General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation

The General Staff's history dates back to its creation as early as 25 January 1763 during the Russian Empire. The Day of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is celebrated annually on 25 January, even though the current Russian General Staff was established at a different date. The General Staff of Imperial Russia then became the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR [ru] in 1918 before being succeeded by the present Staff.

In the Soviet Armed Forces, the General Staff acted as the main commanding and supervising body of the military. A Red Army Staff first formed in 1921 but, historian John Erickson says, until 1924 developed into an unwieldy grouping dealing with combat training, routine Red Army affairs, and defence policy, all without real definition. Erickson dates the development of the Staff as the Soviet "military brain" from Mikhail Frunze's appointment to the post of Chief of Staff by Order No.78 of 1 April 1924. 'From this date.. the history of the Soviet General Staff – as it was to become – begins'.^[1]

On 22 September 1935, the authorities renamed the RKKA Staff as the General Staff, which essentially reincarnated the General Staff of the Russian Empire.^[2] Many of the former RKKA Staff officers had served as General Staff officers in the Russian Empire and became General Staff officers in the USSR. General Staff officers typically had extensive combat experience and solid academic training.

William Odom wrote:

During World War II [the General Staff] became Stalin's main organ for operational direction of all military forces. After the war it became the most powerful centre for virtually all aspects of military planning, operations, and determination of resource requirements. The minister of defence had only a limited staff for his own support, leaving him heavily dependent on the General Staff. … Within the Ministry of Defence, all the resource allocation issues were normally resolved by the chief of the General Staff before going to the minister, and finally, after consultation with GOSPLAN, to the Politburo.^[3]

During the Cold War, the Soviet General Staff maintained Soviet plans for the invasion of Western Europe, whose massive scale was made known secretly to the West by spies such as Ryszard Kukliński and later published by German researchers working with the National People's Army files,^[4] and the Parallel History Project^[5] and the associated Polish exercise documents, Seven Days to the River Rhine (1979).

The Main Military Scientific Directorate of the General Staff was formed in accordance with an order of the Minister of the Armed Forces of March 22, 1949 (since 1953 - the Military Scientific Directorate of the General Staff).^[6]

In 1978, the Military Scientific Directorate was disbanded, and the management of scientific work in the Armed Forces was carried out by the Directorate of Operational Training and Military Scientific Work of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff. In 1985, the Military Scientific Directorate was re-established.^[6]

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and especially since 2004 the General Staff and the Russian Ministry of Defence have attempted to divide direction of the armed forces between them, often in intense bouts of bureaucratic disagreement. It has been reported that the General Staff's main role now is that of the Russian Ministry of Defence's department of strategic planning, and the Minister of Defence himself is now gaining executive authority over the troops. This is, however, contradicted by some Russian commentators and defence analysts.^[7]

Defence Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov who initiated the 2008 military reform, in order for separation of operational and administrative functions, the Ministry of Defense formed two functional lines of responsibility: the first was planning the use and construction of the Armed Forces, the second was planning the comprehensive support of troops (forces). The transition to a three-tier principle of responsibility was conducted: the main commands of the branches and formations were responsible for combat training, and the General Staff, joint strategic commands and formations were responsible for operational training. As a result of the transformations carried out, the General Staff was freed from duplicate functions and became a full-fledged strategic planning body that organizes and exercises control of the Armed Forces in fulfilling the assigned tasks.

During the Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war, a Joint Group of Forces was established in Syria by the General Staff on 30 September 2015. It is a separate, temporary command of the General Staff for an operation, and its commander is the representative of the General Staff. At the start of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the General Staff initially had direct control over the four Ministry of Defense groups of forces from the National Defense Management Center in Moscow, which was carried out through the Southern Military District headquarters. A separate Joint Group of Forces was established for the Special Military Operation in Ukraine on 8 October 2022 in Rostov-on-Don.^[8]