Professional, all-volunteer Soviet military

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?

I am not sure whether this runs contradictory to Communist or Soviet political ideology.
 
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.

You'd need a far different make-up for such a radical change in policy ie a more liberal Soviet Union, say with the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks involved, the 1905 Soviets were extremly liberal compared to Lenin's lot however even then conscript Army would have existed during the Revolution/Civil War for pure expediency at least with national service during peacetime (National Guard style reserve perhaps?)
 
Could we have an analogue of many European nations' armed forces? A separate force consisting of conscripts tasked with guarding internal borders and garrisoning sovereign or occupied bases and another force consisting of professional volunteers readied for foreign wars? Is it possible to have a two-tier system?

How feasible is a European equivalent in which conscript soldiers can be used by the military inside the country itself, but are forbidden by law to fight in aggressive wars (which only the professional volunteers can) and can fight in defensive wars?
 

CalBear

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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.
 
Could you even win wars with professional militaries in the era of vast conscript armies? Was there ever a single major power that didn't have conscription, at least during the wars?
 
You'd either have to have a) a more federal soviet union where the various soviet republics had more autonomy. It is likely that the backbone of this autonomy would have been a series of regionalised professional regiments. This is basically a soviet union without trotsky and stalins influence.
b) you could have the creation of guards divisions before the war, perhaps if stalins puges had been less agressive thus leading russia to have a better trained and dedicated roll call of tank corps at the start of WW2
or c) you could have an expanded and even more militarised cheka/NKVD

What you would probbly get, without a massive change in russias industrial capacity would be a better equipped professional army with better training tactical doctrines backed up with a mass conscript force of regular divisions held in reserve that were more poorly equipped and trained than OTL.
 
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:
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
 
In the USSR, did anybody really "volunteer" for anything?
Bulk of Soviet "volunteerism" can be really compared to "volunteering" in Western corporate environment. You do take an extra or unpleasant job not because you heart takes you in this direction but because it open a way to promotion or saves your hams from being kicked out. Above it was true volunteerism (much more widespread that anyone brainwashed by the Cold War propaganda can imagine), below it were direct orders from government, badly disguised as "volunteerism" (extent of those greatly exaggregated by the very same propaganda).
 
What did the massive conscript army accomplish for the Soviet Union in 1941? Mostly to be captured. Were they even speedbumps to the invasion?

What if they had a smaller well equipped mobile force, that could have retreated and not been encircled?
 
What did the massive conscript army accomplish for the Soviet Union in 1941? Mostly to be captured. Were they even speedbumps to the invasion?

What if they had a smaller well equipped mobile force, that could have retreated and not been encircled?

Well, the only problem is that retreating and not not being encircled is about all a small, mobile army would be able to do against the several million Wehrmacht conscripts invading the USSR.
 
What did the massive conscript army accomplish for the Soviet Union in 1941? Mostly to be captured. Were they even speedbumps to the invasion?
You really really need to educate yourself, my opinionated friend. Cold War tales are good to raise what passes for morale, but not to gather your knowledge of the world from.

What if they had a smaller well equipped mobile force, that could have retreated and not been encircled?
Ever heard of Dunkirk? With all fairness, I don't think USSR could have better trained or equpped army than the Great Britain, and look how much good it did to Britons.
 
they could have done it after WW2, assuming they didn't take such a hard line stance towards the west... if they had decided to concentrate on their economy instead of their army, this might have been a good solution..

..in the west. In the east, I think they'd still have to have large conscripted armies to stand on the border with China...
 
Could we have an analogue of many European nations' armed forces? A separate force consisting of conscripts tasked with guarding internal borders and garrisoning sovereign or occupied bases and another force consisting of professional volunteers readied for foreign wars? Is it possible to have a two-tier system?

That may be the only way to do it, something similar to Heer/SA in Germany. Most totalitarian regimes set up their own, party (para)military forces then set them to compete with regulars thus keeping them at each other's throats and too busy to plot beloved leader's overthrow.

Considering that prior to WW2 CP membership was fairly limited you could have one branch staffed with CP members (the elite) and rest unwashed masses in mass army
 
they could have done it after WW2, assuming they didn't take such a hard line stance towards the west... if they had decided to concentrate on their economy instead of their army, this might have been a good solution...
If there ever was an idea Soviet leadership truly believed in (hint - Communism wasn't), it was "country unwilling to feed it's army end up feeding occupants" dogma.
 
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