Triandafillov, Lt Gen Vladimir (1894-1931), Russian and Soviet officer and military theorist, responsible for the development of the concepts of ‘deep battle’ and ‘deep operations’. Born in Kars district, now in Turkey, Triandafillov joined the Russian army as an ensign in 1915, rising to command a battalion as a staff-captain. He joined the Red Army in 1918 and during the civil war rose to command a brigade, fighting on the eastern, southern, and south-western fronts. From 1923 until 1931 he was head of the operations directorate of the Red Army general staff, commander and commissar of a rifle corps, and, finally, deputy chief of Red Army Staff with the rank of komkor (lieutenant general). Triandafillov's study of WW I led him to develop the idea of a simultaneous attack on the entire depth of the enemy's deployment, using long-range artillery, armour, and air. His work closely paralleled that of Fuller in Britain, particularly Plan 1919. Like Fuller's, his early work focused on the penetration of the tactical zone—up to the zone of the enemy's guns—some 6.2-7.5 miles (10-12 km) deep, using three different types of tanks for close support of infantry (NPP), for destroying machine guns (DPP), and for destroying artillery (DD). In The Scale of Operations of Modern Armies (1926) and The Character of the Operations of Modern Armies, first published in 1929, Triandafillov had begun to explore the possibility of deeper and more expansive penetration-deep operations, although this was not fully developed until after his death, in the temporary Field Service Regulations for 1936 (PU-36).
His work on the scale of operations of modern armies and the operational level of war drew on that of earlier writers, especially Aleksandr Neznamov (1872-1928). Triandafillov, like most Soviet military theorists, focused on the next big future war (budushchaya voyna), against a great capitalist coalition. He therefore concurred with Svechin that the USSR needed armed forces ‘of high quality and in sufficient numbers’—the ‘high quality mass army’ which was probably unattainable.
On 12 July 1931, Triandafillov was due to fly to Kiev to read a paper on ‘new forms of deep battle’ to a command conference of the Kiev Special Military District—used as a laboratory for studying new forms of warfare. The plane crashed on or shortly after take-off. Foul play is not suspected. His ideas were vindicated during WW II, and his remains are now fittingly interred in the Kremlin wall.
— Christopher Bellamy
