Herspring Dale R. Russian Civil-Military Relations

Indiana University Press, 1996. — 192 p.From the author of Rumsfeld's Wars, "an important addition to the bookshelf of any analyst of post-Soviet security affairs" (Slavic Review). Dale Herspring analyzes three key periods of change in civil-military relations in the Soviet Union and post-communist Russia: the Bolshevik construction of the communist Red Army in the 1920s; the era of Perestroika, when Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to implement a more benign military doctrine and force posture; and the Yeltsin era, when a new civilian and military leadership set out to restructure civil-military relations. The book concludes with a timely discussion of the relationship of the military to the current political struggle in Russia.