Contemporary Soviet Military Affairs

This volume examines the effect of World War II on the evolution of Soviet military affairs. It surveys the devastating effect of the war on Russia as a whole, and the ways it was forced to reorganize its internal systems under the impact of war. The aim of the book is to focus on the Soviet military at the end of the 1980s and on the war experience itself and its impact on the Russian psyche. No society in modern time has absorbed a blow of the severity of Operation Barbarossa and survived as a political, economic and social entity. Consequently, the Soviets view the war as a "great patriotic war" and its legacy has endured among its citizens, reaching a zenith during the Brezhnev era, and only now giving way to a new postwar generation under Gorbachev who largely plays down memories of the war. Whilst concentrating their study on the Soviet military the authors have placed it against the background of a broader social, economic and political context.