[chico20854]

Originally Posted by Matt Wiser

Those rear-area divisions must've been someone's way of having additional divisions on the OB without having to really do much. I mean, late WW II or early 1950s era equipment and forty-year old reservists to man them? Reminds me of the image in Bear and the Dragon where General Bodarenko is settling into his new command and finding out he's got warehouses full of World War II era tanks and artillery, and the soldiers assigned to the stockpiles turned the engines over on the tanks, and even took them out for test drives (and probably test fired the guns, too). That would've worked in the '60s or '70s, but in a continued Cold War into the mid '90s? The Russians actually had exercises in 1995 which featured JS-3 tanks, and they were withdrawn from service immediately after the exercise.

In 1988 a category B(!) tank division in the Ukraine turned in its T-10s to the local steel combine to be melted down. And the 1990 Victory Day parade featured T-34s running through Red Square. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ix7UwFwlDI

As far as 40-year old reservists, with conscription it would be possible to really increase the size of the Red Army (at the cost of crippling the economy further) with just men in their 20s. (To double the peacetime strength would require callup of the last 2 classes, those 20-22 years old. That would bring the whole army up to or near full strength. Expand the net to 22-26 year olds and you double the size again. New conscripts equal to 50% of peacetime enlisted strength come in every six months before lowering the age of conscription. With these sort of numbers it takes a while before you get to 40 year olds. (Officers and michmeny are another issue, however...)

Originally Posted by Matt Wiser

If no Glasnost, those "Protection and Guarantee" Regiments would probably have maintained their designation as independent MR Regiments. Those independent regiments may have been how Ivan found four regiments available to deploy to Cuba in 1962, as none of the four that were sent to Cuba belonged to a parent division. And separating four regiments from their parent divisions may have alerted Western Intelligence that something was up.

Those regiments were tank regiments before Glasnost. I remember reading something in Russian about the units sent to Cuba in 1962; they were single regiments assembled as composites from entire divisions from the Moscow and other central military districts; new regiments were raised to replace them.