Soviet General Staff Academy Lectures 1968-1985

While doing archive research, I came across translations of lectures from Soviet General Staff Academy, or Voroshilov Academy as it was also known in the Soviet days. I had tucked away the documents in a notebook, and tweeted about some of them.

After getting my hands on the “CIA Analysis of Warsaw Pact Forces” DVD, I found a larger collection of the documents from 1977.

When I started compiling the materials into a single sorted list, I noticed there were actually lectures from different years. CIA’s had documents from 1968-1969 and 1975-1977. But additionally, in the National Archive’s ISCAP released files I found more CIA documents, this time from 1985. And someone also tipped me off about the Voroshilov Lecture books.

These documents put together, there seem to be five different series of General Staff Academy lectures:

• 1968-1969 (7 CIA documents)
• 1973-1975 as described by Col Gulam Wardak and edited into three books
• 1975-1976 covered by a single notebook acquired by the CIA
• 1977 (51 CIA documents)
• 1985 (18 CIA documents declassified through ISCAP in 2015)

I’ve compiled these documents into a single Google Sheet, and the documents are also grouped by category. A description of the contents is copied in where appropriate. Links point to the CIA, DTIC and National Archives.

The documents cover a range of interesting topics, from agent reconnaissance to naval operations. The title column should give you a quick overview, and the description of the content is usually copied from the source.

For a good measure, I also added on the list four translated parts of a 1963 guide series called “Manual on the Conduct of Operations”. Part 3, “Combat Operations of the Air Defense” was missing online due to the issue I mentioned in an earlier post, but I’ve made that available online separately.

[Link to the spreadsheet]

Update, January 6th: I’ve added a link to a translated 1974 textbook on Front Offensive Operations that was also in use at Voroshilov Academy. Found it thanks to this thread on a Russian forum.

If you feel you don’t yet have what it takes to be a Soviet General Staff officer, you can also get started a step below that: “Officer’s Handbook: A Soviet View” is a translation of the 1971 original titled “Справочник офицера”, part of the Officer’s Library (Библиотека офицера) series. Need a primer on Marxist-Leninist military theory? This book has you covered.