The emergence of armies and armed forces

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The emergence of armies and armed forces
Андрей Тихомиров

Николай Литвинов

The origin and development of armies and armed forces is connected with the formation and development of class society and the state. It is only with the formation of the first class society, which was the slave system, that the army appears. With the development of productive forces, with the change in industrial relations, the nature and methods of warfare changed, and with it the forms of organization of the army. The forms of organization of armies, genera and types of troops are usually adapted to the forms and methods of warfare. The militias and standing armies of the slave-owning period were replaced by recruiting and mercenary troops of the feudal era, and the latter gave way to cadre armies of the modern type, existing, with rare exceptions, on the basis of universal military service.

Андрей Тихомиров, Николай Литвинов

The emergence of armies and armed forces

The creation of armies in the history of different countries

The primitive communal system did not have an army, since there were no classes and no state in it. The generic organization of the society had only a self-acting armed organization of the population. The decomposition of tribal society into classes led to the emergence of the army as an instrument of class domination and oppression, and the self-acting armed organization of the population became impossible. In a slave-owning society, wars were primarily fought in pursuit of slaves and armies were slave-owning. Permanent armies were not formed immediately. The army of Ancient Egypt was based on military settlements and was located on the borders of the state, where allotment of land was payment for military service. Later, permanent armies appeared, the main purpose of which was to keep the population of the conquered regions in subjection and suppress uprisings. This, for example, was typical of the standing army created by Darius Hystaspes in the Persian Empire.

"A new page in the history of India begins with the era of chariot invasions by Indo-European semi-nomadic peoples from the steppes of the Urals and Altai. It was the beginning of a new historical period in ancient India, it is called the "Vedic" in connection with the ancient sacred Indian literature, the texts of the Vedas, the collection (Samhita) of hymns in the Vedic language (the predecessor of Sanskrit). Although these texts were composed between 1500 and 1000 BC, their complete collection was not clearly recorded until 900 or 800 BC. By that time, much of the meaning of these religious texts had already been lost due to many changes in social, economic, religious and political life. The reasons for the conquest of Northern India by the Aryans are as follows: the "tanks" of antiquity are widely used – cavalry and chariots, iron weapons, perhaps something like catapults spewing a fiery barrage of fire, since traces of severe high-temperature fires have been found in Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. The oldest city in Palestine, Megiddon, was destroyed several times due to terrible fires that engulfed the entire city, this was established by archaeological excavations and belonged to the V and VI layers. The word "armageddon" later came from the name of this city – the place where, according to Revelation John (16:16), when the end of the world comes, the last battle will take place with the participation of all the kings of the earth. Scientific research has proved that Armageddon is a distorted Hebrew phrase translated as "the mountain near the city of Megiddo" (in northern Palestine), where many decisive battles took place in ancient times due to the geographical location of this area, and the Roman garrison, known for its cruelty, was stationed there.

The fire trails were left by the ancient Aryans everywhere they visited. Including where their possible predecessors, arias, were located. A monstrous fire destroyed Troy II (many layers were found in Troy), traces of a monstrous fire were found everywhere in this layer. Not far from Babylon are the ruins of Borsippa. The first explorers considered them to be part of the urban area of Babylon. There, in Borsippa, the remains of the temple towered, which best tell about the way the Babylonians and Assyrians once erected their towers. In the turbulent years of the formation of archaeology, the idea arose that this tower from Borsippa could be identified with the world-famous Tower of Babel, which is mentioned in the Bible. Archaeologists have found huge religious premises of the temple and its extraordinarily powerful walls. Since ancient times, traces of a fire disaster have remained on them, which destroyed the temple to the ground. The temple tower was badly damaged during the fire. " (Tikhomirov A.E., Collection of articles in 2014, "PoLyART", Orenburg, 2015, p. 244).

The military system in the slave-owning countries served the ruling class of slaveholders. In the armies of the slave-owning states of Greece and Rome, slaves were recruited as soldiers, but from this the armies did not cease to be an instrument of suppression of slaves in the hands of the ruling class. The geographical position of the states of the ancient world – Egypt, Greece, Rome, the development of production, trade, navigation, the struggle for supremacy on the sea routes led to the emergence and development of the navy. Athens had the most powerful fleet, and then Rome. The navy, as well as the army, served to suppress the resistance of the exploited masses and acquire slaves. During the period of feudal relations, subsistence farming and feudal fragmentation precluded the possibility of maintaining large standing armies. Military power during this period was directly related to land ownership; the ruling class – the feudal knights, when marching, formed a militia – the feudal militia. Serfs in the army were used only as servants and served in the wagon train.

