Mechanised corps (Soviet Union)

A mechanised corps was a Soviet armoured formation used prior to the beginning of World War II.

In Soviet Russia, the term armored forces (thus called Bronevyye sily) preceded the mechanised corps. They consisted of the autonomous armored units (avtobroneotryady) made of armored vehicles and armored trains. The country did not have its own tanks during the Civil War of 1918–1920.

In January 1918, the Russian Red Army established the Soviet of Armored Units (Sovet bronevykh chastey, or Tsentrobron’), later renamed to Central Armored Directorate and then once again to Chief Armored Directorate (Glavnoye bronevoye upravleniye). In December 1920, the Red Army received its first light tanks, assembled at the Sormovo Factory. In 1928, it began the production of the MS-1 tanks (Malyy Soprovozhdeniya 1, 'Small Convoy 1'). In 1929, it established the Central Directorate for Mechanisation and Motorisation of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. Tanks became a part of the mechanised corps at this point.

During this time, and based on the experience of the Civil War with its sweeping movements of horse-mobile formations, Soviet military theorists such as Vladimir Triandafillov born in Pontus of Greek parents and Konstantin Kalinovsky elaborated the principles of combat use of armored units, which envisioned a large-scale use of tanks in different situations in cooperation with various army units. In the mid-1930s, these ideas found their reflection in the so-called deep operation and deep combat theories. From the second half of the 1920s, tank warfare development took place at Kazan, where the German Reichswehr was allowed to participate.

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