Soviet Army

The Soviet Army, formally the Soviet Ground Forces, was the land warfare service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992, and the successor of the Red Army. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991 it stayed under the command of the Commonwealth of Independent States until it was formally abolished on 14 February 1992; most of it passed to the Russian Ground Forces, while units outside Russia were taken over by the post-Soviet states. In Soviet usage the word army could also mean the combined land and air components of the armed forces. After the Second World War it was cut from over 500 rifle divisions and reorganised around tank and motor rifle divisions; by the middle of the 1980s it held about 210 divisions, and in 1989 it numbered two million men. Its largest force abroad was the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, and it fought the Soviet-Afghan War that began with the deployment of the 40th Army in December 1979.