Abstract
Political indoctrination and its influence is only one factor of morale. There are others. Richard Gabriel highlights some of these and attempts to assess the influence on morale of such elements of military life as living conditions, the quality and adequacy of rations, the amount of free time allowed and how a soldier spends it, the effects of overcrowding in barracks, lack of privacy, ethnic problems, etc.1 These and allied factors have been considered also by Goldhamer and other writers and their various assessments are reviewed collectively here.2 They are also openly acknowledged as seriously adverse tendencies by authoritative Soviet sources.3
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Notes
R. A. Gabriel, The New Red Legions (New York: Greenwood, 1981).
E.g. H. Goldhamer, The Soviet Soldier (New York: Crane, Russak, 1975).
See A. A. Yepishev, True to the Ideals of the Party (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1981). A frank listing of moral shortcomings.
Wimbush and Alexiev, The Ethnic Factor in the Soviet Armed Forces (Rand Corporation, March 1982).
Admiral A. I. Sorokin, in Voprosy Filosofi (Issue 2, 1983). Not only Sorokin but Yepishev himself also raises this issue in his ‘True to the Ideals of the Party’ (1981) .
R. A. Gabriel, The New Red Legions (New York: Greenwood, 1981) p. 43.
V. Suvorov, The Liberators (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981).
P. Aleksandr, ‘The Story of a Sailor’, Posyev, no. 6, Munich, 1983.
B. B. Krabtsov, ‘The Law against Drunkenness’, USSR Minister of Justice, reported in Tass, 1 June 1985.
M. Tsypkin, ‘The Conscripts’, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, May 1983.
Myakgov, Inside the KGB (New York: Ballantine, 1981).
Belyenko (John Barron), MiG Pilot (London: Readers’ Digest Association, 1979).
V. Snezhko, ‘The Code of Military Law’, Agitator of the Army and the Fleet, Issue 18, September 1982.
H. Goldhamer, The Soviet Soldier (1976).
A. Zyryanov, ‘Let’s Discuss the New Military Regulations’, Military Knowledge, no. 11 (Moscow: Military Publishing House, October 1975).
Belyenko, MiG Pilot (London: Readers’ Digest Press, 1980).
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© 1986 Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies
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Williams, E.S. (1986). Morale and Other Factors. In: The Soviet Military. RUSI Defence Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07754-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07754-0_3
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