Prisoners of Myth I. The Russians in the war with Ukraine

How the Soviets,  and by extension the Russians, came to see themselves.  In reality the wool in the uniform may have come from the US, the steel nad munitions that supported his artillery did as well, when those jack boots wore out he may have worn service shoes, and he definately dug into SPAM for rations from time to time.

The danger of believing myths is that some become ahistorical.  

Not all, but some.

Which points out while studying history is so important.

Myth itself is something that's not existentially bad.  Cultures create myths for a reason, with that reason stretching back into antiquity.  The earliest human beings created myths, as their entire historical memory was oral.  Current events were reduced to stories, and the stories remembered through telling, with them evolving into myths over time.  For that reason, myths are often surprisingly accurate. There really was a Troy that the Greeks waged war upon. . . the Apaches and the Navajo had really once lived in a region where there were great white bears, you get the point.

The problem becomes that myth making can become a coping mechanism for a culture as well.  And that can become enormously dangerous to that culture in some instances.  The Germans adopting the theory that they hadn't been defeated on the battlefield in World War One, which they had been, lead them to adopt a "stabbed in the back" theory that lead directly to World War Two.  The myth of the "Lost Cause" resulted in rank and file Southerners forgetting that they'd gone to war over slavery and had been outright defeated on the battlefield with a huge percentage of Southern soldiers deserting before the war's end, resulting partially in the preservation of formal institutional racism well into the second half of the 20th Century.  The myth of the Stolen Election is corrupting American Conservatism and the Republican Party right now.

Russia, likewise, went into Ukraine believing in a set of myths, with one overarching myth, and its paying the price for it.

Modern Russia and the Myth of World War Two.

• The basic myth.

At some point during World War Two itself the Soviet Union started telling the myth that the USSR, alone in its fight against Nazi Germany, and supported only weakly by two untrustworthy and cowardly allies, the US and the UK defeated the Germans.

Not hardly.

But this myth, or versions of it, became all pervasive in the USSR and are still believed in Russia today.  Indeed, amazingly enough, versions of this myth became relatively common, in a different form, in the West.

It's simply not true.

Now eighty years after the fact, the history of the Second World War is starting to be more accurately told, stripped away of many of its myths, including this one.  Let's flatly state the truth of the matter here.

The Soviet Union, following its own self interests, was an occasional defacto Axis ally from 1939 until the spring of 1941.  In that capacity, it helped the Germans subjugate continental Western Europe, but the Germans were unable to defeat the British.  Unable to do just that, Germany turned its eye on Soviet resources, which the USSR was well aware it was going, and the two nations bargained on greater German access to them.  Stalin overplayed his hand and sought a post-war position from Germany, at the expense of the British Empire, which was too much for the German's to agree to, and the Germans, contemptuous of the Slavs in any event, were ready to break off the effort and go to war with the USSR, the heir to Imperial Russia, which the Germans had defeated in 1917.

The German invasion came in June 1941.  The Red Army made some heroic stands in the summer and fall of 1941, but by and large it was thrown back in defeat.  The real Soviet achievement in 41 was not being outright defeated, but it was thrown back again, on a massive scale, in 1942.  Only in the winter of 1942 did the Soviet fortunes turn, but it would take titanic efforts and massive loss of life in order for the Germans to be pushed back and ultimately defeated.

Added to that, much of the Red Army was simply never very good.  Materially, the Soviets were unable to supply their own army adequately, and that fell to the UK and the US in large part.  Only 55 to 60 percent of the Red Army was Russian, with the balance being made up of other ethnicities, including large numbers of Ukrainians, 7,000,000 of whom served in the Red Army. At no point whatsoever did the Soviets ever fight, moreover, alone.  There was always a "second" or even third and fourth front which was manned by other Western Allies alone.

• The actual truth

It's odd to think of the myth of the invincibility of the Red Army when it's also so commonly known that the Soviet state spent so much time destroying it after the Civil War.

Contrary to the way we came to imagine it, the USSR did not spend a lot of time trying to become a military titan before World War Two.  The Reds, not without good reason, somewhat feared what an effective standing army would mean to its political leadership.  People have often been mystified by the purges of the Red Army, but in context they made sense.  After the fighting of the civil war had ended, the only powers powerful enough to challenge the Communists core running the country were in the Red Army, or in other established Communists.  Both took a pounding during the purges.  Indeed, while it hardly justifies murder, it's far to ask if Stalin would have been able to remain in control of the country if political opponents like Trotsky had run around unaddressed, or if powerful military leaders had not been done away with.

