Army Staff Research Articles

A case study exploring the role of Christian hospitality in Salvation Army staff and volunteer approaches to supporting survivors of domestic abuse (DA)

ABSTRACT Using The Salvation Army’s (TSA) The Link Café (TLC) in South London as a case study, this paper explores how the approach of Salvation Army staff and volunteers to working with survivors of domestic abuse (DA) models Christian hospitality. Hospitality is one of TSA’s Family Ministries Department’s seven values; however, as DA is an under-researched area of TSA provision, it is necessary to explore what this looks like in practice. Data collected through five semi-structured interviews with TLC staff and volunteers reveal a hospitality rooted in recognition of survivors as those marginalised; a hospitality that emphasises relationships and ‘being with’ survivors over prescriptive support. Even with necessary boundaries, this hospitality opens up space for genuine empowerment, where each survivor is seen as one ‘who bears gifts’ and attempts are made to enable ‘guests’ to become ‘hosts’. However, as with many faith-based organisations’ responses to social injustice, this study suggests that the ‘Christian’ in TLC’s hospitality is implicit rather than explicit. It nevertheless challenges TSA to think more intentionally about the extent to which Christian hospitality is and can be lived out in its different expressions to ensure DA survivors are welcomed, empowered, and supported effectively.

Hronika Velikoj Pobedy (1941–1945) 22 iyunya 1941 g. «Protivniku udalos' na otdel'nyh napravleniyah dostich' chastnogo uspekha…»

“Voprosy Istorii" history journal presents two documents within our Chronicle of the Great Victory (1941-1945). The first one is operational summary No. 01 on 22.06.1941 of the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, Army General G.K. Zhukov. In it, he reported the position of the troops at 10:00 a.m. on the first day of the Great Patriotic War on the Northern, Northwestern, Western, Southwestern fronts and on the Soviet-Romanian border. The second one is operational summary No. 01 of the Chief of Staff of the 9th Army, Major General MV Zakharov, on the situation on the Soviet-Romanian border at 9 a.m. on June 22. The documents are contained in Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

Коллективный портрет бывших белогвардейцев, репрессированных в Омске по делу «организации Артамонова» в 1937 г

The article, based on an analysis of materials from the case of «Artamonov’s organization», reconstructs a generalized social portrait of residents of the Omsk region who were subjected to massive political repression during the years of the Great Terror for belonging to the command staff of the White Army during the Civil War. The theoretical basis of the study is a combination of anthropological approach, prosopographical, comparative-historical, historical-genetic and statistical methods. The purpose of the work is to analyze, in the context of the historical conditions of the Omsk region, the typical social characteristics of representatives of the former officers who became victims of mass political repression during the years of the Great Terror. In conclusion, the information potential of historical sources is assessed and further prospects for developing the topic of political mass repressions against former White Guards are outlined.

German cars in the Russian army during the first world war: Features of the military transport crisis

The article discusses the challenges of supplying the formations of the army of the Russian Empire with automotive equipment on the eve and during the First World War. Prior to the war, the utilization of road transport in the army and rear was fragmented. However, as of 1914-1915, the advantages of road transport in military logistics became evident to both the command and government. Nonetheless, ordering new cars from the Entente countries posed several difficulties. Drawing from the documents of the military-technical department of the General Staff of the Russian army, the article highlights the extent of dependence on German production. It delves into the complexities faced by the Russian government at the onset of the war. The research convincingly demonstrates that, contrary to previous studies and customs statistics for Russia, the primary issue lay not in the inability to replace cars from Germany, but rather in the necessity to multiply the number of cars when altering the logistics of supplies from other countries that also had to pass through Germany. These two interconnected problems became key issues that proved insurmountable for Russia, ultimately leading to catastrophic consequences.

Nablyudenie voennoj kontrrazvedki za dejstviyami vysshego komandnogo sostava Krasnoj armii v hode boevyh operacij 1941–1945 gg.

The article analyzes an important element of the control of the Soviet military counterintelligence over the top command staff of the Red Army - monitoring the actions of the command in combat conditions. Two approaches are identified that manifested themselves in the activities of counterintelligence during the war: traditional (exposing) and constructive. The author divided the supervisory functions of military counterintelligence into two blocks: control of the army (behind the army) and control “within the army". The issues of the need for informing, its quantitative and qualitative characteristics are considered. The degree of influence of counterintelligence information on the actions of military leaders on the decision-making on personnel changes is considered.

