 after two years of its greatest defence effort. Most of the money spent on the Red Army and Air Force went for machines of war. Twenty-three years ago when
11534-535: The Soviets released 3,572,600 from captivity after the war, thus the grand total of the Axis losses came to an estimated 5,976,645. Regarding POWs, both sides captured large numbers and had many die in captivity – one recent British figure says 3.6 of 6 million Soviet POWs died in German camps, while 300,000 of 3 million German POWs died in Soviet hands. In 1941, the rapid progress of the initial German air and land attacks into
11680-654: The USSR, with whom it remained neutrally bound by their non-aggression pact and trade agreements . Another consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina , carried out by the Southern Front in June–July 1940 and Soviet occupation of the Baltic states . These conquests also added to the border the Soviet Union shared with Nazi-controlled areas. For Adolf Hitler ,
11826-422: The Ural Mountains kept the main Soviet support system out of German reach. In the later stages of the war, the Red Army fielded some excellent weaponry, especially artillery and tanks. The Red Army's heavy KV-1 and medium T-34 tanks outclassed most Wehrmacht armor, but in 1941 most Soviet tank units used older and inferior models. The Red Army was financially and materially assisted in its wartime effort by
11972-853: The Volunteer Army comprised 30,000 to 35,000 members, thanks to mobilization of the Kuban Cossacks gathered in the North Caucasus . Thus, the Volunteer Army took the name of the Caucasus Volunteer Army. On 23 January 1919, the Volunteer Army under Denikin oversaw the defeat of the 11th Soviet Army and then captured the North Caucasus region. After capturing the Donbas , Tsaritsyn and Kharkiv in June, Denikin's forces launched an attack towards Moscow on 3 July, (N.S.). Plans envisaged 40,000 fighters under
12118-468: The Volunteer Army grew from 64,000 to 150,000 soldiers and was better supplied than its Red counterpart. The White Army's rank-and-file comprised active anti-Bolsheviks, such as Cossacks, nobles, and peasants, as conscripts and as volunteers. The White movement had access to various naval forces, both seagoing and riverine, especially the Black Sea Fleet . Aerial forces available to the Whites included
12264-840: The Volunteer Army's ruble, had no gold backing . The Whites and the Reds fought the Russian Civil War from November 1917 until 1921, and isolated battles continued in the Far East until June 1923. The White Army—aided by the Allied forces ( Triple Entente ) from countries such as Japan , the United Kingdom , France , Greece , Italy and the United States and (sometimes) the Central Powers forces such as Germany and Austria-Hungary —fought in Siberia , Ukraine , and in Crimea . They were defeated by
12410-427: The White movement had no unifying political convictions, as members could be monarchists, republicans, rightists, or Kadets . Among White Army leaders, neither General Lavr Kornilov nor General Anton Denikin were monarchists, yet General Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel was a monarchist willing to fight for a republican Russian government. Moreover, other political parties supported the anti-Bolshevik White Army, among them
12556-436: The White movement included a great variety of political opinions in Russia opposed to the Bolsheviks, from the republican-minded liberals through monarchists to the ultra-nationalist Black Hundreds , and did not have a universally-accepted leader or doctrine, the main force behind the movement were the conservative officers, and the resulting movement shared many traits with widespread right-wing counter-revolutionary movements of
12702-442: The Whites had no set ideology or main leader. The White Armies did acknowledge a single provisional head of state in a Supreme Governor of Russia in a Provisional All-Russian Government , but this post was prominent only under the leadership in the war campaigns during 1918–1920 of Admiral Alexander Kolchak , formerly of the previous Russian Imperial Navy . The movement had no set foreign policy. Whites differed on policies toward
12848-631: The advance of the Red Army. In what became known as the Ice March , they traveled to Kuban in order to unite with the Kuban Cossacks , most of whom did not support the Volunteer Army. In March, 3,000 men under the command of General Viktor Pokrovsky joined the Volunteer Army, increasing its membership to 6,000, and by June to 9,000. In 1919 the Don Cossacks joined the Army. In that year between May and October,
12994-468: The altered orthography, the series names remained unchanged up until these locomotives were discontinued in the 1950s. Some Russian émigré publications continued to appear in the former orthography until the 1970s. The reform reduced the number of orthographic rules having no support in pronunciation—for example, the difference of the genders in the plural and the need to learn a long list of words which were written with yats (the composition of said list
13140-575: The anti-communist side may be referred to as White Armies, e.g. in Finland the White Guard -led, partially conscripted Finnish White Army [ fi ] ( Finnish : Valkoinen Armeija ) who fought against Soviet Russia -sponsored Red Guards . However, since they were nationalists, their aims were substantially different from the Russian White Army proper; for instance, Russian White generals never explicitly supported Finnish independence. The defeat of
