We tell when countries are mobilized and what follows
September 21, 2022, partial mobilization was announced in Russia. Decree on mobilization in the Russian Federation published on the Kremlin website.
We explain what mobilization means, and tell how it took place in the history of different countries in the 19th and 20th century.
What is mobilization?
This was observed by the Russian Minister of the Interior Peter Valuev, who was treated in Germany in the summer of 1870. Soon the official gave the king a note that it was time to do how in Germany.
As a result, in 1874, the first military set in Russia was held based on universal service. The military persons became representatives of all classes who have reached the age of 21. The benefits were educated: those who graduated from elementary school were not six years old, but four;Graduates of gymnasiums – a year and a half, and universities – only six months.
So even the peasants have an incentive to teach children. The fears of the old generals about the unreliability of the conscripts did not justify, the new army showed itself well in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878.
The rebellion of the call
During the civil war in the United States, when the stock of volunteers dried up, the feds and confederates were forced to resort to mandatory appeal.
True, the result turned out to be far from that expected: instead of a significant increase in human reserves, the northerners received the most serious rebellion in the history of America, the so -called rebellion. On July 13, 1863, crowds of people took to the streets of New York and armed themselves with what they found in the military warehouse captured by them.
The rebellion cost the lives of almost a thousand people, and as a result, President Abraham Lincoln was forced to grant citizens the right to refuse to call: as a result, only 2% of conscripts fought in the troops of the northerners.
From mobilization – to professional armies
The Second World War was the last war of mass mobilization armies, although the draft system has been preserved for a long time both in NATO members and in the states of the Warsaw Treaty. But if the latter took an example with the USSR, where the call remained all the time, although the service life was reduced (for example, in 1967 in the army-from three to two years, in the fleet-from four to three), then the Western armies quickly came toconclusion that conscripts must give way to professionals.
In 1963, Britain refused the call. In 1974, not a single conscript left in the US Army: the experience of the war in Vietnam and the mass protests of the draftees forced the American army to rely on military personnel. And the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the threat of direct military aggression led to the idea of reducing the armed forces and the refusal to call most of the old NATO members.
So, for example, Spain passed to the contract system of acquiring the army in 2000, France in 2001, Portugal in 2004, and Germany abandoned the draftees from July 1, 2011.
Another argument against universal mobilization is the constantly growing complexity of equipment with which even a simple infantryman has to deal with. The usual service life is not enough to teach a fighter to use weapons truly effectively, and ineffective use of expensive equipment is economically impractical.
And finally, the military concepts of most large states no longer consider large -scale military operations as the most likely. The main role in the wars of the future is assigned to small mobile units equipped with the latest technology, which means that the content of the mass armies is becoming an excessive burden for the national budget.