Towards the NATO Path – From the formation and structure of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The concrete plans for the preparation and execution of aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina were drawn up by the General Staff of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in Belgrade. The JNA, in conjunction with the political leadership of Serbia and Bosnian Serbs, defined the objectives, planned, and determined the tactics and methods of waging war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In response to the aggression and the need for the survival of the state and all its peoples who considered Bosnia and Herzegovina as their homeland, the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged. The legally elected representatives of the authorities and institutions of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina had the obligation to protect the territorial integrity of the state, its citizens, economy, culture, and other assets. To make this possible, the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina made a decision to mobilize units of the Territorial Defense, the reserve component of the police, and civil defense units, followed by the issuance of regulations by the Presidency to regulate the formation and composition of the armed forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, thereby transforming the Territorial Defense into the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Army became the core of the formation of the Federation's military and later the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Today, Bosnia and Herzegovina's foreign policy is focused on preserving and advancing lasting peace, security, stable democratic development, and contributing to international peace and security. The principle of collective security is the cornerstone of the long-term military strategy. Achieving the military security of Bosnia and Herzegovina includes membership in NATO, where the Alliance guarantees national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The first step in this direction is membership in NATO's political-military program, Partnership for Peace (PfP), which Bosnia and Herzegovina joined on December 14, 2006. Membership in NATO and the European Union are strategic goals of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in line with this, there is a striving for full NATO membership, which implies the integration of the armed forces into NATO's military structure, especially in peacekeeping missions and humanitarian operations. The formal basis for PfP is the Framework Document, which envisions the commitment of allies to consult with each partner country that believes its territorial integrity is threatened or its political independence or security is in danger. Under this document, individual countries and the NATO Alliance develop and align individual partnership programs with the goal of achieving NATO standards, procuring military equipment, training and education of military personnel, joint maneuvers and exercises, and other areas of cooperation.

Проблема репатриации черкесских иммигрантов из Османской империи во 2-й половине XIX – начале XX века в документах архивов России и Грузии

The documents analyzed in the article are classified into 2 types – office documentation and regula-tory legal acts. Documents of the 1st type are divided into 2 groups depending on the departments of their compilation and functions. The first set of papers includes official correspondence and re-ports from Russian ambassadors in the Ottoman Empire to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as correspondence from Russian consuls and vice-consuls in Ottoman Empire provinces to Russian diplomats in Constantinople. The papers explain how Circassians came to the Ottoman Empire and the difficulties they faced when attempting to return home. The second group consists of documents prepared by military officials in the Caucasus: instructions from the Viceroy of the Caucasus’s Main Directorate to lower-ranking commanders of subdivisions, heads of regions and territories, instructions from the Commander-in-chief of civil authority in the Caucasus to governors-general and heads of regions and districts of the Caucasus region, etc., military officials’ reports to higher levels, attitudes between departments o According to these records, military officials in the Caucasus sent instructions to their subordinates in early 1861, which included rules addressing North Caucasian repatriates. Similar documents were accepted by tsarist officials in the Caucasus and at the beginning of the 20th century. The regulatory legal acts include: the provision of the Committee of Ministers «on taking measures to suspend the return of the highlanders from Turkey... », developed in July 1861 and approved by the emperor; «Regulations regarding Caucasian settlers returning from Turkey» (09.1861), compiled by the Chief of the General Staff of the Caucasian Army A.P. Kartsov. They contain rules that should have been applied to different groups of North Caucasian repatriates.

Uloga ruske vojne elite u Oktobarskoj revoluciji 1917.

Based on unpublished archival materials, memoirs and relevant literature, the paper analyses the attitude of officers of the Russian General Staff towards the fall of the Provisional Government of A. F. Kerensky and the rise of the Bolsheviks, which ended with a coup d’état on October 25 (November 7), 1917. New archival data was found in the unpublished memoirs of Lieutenant General Vladimir Vladimirovich Marushevsky (1874–1952), the last Chief of the General Directorate of the General Staff of Russian Army at the time of the October Revolution, who ended his life in exile in Yugoslavia.

