A subtle, profound, and authoritative assessment of the life and
sudden death of the Soviet military by the former director of the
National Security Agency. By almost every measure, the Soviet armed
forces were the largest in the world. By 1985, they were nearly 6
million strong, with another 25 million reserves. Behind that force
stood a military-industrial complex far larger than the West
understood, accounting for at least 20 percent and perhaps more
than 30 percent of GNP. It was plain to Mikhail Gorbachev and even
to military leaders that, if the Soviet Union was to deal with its
economic crisis, it had to bring these expenditures under control.
The genius of this analysis is to show how a "cold, calculating,
and brilliantly duplicitous" Gorbachev outmaneuvered not only his
opponents in the Politburo and the military but even himself. His
weakness in economics has been widely commented on, but Odom shows
that his large, unilateral reductions in the size of Soviet forces,
intended to show the West that the Soviet Union was serious about
negotiating mutual reductions, began the process of disintegration.
Glasnost also turned a harsh light on the realities of military
life. Odom argues that there was a serious moral deterioration in
the military in the 1970s and '80s, that hazing became increasingly
dangerous and uncontrolled, and that resistance to conscription
developed rapidly. Many in the military saw the danger and opposed
his policies, but the close relationship between the party and the
armed forces made independent action difficult. The military
leadership was also "too corrupt, weak, careerist, and indecisive
to act on its own." The final irony was when a group of generals
around Yeltsin, for corrupt reasons of their own, schemed to
prevent the Soviet military resuscitation in the short-lived
Commonwealth of Independent States' armed forces. A careful,
thoughtful, and outstanding contribution to the understanding of a
tumultous period. (Kirkus Reviews)
One of the great surprises in modern military history is the
collapse of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1991-along with the
party-state with which it was inextricably intertwined. In this
important book, a distinguished United States Army officer and
scholar traces the rise and fall of the Soviet military, arguing
that it had a far greater impact on Soviet politics and economic
development than was perceived in the West. General William E. Odom
asserts that Gorbachev saw that dramatically shrinking the military
and the military-industrial sector of the economy was essential for
fully implementing perestroika and that his efforts to do this led
to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Odom enhances his account
with interviews with key actors in the Soviet Union before, during,
and after the collapse. He describes the condition of the Soviet
military during the mid-1980s and explains how it became what it
was-its organizational structures, manpower policies, and
military-industrial arrangements. He then moves to the dramatic
events that led to its destruction, taking us to the most secret
circles of Soviet policy making, as well as describing the public
debates, factional struggles in the new parliament, and street
combat as army units tried to repress the political forces
unleashed by glasnost. Odom shows that just as the military was the
ultimate source of stability for the multinational Soviet state,
the communist ideology justified the military's priority claim on
the economy. When Gorbachev tried to shift resources from the
military to the civilian sector to overcome economic stagnation, he
had to revise the official ideology in order to justify removing
the military from its central place. Paralyzed by corruption,
mistrust, and public disillusionment, the military was unable and
unwilling to intervene against either Gorbachev's perestroika or
Yeltsin's dissolution of the Soviet Union.
General
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