Good Sources on Cold War USSR and Warsaw Pact Soldiers, Conscription and RPG Details
 

I'm looking to detail a few dozen former and current USSR and other Warsaw Pact military personnel in late 1990 and through 1991.

Most of them will be pilots and technical specialists concerned with Mi-8/Mi-17 Hip and Mi-24/Mi-25 Hind helicopters, in particular logistics experts skilled at setting up forward arming and refueling posts (FARP) near enemy positions, to keep helicopters in the air and effective as much as possible, but there will also be master parachutists, reconaissance experts and pathfinders to go in before anyone else to find and mark drop zones and landing zones, as well as specialists in aerial resupply.

Also, VDV and Spetsnaz personnel who have experience of being deployed by Hip transport helicopters and making air assaults supported by Hinds. The more such troops have worked closely with personnel of the forward arming and refueling posts for the helicopters, the more useful they would be. The same applies for pilots and crew chiefs of cargo planes providing aerial resupply, riggers who prepared supply drops and knew how to air drop ordnance or fuel into supply landing zones while minimizing the risk to ground troops, and mechanized infantry and drivers of ground units supplying helicopters at the front, especially behind enemy lines or in hostile territory.

What are some good books in English, ideally available on Amazon.com in Kindle format, on the subject of USSR conscript soldiers, their experiences, the basic form of the service, culture and what kind of contracts were offered for different jobs while serving?

I know there were conscript VDV and even Spetsnaz, so short-service soldiers were obviously somehow chosen for perceived elite units. For that matter, there were multiple services, from the Border Guards to other armed security services under the Interior Ministry, through the KGB (with their own Spetsnaz) to the GRU (at least administratively, owner of most Spetsnaz units involved in the War in Afghanistan), all the way to the regular Soviet Army, Rocket Forces, Air Forces and all the rest.

Was selection into different services, branches or units based on formal performance in physical, vocational and intellectual testing or was the process opaque to those involved and widely suspected to be mostly about who your family were connected to?

How were the different services perceived by ambitious conscripts who wanted to secure a place in a good university? Were the most dangerous combat assignments rewarding in social or economic ways, to make up for the risk, or were they mostly something the well-connected tried to avoid?

I know East Germans, in the latter years of the existence of that country and its conscription, had 18 months of duty, but volunteering for three years instead got you into NCO school. Officers had to agree to sign contracts for up to 10 or 25 years, but part of their service would involve university education and former military officers were often in a good place to go into politics or business, with their network of connections.

Was it similar in the Soviet Armed Forces?

How long would contracts be for skilled pathfinders of the VDV or helicopter mechanics?

How about specialist reconaissance platoons of GRU or KGB Spetsnaz? Were all their personnel full-time professional soldiers with careers ahead of them within the paramilitary arm of the GRU or KGB, or could it be that some picked conscripts served in Spetsnaz units under GRU or KGB authority during their military service, but if they did not specifically opt to accept an offer for a longer service and NCO or officer rank, for example, they would become regular citizens again, perhaps work as physical therapists or wrestling coaches in gymnasiums?

Were all helicopter pilots officers and, if so, when did they go to university to obtain a degree? Before or after flying in combat?

Basically, what do I read to most efficiently, but with some flavour, get enough information about the Russians and other citizens of the USSR who fought in Afghanistan 1979-1989, as well as various other Warsaw Pact military personnel of roughly the same period, to detail their background well enough for them to feel like NPCs with the texture of actual people.

Personal experience or family anecdotes of the period are totally valid information too.

Re: Good Sources on Cold War USSR and Warsaw Pact Soldiers, Conscription and RPG Deta
 

I've been trying to find books on how the Soviet conscription system actually worked and how the experiences of those selected for special duties or units like helicopter pilots, mechanics or technicians concerned with forward helicopter resupply, VDV, airborne pathfinders or Spetsnaz would have been, in English on Amazon.com, but either I'm using the wrong search terms, or the Amazon.com search engine is terrible.

I can find more data on the experiences of people serving in the militaries of Cuba*, Iran, Iraq, Rhodesia, South Africa and Israel at the same time, but these are are smaller countries, with far fewer potential authors to be translated into English. Or just have English-speaking authors research the sources and write books.

*I can find interviews with Cubans who served in Angola easier than I can find some good books on Soviet conscripts who fought in Afghanistan. Why are there so few memoirs or history books on the experiences of Soviet conscripts in the 1970s and 1980s on Amazon?

Re: Good Sources on Cold War USSR and Warsaw Pact Soldiers, Conscription and RPG Deta
 

For most it was fairly 'fair', though I think party members' families could arrange better outcomes by making sure their children went to the right youth programs, etc.

For everyone else, each service were given quotas, and they got to pick based on what the government decided was their need for quality troops. So the Strategic Rocket Forces got first pick, then the various aviation forces, and so on. Infantry was at the bottom of the list. The navy was probably the least popular outcome, because they got you for three years rather than just two.