Added to that, the Russian armies, and it's fair to use the plural, that we have as examples in the 1900 to 1941 time period were bad.  The Japanese had defeated the Imperial Russian Army in 1905, the same army in World War One did not turn in a stellar performance.  The Whites and the Reds did fight each other tooth and nail during the Civil War, but all civil wars tend to work that way.  The Soviets did well in some of the Russo Polish War but were ultimately defeated, and thereafter they lived in mortal fear of hte Poles, and the Romanians, even though logic would dictate that neither country was capable of being a serious military threat to the Soviet Union.

And, of note, it's clear that the Russians still fear the Poles today.

The USSR was fought to a standstill in the Winter War with Finland just before World War Two. And only in the final months leading up to June, 1941, did the Soviets undertake a real effort to build a capable modern army.  It had some raw elements of that, including some good armor and aircraft designs, but it also had a weakened military institution with no NCO corps and a murdered officer corps.  It realy wasn't able to fix this, and nobody would be, prior to the German invasion.

What the Soviets did have was a  massive amount of territory and a leader in singular control.  

What it also had on 1941 was a British Empire that was already fighting the Germans, with ground combat having been going on in North Africa since June 1940.  The German invasion of the USSR was the second front, or the third if the Battle of the Atlantic is considered.

The UK was already receiving substantial US material, and frankly military, support well before Barbarossa, but the British were a major military materials producer itself.  Both the US and the UK immediately started to offer the Soviets material support.  It would take months before it really began to arrive, but of note, it took months as well for the Red Army to become really effective.

During the war, that aid would become enormous.  The US supplied 400,000 vehicles to the Soviets, changing what had been a horse-drawn army into a mostly vehicle transport one.  Studebaker's 6x6 trucks were for all practical purposes a dedicated Soviet truck, not even entering the US military in substantial numbers.  14,000 aircraft were supplied to the Soviets, including some, like Studebaker trucks, that were essentially models dedicated to Soviet use.  13,000 US tanks were supplied, with additional numbers of British tanks also being supplied.

15,000,000 pairs of Army service shoes, the legendary U.S. Munson Last boot, were supplied to the Red Army. If you see a photo of a Soviet soldier wearing lace up boots, those are almost certainly US made ones.

107,000 tons of cotton went to the USSR for their use.  2,700,000 tons of petroleum products.  4,500,000 tons of food were supplied.

An entire Ford tire factor was supplied.

80% of the copper used by the USSR during the war came from the US and UK.  55% of the aluminum.  

Immediately after the war, before the myth really set in, Soviet sources outright admitted that the USSR could not have fought without lend lease supplies. As late as 1963 a Soviet marshal was known to have stated the same.

The Western Allies, of course, provided this for their own purposes.  It was not charity.  The Soviets were always reticent to some degree to really acknowledge it at that.  But its important to note that the option not to provide it existed.

That would have been risky, which is in part why the leaders of the Western Allies were so ready to engage in it.  The Soviets were a known potential enemy, but the Germans were a present actual enemy.  Prior to June 1941, the British had gone it alone, but they had been fighting a defensive war the entire time.  It was possible to imagine a Germany, particularly one that made some sort of accommodation to the Soviet Union, consolidating gains in Europe to the point where it would have been impossible for the British to ever dislodge them.  Even after December 7, 1941, that remained a possibility.  The Western Allies needed the Soviets in the fight, just as the Soviets needed the Western Allies in order to fight.  The Patrick Buchanan view that the Western Allies should have allowed the USSR and Nazi Germany to destroy each other is wrongheaded, as chances are good that the Germans would have forced the Soviets into a peace of some sort that secured southern Russian materials and left Germany in a position basically impossible to deal with.  Having said that, at the same time, it's not impossible either to imagine the Soviets getting to that point.

It was, after all, the Russians who had given up in the Russo Japanese War and who had collapsed in World War One. And the Soviets, who had been defeated by the Poles after the Great War. And the Soviets, who had accommodated in the Winter War, after invading Finland.  Throughout World War Two, Stalin worried about the Western Allies reaching a separate peace, but that may have really  revealed more about Soviet thinking than anything else.  The Western Allies had fought the Germans to the bitter end in 1914-1918, which the Russians had not.

Moreover, for all its self-congratulatory propaganda.

Additionally, or all its self-congratulatory propaganda, the Soviet casualty list does not suggest what it might.  Massive Red Army losses in World War Two were in no small part self-inflicted, reflecting a poorly formed army that was badly trained and lacking a NCO corps.  It also reflected a leadership that was completely immune to concern over human losses, truly viewing Soviet soldiers as cannon fodder.  The German view as quite similar.  The fighting on the Eastern Front was in part savage, as the two armies engaged had leadership which didn't really care about high losses as long as goals seemed obtainable.  The Western Allies did not fight this way as, being from democratic societies, they could not contemplate using their citizenry in such a callous fashion.