13286-516: The archaic mute yer became obsolete, including the ъ (the " hard sign ") in final position following consonants (thus eliminating practically the last graphical remnant of the Old Slavonic open-syllable system ). For instance, Рыбинскъ became Рыбинск (" Rybinsk "). Examples: In a complex system of cases, the genitive ending -аго was replaced with -его after ж, ц, ч, ш , and щ ( лучшаго → лучшего ), in other instances -аго
13432-621: The army. However, it was recognized that an army of 1,600,000 would be burdensome. By the end of 1922, after the Congress, the Party Central Committee decided to reduce the Red Army to 800,000. This reduction necessitated the reorganization of the Red Army's structure. The supreme military unit became corps of two or three divisions. Divisions consisted of three regiments. Brigades as independent units were abolished. The formation of departments' rifle corps began. After four years of warfare,
13578-517: The beginning of its existence, the Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers. However, a decree on 29 May 1918 imposed obligatory military service for men of ages 18 to 40. To service the massive draft, the Bolsheviks formed regional military commissariats ( voyennyy komissariat , abbr. voyenkomat ), which as of 2023 still exist in Russia in this function and under this name. Military commissariats, however, should not be confused with
13724-472: The brigades took hostages from the villages of deserters to compel their surrender; one in ten of those returning was executed. The same tactic also suppressed peasant rebellions in areas controlled by the Red Army, the biggest of these being the Tambov Rebellion . The Soviets enforced the loyalty of the various political, ethnic, and national groups in the Red Army through political commissars attached at
13870-665: The circumstance was no dilemma, because the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") policy secretly remained in force, culminating on 18 December 1940 with Directive No. 21, Operation Barbarossa , approved on 3 February 1941, and scheduled for mid-May 1941. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades (5.5 million soldiers) including 166 divisions and brigades (2.6 million) garrisoned in
14016-420: The civil war ended in 1922, ex-tsarists constituted 83% of the Red Army's divisional and corps commanders. In 1919, 612 "hardcore" deserters of the total 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed following Trotsky's draconian measures. According to Figes, "a majority of deserters (most registered as "weak-willed") were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of
14162-475: The class-conscious and best elements of the working classes." All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible. Its role being the defense "of the Soviet authority, the creation of a basis for the transformation of the standing army into a force deriving its strength from a nation in arms, and, furthermore, the creation of a basis for the support of the coming Socialist Revolution in Europe." Enlistment
14308-616: The command of General Vladimir May-Mayevsky storming the city. After General Denikin's attack upon Moscow failed in 1919, the Armed Forces of the South of Russia retreated. On 26 and 27 March 1920, the remnants of the Volunteer Army evacuated from Novorossiysk to the Crimea, where they merged with the army of Pyotr Wrangel . The Eastern Front started in spring 1918 as a secret movement among army officers and right-wing socialist forces. In that front, they launched an attack in collaboration with
14454-550: The country, signalling the end of all military hostilities relating to the Russian Civil War. Headed by Nikolai Yudenich , Evgeni Miller , and Anatoly Lieven , the White forces in the North demonstrated less co-ordination than General Denikin's Army of Southern Russia. The Northwestern Army allied itself with Estonia , while Lieven's West Russian Volunteer Army sided with the Baltic nobility . Authoritarian support led by Pavel Bermondt-Avalov and Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz played
14600-721: The defeated Provisional Government, monarchists, but mainly the White Movement of several different anti-socialist military confederations. "Red Army Day", 23 February 1918, has a two-fold historical significance: it was the first day of conscription (in Petrograd and Moscow), and the first day of combat against the occupying Imperial German Army . The Red Army controlled by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic also against independence movements, invading and annexing newly independent states of
14746-532: The defense of Motherland and nation, employing historic exemplars of Russian courage and bravery against foreign aggressors. The anti-Nazi Great Patriotic War was conflated with the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon , and historical Russian military heroes, such as Alexander Nevsky and Mikhail Kutuzov , appeared. Repression of the Russian Orthodox Church temporarily ceased, and priests revived
14892-499: The depth of the enemy's ground forces, inducing catastrophic defensive failure. The deep-battle doctrine relies upon aviation and armor advances with the expectation that maneuver warfare offers quick, efficient, and decisive victory. Marshal Tukhachevsky said that aerial warfare must be "employed against targets beyond the range of infantry , artillery , and other arms. For maximum tactical effect aircraft should be employed en masse , concentrated in time and space, against targets of
