7th Guards Army

The Red Army's 7th Guards Army was re-designated from the Soviet 64th Army on April 16, 1943.

64th Army had originally been formed from 1st Reserve Army in July 1942, and alongside the 62nd Army, fought the German offensive during the Battle of Stalingrad to a standstill, for which it was raised to Guards status. General Lieutenant M.S. Shumilov, who had commanded the 64th Army, continued to command 7th Guards Army through the rest of the war, though he was promoted to General Colonel in October 1943.

It included the 15th, 36th, 72nd, 73rd, 78th and 81st Guards Rifle Divisions, which were incorporated in the 24th and 25th Guards Rifle Corps. As part of the Voronezh Front and the Steppe Front since July 18, 1943, the Army participated in the Battle of Kursk and the Battle for the Dnieper River from July through August, 1943. Subsequently, as part of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, it participated in the Kirovograd Offensive, and those of Uman and Botoşani, Iassy-Kishinev, Debrecen, Budapest, Bratislava and Brno, and Prague.

The 7th Guards Army was stationed in Austria as part of the Central Group of Forces briefly after the war. In 1946 it comprised three rifle corps totaling nine divisions, and that year General Ivan Fedyuninsky took command for a period. These formations were reassigned to the North Caucasus, Tavrichiy and Kiev Military Districts and the Army HQ arrived at Yerevan in the Transcaucasus Military District to take control of the 75th and 261st Rifle Divisions, soon followed by the 26th Mechanised Division and the 164th Rifle Division. In the late 1980s the Army consisted of:
*15th Motor Rifle Division (former 15th Rifle Division) – Kirovokan
*75th Motor Rifle Division (former 75th Rifle Division) – Nakhichevan
*127th Motor Rifle Division (former 261st Rifle Division) – Leninakan, Armenia (now 102nd Military Base)
*164th Motor Rifle Division (former 164th Rifle Division) - Yerevan

It was disbanded circa 1989-92 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

ources

*Feskov et al, 'The Soviet Army during the period of the Cold War,' Tomsk, 2004
*From Volga up to Prague", Moscow, 1966
*Shumilov, M., "Guardsmen", in the book "Kursk Fight", 3rd edition, Voronezh, 1982.
*http://samsv.narod.ru/Arm/ag07/arm.html
*Narod.ru [http://samsv.narod.ru/Arm/a64/arm.html 64th Army] (Russian)