Talk:Mechanised corps (Soviet Union)

Duplication and Doctrine

There is a lot of duplication between this article and Tank Corps (Soviet). Would it be a good idea to merge them? Balcer 12:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The duplication is intentional at this stage, and only affects the pre-war section. They were separate formation types, and I think warrant their own articles, so I think they should not be merged. Ideally, there should be an article on the development of Soviet armoured doctrine containing most of the pre-war section, with these two articles only containing relevant info. Not sure if I am the right person to draft the overall doctrine article though. Andreas 12:58, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Can you think of a good title for a general article? We could at least create a stub for it, and let it grow from there. Balcer 13:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this one should do Deep_operations Andreas 13:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a good start, but I wonder if we don't also need something broader and under a more general title. Maybe Soviet Armor Doctrine, or something along those lines, that would cover developments in the whole 1918-1991 span (one possible reference is here). Deep operations is really a doctrine that existed only in the 1930s, and it actually died, so to speak, with the officers executed during the Great Purge. Of course various elements of it were used by the Red Army during the war and afterwards, but properly speaking it was not the same thing, in my opinion at least. Balcer 14:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that pre- and post-war developments are probably quite separate, and to try to shoehorn Soviet military doctrine into a single article spanning 1917-1991 is probably not going to be practical (just consider the impact of nuclear weapons on the battlefield). In the meantime, I think describing the concept of Deep Operations (of which the armoured doctrine is a subset) in more depth should be a good start. It is important to divide the operational from the tactical doctrine. Tanks had their own tactics, but within operations their doctrine is invariably (and in my view inseparably) part of the overall doctrine. So an armoured doctrine article would be tactical, while the role of armour in operations needs to be discussed in the context of operational doctrine, i.e. Deep Battle/Operations, pre-1941. Andreas 14:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, let's develop Deep operations first and see where that goes. Balcer 14:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

See also GABTU.

I think a better translation for "Automated Armoured" would be simply the conventional name Armoured (or is that mechanized?). —Michael Z. 2006-05-09 21:31 Z

I have seen this translated as "Armoured Car and Tank". Balcer 22:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I have often seen 'mechanized' used in German translations of Soviet officer memoirs. Andreas 06:00, 10 May 2006 (UTC)