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An army, besides the generalized meanings of ‘a country's armed forces’ or its ‘land forces’, is a type of formation in militaries of various countries, including the Soviet Union. This article serves a central point of reference for Soviet armies without individual articles, and explains some of the differences between Soviet armies and their U.S. and British counterparts. During the Russian Civil War, most Soviet armies consisted of independent rifle and cavalry divisions, and corps were rare. During World War II, Soviet armies included the all-arms (общевойсковые), tank (танковые), air (воздушные), and air-defence (противо-воздушной обороны (ПВО)) armies which included a number of corps, divisions, brigades, regiments and battalions belonging largely to the appropriate branch of the armed forces or of the arm of service, such as the rifle corps. In the emergency of June 1941 it was found that inexperienced commanders had difficulty controlling armies with more than two or three subordinate corps, and they several armies were disbanded, to be reformed later in the war. Thus Soviet High Command's (Stavka's) Circular 01, of July 15, 1941, directed several changes to Red Army force structure, including the elimination of rifle corps headquarters and subordination of rifle divisions directly to rifle army headquarters.〔David M. Glantz and Jonathan House, ''When Titans Clashed,'' Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. ISBN 0-7006-0899-0, p. 65〕 Following the Second World War, an army was reorganised with four or five divisions, often equivalent to a corps in the militaries of other countries. During a war, an Army of the Soviet military was typically subordinated to a front. In peacetime, an army was usually subordinated to a military district. ==History== There were large variations in structure and size. For example, in the October 1944 Battle of Debrecen, the 27th Army was a massive organization with nine rifle divisions, an artillery division, and four attached Romanian infantry divisions. The 40th Army, by comparison, had only five rifle divisions.〔Boyevoy sostav sovetskoy armiyi (Soviet Army Order of Battle) 1941-1945〕 Both armies were part of the Second Ukrainian Front. Special titles given to Soviet armies included ''red banner army'', following the award of the Order of the Red Banner and ''shock army''. The famous image of the flag over the Reichstag was of men from the 3rd Shock Army's 150th Rifle Division. In accordance with prewar planning that saw shock armies as special penetration formations, the 1st Shock Army was formed in November–December 1941 to spearhead the December counteroffensive north of Moscow.〔Glantz 2005, p 144.〕 A total of five shock armies were formed by the winter campaigns of 1942–43, the 2nd (former 26th Army), 3rd, and 4th (the former 27th Army). During the Stalingrad counteroffensive the 5th Shock Army was the last such formation formed. The 2nd Shock Army was reformed three times, most famously after being encircled in the Lyuban operation south of Leningrad, after which its commander, General Andrey Vlasov, went over to the German side. Armies which distinguished themselves in combat during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 often became ''Guards armies''. These included the 8th Guards Army. As World War II went on, the complement of supporting units attached to a Soviet army became larger and more complex. By 1945, a Soviet army typically had attached mortar, antitank, anti-aircraft, howitzer, gun–howitzer, rocket launcher, independent tank, self-propelled gun, armored train, flamethrower, and engineer-sapper units.〔The 47th Army in January 1945 had nine rifle divisions, a Guards gun-artillery brigade, a rocket launcher regiment, five anti-aircraft regiments, an independent tank regiment, four regiments of self-propelled guns, an armoured train unit, a DUKW truck battalion, an engineer-sapper brigade, and two flamethrower units.〕 In particular, the ratio of artillery pieces to riflemen increased as the war went on, reflecting the Soviet need for increased firepower as manpower reserves began to decline after staggering infantry losses.〔The ratio of field guns to ration strength in the Red Army increased from 6 guns per 1,000 men in June 1941, to 9 guns by April 1945. Sources are Krivosheev, pp 250–51, and Glantz (''When Titans Clashed''), pp 301, 305.〕 From the Soviet Air Force, air armies were attached to fronts. They were made up of two to three aviation corps. The 16th Air Army is one of the longest serving, still active today in the Moscow Military District. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「List of Soviet armies」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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