NCOs were selected on conscription and went to a special 'sergeant's school' for six months. This had the result of putting them in charge of troops with at least six months more experience of actual service than them, so it took a very strong person to be effective - actual status and power within the enlisted ranks was based on 'time in', not official rank.

Technical specialists tended to be officers, so technical service branches would have more officers than a NATO country's would, with them taking to place of the US' warrant officers, etc.

My recollection is that officers signed up for a certain term, and if they wanted to make a career of it the next sign-up was for much longer. Senior NCOs would also be careerists, but reenlistment after the initial conscription period was very low (3% rings a bell), so there was always a very serious shortage of experienced senior NCOs (and thus a lack of continuity of institutional knowledge) and junior officers had to do way too much of what should've been the NCO cadre's jobs.

I don't have any great sources, unfortunately, and I studied this stuff long ago.

"Victor Suvorov's" Inside the Soviet Army might still be of use to you. It's old, but was written in the time you're looking at.

Re: Good Sources on Cold War USSR and Warsaw Pact Soldiers, Conscription and RPG Deta
 

I also don't have great sources, but my understanding based off of dated jokes, all fit male university students were trained to be reserve junior officers, and surely some of them were called up to serve.
Jokes about idiotic praporschiks (comparable to the lowest Warrant Officer or highest NCO), jokes about referring to the United States as "our probable military adversary".

Digital Forms of Viktor Suvorov's Books
 

Thanks. I already bought his Spetsnaz book, as it was available in Kindle form, but, uncortunately, his Inside the Soviet Army seems only offered in hardcover form on Amazon. I think I'm paying for some academic-esque sites where either that book or his book about GRU careers might be accessible in digital form.

Does anybody know if there even if a PDF or other digital file of those of his books Amazon doesn't sell for Kindle?

Re: Good Sources on Cold War USSR and Warsaw Pact Soldiers, Conscription and RPG Deta
 

You might have to scour the internet for that, or just order it if there is no other way to find it. Something you could also try for is to look for thrift stores or surplus stores to find old books or documents that could help. I am not the best when it comes to finding historical sources, but I have some pieces of the soviet tactical doctrine if that helps at all.

Re: Good Sources on Cold War USSR and Warsaw Pact Soldiers, Conscription and RPG Deta
 

For the same length of time as other conscripts or longer?

Any idea how someone became a praporshchik?

Re: Digital Forms of Viktor Suvorov's Books
 

I read Suvorov's "Inside the Soviet Army" sometime in the early 1990s and recall that it had some factual errors, possibly introduce as misinformation if Suvorov was a double agent.

Re: Digital Forms of Viktor Suvorov's Books
 

I managed to borrow it from a digital library and enjoyed it enormously. What factual errors did you spot?

That Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun could have been a double agent, I find fantastical. He's still alive, living in Britain. The Soviet Union collapsed and Rezun spends his time arguing with other historians over whether Stalin planned to go to war with Germany in order to conquer Europe, or if he just took advantage of a lucky opportunity. The debate is interesting, as historical intepretation tends to be, and difficult to adjudicate, as it tends to be when the motives of paranoid tyrants are analyzed without access to even a fraction of the data we'd need to know what information each party was operating with, let alone what they were thinking.

I'd be much more inclined to write off discrepancies in Rezun's works on the fact that he served in units where even training in tank or armoured vehicle tactics rarely had access to the actual vehicles and everything was kept secret. His personal experience did not extend to even a fraction of the weapon systems or type of units he mentions. Some things are vividly and personally described and I find them credible. They are anecdotes of his service. Other things he reconstructs from rumours and guesswork.

He knew a lot more than Western intelligence analysts tended to do at the time, but it's not like he ever sat in a pilot's seat for an air defence interceptor or attack helicopter. He was a junior tanker officer who accepted an 'all-arms' designation, meaning he commanded an infantry platoon too, served briefly in a reconaissance unit and then attended the GRU academy for foreign agents. These things seem confirmed and he certainly did defect, with his family. I can't see a motive for him to act as some kind of double agent, as what would he possibly want from the USSR?

Also, why would the USSR want him telling the Western world how cleverly simple their weapons were, so that monkeys and even Russian soldiers could use them, with similar levels of training, and that their system was decaying, corrupt and would collapse if not propped up with brutality most Westerners could not imagine?

Re: Good Sources on Cold War USSR and Warsaw Pact Soldiers, Conscription and RPG Deta
 

Scripd was useful, as well as some other similar thing of which I can't remember the name. I'm thinking about registering for some courses at the University of Iceland, that would open up unlimited access to JSTOR, ResearchGate and a bunch of other services with peer-reviewed publications and sometimes ways to follow citations from them, for more or less equivalent cost of paying for those services as an 'independent researcher'. Though I have to check if I'm allowed to sign up for university courses while am on recovery disability for my mystery illness.

Re: Digital Forms of Viktor Suvorov's Books
 

The link in the wikipedia article: http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/index.html seems to go to an html version, mostly in English.