Who ordered the attack.

[Cdnwolf]

Just curious... we have lots of info on the Civgov vs Milgov on the US side but has anyone done a run down of who is currently in charge on the Soviet side? Also who ordered the attack that over ran the 5'th Mech division at Kalisz?

[Rainbow Six]

There was an article about the USSR in one of the first Challenge magazines after T2K came out. I think it had some details about who was currently in charge in the USSR. Various warlords were mentioned...I seem to recall mention of something called the Red Legion and a self appointed King (or Tsar?) in the Crimea amongst others.

I have it somwhere. I'll try and find it.

[Rainbow Six]

OK, found it.

The following are excerpts from Challenge 31. Expanding on some of the ideas put forward in that article would probably be quite an interesting project.

Concerning the New Red Legion

In late January of 1999, a group known as the New Red
Legion, which consisted of some members of the Presidium
and a few 'retired" army offlciers, gained the support of the
commander of the 9th Soviet Army at Ryazan and arrested the
remnants of the Politburo. Brief skirmishes took place with the
106th Guards Air Assault division and with some KGB units,
but by the end of the month, what remained of the civilian
government had passed into the hands of the New Red Legion.
About all this new government actually controlled was the
Urals, an area bounded byTula, Moscow and Ryazan, and the
area around Leningrad. The New Red Legion immediately
ordered the Front commanders to suppress all revolts and to
renew the war against the enemies of the Soviet Union. Many
of the Front commanders never even bothered to reply; those
that did asked for the means to fulfill the demands being made
on them.

In June of 2000, the New Red legion and the Strategic Reserve
army moved into the Urals. This was what was left of the USSR
of old. The New Red legion issued orders declaring nearly all
surviving front commanders traitors and condemning them to
death in absentia. They also called upon the workers and
peasants throughout the old Soviet Union to rise against the
revisionist and bourgeoisie forces that had betrayed the
Marxist-leninist revolution. The New Red legion then disappeared
inlo the Urals where it is reported that they are actively
trying to rebuild the Soviet Union along the same lines as
it existed in 1995.

Concerning the Crimea

In September of 1999, a shadowy figure calling himself "King
Kutseyev" rallied together several armed bands in the Crimea
and seized Sevastopol. By October, the whole of the Crimean
peninsula was under the control of Kutseyev. Kutseyev, who
claimed that he was a descendant of the Romanovs, announced
the establishment of the New Russian Empire with its Capital
being Sevastopol. The armed forces of this new monarchy were
reasonably powerful and had little trouble defending the territory
it had staked out. The Crimea became a haven which
represented at least some degree of law and order, and the
government there welcomed refugees.

In August of 2000, the Ukraine defeated the New Russian Empire
and absorbed the Crimea. Also, negotiations with Soviet
armies in or around the Ukraine began with an end towards
either incorporating them into the new government or alleast
to stop fighting each other. The events of the summer have
shown that the Ukraine is the most stable force in the area of
western Russia and a power to be dealt with in the future.

Concerning who ordered the attack on the 5th

The armies facing each other in Europe continued to fight
each other but only in a haphazard manner. They were no
longer fighting for political beliefs; the governments those
beliefs were based on no longer existed. The armies fought
each other out of habit and a deeply ingrained suspicion
fostered by the long years of war. Soviet armies stayed together
because staying with the army represented the greatest chance
of survival. Many of the officers and soldiers of the Soviet armies
were still, in a manner, loyal to the Soviet idea of government,
and they thought that maybe someday they could help
reestablish that form of government. Until that time they would
fight to survive.

[Adm.Lee]

Interesting, I had forgotten about all of that.

Given the we 'know' in 2300, Ukraine is still independent and a European power (albeit as a French ally), we can see that their independence came early after the war wound down.

One wonders whether the Red Bear, seen in the module, was a unifier for Ukraine, or a spoiler?

[pmulcahy11b]

A few blurbs from the v1 Soviet Army Vehicle Guide that may be useful:

The government of the Soviet Union had, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist. The Ukraine, the Baltic states, Siberia, the central Asian districts and the southern areas were all in various stages of revolt, and units from those districts felt more loyalty to their 'homeland" than they did to a central government. What was left of the Soviet government was limited to what was roughly the Ural military district and the area around the ruins of Moscow and Tula.

Most of the information about the Soviet forces as of July 2000 has been obtained from official sources. We have the U.S. Army's last intelligence report on the strength and dispositions of the Soviet Army dated March 1, 2000. Also, we have a copy of the last known Soviet report about the state of that army received from the personal collection of Major-General I. M.
Kotiev, who surrendered to the Germans in August of 2000. The last source is from the Japanese, who have travelled extensively in the areas that were once part of the Soviet Union, trying to establish trade with the various local governments. Of course, we have many private diaries, letters, orders and remembrances, but these are usually limited to information about a single division; and we have found that many times, the average soldier really did not know where he was.

The area that is still calling itself the Soviet Union still believes itself to be at war; thus, we have been able to obtain no information at all from it. Thus, what may someday prove to be a valuable resource is still closed to us. At any rate, the information presented here is the result of painstaking research and is as accurate as possible.

This information is on p.20 of the v1 Soviet Army Vehicle Guide.

I still can't figure out what date the fictional writer is coming from, though I have an idea that the time period would be 2003-2005 (of course, a guess on my part). I have a guess that the writer may be from one of the British Commonwealth countries or was taught English by a teacher from one of those countries, but this has a flimsy basis on my part (the spelling of the word "travelled" vs the US spelling, "traveled").

[Legbreaker]

The East European Sourcebook has the following to say about Russian Government supposedly as of the 1st of July 2000:

The Russian government is that of the now-defunct Soviet Union. It resembles a Kremlin dictatorial oligarchy, and functions as an inefficient military bureaucracy. Military law is the only law in Russia, and military commanders have only to answer to their immediate superiors for any transgressions.