Imperial Russian Armed Forces (Rossyiah)

Imperial Russian Armed Forces
Императорские Вооруженные Силы России Imperatorskiye Vooruzhennyye Sily Rossii
Founded	1696 (Navy) 1721 (Army) 1912 (Air Force)
Current form	1946 (Imperial Russian Armed Forces)
Service branches	Imperial Russian Army Imperial Russian Navy Imperial Russian Air Force Strategic Missile Forces Special Operations Forces
Headquarters	Ministry of Defence, Moscow
Leadership
Tsar	Tsar Kyrill II
Minister of Defence	General of the Army Alexei Nikolaievich Lobanov-Rostovsky
Chief of the General Staff	General of the Army Gennady Belosimov
Personnel
Military age	18–27
Conscription	18 months
Active personnel	1,834,000
Expenditure
Percent of GDP	4.9% (2019)
Industry
Annual exports	$19 billion (2018)

| name = Imperial Russian Armed Forces | native_name = Императорские Вооруженные Силы России
Imperatorskiye Vooruzhennyye Sily Rossii

The Imperial Russian Armed Forces (Russian: Императорские Вооруженные Силы России, ИВCP Imperatorskiye Vooruzhennyye Sily Rossii IVSR), commonly known as the Russian Armed Forces, are the military of the Russian Empire.

On 9 May 1946, Tsar Aleksei II signed a Ukaz establishing the Ministry of Defence combining the Minister of War and the Maritime Minister and placing all armed corps under an unified control. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is the Tsar. The Imperial Russian Armed Forces were formed in 1946. The Imperial Russian Armed Forces also possess the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world.

Under Russian law, the Armed Forces along with the Internal Security Service (SVB)'s Border Troops, the Russian Guard, the Policethe Russian Imperial Guard and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), form Russia's military services and are under direct control of the Tsar.

Service branches

Armed forces under the Ministry of Defence are divided into:

• Three "Armed Forces": the Imperial Russian Army; the Imperial Russian Navy; the Imperial Russian Air Force.
• Two "separate branches": the Strategic Missile Forces and the Special Operations Forces.
• The Logistical Support, which has a separate status of its own.

There are additionally two further "separate branches", the Russian Guard and the Border Troops. These retain the legal status of "Armed Forces", while falling outside of the jurisdiction of the Imperial General Staff. The Russian Guard is directly subordinated to the Tsar. The Border Service is a paramilitary organization of the Internal Security Service - the country's main internal intelligence agency. Both organizations have significant wartime tasks in addition to their main peacetime activities and operate their own land, air and maritime units.

The number of personnel is specified by decree of the Tsar. On 1 January 2010, a number of 2,000,000 units was set. As of December 2016, the armed forces are at 93 percent of the required manpower, up from 82 percent reported in December 2013.

History

During the civil war, the Tsarist command subdivided its forces into groups known as White Armies in order to fight Bolshevik revolutionary groups. The White Armies enjoyed a series of initial victories over their opponents, and in a surge of optimism Lenin ordered the Western Army under General Roman von Ungern-Sternberg to advance West in the vacuum created by the German forces retreating from the Ober-Ost areas. This operation swept the newly formed Nestor Makhno's Ukrainian People's Republic and Belarusian People's Republic and eventually lead to the Russian invasion of Second Polish Republic.

The overwhelming majority of professional officers in the Russian army were of nobility (dvoryanstvo); moreover, most of them had joined the White armies. Therefore, the Tsar's forces retained the experienced military leadership. By 1921 the White Armies had defeated the Red Army, but began to face setbacks in Poland.

Polish forces managed to break a long streak of Russian victories by launching a bold counteroffensive at the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920. At Warsaw the Western Army suffered a defeat so great and so unexpected that it turned the course of the entire war and eventually forced Russia to accept the unfavorable conditions offered by the Treaty of Riga, signed on March 18, 1921.

After the civil war, the Imperial Russian Army faced the long path to regain its professional standards. Challenges were though. With economy in ruins and most of its five million soldiers demobilized, the Imperial Russian Army was transformed into a small regular force, and territorial militias were created for wartime mobilization. The established military schools, established during the civil war, began to graduate large numbers of trained officers loyal to the new path of the Tsarist power.

Rebuilding the Army

During the 1930s, Joseph Dzugashvili's industrialization drive built the productive base necessary to modernize the Imperial Russian Army. As the likelihood of war in Europe increased later in the decade, the Russian Empire steadly increased its military expenditures and doubled the size of its regular forces to match the power of its potential enemies.

