11th Guards Army (Soviet Union)

The 11th Guards Army was a Soviet field army active from 1943 to 1997, which traces its origins to the formation of the Soviet 16th Army in June–July 1940.

History
Before Operation Barbarossa, HQ 16th Army was formed in July, 1940 in the Transbaikal Military District (uniting the forces deployed in Dauriya). General Lieutenant М. F. Лукин (June - August 1941) took command. In June 1941 it was relocated (with six Trans-Baikalian divisions) to Ukraine and subordinated to the Kiev Special Military District. The Army HQ was disbanded on 8 August 1941 after encirclement (the Battle of Smolensk (1941)) just west of Smolensk as part of the Western Front. For its prowess in battle, the second formation of the 16th Army was redisignated as the 11th Guards Army on 16 April 1943.

On 1 June 1943 the 11th Guards Army consisted of the 8th Guards Rifle Corps (11th, 26th and 83rd Guards Rifle Divisions), 16th Guards Rifle Corps (1st, 16th & 31st Guards, and 169th Rifle Divisions), and the 5th, 18th, and 84th Guards, and the 108th and 217th Rifle Divisions, several artillery divisions, armoured units, and other support units. The Army took part in the Orel Offensive (Operation Kutuzov), Briyansk, Gorodok, Operation Bagration, the Gumbinnen Operation the East Prussian Offensive, and finally the Battle of Königsberg under Bagramyan's command.

11th Guards ended the war in the Kaliningrad region and was based throughout the Cold War in the Kaliningrad oblast, forming part of the Baltic Military District. Pavel Batov commanded the army in the 1950s. In the 1950s it comprised 1st TD (former Tank Corps) and all the remaining Guards formations - 2nd Rifle Corps, 16th Koenigsberg Red Banner Rifle Corps (the 1st and 26th RD, 29 MD) and 36th Nemanskiy Red Banner Rifle Corps (5th and 16th Guards Rifle Divisions, 30th MD). Subsequently the army's composition changed little, and for the entire postwar period it comprised the 40th Guards Tank Division (former 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps, then 28th Guards MD) at Sovetsk, and the 1st Tank, and the 1st Guards and 26th Guards MRD (former Rifle Divisions). In 1960 the 5th Guards MRD, a former Rifle Division, was disbanded.

Elements took part in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

It was disbanded on 1 February 1997 by being redesignated the Ground and Coastal Defence Forces of the Baltic Fleet.