Article The cold war - Soviet Army

[Иван Феоктистов]

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

You make an old and sick person read the 1982 Military Encyclopedic Dictionary at night, looking at the emblems and remembering all the branches of the USSR Armed Forces. We need to make tea to make work more fun.

I will draw on the '82 book and '89 poster as they are at hand. There were minor changes in the system of the Soviet army at this time. So, for example, in 1988 a separate emblem for the road troops appeared...

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

So, let's begin.

To begin with, a small digression. Not all soldiers did military service in the troops that belonged to the Soviet army. For example, the internal troops and fire brigade were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior, and the state security and border troops were under the command of the KGB of the USSR.

Since 1969, the everyday and ceremonial uniform of a new model has been introduced in the Soviet army. Accordingly, they introduced new sleeve insignia for the branches of the armed forces. The sleeve insignia according to the combat arms were installed for long-term servicemen, sergeants and conscripts, cadets of military educational institutions, military builders and Suvorov soldiers by order of the USSR Ministry of Defense dated July 26, 1969 No. 190. There are fifteen emblems in total. These emblems existed before the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

1. Motorized rifle troops
(After the introduction of the armored personnel carrier, the infantry, walking on its own feet, disappeared in the USSR. Only motorized ones remained. That is why the rifle troops were renamed into motorized rifle troops).

Soldiers of the motorized rifle troops wore red shoulder straps, red buttonholes and their own emblem. The emblem indicated a five-pointed star with a hammer and sickle, crowned with laurel leaves. Among the soldiers, she received the ironic title "Sitting in the bushes and waiting for a Hero" (a hero in the sense of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union). Also, the star in the bay leaves could be called "cabbage".

I will say right away that after there were no questions, the letters on the shoulder straps indicated belonging to the structure in which the soldier served. "SA" means "Soviet Army" - Советская Армия. My grandfather served in the army when these letters appeared on the shoulder straps. Grandfather served in the tank forces in a car company, his friend deciphered the letters "SA" as "Crazy car company" (Сумасшедшая авторота).

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

2. Air Force

The pilots' motto: "Higher and Higher!" or "Fly the highest, the farthest, the fastest!"
These servicemen said about themselves:
"Air Force - Fear Inspirational Troops" - "ВВС - Войска, внушающие страх"
"When God created discipline on earth, aviation was in the air."

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

3. Airborne troops
Воздушно-десантные войска (ВДВ)

The Airborne Forces are one of the most elite troops of the Soviet army. Only people with the most excellent health were taken into the paratroopers. In the Airborne Forces, soldiers underwent such combat training that they became real terminators. Particular attention was paid to physical fitness. After the reform of 1969, airborne troops began to wear uniforms for hot areas. Unlike standard tunics (covered with a collar), tunics for hot areas had a cutout on the chest through which the vest was visible. The vest and takes the colors of the sky is the main pride of every paratrooper.

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

 

[BeNder]

I am very interested in how foreign comrades after this thread will watch an American movie about the Soviet army. Sometimes there are such terrible examples of uniforms that you want to cry. And it is not known from what - from shame or from laughter.

View attachment 283387

Hello friend. I understand that the Soviets destroyed 70 -80 % of the Wehrmacht in WWII.

One of the movies in question is Enemy at Gates. I like that movie as it showed the extreme destruction that the Soviet people endured and that they still kept fighting on.

There are others, not sure the ones that are bad but feel free to post them. Take care.

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

Soviet paratroopers have repeatedly become the protagonists of Soviet cinema. I have already talked about the wonderful 1960 film Leap at Dawn. Now I want to talk about a movie that came out in 1977. The motion picture "In the Zone of Special Attention" has become a real classic in films about the Soviet army. If you have long wanted to watch a real Soviet action movie, I strongly recommend it.

In the course of military exercises, the headquarters of the Yuzhny Guards Airborne Regiment is developing a plan for an offensive operation. The “Yuzhnye” have information about the alleged location of the masked command post (ZKP) of the mock enemy and plan, by conventionally destroying it, to disrupt the control of the “Severnyye” defense, which will greatly facilitate their offensive.

Three sabotage and reconnaissance groups are thrown into the rear of the "Severny", which must arrange sabotage at the objects of the conditional enemy in order to divert his attention, and then try to find the ZKP within two days left before the start of the planned offensive operation. The paratroopers carry out the mission in conditions that are as close as possible to combat. The anti-sabotage units of the "Severny" under the leadership of Major Moroshkin neutralize two groups of the "Yuzhny", but the commander of the third group, Lieutenant Tarasov, refuses to carry out the order of the headquarters to attack the fuel depot, reasonably assuming that an ambush awaits them there, and decides to move to the military town of missilemen... This leads to a conflict with Warrant Officer Volentir, whom the young and inexperienced Tarasov replaced as platoon commander. Tarasov sends Volentir with a fighter to attack the fuel and lubricants warehouse, where they really almost fall into an ambush.