Additionally, and seemingly completely missed by Soviet propaganda, the Western Allies went int alone on the seas, with the Soviet Navy being largely irrelevant the entire war.  While the Soviet Union had a navy, it didn't really matter, which effectively means that in a war fought on the land, air, and sea, the Soviets only fought on two out of the three.

And, as earlier noted, the Soviets were latecomers to the war and, in fact, had been on the other side early on.  If the US and UK did not take such massive losses, it was because, as noted, that they didn't fight that way.  They were, however, fighting, and fighting in more areas than the USSR was.  They were not, of course, fighting on their own ground, however, which does make a real difference.

And it goes beyond that.

Over 7,000,000 Red Army troops were Ukrainians, as noted, with indigenous Poles, Turkic peoples, and others filling the Red Army ranks.  But around 1,000,000 Soviet citizens provided aid to the Germans during the war as well.

This is a complicated story, as that aid varied in nature substantially.  The most pronounced anti-Soviet variants of it might be found in Cossack elements that went over wholesale to the Germans and who served on the Eastern Front, the Western Front, and in the Balkans.  But they were not alone.  Other Soviet citizens willingly took up arms with the Germans and fought against the Moscow.  Others, particularly in Ukraine, fought against the Soviets and the Germans, reprising the odd role of the Ukrainian Greens of the Russian Civil War who fought against the Reds and the Whites. Large numbers of Red Army POWs joined Vlasov's White Russian Army, but probably did so out of a desire simply to survive the ordeal of being a German POW.  

Soviet civilians aided the Germans in varying ways as well.  The examples are too numerous not to take note of, with Soviet civilians providing all sorts of minor aid and comfort to the Germans in spite of the fact that the Germans were barbaric towards Soviet citizens, visiting death and rape upon them at a scale that was too large not to be regarded as institutionally sanctioned.  Indeed, early on Russians and Belorussians greeted the Germans as liberators, with their view largely changing due to German barbarism.  Ukrainians greeted the Germans with bread and salt, a traditional Ukrainian greeting.  They, too, came to change their views under German repression.

• Bringing the myth forward.

After the war, and even by its late stages, the Soviets were developing a myth that they had won World War Two basically on their own.  Their leadership knew better, which showed itself even as late as the 1980s, when the Soviets lived in real fear of a NATO attack upon the Soviet Union.  But the myth has solidified, and it's showing itself now.

The logical question would be why such a myth would have been developed and fostered.  There are, however, a series of reasons for that.

All nations have foundational myths that are central to their identify in a way.  The American one dates back essentially to the Revolution, and was redefined by the Civil War, giving the country the foundational story of rising up against tyranny, which isn't really true, to form a self-governing democratic republic with a unique mission in the world. The Australian one involves a history of mistreatment by the British culminating in the disaster of Gallipoli, which in truth the Australians were only one nation involved in a much larger Allied effort. Other examples could be given.

The Soviet Union going into World War Two already had the Russian Revolution, but the imposition of Communism on the Russian Empire had not been universally accepted by any means, and various peoples struggled against it into the 1930s.  The USSR had only been saved from defeat by the support of Western, capitalist, nations during World War Two, after it had first conspired with the fascist Nazi Germany, for its own reasons.  During the war, large percentages of its population, in spite of massive Nazi barbarism, had sided with the Germans, and resistance movements went on in the country until the late 1940s.  A myth of a Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets came to call it, served to counter all of that.

The modern Russian Army is not the Red Army.  For one thing, it lacks the huge number of Ukrainians that the Red Army had.  But the Red Army, without the West, was never all that good.  It was bad going into World War Two, and it survived World War Two thanks to the West.  After the war, it continued to rely on Western technology for a time, in the form of purchased Western material, and in the form of acquired German knowledge, but over the decades it had to go over to simply acquiring it however they could, and often they simply did not.

The current Russian Army retains all the vices of the old, plus one more.  Its equipment is antiquated and poor.  Its leadership is bad.  

And it believes that it was invincible during World War Two, forgetting that it wasn't defeated due to Western support, the very thing Ukraine is getting now.

Tuesday, September 2, 1941. Finnish victories and Bloody Tragedies

The first meeting of the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board, Washington, D.C., September 2, 1941.

On this day in 1941, Finnish forces completed retaking the Karelia Isthmus, territory that had been lost to it during the Winter War.  You can see this and other items here:

Today in World War II History—September 2, 1941

On this time, while Finland  had thrown its fate in with Nazi Germany, it's hard not to sympathize with their immediate war aims, of which this was one. This territory had been stolen from it by the Soviet Union, and in joining the war, it was taking back what it had only recently lost.  Indeed, it would stop its advance upon doing so.