15038-453: The exception of й ) from secular usage and the use of Arabic numerals instead of Cyrillic numerals there appeared for the first time a visual distinction between Russian and Church Slavonic writing. With the strength of the historic tradition diminishing, Russian spelling in the 18th century became rather inconsistent, both in practice and in theory, as Mikhail Lomonosov advocated a morphophonemic orthography and Vasily Trediakovsky
15184-512: The fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as people's commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars. At a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries , held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked: "We have no army. The demoralized soldiers are fleeing, panic-stricken, as soon as they see a German helmet appear on the horizon, abandoning their artillery, convoys and all war material to
15330-501: The formations of the Red Army in that time. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, Soviet military theoreticians – led by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky – developed the deep operation doctrine, a direct consequence of their experiences in the Polish–Soviet War and in the Russian Civil War. To achieve victory, deep operations envisage simultaneous corps - and army-size unit maneuvers of simultaneous parallel attacks throughout
15476-566: The former Russian Empire. This included three military campaigns against the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic , in January–February 1918, January–February 1919, and May–October 1920. Conquered nations were subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union. In June 1918, Leon Trotsky abolished workers' control over the Red Army, replacing the election of officers with traditional army hierarchies and criminalizing dissent with
15622-456: The highest tactical importance." "To the Red army, Stalin has dealt a fearful blow. As a result of the latest judicial frameup, it has fallen several cubits in stature. The interests of the Soviet defense have been sacrificed in the interests of the self-preservation of the ruling clique." Red Army deep operations found their first formal expression in the 1929 Field Regulations and became codified in
15768-593: The hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million. While the Soviets considered the surrender of Germany to be the end of the "Great Patriotic War", at the earlier Yalta Conference the Soviet Union agreed to enter the Pacific Theater portion of World War II within three months of the end of the war in Europe . This promise was reaffirmed at the Potsdam Conference held in July 1945. The Red Army began
15914-426: The institution of military political commissars . In the mid-1920s, the territorial principle of manning the Red Army was introduced. In each region, able-bodied men were called up for a limited period of active duty in territorial units, which constituted about half the army's strength, each year, for five years. The first call-up period was for three months, with one month a year thereafter. A regular cadre provided
16060-421: The language evolved, several letters, notably the yuses (Ѫ, Ѭ, Ѧ, Ѩ) were gradually and unsystematically discarded from both secular and church usage over the next centuries. The emergence of the centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, the consequent rise of the state bureaucracy along with the development of the common economic, political and cultural space necessitated the standardization of
16206-452: The language used in administrative and legal affairs. It was due to that reason that the earliest attempts at standardizing Russian, both in terms of the vocabulary and in terms of the orthography, were made initially based on the so-called Moscow chancery language. From then and on the underlying logic of language reforms in Russia reflected primarily the considerations of standardizing and streamlining language norms and rules in order to ensure
16352-440: The language's role as a practical tool of communication and administration. The printed Russian alphabet began to assume its modern shape when Peter I introduced his "civil script" ( гражданский шрифт ) type reform in 1708. The reform was not specifically orthographic in nature. However, with the replacement of Ѧ with Я and the effective elimination of several letters ( Ѯ , Ѱ , Ѡ ) and all diacritics and accents (with
16498-417: The leadership knew what was happening, but did little to stop it. It was often rear echelon units who committed the rapes. According to professor Oleg Rzheshevsky, "4,148 Red Army officers and many privates were punished for committing atrocities". The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation is uncertain, but historians estimate their numbers are likely in
16644-423: The life of any soldier and (almost any) officer of the unit to which he was attached. In 1942, Stalin established the penal battalions composed of gulag inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as tramplers clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera. Given the dangers, the maximum sentence was three months. Likewise, the Soviet treatment of Red Army personnel captured by
