ABSTRACT

In Soviet Russia, the risk of war is not invested with the same conditional, intermittent character as in our Western democracies: it is foretold in the Communist Handbook, and described as the inevitable, logical uprising of the old world against the might of the new. The organisation of the Russian army is the outcome of the decree concerning compulsory military service issued on 18 September, 1925, and confirmed by the decree of 8 August, 1928, in virtue of which all citizens between the ages of nineteen and forty are obliged to serve in the armed forces. Owing to the vastness of the sectors in which all territorial units may be called upon to operate independently, the infantry regiment in the Russian army has a greater developed autonomy than is found in Western armies. Always greatly attracted to science and carried away by scientific hopes and ambitions, Russia looks upon future wars from the viewpoint of discoveries in aviation and chemistry.