ABSTRACT
In September 1971, illness forced Marshal of the Soviet Union M. V. Zakharov to relinquish his position as chief of the Soviet General Staff. Zakharov's replacement, General of the Army V. G. Kulikov, was born in 1921, after the formation of the Red Army. The Soviet Armed Forces reached this position of power in approximately fifty years, a period so short that it scarcely spanned the military career of Marshal Zakharov. The Red Army, as the predecessor of today's Soviet Armed Forces was called, had a turbulent history. Ranks of the Red Army were filled rapidly by Red Guards and former soldiers of the Petrograd Garrison, who were among the first volunteers. German forces, penetrating the weak defenses of both the Red Army and the Red Guard detachments, moved deep into the Ukraine, Estonia, and Latvia. Human life and suffering aside, the cost of the purges to the Red Army was inestimable.
