From its revolutionary inception in 1917, to its counter-revolutionary demise in 1991, the Red Army played a crucial role in all aspects of Soviet life. The Soviet Military Experience is the first general work to place the Soviet army into its true social, political and international contexts.Focuses on the Bolshevik Partys intention to create an army of a new type, the armys aim was both to defend the people and propagate Marxist ideals to the rest of the world. Lenin believed that this new peoples army would be a tool for social transformation and cohesion. But the Soviet Military Experience shows that by the end of the Cold War and collapse of the USSR in 1991, Russian society once again saw their army as the elitist and callous organisation which its Bolshevik founders had tried so hard to avoid.This timely account of the Soviet military experience includes discussion of the:* origins of the Workers and Peasants Red Army* effects of the Civil War* Bolshevik regimes use of the military as a school of socialism* effects of collectivization and rapid industrialisation of the 1920s and 1930s* Second World War and its profound repercussions* ethnic tensions within the army* effect of Gorbachevs policies of Glasnost and Perestroika This up-to-date account is organised chronologically and thematically within chapters, and includes a comprehensive bibliography.