Part Five Chapter Five 'Bukrin Bridge-Head" pages 401 to 411 in Carell's Scorched Earth does cover this. A little more info: most use Glantz's study The Soviet Airborne Experience
1940, 29-30 June: In the first combat use of Soviet airborne forces in an air assault, two airborne brigades parachuted from TB-3 bombers into Rumanian Bessarabia and captured the cities of Bolgrad, Kagul, and Izmail.
1942, 3 January-6 March: Airborne troops of the Soviet IV Airborne Corps, totaling approximately 14,000 men, were dropped or airlanded into the rear area of the German forces attacking Moscow in the vicinity of Vyaz’ma, 130 SW of Moscow. The operations included six major drops that were often spread out over several days due mainly to shortages in troop carrier aircraft (including PS-84s, TB-3s, and probably even some Soviet-built C-47s). Initial objectives generally required troopers to secure—and in one instance, establish—an airfield for airlanding additional forces. The troopers of IV Airborne Corps were to link up with attacking Soviet ground forces and, along with partisans in the vicinity, cut German supply lines and strike a counterblow; in the drop of 6 March, parachutists jumped even farther west and directly attacked the supply base at Elnya. The overall effort suffered from poor coordination between units, bad weather, shortages, ineffective resupply, pilots who were poorly trained in night navigation and formation flying, and scattered drops; however, the effort threw off the German timetable in Hitler’s quest for Moscow. Troopers were isolated and eventually defeated in a battle during which some units fought in the line for four months, making this the longest-running airborne operation in history. Approximately 4,000 men survived.
Source: http://www.usaaftroopcarrier.com/Airborne%20Chronology.htm
"GERONIMO!" AND THE RED ARMY http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/geronimo/index.html
.....and one entire brigade was dropped near Smolensk, in 1941, behind German lines. Many of the personnel in this drop were dressed in civilian clothing, and were expected to operate as Partisans.
The VDV See Action
Despite being part of the Air Force, the 212th Airborne Brigade was deployed to the Far East and saw action in the Battle of Khalkin Gol against the Japanese Army in July and August 1939, while the 201st, 204th and 214th Airborne Brigades took part in the invasion of Poland during September 1939. The first full-scale combat jump in history occurred in November 1939 near Petsamo, Finland during the Russo-Finnish War and were again in action during the occupation of Rumanian Bessarabia. The reasonable success and good combat record, along with the success of the German Airborne forces in Western Europe meant that the five airborne brigades based in European Russia were earmarked to be expanded to corps status, while the sixth remained in the Far East. When war broke out in June 1941, the technical assets of the VDV (Vozdushno-Desantnaya Voyska - Air Assault Force) were totally inadequate to start with, and what they had was devastated by the air attacks early on in the campaign. This shortage of air assets meant that the VDV spent most of the war fighting as elite infantry. A number of operations were conducted during the winter of 1942 / 1943 with the 201st Airborne Brigade dropping near Medzyn on the 2 / 3 January and again near Vyazma on the 18th January, with the 204th Airborne Brigade near Rzhev on the 14 - 22 February. An ambitious plan was formulated to drop the entire 4th Airborne Corps near Vyazma behind German lines at the beginning of February, but with the lack of air transport assets meant that the 22 TB-3s and 40 PS-84s would have to fly two or three sorties a night for a week. The Corps started dropping on the 27th January and about a quarter of them were dropped into terrible weather conditions and the operation foundered. Another operation later in the month against Yukhnov also failed. These heroic but ineffective operations led the Soviet High Command to convert the Corps to Guards Rifle Divisions and they fought with distinction in the northern Caucasus and Stalingrad. Eventually however, the Air Force managed to have them reformed as Guards Airborne Divisions and a large scale operation was planned in September 1943 to drop and air-land 10,000 troops from the 1st, 3rd and 5th Airborne Brigades and establish a bridgehead over the Dniepr River. The operation, however was a costly failure. "By a cruel irony, the only successful airborne operation by Soviet forces in the Second World War were small-scale drops by special Naval Infantry paratroopers in the Crimea, and operations by improvised Army units during the campaign against the Japanese in Manchuria in 1945." [note 1]
Source Airborne and Airmobile Forces, Russian (Peter Antill) http://www.rickard.karoo.net/articles/weapons_russianairlong.html
, my main reference on the operation I was mentioning, is Paul Carrell's book "Scorched Earth" but alas it's not part of my library at the moment.
