The Soviet officer corps began to form in the course of the civil war in Russia that broke out after the October Revolution of 1917. After its definitive end at the turn of 1922/1923 (although the main activities came to an end already in 1919), as well as after the defeat in the war with Poland (the Peace of Riga - 1921), conclusions were slowly drawn from these armed conflicts, which influenced in the shape of the Soviet officer corps and its theoretical and military views. This process accelerated at the turn of the 20s and 30s of the twentieth century, when in the USSR appeared the theory of the so-called deep operation, and their works were published by Tukhachevsky or less known, but very important for the development of Soviet military thought, Triandafilov and Isserson. However, in the mid-1930s, the Soviet officer corps was decimated in the course of the Stalinist purges, which was bad for his professionalism, and perhaps even more for the independent thinking of individual officers. This fact was not changed by the introduction of the professional officer corps in 1935. As a result of these purges, high command positions were given to officers with insufficient preparation, considerable lack of theoretical knowledge, but completely loyal to the apparatus of the communist state. Moreover, at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s, the Red Army underwent intensive quantitative development and generally suffered from considerable shortages in the officer corps. The shortcomings in this regard were already underlined by the Winter War with Finland (1939-1940), and they were fully heard in the first period of the war with Germany, especially in the period 1941-1942. Even the first great victory in this war (the counteroffensive from Moscow in 1941) was achieved more thanks to the enemy's exhaustion and weather conditions than thanks to Zhukov's commanding talents. With time, however, at the cost of a huge tribute of blood, the Soviet officer corps was professionalized and was able to carry out really large-scale land operations more and more skilfully. One example is Operation Bagration in 1944. Also such generals and marshals as Rokossovsky, Konev and Batov turned out to be equal opponents for the German commanders. Moreover - especially the former can be counted as one of the best commanders of the Second World War.
Armored and mechanized troops of the Red Army began to be formed on a larger scale in the late 1920s and 1930s. Especially in the 1930s they developed dynamically. This was reflected both in the organizational structure and in the equipment. On the first of these planes, the formation of mechanized corps began in 1932, the structure of which evolved until the outbreak of World War II. As for the equipment - new types of tanks were introduced, such as the BT-5, BT-7, T-26 and the T-28 multi-turret tank. Very successful tanks also introduced into the line shortly before the start of the war with the Third Reich - of course, we are talking about the KW-1 and T-34. However, despite the fact that at the time of the German aggression, the Soviet armored forces had a quantitative advantage over the aggressor, they suffered huge losses in men and equipment in the first period of the war. They can be explained by the shortcomings of a well-trained officer cadre (the aftermath of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s), worse individual training of Soviet tankers compared to their German opponents, or inferior tactics used by the crews of Soviet tanks. Also, the doctrine of their use was not as consistent and well-grounded in training as in the German army. We can also add to this the rather poor ergonomics of Soviet vehicles or the shortage of short and long-range radio stations in armored forces. With time, however, these errors began to be more or less successfully corrected. For example - from the spring of 1942, armored armies began to be formed, which were to perform primarily offensive tasks and which constituted a slightly more ergonomic structure than the previous mechanized corps. However, it seems reasonable to say that until the end of the war, the Red Army emphasized the quantitative advantage rather than the qualitative advantage over the enemy, although it introduced such successful tanks as the T-34/85 or IS-2 into service during the warfare. This is clearly visible, for example, during the Battle of Kursk in July 1943.