In 1960, however, new regulations were introduced making discipline, and certainly punishments, less severe. Discipline in the Soviet forces was always strict and punishments severe during World War II, penal battalions were given suicidal tasks. Thus, a Soviet soldier, hitherto known as a krasnoarmiich (“Red Army man”), was subsequently called simply a ryadovoy (“ranker”). In 1946 the word Red was removed from the name of the armed forces. The microwave was developed when an engineer working on a radar’s magnetron noticed it made his chocolate bar melt he later tested it with popcorn kernels. The purge’s effects were apparent in the serious defeats suffered by the Red Army during the first months of the German invasion (1941), but a corps of younger commanders soon emerged to lead the Soviet Union to victory in World War II. Many other generals and colonels were either cashiered or sent to forced-labour camps, or both. On June 12, Mikhayl Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, first deputy people’s commissar of war, and seven other Red Army generals were found guilty of plotting to betray the Soviet Union to Japan and Germany, and all were shot. In May 1937 a drastic purge, affecting all potential opponents of Joseph Stalin’s leadership, decimated the officer corps and greatly reduced the morale and efficiency of the Red Army. From The Second World War: Allied Victory (1963), a documentary by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation. In the Battle of Stalingrad (1942–43), the advancing Germans were finally stopped by the Red Army in desperate house-to-house fighting. Moreover, all commanders were graduates of Soviet military academies and officers’ training schools, admission to which was limited to those recommended by the Communist Party. The number of Communist Party members increased among the Red Army’s ranks from 19 to 49 percent during 1925–33, and among officers this increase was much higher. As the Russian Civil War continued, the short-term officers’ training schools began to turn out young officers who were regarded as more reliable politically. Political advisers called commissars were attached to all army units to watch over the reliability of officers and to carry out political propaganda among the troops. Up to 1921 about 50,000 such officers served in the Red Army and with but few exceptions remained loyal to the Soviet regime. Trotsky met this problem by mobilizing former officers of the imperial army. The Red Army was recruited exclusively from among workers and peasants and immediately faced the problem of creating a competent and reliable officers’ corps. Bain News Service/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Leon Trotsky reviewing troops of the Red Guard, c. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.
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