In 1937, however, Joseph Dzugashvili, under the pressure of Nicholas II, purged the Army of its best military leaders. Fearing that the military posed a threat to Taserevich Alexei's rule, Dzugashvili jailed or executed many officers, including three of five marshals.

Second World War

On 17 September 1939 the Imperial Russian Army marched its troops into the eastern territories of Poland (now part of the Russian Empire), using the official pretext of coming to the aid of the Russian brothers threatened by Germany,cwhich had attacked Poland on 1 September 1939. The Russian invasion opened a second front for the Poles and forced them to abandon plans for defence in the Romanian bridgehead area, thus hastening the Polish defeat. The Russian and German advance halted roughly at the Curzon Line.

The Sacken–Ribbentrop Pact, which had included a secret protocol delimiting the "spheres of interest" of each party, set the scene for the remarkably smooth partition of Poland between Germany and the Russian Empire. The defined Russian sphere of interest matched the territory subsequently captured in the campaign. The territory became part of the Russian Empire.

Even though water barriers separated most of the spheres of interest, the Russian and German troops met each other on a number of occasions. The Russian Army troops faced little resistance, mainly due to the entanglement of the majority of the Polish forces in fighting Germans along the Western border, but partly due to an official order by the Polish Supreme Command not to engage in combat with the Russian troops, and also partly because many Polish citizens viewed the advancing troops as liberators.

Great Patriotic War

By the autumn of 1940 a new world order had emerged. Nazi Germany and its allies dominated most of the European continent. Only the United Kingdom (in the West) was actively challenging national socialist and fascist hegemony. Nazi Germany and Britain had no common land border, but a state of war existed between them; the Germans had an extensive land border with the Russian Empire, but the latter remained neutral, adhering to a non-aggression pact and by numerous trade agreements.

For Adolf Hitler, no dilemma ever existed in this situation. Drang nach Osten remained the order of the day. This culminated, on 18 December 1940, in the issuing of 'Directive No. 21 – Case Barbarossa', which opened by saying "the German Armed Forces must be prepared to crush Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England". Even before the issuing of the directive, the German General Staff had developed detailed plans for a Russian campaign. On 3 February 1941, the final plan of Operation Barbarossa gained approval, and the attack was scheduled for the middle of May, 1941. However, the events in Greece and Yugoslavia necessitated a delay — to the second half of June.

At the time of the Nazi assault on the Russian Empire in June 1941, the Imperial Russian Army had 303 divisions and 22 brigades (4.8 million troops), including 166 divisions and 9 brigades (2.9 million troops) stationed in the western military districts. Their Axis opponents deployed on the Eastern Front 181 divisions and 18 brigades (3.8 million troops). The first weeks of the war saw the annihilation of virtually the entire Imperial Russian Air Service on the ground, the loss of major equipment, tanks, artillery, and major Russian defeats as German forces trapped hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers in vast pockets.

Russian forces suffered heavy damage in the field as a result of poor levels of preparedness, which was primarily caused by a reluctant, half-hearted and ultimately belated decision by the Russian Government and High Command to mobilize the army. Equally important was a general tactical superiority of the German army, which was conducting the kind of warfare that it had been combat-testing and fine-tuning for two years. The hasty pre-war growth and over-promotion of the Russian Army cadres as well as the removal of experienced officers caused by the Purges offset the balance even more favourably for the Germans.

A generation of brilliant Russian generals, most notably Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov, learned from the defeats, and Russian victories in the Battle of Moscow, at Alexigrad, Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive in what became known to the Russian people as the Great Patriotic War.

The Russian government adopted a number of measures to improve the state and morale of the retreating Russian Army in 1941. Russian propaganda invoked the deeply-rooted patriotic feelings of the population. Propagandists proclaimed the War against the German aggressors as the "Great Patriotic War", in allusion to the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon. References to ancient Russian military heroes such as Alexander Nevski and Mikhail Kutuzov appeared. Priests increased the tradition of blessing arms before battle. The concept of a Guard re-appeared: units which had shown exceptional heroism in combat gained the names of "Guards Regiment", "Guards Army", etc.

During the German–Russian War, the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. The majority of the losses comprised ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400).

