The Russian Army on Parade 1992-2017 is the third volume of the series 100 Years of Soviet and Russian Military Parades 1917-2017. It has been written as the previous ones by James Kinnear and is a thick hardcover volume of 370 pages. The format is slightly wider than a DIN A4, with thick and gloss paper.
Looking only at the title, it may seem that this is a mere photo collection of images from Military Parades, but in fact it is much more than that. Apart from the graphic component, which is undoubtedly important, there is also a lot of interesting text.
Russian/Soviet Military Parades have served different purposes, from national pride demonstration to power assertion or showroom of new weapons. Additionally, politic, economic and military situation have affected also the Parades.
The book puts in context all this background with the Military Parades, with detailed information also on the Parade itself like first appearance of vehicles, rehearsals or curious data.
Although most of the volume is focused on the spectacular and well known Moscow Red Square Parades, there is information also on others held at smaller cities.
And there is also over one thousand of excellent quality photos, detailed and crisp, of Russian military vehicles. Most representative vehicles of the era are shown, including the T-72, T-90, T-14 Armata, BTR-80, Taifun, Kurganets, BMPT Terminator, Msta, Koalitsiya, Smerch, Pantsir. Tor, Iskander and many more.
In detail
The book opens with a summary of Russia's geopolitical evolution in this period, right after URSS disintegration. It has been a very convulsive time, with radical changes of government, wars, terrorism, economic crisis... The evolution of the Military Parades is covered as well, with a significant gap between 1955 and 2008 with minimal commemorations to its resurgence to an annual event.
Then, the main part of the book are 300 pages devoted to describe, analyse and show each year's parade. Note that, despite the title, there is information up to 2019 -there is a separated volume for 2020, which marked the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) day.
For each year, there is a summary of the main political, economical and military events from a Russian point of view which help understanding the background of the Parades. Then there is a description of the Parades themselves for that year, mostly on the Red Square
There is a good amount of photos of different sizes for each year, showing a wide variety of vehicles that took part.
On some years, the military vehicles where just shown on an static exhibition, and these are also mentioned and photographed.
In general, parades until 2008 are briefly covered as they were just marching troops and war veterans with no vehicles. There were two exceptions, 1995 (50th anniversary of VE day) and 2005 (60th anniversary), which therefore have more extensive entries in the book.
From 2008 onward, Parades will have continuous and abundant presence of military vehicles hence the extent of these entries for each year is larger than the previous ones. There are details of which vehicles participated, which were first-timers and obviously there are many more photos.
For the last years, there is also information on the Bessmentny Polk (Inmortal Regiment), a popular parade of citizens.
The last main section of the book is a kind of catalogue or index of participant vehicles between 1992-2019: for each type of vehicles there is a description and small image, from armoured cars and BTS to tank to Strategic Rocket Systems, and data tables showing a summary of participants by type and year
Finally, there are a bibliography and glossary.
Conclusion
As expected, there is a large amount of photos of exceptional quality of the vehicles participating on the Parades for 27 years, including descriptive captions, which they alone already justify the book.
But the book has been a surprise for what it is much more than this large and nice collection of photos, with its narrative of Russian history of the last three decades and how it has influenced the Parades.
Highly recommended for fans of modern Russian AFV's, who will enjoy the more than 1,000 photos of so many different vehicles and its informative text.