Inside the Soviet Military

by Carey Schofield

Given unprecedented access by the Soviet top brass to military facilities & personnel, the author spent two years traveling from Leningrad in the west to Vladivostok in the east, from the Arctic Circle in the far north to the deserts of Central Asia in the south. This book is an exercise in glasnost & a landmark in East-West relations. All aspects of military life are covered, from the organ. of the forces to the morale of the officer corps, from the daily life of the ordinary conscript to the special operations of the elite paratroopers & Spetsnaz. Looks at issues of conscription, training, career progression, & the legacy of Afghanistan. 250 full-color photos.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1991

Reviews

[Sleepy Boy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing coffee table book. The fact the author was allowed into the Soviet Union and to take these quality photos and speak to the various men and women serving in the armed forces at the time was huge I would imagine. I still enjoyed it even though the Iron Curtain has kinda, sorta, fallen.

[Diffusion Tensor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author, a British journalist, "lived with the Soviet Army throughout 1989 and a large part of 1990," and was given unprecedented access to that institution, presumably in the spirit of glasnost. The resulting book, published in 1991, is an extraordinary and unique document in the English language, portraying the Soviet Armed Forces from the perspective of the people who served in it, near the end of its formal existence. The author was accompanied by photographer Leonid Yakutin, a Soviet naval officer, responsible for the 250 color photographs that illustrate nearly every page of the volume. The preface and foreword were contributed by Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and NATO's resident Sovietologist, Christopher Donnelly, respectively. The same year the book was published, Yazov joined the committee that briefly seized power from Mikhail Gorbachev; the USSR ceased to exist at the end of the year. Thus no other book like this has ever been, or will be produced, in the English language. The author even briefly discusses head-on the problem of "dedovschchina" or violent bullying and hazing of junior conscripts by their elders (pp. 82-86), which she said was undermining military discipline. The focus on the ordinary soldiers pervades the entire book, complementing other Western books in this field that typically dwell on more technical matters.

The table of contents includes (1) Introduction; (2) The Military Establishment; (3) The Officer Corps; (4) Conscription; (5) The Soldier's Life; (6) The Ground Forces; (7) The Air; (8) The Navy; (9) The Airborne Forces; and (10) Spetsnaz. The book is supplemented with a number of appendices with additional information.