The Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School (RVVDKU), one of the most famous and prestigious military educational institutions in Russia and the Soviet Union, is celebrating its centenary. The history of the RVVDKU began 100 years ago, on November 13, 1918, when classes at the newly created Ryazan infantry courses for the command staff of the Red Army began in Ryazan. And for 100 years now, the Ryazan School has been the forge of command personnel for our army.
For a whole century of existence in this educational institution, tens of thousands of Soviet and Russian officers and servicemen from other states received military education. Many graduates of the school became Heroes of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, were awarded orders and medals, reached real heights in both military and state careers.
The history of the Ryazan School is inextricably linked with the history of the Red Army, the armed forces of the USSR and Russia. Almost immediately after the creation of the Red Army, it became clear that the new army needed qualified command personnel. The Red Army youth, with all their fighting spirit and zeal, did not have the proper knowledge. Therefore, in a number of cities in the country, courses were opened for the training of commanders of the Red Army.
Ryazan was one of these cities. Near Ryazan, in the village of Starozhilovo, the 1st Ryazan Cavalry Command Courses of the Red Army were created, in which the future Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov studied. In August 1918, it was decided to open infantry courses, and in November 1918, classes began at the Ryazan infantry courses of the command staff of the Red Army.
The first release of red commanders went to the Civil front from the Ryazan courses on March 15, 1919. The training, as we can see, was short-lived and as concise as possible. During the Civil War, the courses produced 7 accelerated graduations of red commanders, and the total number of graduates exceeded 500 people. After the end of the war, the courses were transformed into the Ryazan Infantry School with three years of training, and then into the Ryazan Infantry School of the Red Army named after Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov.
When the Great Patriotic War began, the school was again forced to switch to accelerated training of command personnel. The cadets began to study not 8 hours a day, but 10-12 hours a day, many classes were held at night. At the same time, the number of cadets was increased - instead of 2 battalions, 3 battalions were created. Graduates were awarded the military rank of "lieutenant", after which they were sent to the rifle units of the active army. All the war years, the school was headed by Colonel (then - Major General) Mikhail Petrovich Garussky (1894-1962) - a participant in the Civil War, a combat commander, who served as head of the Ryazan Infantry School in 1940-1946. In 1943 the school was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
On August 2, 1941, already in the first year of the war, in Kuibyshev (Samara), on the basis of the Ryazan Infantry School, a special military parachute school was created in an atmosphere of strict secrecy, in which command personnel were trained for the recently appeared airborne units of the Red Army. After the war, from 1946 to 1947, the military parachute school was located in Frunze, and then was transferred to Alma-Ata.
In 1958, the Council of Ministers of the USSR transformed the Ryazan Red Banner Infantry School into the Higher Combined Arms Command School. If before the school was considered a secondary school and had a three-year course of study, now it has become the highest one and new sets of cadets have had to study for four years already. At the Alma-Ata military parachute school, the period of study remained the same. However, General Vasily Filippovich Margelov, in 1954-1959. who held the post of commander of the USSR Airborne Forces, proposed combining both schools into one, especially since the growing importance of the Airborne Forces also required the development of a military education system for this type of troops.
The military department heeded Margelov's arguments and already on May 1, 1959, paratroopers under the command of Colonel A. S. Leontyev, appointed commander of the Ryazan Higher Combined Arms Command Red Banner School. Since that time, the Alma-Ata military parachute school became part of the Ryazan, and in the latter they began to train command personnel not only for the infantry, but also for the paratroopers.
But for another five years, until all the graduations of cadets who studied under the program of infantry (motorized rifle) units were completed, the school was called the Ryazan Higher Combined Arms Command Red Banner School. Only on April 4, 1964, the RVOKU was renamed into the RVVDKU - the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command Red Banner School. So the USSR Airborne Forces got their own higher educational institution. On February 22, 1968, the school was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for the second time, and it was given the honorary title "named after the Lenin Komsomol".
Great attention was paid to the strengthening of the school, the development of its training base, training camps. Quite quickly, the school became one of the most prestigious in the Soviet Army. The interest of young people in the Airborne Forces and the Ryazan School especially increased in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The war in Afghanistan became a real test for the officers - "Ryazan". The airborne troops played one of the key roles in the hostilities "across the river" and suffered heavy losses in personnel. But for the military, the war in Afghanistan has also become an unprecedented school of combat experience. Many graduates of the Ryazan School managed to fight in Afghanistan. Some of them subsequently made a dizzying career - not only military, but also political.
So, in 1969 Pavel Sergeevich Grachev graduated with honors from the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School. In 1981-1983 and 1985-1988. he took part in the hostilities in Afghanistan, received the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 1992-1996 Pavel Grachev served as Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation. These were very difficult years, during which dramatic events in the history of the country and the army fell - the economic crisis, the reduction of the armed forces, the shooting of the House of Soviets in October 1993, the First Chechen War.
