Russian Airborne Troops - Postwar

Postwar

HQ 9th Guards Army was redesignated Headquarters Airborne Forces soon after the war ended. The units of the Army were removed from the order of battle of the Air Forces of USSR and assigned directly to the Ministry of Armed Forces of USSR.

The creation of the post-war Soviet Airborne Forces owe much to the efforts of one man, Army General Vasily Filipovich Margelov, so much so that the abbreviation of VDV in the Airborne Forces is sometimes waggishly interpreted as "Войска дяди Васи", "Uncle Vasya's Troops".

The 37th, 38th, and 39th Corps survived for a while, and in 1946 the force consisted of five corps (the 8th and 15th had been added) and ten divisions:

• 8th Airborne Corps (103rd and 114th Divisions). The 114th Airborne Division was established in 1946 on the basis of the similarly numbered Rifle Division in Borovukha (just east of Slutsk) in the Belarussian SSR. The Division was disbanded in 1956, with two of its regiments (the 350th and 357th) joining the 103rd Guards Airborne Division.
• 15th Airborne Corps (the 76th and 104th Divisions),
• 37th Airborne Corps (the 98th and 99th in Primorsky Krai)
• 38th Airborne Corps (105th and 106th at Tula),
• 39th Airborne Corps at Belaya Tserkov in Ukraine (the 100th and 107th Divisions (Chernigov, disbanded 1959))

In the summer of 1948, five more Airborne Divisions were created. The 7th (Lithuania, 8th Airborne Corps), the 11th (presumably in the Moscow Military District, 38th Airborne Corps), the 13th (in the Transbaikal, with the 37th Airborne Corps), the 21st (Estonia, Valga, with the 15th Airborne Corps), and the 31st (Carpathians, 39th Airborne Corps). At the end of 1955 and the beginning of 1956 the 11th, 21st, 100th and 114th Airborne Division were disbanded as well as all the airborne corps headquarters. The number of divisions, thus, decreased to 11. In April 1955 the transport aircraft were separated from the VDV and the Air Force Military Transport Aviation was created. In 1959 the 31st and 107th Airborne Divisions were disbanded, but in October 1960 the 44th Training Airborne Division was formed. In 1964 the Airborne Forces were directly subordinated to the Ministry of Defence.

Airborne units of two divisions (7th and 31st Guards) were used during Soviet operations in Hungary during 1956, and the 7th Guards division was used again during 1968 operations in Czechoslovakia. The first experimental air assault brigade – the 1st Airborne Brigade – was apparently activated in 1967/1968 from parts of the 51st Guards Parachute Landing Regiment (PDP) (Tula), after the Russian had been impressed by the American experiences in Vietnam. In 1973 the 13th and 99th Airborne Divisions were reorganised as air assault brigades, and thus the number of divisions dropped to eight. There were also several independent brigades, regiments and battalions. However, even by the 1980s only two divisions were capable of being deployed for combat operations in the first wave against NATO using Air Force Military Transport Aviation and Aeroflot aircraft.

In accordance with a directive of the General Staff, from August 3, 1979, to December 1, 1979, the 105th Guards Vienna Airborne Division was disbanded. From the division remained in the city of Fergana the 345th Independent Guards Airborne Regiment (much stronger than the usual regimental size) with the separate 115th military-transport aviation squadron. The rest of the personnel of the division were reassigned to fill out other incomplete airborne units and formations and to the newly formed air assault brigades. Based on the 351st Guards Parachute Regiment, 105th Guards Vienna Airborne Division, the 56th Guards Separate Air Assault Brigade was formed in para Azadbash (district Chirchik) Tashkent Oblast, Uzbek SSR.

However there was also a mistaken Western belief, either intentional Soviet deception or stemming from confusion in the West, that an Airborne Division, reported as the 6th, was being maintained in the Far East in the 1980s. This maskirovka division was then 'disbanded' later in the 1980s, causing comment within Western professional journals that another division was likely to be reformed so that the Far East had an airborne presence. The division was not listed in V.I. Feskov et al.'s The Soviet Army during the period of the Cold War, (2004) and the nearest division ever active, the 99th Guards Airborne Svirsk Red Banner Division based at Ussuriysk, was broken up to form separate air assault brigades (parts of the 11th, 13th, and 83rd Brigades) in 1973.

In 1989, the Airborne Forces consisted of:

• 7th Guards Cherkassy Airborne Division (HQ Kaunas Fortress, Lithuanian SSR)
• 76th Guards Chernigov Airborne Division (Pskov, RSFSR)
• 98th Guards Svir Airborne Division (Bolgrad & Kishinev, Moldovan SSR)
• 103rd Guards Airborne Division (Vitebsk, Belorussian SSR)
• 104th Guards Airborne Division (Kirovabad, Azerbaijan SSR)
• 106th Guards Airborne Division (Tula, RSFSR)
• 242nd District Training Centre of the Airborne Forces (Gaižiūnai/Jonava, Lithuanian SSR) created from the 44th Training Airborne Division. However, the divisional banner was retained. The division's full designation in Russian was 44 воздушно-десантная Овручская Краснознаменная орденов Суворова и Богдана Хмельницкого дивизия – 44th Airborne Ovruch Red Banner Order of Suvorov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky Division) with three training regiments. The division was established in Pskov in October 1960 as the 4th Airborne Division, and according to some sources, it was given the Fighting Banner of the 111th Guards Rifle Division (the wartime 4th Guards Airborne Division), although the Division and its regiments were not guards units. After the formation of the division was relocated to Lithuania, where it received the number 44.
• 345th Independent Guards Airborne Regiment (Gudauta, Georgian SSR)
• 11th Air Assault Brigade
• 13th Air Assault Brigade
• 14th, 21st, 23rd, 35th, 36th (Garbolovo, Leningrad MD), 37th, 38th, 39th, 40th, 56th, 83rd, 95th, 100th Air Assault Brigades
• 171st Independent Communications Brigade (Medvezhi Ozera, Moscow Military District, RSFSR)