K.E. Voroshilov and Military Development in the USSR (late 1920s – early 1930s)

This article is devoted to K.E. Voroshilov's tenure as People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and attempts to examine the military-political aspects of this tenure. The study focuses on the principles upon which military development in the USSR was based at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, principles for which Voroshilov himself can be considered a proponent. This goal is achieved through the achievement of several intermediate objectives: determining the most appropriate model of military development from Voroshilov's perspective, elucidating Voroshilov's attitude toward the technical re-equipment of the army and navy and the pace of this rearmament, and identifying the timeframe within which Voroshilov articulated his own views on the modernization measures carried out in the armed forces. The article relies on historical descriptive and historical genetic methods, necessitating the accumulation of documentary materials for subsequent research. This paper draws on previously overlooked documents from Voroshilov's personal archive, deposited in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) and the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA). Based on these findings, it is concluded that, in matters of military development, K.E. Voroshilov recognized the importance of technical re-equipping the Red Army and Red Navy, which was to include strengthening the Air Force, motorizing the ground forces, and establishing tank forces as the primary strike force on the battlefield. Regarding the size of the army, Voroshilov advocated a limited increase in the number of military personnel during peacetime, favoring a qualitative transformation through the improvement of their weapons and the ability to use them in combat. Regarding the role of the Navy, the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs supported representatives of the "land-based" party, who considered a large battleship fleet unpromising given the USSR's geopolitical position. Thus, in matters of military development, Voroshilov was guided by the concept of economy, within the framework of which the quantitative expansion of the army and navy was a dangerous and unacceptable measure for the country's economy.