WI/PC: USSR makes all of it's Armed Forces volunteer?

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
Inspired by John Dusk's thread about the NATO/WarPac forces comparison.

What if the USSR, scrapped conscription in it's entire Armed forces and went over to funding a full volunteer force in it's Army, Navy and Air Force?

Not only this, defence spending remains the same allowing more equipment to be purchased and a higher level of readiness to be achieved plus more technicians trained that allow more flight hours for their Air Force aircraft, and more Navy ships to be at sea on patrol similar to Western Navies?.

Would this work?

Would the Politburo allow this?

What would the possible size of the USSR armed forces be after this restructuring?

Regards filers
 
Don't you have to define the definition of volunteer in a totalitarian society first, can the party allow people to make such important free choices and still remain in control?

Well, it worked in Suharto's Indonesia, and Chinese PLA is now practically an all-volunteer force because you know, to be a militaryman in a dictatorship will often give you many privileges in the society, so you will still find many people eager to join the military.
 
Would the Politburo allow this?

Maybe? But I think it would have taken time for them to come around to the idea.

There were reformists in the 70s and 80s who wanted to switch to a volunteer army with higher spending per man, but the Party resisted this due to perceived risk that this professional army could become a counter-revolutionary threat.

An army of professional soldiers would become alienated from the population - a military caste who would develop their own political and economic interests. The fear was that these interests would not align with those of the Party.

What would the possible size of the USSR armed forces be after this restructuring?

I would have thought it would be more than 1 million but less than 4 million.

fasquardon
 
Well, it worked in Suharto's Indonesia,

Not a totalitarian government.


and Chinese PLA is now practically an all-volunteer force because you know, to be a militaryman in a dictatorship will often give you many privileges in the society, so you will still find many people eager to join the military.
Because it is suicidal to try and maintain a military of ten million when you don't have the money.
 
Chinese PLA is now practically an all-volunteer force because you know

Legally speaking, conscription is still very much a part of Chinese recruitment. They just don't exercise it because China's manpower pool is so bloody huge that volunteers alone are enough to man the few million strong forces it maintains in peacetime. The USSR was a nation of ~200 million though, not 1.6 billion.
 
An army of professional soldiers would become alienated from the population - a military caste who would develop their own political and economic interests. The fear was that these interests would not align with those of the Party.
This seems to describe the PLA which appears to have a different foreign and economic policy to the Communist Party.
 
They would need those as occupation forces but the USSR did consider this very option around where Gorbachev picked up.

The argument is that it is a trade off. It is extremely risky because there won't be second, and third line reserves available, but at the same time there would be more forces at the onset to work with. The USSR had adopted a defensive approach under Gorbachev.

They were concerned that Soviet frontline forces would not have enough numbers to be effective, but mobilzation was tantamount to war. They though they could circumvent this by doing what you propose.

At the same time having more men at the border wasn't purely defensive strictly speaking and somewhat conflicted with Gorbachevs ideas (borne out of the realization that NATO had better tech and the ensuing dilemma of how to come to terms with that)
 
Using conscription as they did the USSR was able to maintain a large military force at an affordable cost. To get the same size force with volunteers would have meant paying more, and improving living conditions. Additionally getting enough ethnic Russians and those with decent education would have been difficult. Only when you have a huge manpower pool can you get enough volunteers to maintain a very large military with volunteers alone.
 
Last edited:
I had never thought an American Pinochet was possible, but that article does seems to suggest that, had the situation then continued, it was certainly possible.

Hasn't the situation continued? Alienation from civilian life has been a continuing problem for US veterans over the 20 years since the article was written. The budgets for treating the mental health problems caused not only by PTSD but also simple loneliness have been ballooning.

Which makes me wonder if conscription militaries face similar cultural alienation - certainly German conscripts returning home after WW1 were left feeling alienated and yearning for the ordered brotherhood of their wartime service. And I can think of similar stories about US Korean war veterans. But I can't think of stories of conscripts feeling alienated after being released from a peace-time service stint.

fasquardon
 
Hasn't the situation continued? Alienation from civilian life has been a continuing problem for US veterans over the 20 years since the article was written. The budgets for treating the mental health problems caused not only by PTSD but also simple loneliness have been ballooning.
Some of the problems laid out have continued. However, the 9/11 attacks practically eliminated others; they made even liberals appreciate the military, at least for a time, they created a clear mission for the military, and they increased the importance of military figures in policymaking. This all made the problem less serious, although not nonexistent.
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
Hasn't the situation continued? Alienation from civilian life has been a continuing problem for US veterans over the 20 years since the article was written. The budgets for treating the mental health problems caused not only by PTSD but also simple loneliness have been ballooning.

Which makes me wonder if conscription militaries face similar cultural alienation - certainly German conscripts returning home after WW1 were left feeling alienated and yearning for the ordered brotherhood of their wartime service. And I can think of similar stories about US Korean war veterans. But I can't think of stories of conscripts feeling alienated after being released from a peace-time service stint.

fasquardon

It's not really surprising. Any military will put a recruit through a highly regimented and disciplined environment.
 
Top