We should ask and see if there are any Russian members of the forum and ask them. In order to havce 20 million paras (which I also find hard to believe) they must virtually have every able bodied male be a part of it.Thank you, Jeff. I haven't followed The Military Balance for twenty or more years, but I imaging that many of the numbers will have received little attention, as those Russian para, while other numbers will have been to difficult to get right. Then there is the influence of propaganda. I remember that the Pentagon doubled its estimate of Soviet military expenditure in the time of President Carter and that was followed by The Military Balance.
My focus on that chart is really the active duty and official reserves. I may go back and just take the paras out of it.