Turkestan Military District

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The Turkestan Military District was a military district of the Soviet Armed Forces, with its headquarters at Tashkent, created on 9 July 1945 after the division of the Central Asian Military District into the Turkestan and Steppe Military Districts. The new Turkestan and Steppe District were formed from the headquarters of the 1st and 4th Shock Armies respectively. In January 1958 from the abolished South Ural Mlitary District the Turkestan District gained the territories of Aktyubinsk, Guryev and the West-Kazakhstan areas of the Kazakh SSR.

Initially it covered most of Soviet Central Asia, but on June 24, 1969 the Central Asian Military District was reformed following difficulties between the USSR and the People's Republic of China, covering the Tajik SSR, the Kyrgyz SSR, and the Kazakh SSR with headquarters at Alma-Ata. Thus the District covered only the Uzbek SSR and the Turkmen SSR. In the 1980s the District became part of the Southern Strategic Direction alongside the North Caucasus and Transcaucasus Military Districts. Within the District's territory and under its command was the 40th Army, in Afghanistan, the 36th Army Corps, and other forces, totalling one VDV airlanding (the 105th Guards Airborne Division at Fergana) and 8 motor rifle divisions. Aviation support of district was provided by the 49th Air Army, and air defence by the 12th Army of the Voyska PVO. However from June, 1st, 1989 the Central Asian Military District was disbanded and its territory again incorporated into the Turkestan Military District, as part of the unilateral reductions which Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had announced at the United Nations on 7 December 1988.^[1]

The District was finally dissolved on June, 30th, 1992 with the demise of the Soviet Union, when its forces were distributed between 5 new Central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The most powerful grouping went to become the core of the Military of Kazakhstan which acquired all the units of the 40th (the former 32nd) Army and part of the 17th Army Corps, including 6 land force divisions, storage bases, the 14th and 35th air-landing brigades, 2 rocket brigades, 2 artillery regiments and a large amount of equipment which had been withdrawn from over the Urals after the signing of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

[edit] Sources and References

^ Odom, 1998, p.182, citing Isvestia, 3 June 1989

David Glantz, Companion to Colossus Reborn, University Press of Kansas, 2005
William E Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military, Yale, 1998
A.G. Lenskiy & M.M. Tsybin, The Soviet Ground Forces in the last years of the USSR, St Petersburg, B&K, 2001
V.I. Feskov, K.A. Kalashnikov, V.I. Golikov, The Soviet Army in the Years of the Cold War 1945-91, Tomsk University Publishing House, Tomsk, 1994