Predicting personnel appointment in the Nigerian army using performance records and machine learning techniques

Professionalism and discipline in the Nigerian armed forces have been negatively impacted due to a lack of structured methods of promotion, appointment, and succession in the rank and file of military officers. This lacuna is an attribution of the socio-cultural diversities in Nigeria dispensed through nepotism, favouritism, and ethnicity. Thus, validates the need for pellucid techniques for personnel appointment at the higher echelon based on merit. This paper aims to promote professionalism in the armed forces through a model of seamless human resource processing of enthroning a seamless and transparent culture of succession based on personnel performance records. Supervised learning techniques are adopted for this research given labelled data of 10, 000 records of officers from the rank of major general eligible for appointment as the chief of army staff from the year 1990 to 2002. Relevant features were extracted from the dataset during pre-processing to filter noise, and resampled using sci-kit random over sampler to generate augmented data to balance the target class in order to eliminate algorithmic bias toward the underrepresented class. Three classification algorithms were used comparatively for modelling. The result obtained in terms of accuracy is Logistic regression 84%, decision tree 92%, and random forest 92%. The findings in this research show that our best model random forest will be 92% correct every time prediction is made with a 95 AUC score signifying 95% correctness in distinguishing between the two target classes. This research is the first of its kind and gives room for further improvement with a larger dataset

Associations of health care staff burnout with negative health and organizational outcomes in the U.S. military health system

RationaleBurnout is a personal and occupational phenomenon that has been associated with negative physical and psychological outcomes in medical staff. Additionally, there are implications for healthcare organizations, as those staff who are burned out are more likely to have lower productivity or leave the organization. As with the Covid-19 pandemic, future national emergencies and potentially large-scale conflicts will require similar and likely even larger scale responses from the U.S. Military Health System, thus it is important to understand burnout in this population so that the readiness of the staff and the military can remain at a high level. ObjectiveThis assessment was designed to examine levels of burnout among United States Military Health System (MHS) staff working at Army installations and the factors that influence the development of burnout. MethodsAnonymous data was collected from 13,558 active-duty U.S. Soldiers and civilian MHS employees. Burnout was measured using the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the Mini-Z. ResultsResults showed nearly half of staff who responded (48%) reported being burned out, an increase since last measured in 2019 (31%). Factors related to increased burnout included concerns about work/life balance and workload, low job satisfaction and feeling disconnected from others. Burnout was associated with increases in adverse physical and behavioral health (BH) outcomes. ConclusionsResults indicate that burnout is a common problem across MHS Army staff and is related to significant adverse health consequences for the individual and reduced retention of staff for the organization. These findings highlight the need to address burnout through policies that standardize health care delivery policies and practices, providing support to leadership to promote a healthy workplace, and individual support to those who experience burnout.

Patterns of War: A Re-interpretation of the Chronology of the German-Soviet War 1941–1945

ABSTRACT Most histories of the Soviet-German War 1941–1945 in English, German, and Russian, adopt a narrative framework based on the sequence of major battles, such as Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin. This approach portrays the war from a specific viewpoint reducing the importance of other fronts or secondary battles. Nevertheless, this study looks at an alternative narrative, the Soviet ‘canon of operations’, which was produced by the Military-Historical Department of the General Staff of the Red Army. This radically different account changes the viewpoint to a broad front war and alters our understanding of the issues facing the Soviet High Command and its resource management.

A Single Imperial Army? The Development of Australian Army Staff Training in an Imperial Context, 1919–1939

This article examines the development of Australian staff training across the interwar period. Focussing on the establishment of the Australian Command and Staff School in Sydney in 1938, this article argues that whilst still relying on British educational institutions, the Australian Army developed its own progressive form of officer education which reflected British and Dominion educational lessons from the First World War. By doing so, this article challenges our understanding of the interconnectivity of imperial forces and proposes a more nuanced, networked approach to officer training across the interwar period accounting for local defence priorities and national policies.

Ministerstvo inostrannyh del Rossijskoj imperii v operaciyah po priobreteniyu vintovok i patronov v gody Pervoj mirovoj vojny

The article is devoted to the study of the search algorithm, negotiations with suppliers and the purchase of finished small arms for the Russian army during the First World War. It is concluded that the initiator of the purchase of rifles during the First World War was the General Staff of the Russian Army, which involved not only representatives of its procurement committee abroad, but also diplomats, both military and civilian.

