<P> The XI Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP (b)) adopted a resolution on the strengthening of the Red Army . It decided to establish strictly organized military, educational and economic conditions in the army . However, it was recognized that an army of 1,600,000 would be burdensome . By the end of 1922, after the Congress, the Party Central Committee decided to reduce the Red Army to 800,000 . This reduction necessitated the reorganization of the Red Army's structure . The supreme military unit became corps of two or three divisions . Divisions consisted of three regiments . Brigades as independent units were abolished . The formation of departments' rifle corps began . </P> <P> After four years of warfare, the Red Army's defeat of Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel in the south allowed the foundation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922 . Historian John Erickson dates 1 February 1924, when Mikhail Frunze became head of the Red Army staff, as the ascent of the general staff, which dominated Soviet military planning and operations . By 1 October 1924 the Red Army's strength diminished to 530,000 . List of Soviet Union divisions 1917--1945 details the formations of the Red Army in that time . </P> <P> In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, Soviet military theoreticians led by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky developed the deep operations doctrine, a direct consequence of their Polish - Soviet War and Russian Civil War experiences . To achieve victory, deep operations envisage simultaneous corps - and army - size unit maneuvers of simultaneous parallel attacks throughout the depth of the enemy's ground forces, inducing catastrophic defensive failure . The deep battle doctrine relies upon aviation and armor advances in the hope that maneuver warfare offers quick, efficient, and decisive victory . Marshal Tukhachevsky said that aerial warfare must be "employed against targets beyond the range of infantry, artillery, and other arms . For maximum tactical effect aircraft should be employed en masse, concentrated in time and space, against targets of the highest tactical importance ." </P> <P> Red Army deep operations were first formally expressed in the 1929 Field Regulations, and codified in the 1936 Provisional Field Regulations (PU - 36). The Great Purge of 1937--1939 and the Purge of 1940--1942 removed many leading officers from the Red Army, including Tukhachevsky and many of his followers, and the doctrine was abandoned . Thus at the Battle of Lake Khasan, in 1938, and the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, in 1939, major border clashes with the Imperial Japanese Army, the doctrine was not used . It was not until the Second World War that deep operations were to be reused . </P>

Who led the red army and made it an effective fighting force