Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Red Army

Red Army

Having copied the text to Military of the Soviet Union to concentrate on the land forces of the USSR, I've started improving this article, with refs, changing the structure more toward the U.S. Marine Corps military branch template, and filling out the new sections. There is more on all that to do, but I would appreciate thoughts on anything I've missed. Buckshot06 01:07, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshin

It's clearly moving forward now. Some suggestions on the content:

• There seems to be a pretty bizarre choice of focus in some sections; for example, the single episode of Khalkhin Gol gets more coverage than the entire Civil War. I would avoid detailed discussion of battles in this article in any case, and limit the history section to talking about wars, with individual battles mentioned in context, but not getting detailed narratives in their own right; otherwise, this is likely to become unreadably long.
• The discussion of the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War (both of which should be discussed more) should probably be in the first section (with the context of Trotsky, etc.), with the next section covering things from the end of those to the start of WWII and the Winter War.
• More detail on the Winter War would be appropriate, I think.
• More coverage of doctrine is needed; the bulk of it should probably be left for Military doctrine of the Soviet Union, though, as it's a very complex topic in its own right.
• More citations throughout are needed; the entire "The end of the Soviet Union" section is uncited, for example.

Aside from that, some more minor formatting issues:

• {{Infobox military unit}}, maybe?
• A separate bibliography-style "References" section would be helpful.
• More staggering of the images along both margins might improve the layout.
• I'd replace {{main}} with {{details}} throughout.
• The headings should be fixed to follow the MoS.

Keep up the great work! Kirill Lokshin 02:15, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

M3tal H3ad

Looking good, but a few things,

• Years alone should not be wikilinked, i removed some.
• References go after full-stops or commas not in the middle of a sentence. (only saw this once or twice)
• Try to avoid weasel words like 'some critics' just put critics.
• When using references to the web, please use the WP:CITE template. So links are organized better.
• The image will require a source and fair use rationale Wikipedia:Image_description_page#Fair_use_rationale
• Years with dates should be wikilinked example, December 25, 1991.

Otherwise it looks good to me, Goodwork M3tal H3ad 02:34, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Nick Dowling

As noted by Kiril, this article is definitely heading in the right direction. My suggestions are:

• I'm not sure about the value of the 'Weapons and equipment' section. As the Red Army must have fields hundreds of different items of weaponry over its history it's not feasible to cover even the most important bits of hardware in any detail. If this section is retained I'd suggest that it be limited to discussing the underlying philosophies behind the Red Army's weaponry (eg, the preference for mass producing of indifferent tanks rather than building smaller numbers of high quality tanks, etc)
• Coverage of the Red Army's combat potential during the Cold War would be useful and interesting. Given the poor military performance of the USSR's sattelite states, coverage of how the Red Army would have performed using the same weapons and tactics would be really valuable.
• Much of the material in the history section isn't really relevant to the Red Army. For example, the background to the German invasion in 1941 would fit better in an article on the military history of the Eastern Front. A discussion of the Red Army's capabilities over time would be more useful than the current material of the USSR's military history.
• I'm not sure if this is possible, but some graphs showing the size of the Red Army could be a really powerful way of illustrating its sheer size
• More citations are needed. I've added citation flags to some assertions which, while doubtlessly correct, require a source. --Nick Dowling 05:38, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Planemo

The article looks very unbalanced and lacks any structure.

• Needs more words about ranks and uniforms.
• Needs more words about army branches (especially, tanks, aviation, communications).
• Needs more words about weapons used.
• Needs a section about decorations.
• Needs a short review of notable battle commanders.
• Afghanistan war does not belong here since there was no Red Army at that time (it was Soviet Army). If the coverage of the article extended to this period, then need info about missle forces, modern equipment etc. I suggest to make two articles:one for Red Army (Civil War, pre-WWII campangns and WWII) and one for Soviet Army (Cold War, Afghanistan and Warsaw pact).
• The USSR is generally considered to enter the WWII 22 June, 1941, so Polish campaign should be separated from the WWII section.

--Planemo 00:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how meaningful a split of the article at 1946 would be. While the term "Red Army" was, admittedly, abandoned (at least in official usage), it remained fundamentally the same force regardless of the exact name. Kirill Lokshin 01:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

And present-day Russian army is also fundamentally the same force. Anyway the article will be very long if to combine the both and there is little in common between Red Army in 1918 and Soviet Army in 1985. We also need a large section for WWII in this article I feel, so it will be only fair to split it in two. The aims, doctrine and strategy of the army also were different before the Cold War and after it srtarted. Otherwise the article should be renamed anyway.--Planemo 18:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)