Showing the true nature of its ally, however, on this day Germans, along with Lithuanians, killed 3,700 Jews from Vilna.

Australians in Lebanon were photographed on this day.

Major General A. S. "Tubby" Allen, commander of the Australian 7th Division, with Lt Colonel Murray Moten, commander of the 2/27th Infantry Battalion and his men.

October 14, 1920. End of the Heimosodat

On this day in 1920, Finland and the Soviet Union entered into the Treaty of Tartu which fixed Finland's first post war borders with Soviet Russia.  This came in the context of ending the Heimosodat, a Finnish sponsored effort in the Finnish regions of Russia that sought to join the land inhabited by Russian Baltic Finns with Finland.

The story is complicated as the entire story involves a series of wars including wars of independence in neighboring states that were formerly part of Imperial Russia.  In some instances Finnish volunteers sought to aid independence movements in hopes of a friendly state being established, in others they hoped for outright annexation of Finnish lands that lay inside of Russia's boundaries.  The entire matter demonstrated, as the wars of the Poles we've recently dealt with, that former European imperial boundaries were rarely ethnic ones.

Finland itself occupies about 60% of the landmass inhabited by the Baltic Finns.  Estonia is the second state that has a Baltic Finn population, with Estonians also being Baltic Finns, but Baltic Finns speaking a branch of the overall Finnish language.  Finns from Finland sent volunteer units into Estonia to support it independence movement, which was successful at the time, a fairly remarkable thing to do as it was more or less concurrent with the Finnish Civil War.

Finnish volunteers in Estonia.

More serious, from a Russian prospective, were a series of Finnish supported efforts to secure the annexation of the large Finnish landmass to Finland's east.  This lead to a complicated series of wars, the Heimosodat, that are now largely forgotten outside the region but which form an important aspect of the situation from that point forward.

From March 1918 until October 1918, Finnish volunteers attempted, and nearly succeeded, in taking Karelia from Russia.  They were defeated not by Russian troops, with Russia collapsing into civil war at the time, but by British ones who feared the Germans securing access to the White Sea.  Conservative Finns, the Finnish Whites, had support from Imperial Germany and the British saw the Finnish effort in that context. British efforts successfully caused the Finnish advance to fall apart and the Finns ultimately retreated. Following that, the British attempted unsuccessfully to sponsor Karelian independence.

Murmansk Legion, a British organized and equipped Finnish unit in Karelia that fought the Finnish volunteers in that region. The unit was made up of, in part, refugee Finnish Red Guards, making it essentially a Finnish communist unit organized to fight the Finnish whites in Karelia.  When the British left Russia in 1919, many of its members went to Canada, with some securing reentrance to a less than enthused Finland. Some officers stayed in Soviet Russia and would later fight for the reds in the Spanish Civil War.

Also in 1918 Finnish volunteers attempted to annex Petsamo, the large northern landmass bordering the Arctic Sea, but were also pushed back by the British.

Finnish volunteers in Petsamo in 1918.

Finnish volunteers tried again for Karelia in 1919 in the Aunus expedition, now that Russia was fully in turmoil. The plan depended upon a Karelian uprising that didn't materialize, and after two months it retreated back into Finland.

In 1920 they also tried for Petsamo again, but were pushed back this time by Soviet troops.

In 1920 an uprising in North Ingria, the southern part of Karelia, ended up establishing a putative independent state that had the goal of being annexed to Finland, but which would have required the balance of Karelia to join Finland in order to succeed.

The Treaty of Tartu largely followed the former Imperial Russian boundaries of the Grand Duchy of Finland, excepting that the Finns received a portion of Petsamo including a port, which had been promised to them by the Imperial Russian government in 1864. They withdrew from some territory taken in in the other expeditions and abandoned support for North Ingria.  The treaty largely held until the Soviet's unwarranted invasion in 1939 although the Finns supported an uprising in Karelia in 1921-22 which severely strained their relations with the USSR at the time.

The entire matter is another example of the mess of imperial boundaries and the complicated nature of the break apart of imperial regimes.  By and large, Finns who dreamed of incorporating all Finnish lands into their newly independent state were justified in that goal.  Imperial Germany ironically ended up supporting their aspirations and the British helped crush them. German support of Finnish whites helped prevent Finland from becoming a Soviet state that would have been annexed to the Soviet Union in the 1920s, but its probable that had the Finns succeeded in establishing themselves beyond their imperial boundaries the Soviets would have taken that territory back in any event, and perhaps the rest of Finland as well.  At any rate, a good deal of Finnish ethnic territory remains outside of modern Finland today, and the territory, such as it was, that was gained by Finland in the Treaty of Tartu was lost at the end of the Continuation War.