The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with the opposing superpower, the United States, during the Cold War (1945–1991). The Soviet Navy played a large role during the Cold War, either confronting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in western Europe or power projection to maintain its sphere of influence in eastern Europe.
Aurora was unofficially the first Soviet Navy vessel, after it mutinied against the provisional democratic Russian government of Alexander Kerensky in the second 1917 Russian Revolution in October/November.
Soviet souvenir naval cap
Pacific Fleet marines of the Soviet Navy hoisting the Soviet naval ensign in Port Arthur, on 1 October 1945
Soviet Navy enlisted personnel stand at attention (1982)
The Soviet Armed Forces, also known as the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, the Red Army (1918–1946) and the Soviet Army (1946–1991), were the armed forces of the Russian SFSR (1917–1922) and the Soviet Union (1922–1991) from their beginnings in the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923 to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In May 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued decrees forming the Russian Armed Forces, which subsumed much of the Soviet Armed Forces. Multiple sections of the former Soviet Armed Forces in the other, smaller Soviet republics gradually came under those republics' control.
A Red Army parade in Moscow, 1922
A soldier of the Red Army, 1926, wearing the budenovka
Soviet war poster, 1941
A Soviet junior political officer (Politruk) urges Soviet troops forward against German positions (12 July 1942)