16790-451: The male population of the Russian Empire were mobilized; however, most of them were not equipped with any weapons and had support roles such as maintaining the lines of communication and the base areas. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters, 1.8 million dead, 5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners. He estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. While
16936-530: The military could not decide in Russians' steads. Admiral Alexander Kolchak succeeded in creating a temporary wartime government in Omsk , acknowledged by most other White leaders, but it ultimately disintegrated after Bolshevik military advances. Some warlords who were aligned with the White movement, such as Grigory Semyonov and Roman Ungern von Sternberg , did not acknowledge any authority but their own. Consequently,
17082-408: The most part they operated quite independently of each other, with little coordination or cohesion. The composition and command structure of White armies also varied, some containing hardened veterans of World War I, others more recent volunteers. These differences and divisions, along with their inability to offer an alternative government and win popular support, prevented the White armies from winning
17228-500: The names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, and that is to create a people's militia and to fuse it with the army (the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the entire people)." At the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. Approximately 23% (about 19 million) of
17374-493: The national language of ethnic Russians, as the state language, and as the language of international communication continues to the present day. Eventually, the 1964 project remained a dead proposal. The IETF language tags have been registered: Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army , often shortened to the Red Army , was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922,
17520-603: The need to simplify Russian spelling due to the use of Russian as the language of international communication in the Soviet Union and an increased study of Russian in the Eastern Bloc as well as in the West. That instruction for non-native speakers of Russian was one of the central concerns of further reform is indicated in the resistance to Efimov's proposal to drop the terminal "ь" (soft sign) from feminine nouns, as it helps learners identify gender category. Additionally, Efimov claimed that
17666-615: The next generation of anti-Communists for the "spring campaign"—a hopeful term denoting a renewed military campaign to reclaim Russia from the Soviet Government. In any event, many cadets volunteered to fight for the Russian Protective Corps during World War II, when some White Russians participated in the Russian Liberation Movement . After the war, active anti-Soviet combat was almost exclusively continued by
17812-628: The northern portion of Korea . Other Red Army operations included the Soviet invasion of South Sakhalin , which was the Japanese portion of Sakhalin Island (and Russia had lost to Japan in 1905 in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War ), and the invasion of the Kuril Islands . Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on 15 August. The commanding general of the Kwantung Army ordered
17958-477: The rear armies or directly to the front". Even those registered as "malicious" deserters were returned to the ranks when the demand for reinforcements became desperate". Forges also noted that the Red Army instituted amnesty weeks to prohibit punitive measures against desertion which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000–132,000 deserters to the army. In September 1918, the Bolshevik militias consolidated under
18104-487: The revolution) came out in the old orthography (except title pages and, often, prefaces ) up until 1929. Russian – and later Soviet – railroads operated locomotives with designations of " І ", " Ѵ " and " Ѳ ". (Although the letter Ѵ was not mentioned in the spelling reform, contrary to the statement in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia , it had already become very rare prior to the revolution.) Despite
18250-613: The same day the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was created, and initially assigned to Jukums Vācietis (and from July 1919 to Sergey Kamenev ). The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces existed until April 1924, the end of Russian Civil War . In November 1923, after the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Russian Narkom of War Affairs was transformed into the Soviet Narkom of War and Marine Affairs. At
18396-569: The same time as the general Soviet move into the areas abandoned by the Ober Ost garrisons that were being withdrawn to Germany in the aftermath of World War I . This merged into the 1919–1921 Polish–Soviet War , in which the Red Army invaded Poland, reaching the central part of the country in 1920, but then suffered a resounding defeat in Warsaw , which put an end to the war. During the Polish Campaign
18542-453: The slogan of " united and indivisible Russia [ ru ] " which meant the restoration of imperial state borders and its denial of the right to self-determination ; the movement is associated with pogroms and antisemitism , although its relations with the Jews were more complex. Some historians distinguish the White movement from the so-called "democratic counter-revolution" led mainly by
