Today, when we look back at the collapse of the Soviet Union, we can find a striking scene: from the outbreak of the "August 19 Incident", the Soviet army, which was the backing of the Soviet Union's national armed forces, was in a state of inaction.
Why didn't the Soviets rush to the streets of Moscow to suppress the crowds of demonstrators? What is it that makes this world's mighty army no longer powerful? Is it because of years of hunger and poverty? Or was there something wrong with the ideological and political education within the Soviet army?
For the Soviet Union, a strong Soviet army was the basis for the Soviet Union to maintain its superpower status. Whether it is the establishment of Soviet power or the heroic struggle during World War II, it is inseparable from the bloody struggle of the Soviet army. In other words, without a strong Soviet army, the basis of Soviet rule would cease to exist.
However, as the Soviet Union fell apart, the Soviet army, with its 4 million standing army, remained indifferent, and some of them even played a role in promoting independent action in the "August 19 Incident". What's going on here? Why did the powerful Soviet army "aid and abett"?
In fact, what were the Soviets busy doing when the Soviet Union collapsed? To put it simply, 78 percent of them are busy quitting the party. Because with the reform of "new thinking", the ideological offensive of the opposition forces has gradually penetrated into the Soviet barracks, which actually aggravated the internal differentiation of Soviet military ideology.
Objectively speaking, the foreign wars launched by the Soviet Union for many years did have an impact on the thinking of the Soviet army. At first, the Soviet army was able to win foreign wars, but as the international situation changed, unjust wars such as the war in Afghanistan were also in trouble. The Soviets were unable to show their might in Afghanistan as before, and there were even a large number of casualties.
Because of this, war weariness within the Soviet army was also rising year by year, and they called on the authorities to withdraw the army. However, the Soviet authorities at that time disregarded public opinion and deceived the soldiers at home, which eventually led to a tragedy of hasty withdrawal.
As the saying goes: fortresses are often breached from within, and this sentence is naturally true.
On the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet leadership led by Gorbachev began to lose trust in the Soviet army and decided to reform the Soviet army. After 1990, with the further development of "new thinking", the Soviet army was even more denigrated by public opinion with ulterior motives, resulting in a sharp decline in the status of military personnel in Soviet society.
On the other hand, the excessive prevarication of the Soviet military by the Soviet top brass also left the Soviet army in a position of isolation. In cases such as the Tbilisi incident and the Baku incident, the Soviet top brass often sent Soviet troops to suppress the situation in order to calm the situation. When there were casualties, they put the blame on the Soviets. This was really unacceptable to the Soviet army internally, and even some Soviet marshals were quite critical of it.
In fact, since the outbreak of the Rust Incident, the nature of the Soviet army has undergone a fundamental change. In order to escort the continuation of the "new thinking" reform, Gorbachev decided to use a knife against the Soviet army, which in his view was a destabilizing factor for the Powerful and "Disobedient" Soviet Army. As a result, a political movement for the reform of the Soviet army also began quickly.
After 1990, Gorbachev replaced the managers of the Soviet army, including a large number of Soviet top brass loyal to the Soviets. This was accompanied by the emergence of many pro-Western politicians on the stage of history, and they played a role in the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.
In addition, the policy of abolishing and reducing political officers by the political commissars of the Soviet army pushed the Soviet Union into the abyss of disintegration.
In order to embody the so-called "democratization" ideology, the Soviet authorities took the lead in the adjustment of the army structure and took the lead in attacking the General Political Department of the Soviet Army. Not only did they cut down nearly 80,000 political and military officers, but they also made it clear in the subsequent Constitution that "the CPSU organizations and their institutions shall not interfere in the work of the executive and military command organs." This effectively deprived the Bolshevik Party of the power to lead the army, which is a reason for handing over the leadership of the army.
After this, there was a "wind of resignation" within the Soviet army, and even Shaposhnikov, the commander of the Soviet Air Force at the time, also chose to abandon the party.
The immediate consequence of the organisational abandonment of leadership over the army by the Bolshevik Party was that the Soviet army did not obey orders at crucial moments, and they even turned against each other.
When the August 19 Incident broke out, the State of Emergency Committee repeatedly urged Defense Minister Azov to order action to disperse the crowds that had come to demonstrate. But Yazov, taking into account the bloodshed that the operation could cause, chose to leave the army in place to avoid a repeat of the events in Tbilisi.
Soviet paratroopers, led by Grachev, also refused to enter the White House, the office building of the Russian Republic, and they committed a major intrigue in the name of carrying out the orders of the Ministry of Defense. Even the "Alpha Group," which was regarded as the elite of the Soviet army, rejected the orders given by the KGB headquarters to attack the White House and capture Yeltsin before the battle. Thus, the Soviet government completely lost control of the country and the army.
Less than a week after the August 19 Incident, the Soviet government collapsed. At the end of the same year, the edifice of the Red Soviet Union also collapsed and quickly disappeared into the long river of history.