In the first part of the war, the Russian Army fielded weaponry of mixed quality. It had excellent artillery, but it did not have enough trucks to manoeuvre and supply it; as a result the Wehrmacht (which rated it highly) captured much of it. T-34 tanks outclassed any other tanks the Germans had when they appeared in 1941, yet most of the Russian armoured units were less advanced models; likewise, the same supply problem handicapped even the formations equipped with the most modern tanks. The Imperial Russian Air Service initially performed poorly against the Germans. The quick advance of the Germans into the Russian territory made reinforcement difficult, if not impossible, since much of the Russian military industry lay in the west of the country.

Cold War

The Russian Empire only had Ground Forces, Air Forces, and the Navy in 1945. The two Ministries, one supervising the Army and Air Service, and the other directing the Navy, were combined into the Ministry of Defence in May 1946. A fourth service, the Troops of National Air Defence, was formed in 1948. The Ministry was briefly divided into two again from 1950 to 1953, but then was amalgamated again as the Ministry of Defence. Six years later the Strategic Missile Forces were formed. Also falling within the Imperial Russian Armed Forces were the Tyl, or Rear Services, of the Armed Forces, the Troops of Civil Defence, the Border and the Russian Guard.

Men within the Imperial Russian Army dropped from around 13 million to approximately 2.5 million in 1948. In order to control this demobilisation process, the number of military districts was increased to thirty-three, dropping to twenty-one in 1949. The size of the Army throughout most time of the Cold War remained between 4 million and 5 million, according to Western estimates. Until 1997, Russian law required all able-bodied males of age to serve a minimum of 2 years. As a result, the Russian Army remained the largest active army in the world from 1945 to 1991. Russian Army units which had taken over the countries of Eastern Europe from German rule remained in some of them to secure the régimes in what became satellite states of the Russian Empire and to deter and to fend off pro-independence resistance and later NATO forces. The greatest Russian military presence was in the Prussian Republic, but there were also smaller forces elsewhere, including the Northern Group of Forces in Poland, the Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia, and the Southern Group of Forces in Hungary. In Russia itself, forces were divided by the 1950s among fifteen military districts. Tsesarevich Alexander was given command of the Moscow Military District in 1955.

The trauma of the devastating German invasion of 1941 influenced the Russian Cold War military doctrine of fighting enemies on their own territory, or in a buffer zone under Russian hegemony or at least control, but in any case preventing any war from reaching Russian soil. In order to secure Russian interests in Eastern Europe, the Russian Army moved in to quell anti-Russian uprisings in the Prussian Republic (1953), Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).

To improve capabilities for war at a theatre level, in the late 1970s and early 1980s four high commands were established, grouping the military districts, groups of forces, and fleets. The Far Eastern High Command was established first, followed by the Western and South-Western High Commands towards Europe, and the Southern High Command at Baku, oriented toward the Middle East.

Confrontation with the US and NATO during the Cold War mainly took the form of threatened mutual deterrence with nuclear weapons. The Russian Empire invested heavily in the Armed Forces' nuclear capacity, especially in the production of ballistic missiles and of nuclear submarines to deliver them. Open hostilities took the form of wars by proxy, with the Russian Empire and the US supporting loyal client régimes or rebel movements in Third World countries.

War in Afghanistan

In 1979, however, the Russian Armed Forces intervened in a civil war raging in Afghanistan. The Russian Armed Forces came to back a Russian-friendly monarchic government threatened by a multinational, mainly afghan, insurgent groups called the mujahideen. The insurgents received military training in neighboring Pakistan, China, and billions of dollars from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. Technically superior, the Russians did not have enough troops to establish control over the countryside and to secure the border. This resulted from hesitancy in Alexander IV, which allowed only a "limited contingent". Consequently, local insurgents could effectively employ hit-and-run tactics, using easy escape-routes and good supply-channels. This made the Russian situation hopeless from the military point of view short of using "scorched earth" tactics. The understanding of this made the war highly unpopular within the Armed Forces. With the coming of the deep political changes made necessary by the stagnation of the Russian economy, Russian official media started to report heavy losses, which made the war very unpopular in the Russian Empire in general, even though actual losses remained relatively modest, averaging 1670 per year. The war also became a sensitive issue internationally, which finally led Alexander IV to withdraw his forces from Afghanistan. The decade long war resulted in millions of Afghans fleeing their country, mostly to Pakistan and Iran. At least half a million Afghan civilians were killed in addition to the rebels in the war.