"Gotowi do zemsty...” – projekt sformowania polskiego „wolnego korpusu” w okresie kampanii francuskiej 1814 roku

During the campaign of 1814 the French army was supported by the „free corps”, a unit that carried out irregular operations. A proposal to form a similar unit to supplement the Polish army was presented to the chief of staff of the Great Army by Stanisław Żarski, the chef de battalion from the Duchy of Warsaw’s army. The Polish „free corps” was to include soldiers of Polish descent that were currently held in prisoner of war camps in France. The details of Żarski’s proposal combined elements characteristic of both the Polish and French military.

Дело «Приволжской шпионской организации». 1919 г.

Based on unpublished sources from the Central Archive of the FSS of Russia, the article examines in detail the case of the counter-revolutionary «Volga Spy Organization» in the Red Army, investigated by the Cheka in 1919. This plot found a fragmentary reflection in historiography. The purpose of this work is to eliminate this gap. The theoretical basis of the study is a combination of the anthropological approach, problematic and biographical methods. As part of this case, along with other persons, several students of the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army were arrested, who were suspected of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. The course of the operational development of the case, the conduct of the investigation, the composition of the defendants (among them were the brothers Mikhail and Nikolai Tukhachevsky, who escaped arrest), were analyzed, the features of the sentences passed were discussed.

The Confrontation between Soviet Intelligence and Japanese Special Agencies on the Eve of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation (1945)

The article is devoted to the confrontation between Soviet intelligence and Japanese counterintelligence agencies on the eve of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive operation (1945). According to the point of view officially accepted in Russian historical science, the Soviet military, naval and foreign intelligence agencies were able to provide the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the General Staff of the Red Army with reliable information about the state of the Japanese grouping of troops in Manchuria and Korea. This became one of the factors of the rapid defeat of the Kwantung army during the Manchurian strategic offensive operation in August 1945. However, the documents put into circulation indicate that, despite the efforts made by the Soviet command to collect intelligence information about the enemy, it had a distorted idea of the combat composition, deployment, number and operational plans of the Japanese troops. The reason for this was the strict counterintelligence and administrative-police regime that Japan established on the territory of Manchuria and Korea that it captured. By the beginning of 1945 there was a passport system, a special regime for staying in the border zone, and military and agent protection of the Soviet-Manchurian border was organized. The diplomatic institutions of the USSR were under close surveillance by Japanese counterintelligence, measures were taken to identify unreliable elements among Russian white emigrants, as a result of punitive operations, the anti-Japanese partisan movement was practically destroyed by 1941. In addition, several well-equipped radio counterintelligence services operated on the territory of Manchuria, which, in cooperation, identified Soviet radio-equipped intelligence groups and, after the arrest of radio operators, conducted radio games.

CONSTRUCTING THE IMAGE OF THE PAKISTAN ARMED FORCES IN THE 21st CENTURY

This article examines the image of the armed forces of Pakistan in the XXI century. It was revealed that in the 21st century the armed forces of Pakistan and, in particular, a special unit (Inter-Services Public Relations), responsible for public relations, are actively working on constructing the necessary image of the Armed Forces. We see that the strategy of Inter-Services Public Relations covers a large number of channels (social networks, magazines, and so on). The article examines the historical context and various channels of communication: primarily the presence in social networks (both in video and in text format). The construction of the image after the conflict in Kargil in 1999 and the coming to power of P. Musharraf is considered. After these events, an active process was launched to work on the image of the armed forces both in the media and in the ISPR materials. It was revealed that the video materials are primarily aimed at the widest possible audience, also covering various ethnic groups; various problems related to the armed forces (for example, counter-terrorism operations). It is shown that two main directions of image construction can be distinguished: positive-aggressive, that is, armed forces equipped with the most advanced types of weapons that defeat the enemy; emotional – the armed forces value and honor the heroes who gave their lives for their homeland. A special place is occupied by the emotional involvement of the population, as a result of which the image of the armed forces is constructed as a force that protects the Motherland from any enemies, and the hero-soldier turns out to be the object of the nation's love. Much attention is paid to the personality of the Chief of the Army Staff, whose image, similar to the hero soldier, can be seen as the image of the armed forces as a whole.

ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ 120-Й СТРЕЛКОВОЙ ДИВИЗИИ В КОНТЕКСТЕ СОЗДАНИЯ КРАСНОЙ АРМИИ

The purpose of the article is to consider the process of creating the Red Army on the example of the 120th Rifle Division. This process has been actively going on since the beginning of the Civil War and foreign military intervention until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. During this time, several approaches to the formation of the army have changed. Finally, they settled on the idea of creating a mass regular army, formed on new principles of compulsory military service, by conscription and mobiliza-tion. The systematic construction of the regular army start-ed in 1918, when, along with the new type of units, the Red Guard detachments continued to function, which became a school for training command and political personnel for the Red Army. The author analyzes the process of forming the command army staff of a new type by attracting the old military intelligentsia, as well as through educated command courses and military educational institutions of various levels. The quantitative growth of the Red Army at different stages of its creation is traced. The process of creating the army took place within the framework of the military districts being formed, starting in the spring of 1918. The author analyzes the creation of new management bodies of the armed forces of the country, the formation of a unified command structure of the troops. At the end of the 30s, the construction of the Red Army was carried out on the basis of a Plan for the development and reorganization of the Red Army ground forces by creating personnel divisions of triple deployment. The basis of the Red Army was rifling divisions. As a result, the author concludes that the 120th Rifle Division was a typical example of a military structure being created as part of the armed forces of the Soviet State.

Александр Рафаилович Корсунский: фронтовой опыт историка-медиевиста

The article considers the problem how combat experience influenced professional activity in the sphere of medieval studies, based on the case of A. R. Korsunsky (1914–1980). The study draws on documents from the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense (Moscow) and from the Archive of the Medieval Studies Department of the Faculty of History, Moscow State University. The influence of Korsunsky’s combat experience is studied in the context of some clear parallels with the combat biographies of Ernst Kantorowicz and Marc Bloch. Some important tendencies of their scholarly activity can be explained only by this factor. Korsunsky became a volunteer in July, 1941, at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. He participated in the battles of Kursk (1943), of Dnieper River (1943) and the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky offensive (1944). At the same time, his scholarly views were greatly influenced by his experience as a propaganda officer and as an officer of the Political Department of the 1st Guards Army Staff (since 1944). The main result of this experience (both combat and that as staff officer) was to strengthen and consolidate his Marxist vision of historical processes, in spite of his critical attitude towards some aspects of Soviet life. While Korsunsky maintained close links with foreign colleagues and saw his work as part of world scholarship, he, like many other former veterans, remained true to Marxist views to the end of his life.

Măsurile pregătitoare politico-diplomatice și militar-propagandistice ale U.R.S.S. pentru anexarea Basarabiei și a nordului Bucovinei (II)

"A significant turning point in relations between the Soviet Union and Romania was associated with the incorporation of Bessarabia and northern part of Bukovina into the USSR, which took place in the context of Soviet-German rapprochement. To this end, the Soviet leadership developed a set of preparatory political-diplomatic and military-propaganda measures. Soviet political and diplomatic actions were based on fundamental military preparations. In order to prepare and further joining Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina to the USSR, the Southern Front was created on the basis of the Kyiv Special and Odessa military districts. Army General Georgy Zhukov was appointed as a commander. The General Staff of the Red Army developed two variants of actions by Soviet troops. The first one provided for measures in case the Romanian government would not agree to the peaceful transfer of Bessarabia and Bukovina to the USSR. The second variant was an action plan in case of a voluntary retreat of Romanian troops west of the Prut. The first option was taken as the base. As early as June 26, 1940, on the border with Romania, the Soviet command concentrated 32 infantry, 2 motorized infantry, 6 cavalry divisions, 11 tank, 3 airborne brigades, 16 artillery regiments of the commander-in-chief’s reserve, 14 corps artillery regiments and 4 separate artillery divisions. In the main areas of the offensive, more than a triple advantage in manpower and means was provided. At the same time, for the purpose of ideological support, a huge propaganda apparatus was prepared to work with the population. In accordance with the Directive of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army № 0140 (June 21, 1940), a large number of political workers were sent to the disposal of the Southern Front. One month before the start of the military operation, all employees of party and Soviet organizations were considered as mobilized. After appropriate training, they were ready for further activities as editorial staff, propagandists and agitators. Concert brigades and drama theatre groups were organized for the cultural service of the population. There were selected mobile library, gramophone records, and films. Book-mobile was arranged; everything necessary for the publication in Romanian newspaper was completed and provided with everything necessary. Due to the diligence of all these preparatory acts, the territories of Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina were occupied by the Red Army according to all the rules of military art (all elements of military operation were used: military force, local military pressure, military intelligence and counterintelligence, agitation and propaganda), thanks to which the USSR could reach its purpose. "