The Ryazan School was also graduated in some way by the opponent of Pavel Grachev and his "patron" Boris Yeltsin, Lieutenant General Alexander Ivanovich Lebed. He was two years younger than Grachev and graduated from the school in 1973, and Grachev was the commander of Lebed at the school - then a young officer who consecutively commanded a platoon and a company of Ryazan cadets.
Grachev and Lebed are political figures. But among the famous graduates of the school there are even more soldiers who did not plunge into the chaos and filth of post-Soviet politics. For Afghanistan, he received the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union Valery Aleksandrovich Vostrotin, who was "across the river" from the very beginning of hostilities - he commanded an airborne company that stormed the palace of Hafizullah Amin in Kabul, then served in various positions, was seriously wounded. From September 1986 to May 1989 Valery Vostrotin commanded the legendary 345th separate guards paratrooper regiment. After the withdrawal of troops from the DRA, he commanded an airborne division, was deputy minister of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, and retired as a guard colonel-general.
The name of Colonel-General Georgy Ivanovich Shpak has forever entered the modern history of Russia, in 1996-2003. commander of the Russian Airborne Forces. He also graduated with honors from the Ryazan Higher Airborne School, went from platoon commander to division commander, commanded a combined-arms army, was deputy commander of a military district, fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya. The son of Georgy Shpak, Oleg Shpak, who also became a paratrooper officer, died in Chechnya in 1995.
In independent Russia, paratroopers faced no less trials. Airborne units have participated in almost all armed conflicts that have taken place in the post-Soviet space since 1991. Transnistria, Tajikistan, Chechnya, counter-terrorist operations in the North Caucasus, South Ossetia and Abkhazia - where the graduates of the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School did not fight.
Throughout the history of the school, its leaders, teachers, cadets were very sensitive to the history of the educational institution, the Airborne Forces and their "founding father" Vasily Filippovich Margelov. On November 3, 1995, a monument to General of the Army Margelov was unveiled on the territory of the school, and on November 12, 1996, President Boris Yeltsin, at the numerous requests of paratroopers, gave the school a new name. Now it began to be called "Ryazan Higher Airborne Command Twice Red Banner School named after Army General VF Margelov."
However, this military educational institution did not escape a series of reforms and renaming. In August 1998, the Ryazan Higher Airborne School named after General of the Army V. F. Margelov was renamed for some reason into the Ryazan Institute of the Airborne Forces. It took four years for the government of the country to return the name of General of the Army Vasily Margelov to the educational institution on November 11, 2002, and in 2004, again by numerous requests from both personnel and veterans of the Airborne Forces and the school, the Ryazan Institute of Airborne Forces was renamed again - into Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School (Military Institute) named after General of the Army V. F. Margelov.
In 2009, the disbanded Ryazan Higher Military Command School of Communications joined the school, on the basis of which a communications faculty was created, which trains specialists for communications units of the Airborne Forces. In 2013, a special reconnaissance battalion was returned to the Ryazan School from Novosibirsk, after which the training of commanders for special forces resumed in Ryazan.
What is the Ryazan School today? To begin with, this is an extremely prestigious military educational institution. The competition in the RVVDKU is very high, which is associated with the general prestige of the Airborne Forces in Russian society. For many young people, admission to the RVVDKU is a cherished dream. And this is dictated not only by romantic ideas about the service, but also by the fact that the school really provides a high-quality military education, and its graduates are in demand not only in the Airborne Forces, but also in the marines, in military intelligence, in the bodies of the Federal Security Service, the Federal Security Service etc.
Today, the school trains officers in military specialties - "The use of airborne units", "The use of military intelligence units", "The use of airborne communications units", "The use of airborne units (mountain)", "The use of marines", "The use of airborne support units" … The term of study at the school is five years.
Speaking about the Ryazan school, we must not forget that since 1962 foreign servicemen have been trained there. There is a whole special faculty dedicated to training foreign personnel. The first foreigners admitted to the school were Vietnamese military personnel. The warriors with the knowledge gained at the school at that time, in the 1960s, were very much needed by North Vietnam, which was waging an unequal war with South Vietnam, the United States and its allies.
Then the school began to accept cadets from other countries of the world. Many of them subsequently achieved high positions in their countries. For example, General Amadou Tumani Toure studied at the RVVDKU, in 1991-1992 and 2002-2012. former President of Mali. The interest of foreign armies in the Ryazan School is another evidence of the high quality of military education in this educational institution, the fame of which has long gone beyond the borders of our country.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the creation of the school, the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School was given the honorary name "Guards" by the Order of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 245-r dated February 17, 2018.
Voennoye Obozreniye congratulates the entire personnel of the Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne Command School, its veterans, paratroopers and members of their families on this wonderful anniversary. The Airborne Forces is truly the pride and strength of Russia, and the Ryazan School is the elite and pride of the Airborne Forces.