End of Russian presence in Europe

From around 1985 to 1991, the new Prime Minister Mikhail Yuryevsky attempted to reduce the strain the military placed on economic demands. His government slowly reduced the size of the army. By 1989 Russian troops were leaving their Petrograd Pact neighbours to fend for themselves. That same year Russian forces left Afghanistan. By the end of 1990, almost the entire Eastern Bloc had collapsed in the wake of democratic revolutions. As a result, Russia experienced nationalist protests as well. The military got involved in crushing conflicts and unrest in Central Asia and the Caucasus. On 9 April 1989, the Army, together with units of the Russian Guard, massacred about 190 demonstrators in Tbilisi in Tbilisi Governorate. The next major crisis occurred in Baku Governorate, when the Russian army forcibly entered Baku on 19–20 January, 1990, removing the rebellious republican government and killing hundreds of civilians in the process. On 13 January 1991 Russian forces stormed the State Radio and Television Building and the television retranslation tower in Vilna, Vilna Goverorate, both under opposition control, killing 14 people and injuring 700. This action effectively defeated separatist movement.

By mid-1991, the Russian Empire had reached a state of internal emergency. A coup was attempted by foreign-backed liberals; on 15 June 1991 Alexander IV appeared on national broadcast dressed in combat uniform and rallied the Imperial Russian Armed Forces at his side. Commanders sent tanks into the streets of Moscow, but (according to all the commanders and soldiers) only with orders to ensure the safety of the people. The coup failed primarily because the participants did not take any decisive action, and after several days of their inaction the coup simply stopped. Nobody issued orders to shoot at anyone.

In mid-March 1992, Alexander IV appointed himself as the new Minister of Defence, marking a crucial step in the assumption of full control of the Russian state in order to proceed to the new era of the Russian Empire. In the next few years, the Russian forces withdrew from central and Eastern Europe.

In the midst of 1990s crisis, and until 1995, it was planned to form at least 20 brigades numbering 3,000 to 5,000 each, with a total of no more than 200,000. National Guard military units were to be deployed in 10 regions, including in Moscow (three brigades), (two brigades), and a number of other important cities and regions. In the next few years, Russian forces withdrew from central and eastern Europe.

A new military doctrine, promulgated in November 1993, implicitly acknowledged the contraction of the old military into a regional military power without global ambitions. In keeping with its emphasis on the threat of regional conflicts, the doctrine called for a smaller, lighter, and more mobile Russian military, with a higher degree of professionalism and with greater rapid-deployment capability. Such change were never implemented and the Imperial Russian Armed Forces remained to protect the national territory.

Structure

The Defence Ministry serves as the administrative body of the Armed Forces. Since 1946, drawing from individual Armed Forces experiences, the Imperial General Staff has acted as the main commanding and supervising body of the Imperial Russian Armed Gorces: according to several analysists, 'the General Staff without the Ministry of Defence is conceivable, but the Ministry of Defence without the General Staff is not.' Other departments include the personnel directorate as well as the Logistical Support Command, Railway Troops, Signal Troops and Construction Troops. The Chief of the General Staff]] is currently General of the Army Gennady Belosimov.

The Russian military is divided into three services: the Imperial Russian Ground Forces, the Imperial Russian Navy, and the Imperial Russian Air Force. In addition there are two independent arms of service: the Strategic Missile Troops and the Special Forces.

Military districts

Since late 2010 the Army as well as the Air Force and Navy are distributed among four military districts: Western Military District, Southern Military District, Central Military District, and the Eastern Military District which also constitute four Joint Strategic Commands — West, South, Central, and East. In 2014 the Northern Fleet was reorganized in separate Joint Strategic Command. Geographically divided, the five commands are:

• Joint Strategic Command West - Western Military District (HQ in Petrograd), includes the Baltic Fleet;
• Joint Strategic Command North - Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command (HQ in Vayenga), includes the Northern Fleet;
• Joint Strategic Command South - Southern Military District (HQ in Rostov-on-Don) includes the Black Sea Fleet and Caspian Flotilla;
• Joint Strategic Command Center - Central Military District (HQ in Yekaterinburg);
• Joint Strategic Command East - Eastern Military District (HQ in Khabarovsk), includes the Pacific Fleet.

In July 2011, an Operational-Strategic Command of Missile-Space Defence has also been established. Russian security bodies not under the control of the Ministry of Defence include the Russian Guard, the Border Guard Service (part of the Internal Security Service), the Imperial Guard, and the civil defence service.