The development of commodity production and the growing social division of labor, the growth of cities, the strengthening of absolutism and the state apparatus, the use of gunpowder and firearms led to the death of feudal militias and contributed to the emergence of mercenary armies. It was more profitable for the bourgeoisie of cities and the bureaucratic monarchy, which was created on the basis of the development of capitalist relations, to initially maintain a mercenary army in wartime than to have a large standing army dependent on it. However, mercenary armies had little connection with the state, they served the one who paid the most (Wallenstein's army in the Thirty-Year-Old Warrior). Absolutism, on the other hand, needed a more reliable standing army to strengthen its power. In the 2nd half of the 17th century, the economic development of the main European states already allowed the maintenance of permanent armies not only in wartime, but also in peacetime. The development of capitalist relations in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. It aggravated the economic rivalry between the states and led to frequent wars, which also caused the appearance of a permanent army and navy. All European states are moving to permanent and national armies, exceeding in 3-4 slots the mercenary armies of the 16th-1st half of the 17th centuries. The system of permanent armies is maintained until the transition to mass cadre armies of the 19th century.

According to the sources of the Byzantine writer-historian Procopius of Caesarea of the 6th century, the ancient Slavs-Ants in the wars with Byzantium in the 6th century. acted with organized forces. In the period of the 9th-10th centuries. the army in Russia consisted of mounted squads and infantry. The troops of Kievan Rus consisted of princely squads and represented the germ of future feudal squads and the people's militia (remnants of the military democracy system). The Kiev prince, in addition to the squad, also had a fleet that operated both on the Dnieper and Danube rivers and on the Black Sea.

In the era of feudal fragmentation of Russia (12th-14th centuries), the bulk of the prince's army consisted of detachments of large landowners (boyars), staffed by the prince's vassals and "people" (slaves). But the number of this princely army was small, and therefore, in necessary cases, at the call of the Grand Duke, appanage princes, boyars and small patrimony ("boyar's children") came to him with their detachments. The main part of the Russian troops consisted of cavalry, but infantry (militia) played a more significant role. Of particular note is the successful use of infantry (militia) by Alexander Nevsky in the Battle of the Neva (1240), Lake Peipsi (1242) and Dmitry Donskoy in the Battle of Kulikovo (1380).

The liberation of Russia from the Mongol-Tatar yoke took place in 1480, exactly one hundred years after the Battle of Kulikovo. Why does the victory at Kulikovo Field in 1380 occupy a more significant place in our minds than the final victory over the Golden Horde? Although all comparisons are conditional, let's turn to events of a huge scale that are quite close to us – the Great Patriotic War. What was the most significant battle against the Nazis? The battles that determined the winners were the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk. The war did not end after them, but the course of the war and its outcome were determined. A man needs to carry a heavy load over the mountain. How difficult is the path to the truth! My strength is running out, so it seems that everything has run out. I want to drop the load, sink down next to him on the rocks and die. But a person, if he has the courage, gets to the top – even if he crawls, and when he looks back from the top, when he sees the terrible steepness that he overcame, then the further path, even if it is also dangerous and difficult, will seem possible to him. And he will go through it with joy and enthusiasm. The Battle of Stalingrad was for the Soviet people the most difficult uphill climb, from the top of which the road to victory opened. And the Battle of Kulikovo for the Russian people became a milestone event in the fight against the Mongol-Tatars.

In the 16th century, a permanent Streltsy army was created in the Moscow state, the strength of which reached 40 thousand people during periods of intense external and internal situation in the 17th century. In the 17th century. in the Moscow state, the fees of datochny people (the germ of conscription) were established and the regiments of the "new system" were formed as a transitional form from the noble militia to the regular army. In 1680, the Moscow state had an army of about 165 thousand people. In addition, a significant number of Ukrainian and Don Cossacks were involved in military service during this period. Peter the Great was the creator of the regular Russian army and navy, which far surpassed the Western European standing armies in terms of manning and combat capability. Under Peter I, the Russian armed forces consisted of regular land regiments, the Navy, and military schools were established at the same time. By 1725, the Russian armed forces consisted of guards, artillery, 126 regiments of regular troops and 100,000 irregular Cossack and Kalmyk cavalry. During this period, the Baltic Fleet had 35 large linear sailing ships, 10 frigates and about 200 galley (rowing) vessels with 28 thousand. sailors and officers. In the warriors against foreign invaders in Russia, a large national people's militia was usually created, which courageously defended the independence of the Motherland. Russian Russian military art of the 18th century gained the opportunity for rapid development and became advanced in comparison with the military art of the permanent Western European armies, which were recruited by recruiting, due to the special nature of the progressive wars waged by the Russian people, a more advanced system of acquisition.