The saboteurs successfully carry out a distraction operation in the missile township, after which, after resting in the house of the forester (a relative of one of the fighters), they make a march to the alleged location of the ZKP. On the way, they find victims of an attack by a gang of armed recidivists who escaped from a high security colony - a murdered man and a wounded woman. At the risk of disrupting the assignment, Tarasov goes on the radio to the police wave and reports the incident; the group continues to move, while Warrant Officer Volentir remains with the wounded until help arrives. After waiting for help, the warrant officer returns to the forester to borrow a motorcycle from him and catch up with Tarasov. In the house of the forester, he finds runaway prisoners and neutralizes them.

Meanwhile, the "Severnyye" surround Tarasov's group, but the scouts manage to go through the swamps to the ruins of an old fortress, where they find a command post, which, however, turns out to be fake. On the advice of Warrant Officer Volentir, who has joined the group, Tarasov leads the scouts along the communication cable that runs from the checkpoint, which leads them to a real disguised command post. The group transfers its coordinates to its command, thereby completing the task. A landing force is landed at the indicated place, which captures and "destroys" the ZKP. The offensive of the "Yuzhny" begins.

In two days, Volentir and Tarasov actually find out each other's real value: Tarasov sees in the ensign a devoted fighter, an experienced scout and a reliable comrade, and Volentir recognizes the talent of a commander and a scout for the young lieutenant.

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[Иван Феоктистов]

"The Enemy at the Gates" is a propaganda picture that portrays Soviet people, soldiers and officers as cattle, military leaders as idiots, and communists as merciless sadists. Most of what is shown in the film is an outright lie, and a very nasty one. From machine gunners shooting their soldiers in the back, ending with a one-rifle attack for two.

If you like this film because of the destruction shown in it, then I will tell you that one scene from the Soviet film "They Fought for the Motherland", where the hero of the actor Bondarchuk stands in front of a burning wheat field, is much stronger than all this deceitful film.

Hello friend. I understand that the Soviets destroyed 70 -80 % of the Wehrmacht in WWII.

One of the movies in question is Enemy at Gates. I like that movie as it showed the extreme destruction that the Soviet people endured and that they still kept fighting on.

There are others, not sure the ones that are bad but feel free to post them. Take care.

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

Any sane person will understand that the system and tactics of suicide attacks shown in the film will never lead to victory. You are a foreigner, you may have studied the topic of the war in the Pacific. You know very well from the example of the Japanese army, what the idiotic command, the lack of weapons and attacks on machine guns with spears at the ready, lead to. The USSR won the war with a ratio of combat losses of 1 to 1.3, fighting according to science, and not driving unarmed soldiers into tanks.

 

[BeNder]

Welp, sorry Enemy at the Gates got you so down man.

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

Not quite correctly translated your words. The crux of the matter is not in the film, but in you. Even a person who is far from history should understand that what is shown in the film is at least a fairy tale. And I do not understand people who, on the basis of one fictional and unhistorical film with many logical holes, draw serious conclusions about the Battle of Stalingrad in general and about the entire Red Army in particular. You can at least open Wikipedia and read the biography of Vasily Zaitsev there. One of our bloggers visually disassembled this film and provided his video with English subtitles.

I also advise you to look more often at the forum dedicated to the Second World War. Many subscribers to this forum publish there materials about the Red Army and the Eastern Front. Including me. And including about Stalingrad. As they say, you can feel the difference yourself.

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[BeNder]

I only said that the movie was a tale of how Russia suffered.

Now, you are downplaying what our people did in the Pacific? Don't think for a minute that Russia could accomplish what we achieved in the Pacific.

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

For the sake of interest, I compared English and Russian Wikipedia. Yes, that's an interesting thing. Starting from the biography of Zaitsev himself, ending with the film, there are so many silences and distortions in the English Wikipedia that it becomes scary again. Truly, the Internet and politics create amazing things.

Okay. Friend, if you want to discuss "The Enemy at the Gates", then we can move to the thread about the Second World War.
Here is a discussion of the Cold War. ?

 

[Иван Феоктистов]

I am not going to underestimate the accomplishments of the American troops in the Pacific and in Europe. The Japanese were an evil and insidious enemy; the Red Army faced him in 1938, 1939 and 1945. I just gave some examples of the tactics of the Japanese army as an analogy to this film. It is immediately evident that in the Battle of Iwo Jima, the abandonment of Banzai attacks allowed the Japanese armies to achieve much greater success.

I only said that the movie was a tale of how Russia suffered.

Now, you are downplaying what our people did in the Pacific? Don't think for a minute that Russia could accomplish what we achieved in the Pacific.