Naval fleets

The Navy consists of four fleets and one flotilla:

• Northern Fleet (HQ at Severomorsk) forms own Joint Strategic Command.
• Baltic Fleet (HQ at Petrograd) subordinated to Joint Strategic Command West.
• Black Sea Fleet (HQ at Sevastopol) subordinated to Joint Strategic Command South.
• Pacific Fleet (HQ at Vladivostok) subordinated to Joint Strategic Command East.
• Caspian Flotilla (HQ at Astrakhan) subordinated to Joint Strategic Command South.

Personnel

Conscription is still used in Russia; the term of service being 12 months; and eligible age is between 18 and 27 years old. Deferments are provided to undergraduate and graduate students, men solely supporting disabled relatives, parents of at least two children and — upon Ukaz — to some employees of military-oriented enterprises. Men holding a Ph.D., as well as sons and brothers of servicemen killed or disabled during their military service, are released from conscription.

Fifty percent of Russian Armed Forces' personnel were contract servicemen at the end of 2005.

75% of the Imperial Russian Army’s officer corps is Slavic with a large number being Russian.

Reserve components

Russian Armed Forces have reserve (Russian: запас; zapas) which includes 2 components:

• Mobilization human reserve;
• Mobilization human resource.

By default, at the end of active duty each military personnel is enrolled in mobilization human resource; this applies equally to onscripts and contract personnel regardless of ranks. Furthermore, graduates of civilian institutions of higher education, who have graduated the military training centers of their almae matres, trained under reserve officer program, is enrolled in mobilization human resource after their promotion officer's rank. Moreover, mobilization human resource is replenished with males who reached the age of 27 years old and, herewith, was not in military service for any reasons.

Enrolling in mobilization human reserve is voluntary and implies the special contract; this possibility is available for each persons, who is in mobilization human resource already. The initial contract is concluded for 3 years period. Military personnel of mobilization human reserve (reservists) perform part-time duties in military units.

The persons who are in mobilization human resource (non-reservists) may be enlisted to military camp trainings in peacetime. The duration of each training cannot ordinarily exceed 2 months, herewith the total duration of such trainings for the entire period of being in mobilization human resource can not exceed 12 months, and person may be enlisted to such trainings no more than once every three years.

Reservists are subject to mandatory mobilization in wartime first of all. Non-reservists are subject to mobilization secondarily. Mobilization of non-reservists is carried out taking into account the age category.

Troops type	First Category age limit	Second Category age limit	Third Category age limit
Enlisted	35 years	45 years	50 years
Junior officers	50 years	55 years	60 years
Field officers	55 years	60 years	65 years
Colonels	60 years	65 years	-
Generals	65 years	70 years	-
Females	-	-	45 years (Troops) 50 (Officers)

The person who has reached the age limit, established for the third category (the second category for persons at the rank of colonel (captain 1st rank in naval service) or higher), is retired and is not subject to mobilization.

Office of Inspectors General

Military inspectors' emblem

The Office of Inspectors General of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Empire (Russian: Группа генеральных инспекторов Министерства обороны RI) is a body of the Ministry of Defence established in 1958 as a sinecure position for semi-retired senior officers. Elderly senior officers who wish to avoid retiring or transferring to the reserve are assigned to the group, where they enjoy full privileges of rank for the rest of their lives without regular duties.

The main task of the Office of Inspectors General is to promote the organization of combat and operational training of troops, the construction and further development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Empire, the development of the theory and history of military art, and the education of personnel.

Membership

The Office of Inspectors General includes three categories:

• Inspectors general: all inactive Field Marshals, who may not retire at any age;
• Inspector-advisors: all inactive Generals of the Army and Admirals of the Fleet;
• Consultants: select inactive Colonel Generals and Admirals.

Automatic membership in the group is restricted to Generals of the Army, while Colonel Generals were only admitted to it for "special merits".

Nuclear weapons

Russia has approximately 3,987 deployed strategic warheads, and another 4,900 non-deployed strategic and deployed and non-deployed tactical warheads, plus an additional 2,510 warheads awaiting dismantlement. Russia's Strategic Missile Forces controls its land-based nuclear warheads, while the Navy controls the submarine based missiles and the Air Force the air-launched warheads.

The military doctrine of Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional aggression that can endanger the existence of the state.

See also

• Rossyiah