Reserve Front (Soviet Union)

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The Reserve Front was a Front (military subdivision) of the Soviet Army during the Second World War. This sense of the term is not identical with the more general usage of military front which indicates a geographic area in wartime, although a Soviet Front may operate within designated boundaries.

The Reserve Front describes either of two distinct organizations during the war. The first version was created on July 30, 1941 in a reorganization of the earlier Front of Reserve Armies. STAVKA Order No.003334, of 14 July, directed that the Front of Reserve Armies include:

29th Army, with five divisions, five regiments of artillery, and two regiments and one squadron of aviation;
30th Army, with five divisions, one corps artillery regiment, and two AA artillery regiments;
24th Army, with ten divisions, three gun, one howitzer, and three corps artillery regiments, and four anti-tank artillery regiments;
28th Army, with nine divisions, one gun, one howitzer, and four corps artillery regiments, and four anti-tank artillery regiments;
31st Army, with six divisions, one corps artillery regiment, and two anti-tank artillery regiments; and
32nd Army, with seven divisions and one anti-tank artillery regiment.

(Source: STAVKA Order 003334, Collection of Combat Documents of the Great Patriotic War, ('SBDVOV'), Moscow, Voenizdat, 1958(?), Issue 37, p.13, cited in Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p.215)

This Front was encircled and destroyed at Vyazma. The surviving forces transferred to the Western Front on October 10, 1941.

The second version of this Front was created on April 6, 1943. It incorporated the 2nd Reserve, 24th, 53rd, 66th, 47th, 46th, and 5th Guards Tank Armies, and eight mobile corps. It was reorganized as the Steppe Military District on April 15, 1943 and eventually designated the Steppe Front.

[edit] Commanders

Lieutenant General of NKVD I.A. Bogdanov [Front of Reserve Armies] (July 14 1941 - July 30 1941)
General Georgy K. Zhukov (August 1941-September 1941)
Marshal Semyon M. Budenny (September 1941-October 1941)
Lieutenant General Markian M. Popov (April 1943)

[edit] Sources

David Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, University Press of Kansas, 1998
David Glantz, Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War 1941-43, University Press of Kansas, 2005