18688-421: The struggles by creating militarized associations of rebels both outside and within Russian borders. In the Russian context after 1917, "White" had three main connotations which were: Defunct Above all, the White movement emerged as opponents of the Red Army . The White Army had the stated aim to reverse the October Revolution and remove the Bolsheviks from power before a constituent assembly (dissolved by
18834-742: The supreme command of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic ( Russian : Революционный Военный Совет , romanized : Revolyutsionny Voyenny Sovyet (Revvoyensoviet) ). The first chairman was Trotsky, and the first commander-in-chief was Jukums Vācietis of the Latvian Riflemen ; in July 1919 he was replaced by Sergey Kamenev . Soon afterwards Trotsky established the GRU (military intelligence) to provide political and military intelligence to Red Army commanders. Trotsky founded
18980-474: The time, namely nationalism , racism , distrust of liberal and democratic politics, clericalism , contempt for the common man and dislike of industrial civilization; in November 1918, the movement united on an authoritarian-right platform around the figure of Alexander Kolchak as its principal leader. It defended the ideal of pre-revolutionary Imperial Russia , and its positive program was largely summarized in
19126-619: The tradition of blessing arms before battle. To encourage the initiative of Red Army commanders, the CPSU temporarily abolished political commissars , reintroduced formal military ranks and decorations, and introduced the Guards unit concept. Exceptionally heroic or high-performing units earned the Guards title (for example 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps , 6th Guards Tank Army ), an elite designation denoting superior training, materiel, and pay. Punishment also
19272-621: The trio of И , І and Ѵ ), bringing the alphabet closer to the Russian language's actual phonological system . According to critics, the choice of Ии as the only letter to represent that side and the removal of Іі defeated the purpose of 'simplifying' the language, as Ии occupies more space and, furthermore, is sometimes indistinguishable from Шш . The reform also created many homographs and homonyms , which used to be spelled differently. Examples: есть/ѣсть (to be/to eat) and миръ/міръ (peace/world) became есть and мир in both instances. Replacement of онѣ, однѣ, ея by они, одни, её
19418-412: The usual typographic practice reverted to selective use of Ё (to show pronunciation of rare words and to distinguish words that are otherwise homographs). By 1952, normatives on checking school works, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia , and the reference book for typographers by K. I. Bylinsky had declared the letter Ё to be optional. A codification of the rules of Russian orthography and punctuation and
19564-514: The war, and ultimately captured the German capital, Berlin . Up to 34 million soldiers served in the Red Army during World War II, 8 million of which were non-Slavic minorities. Officially, the Red Army lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) ( mostly captured ). The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). Of
19710-671: The western military districts. The Axis forces deployed on the Eastern Front consisted of 181 divisions and 18 brigades (3 million soldiers). Three Fronts, the Northwestern , Western , and Southwestern conducted the defense of the western borders of the USSR. In the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War (as it is known in Russia), the Wehrmacht defeated many Red Army units. The Red Army lost millions of men as prisoners and lost much of its pre-war matériel. Stalin increased mobilization, and by 1 August 1941, despite 46 divisions lost in combat,
19856-610: The wider White émigré overseas community until after the fall of the European communist states in the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990–1991. This community-in-exile of anti-communists often divided into liberal and the more conservative segments, with some still hoping for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty . After the military defeatist, it attempted to continue
20002-482: Was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland . It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland . The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union on 14 December 1939. The Soviet forces led by Semyon Timoshenko had three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and
20148-467: Was conditional upon "guarantees being given by a military or civil committee functioning within the territory of the Soviet Power, or by party or trade union committees or, in extreme cases, by two persons belonging to one of the above organizations." In the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a "collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary." Because
20294-411: Was considered incorrect only if it violated both the old and the new norms. However, in practice, the Soviet government rapidly set up a monopoly on print production and kept a very close eye on the fulfillment of the edict. A common practice was the forced removal of not just the letters І , Ѳ , and Ѣ from printing offices, but also Ъ . Because of this, the usage of the apostrophe as
