Is it possible, with a POD of 1922 onwards, to have a fully professional and all-volunteer Soviet military? Or at least those which were expected to fight in foreign wars?
Several things to consider here:
- World Wars were time of conscript armies and any professional (read "smallish") force is doomed to loose to a massive army of conscripts which undergone 6-month training. See experience of Britons versus Germany in 1914.
- Mandatory service is the best way to prepare conscript reserves for a upcoming war. It allows to cut training time in half at least during "real" war. This has nothing to do with Communism, Stalin or any other ideological bullshit.
- Smallish professional armies are only good to fight against weak opponents, ideally much less developed. There's no example of professional army winning war against conscript army of country with similar population size and "development level", so to speak.
Therefore I consider "professional Red Army" idea to be ASB, contrary to all experiences Soviet leadership could draw from history and (although it is "post-knowledge") contrary to OTL experience of the world during the time Commies were in power. However, once you abandon rigid "professional vs. conscript" division, things get a lot more interesting and Soviets really did go "mixed army" road pre-WWII.
One can really discuss model of army building in Red Russia/USSR post-1925. Before that both Reds and Whites drafted as many able-bodied and trained WWI vets as they could, with many men having dubious experiences of serving in both forces at different points of time. Then Reds spent some time to de-mobilize oversized wartime army after they won the war. What did they do next? Created "mixed" army, with professional, semi-professional and militia (or "volksturm") components (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#Organization). They got rid of the weak "militia" component on the wake of WWII.
Speaking about "foreign war" component, Soviets did not really prepare pre-WWII to fight "colonial" wars of the type Britons fought in Iraq or American on Philippines. Fighting nationalist guerillas on the outskirts of the USSR was considered "protection of the Motherland" (and, in reality, was done by professional units to an overwhelming degree) and Soviets didn't really prepare to go abroad to fight locals, they thought of going to protect locals from the "vile capitalism". It was different game psychologically. Soviets came to Eastern Poland to protect their oppressed Ukrainian and Belorussian brethen (this propaganda cliche holds a lot of truth, by the way) and entered Baltics rather peacefully under an agreement with local government (niceties such as those agreement being rammed down the throats of locals govts by Stalin did not bother grunts or even army commanders much). Even post-WWII, when the USSR became global superpower, competing with the USA in every corner of the world, Soviets avoided sending conscript units abroad at all costs. They managed to avoid it in Korea completely (pilots were all professionals), in Vietnam mostly and participation of the conscript units on the Middle East was a desperate short-term measure. Afghanistan was really only deviation from this rule.
I am not sure whether this runs contradictory to Communist or Soviet political ideology.
It does, but Commies were really good in bending ideology to suite their purposes of the day. They could avoid direct contradiction by having militia-based army and placing professional fighting units under Minitry of Interior (counter-insurgency) and KGB (colonial war troops), for example.
With a POD of 1922 no, and even an earlier POD pre-revolution doubtful. On a Stalinist pseudo-nationalist line it was everyones duty to defend the Motherland, on a general Bolshevik line it would create a Borgouise chauvinistic militaristic blah blah blah powerful clique detached from the worker's state and in reality the Soviets wanted a massive army to prove them a world power.
As I said, it were rather lowly consideration of having an army able to fight on equal terms with armies of capitalist countries with comparable population base and not ideological tenets which turned Soviets from "Crack units plus volksturm" model to massive conscript-based army.
A professional military force is not a good thing if you are a dictator (there was a good reason that Hitler wanted to replace the Heer with the SS). The professionals present a clear & present danger to your position as President for life.
Wow, you disappointed me quite severely (I considered you one of the more informed ppl here). Care to look at history of this patch of land South of California all the way to Cape Horn? You would find that professional (and therefore detached from the bulk of populace) military is almost necessary pre-requisite for dictatorship.