Tank corps (Soviet Union)

A tank corps (Russian: танковый корпус) was a type of Soviet armoured formation used during World War II.

Pre-war development of Soviet mechanized forces

In Soviet Russia, the so-called armored forces (броневые силы) preceded the Tank Corps. They consisted of the motorized armored units (автобронеотряды) made of armored vehicles and armored trains. The country did not have its own tanks during the Civil War of 1918–1920.

In January 1918, the Red Army established the Soviet of Armored Units (Совет броневых частей, or Центробронь), later renamed to Central Armored Directorate and then once again to Chief Armored Directorate (Главное броневое управление). In December 1920, the Red Army received its first light tanks, assembled at the Krasnoye Sormovo Factory. In 1928, it began the production of the MS-1 tanks (Малый Сопровождения -1, where M stands for "small" and S – for "convoy"). In 1929, it established the Central Directorate for Mechanization and Motorization of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. Tanks became a part of the mechanised corps at this point.

During this time, and based on the experience of the Civil War with its sweeping movements of horse-mobile formations, Soviet military theorists such as Vladimir Triandafillov and Konstantin Kalinovsky elaborated the principles of combat use of armored units, which envisioned a large-scale use of tanks in different situations in cooperation with various army units. In the mid-1930s, these ideas found their reflection in the so-called Deep Operation and deep combat theories.