20440-437: Was controversial among linguists, and different spelling guides contradicted one another). The reform resulted in some economy in writing and typesetting , due to the exclusion of Ъ at the end of words—by the reckoning of Lev Uspensky , text in the new orthography was shorter by one-thirtieth. The reform removed pairs of completely homophonous graphemes from the Russian alphabet (i.e., Ѣ and Е ; Ѳ and Ф ; and
20586-3407: Was especially controversial, as these feminine pronouns were deeply rooted in the language and extensively used by writers and poets. The following is the same opening paragraph from The Bronze Horseman by Alexander Pushkin in its original version (left) and post-reform version (right): На берегу пустынныхъ волнъ Стоялъ онъ, думъ великихъ полнъ, И вдаль глядѣлъ. Предъ нимъ широко Рѣка неслася; бѣдный челнъ По ней стремился одиноко. По мшистымъ, топкимъ берегамъ Чернѣли избы здѣсь и тамъ, Пріютъ убогаго чухонца; И лѣсъ, невѣдомый лучамъ Въ туманѣ спрятаннаго солнца, Кругомъ шумѣлъ. [...] Прошло сто лѣтъ, и юный градъ, Полнощныхъ странъ краса и диво, Изъ тьмы лѣсовъ, изъ топи блатъ Вознесся пышно, горделиво; Гдѣ прежде финскій рыболовъ, Печальный пасынокъ природы, Одинъ у низкихъ береговъ Бросалъ въ невѣдомыя воды Свой ветхой неводъ, нынѣ тамъ По оживленнымъ берегамъ Громады стройныя тѣснятся Дворцовъ и башенъ; корабли Толпой со всѣхъ концовъ земли Къ богатымъ пристанямъ стремятся; Въ гранитъ одѣлася Нева; Мосты повисли надъ водами; Темно-зелеными садами Ея покрылись острова, И передъ младшею столицей Померкла старая Москва, Какъ передъ новою царицей Порфироносная вдова. Люблю тебя, Петра творенье, Люблю твой строгій, стройный видъ, Невы державное теченье, Береговой ея гранитъ, Твоихъ оградъ узоръ чугунный, Твоихъ задумчивыхъ ночей Прозрачный сумракъ, блескъ безлунный, Когда я въ комнатѣ моей Пишу, читаю безъ лампады, И ясны спящія громады Пустынныхъ улицъ, и свѣтла Адмиралтейская игла[...] Красуйся, градъ Петровъ, и стой Неколебимо какъ Россія, Да умирится же съ тобой И побѣжденная стихія; Вражду и плѣнъ старинный свой Пусть волны финскія забудутъ И тщетной злобою не будутъ Тревожить вѣчный сонъ Петра! На берегу пустынных волн Стоял он, дум великих полн, И вдаль глядел. Пред ним широко Река неслася; бедный челн По ней стремился одиноко. По мшистым, топким берегам Чернели избы здесь и там, Приют убогого чухонца; И лес, неведомый лучам В тумане спрятанного солнца, Кругом шумел. [...] Прошло сто лет, и юный град, Полнощных стран краса и диво, Из тьмы лесов, из топи блат Вознесся пышно, горделиво; Где прежде финский рыболов, Печальный пасынок природы, Один у низких берегов Бросал в неведомые воды Свой ветхой невод, ныне там По оживленным берегам Громады стройные теснятся Дворцов и башен; корабли Толпой со всех концов земли К богатым пристаням стремятся; В гранит оделася Нева; Мосты повисли над водами; Темно-зелеными садами Ее покрылись острова, И перед младшею столицей Померкла старая Москва, Как перед новою царицей Порфироносная вдова. Люблю тебя, Петра творенье, Люблю твой строгий, стройный вид, Невы державное теченье, Береговой ее гранит, Твоих оград узор чугунный, Твоих задумчивых ночей Прозрачный сумрак, блеск безлунный, Когда я в комнате моей Пишу, читаю без лампады, И ясны спящие громады Пустынных улиц, и светла Адмиралтейская игла[...] Красуйся, град Петров, и стой Неколебимо как Россия, Да умирится же с тобой И побежденная стихия; Вражду и плен старинный свой Пусть волны финские забудут И тщетной злобою не будут Тревожить вечный сон Петра! While there have not been any significant changes since
20732-540: Was killed on 20 November 1917. Nikolai Podvoisky was appointed as the Narkom of War Affairs, leaving Dybenko in charge of the Narkom of Marine Affairs and Ovseyenko – the expeditionary forces to the Southern Russia on 28 November 1917. The Bolsheviks also sent out their own representatives to replace front commanders of the Russian Imperial Army . After the signing of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918,
20878-483: Was nearly identical to the proposals put forth by the May Assembly, and with other minor modifications formed the substance of the decree issued by the Soviet of People's Commissars in October 1918. In this way, private publications could formally be printed using the old (or more generally, any convenient) orthography. The decree forbade the retraining of people previously trained under the old norm. A given spelling
21024-651: Was not used. Only in the Second World War did deep operations come into play. The Red Army was involved in armed conflicts in the Republic of China during the Sino-Soviet conflict (1929) , the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang (1934), when it was assisted by White Russian forces, and the Islamic rebellion in Xinjiang (1937) in Northwestern China . The Red Army achieved its objectives; it maintained effective control over
21170-445: Was replaced with -ого , -яго with -его (e.g., новаго → нового , ранняго → раннего ), feminine and neuter plural endings -ыя , -ія were replaced with -ые , -ие ( новыя (книги, изданія) → новые ). The words онѣ, однѣ, однѣхъ, однѣмъ, однѣми were replaced with они, одни, одних, одним, одними . The feminine pronoun ея (нея) was replaced with её (неё) . Prefixes ending with -з/с underwent
21316-402: Was used; slackers, malingerers, those avoiding combat with self-inflicted wounds cowards, thieves, and deserters were disciplined with beatings, demotions, undesirable/dangerous duties, and summary execution by NKVD punitive detachments. At the same time, the osobist (NKVD military counter-intelligence officers) became a key Red Army figure with the power to condemn to death and to spare
#245754