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Essay: Stavridis: Getting Pummeled in War Is a 200-Year Russian Tradition (view source)
Revision as of 04:00, November 7, 2023
, 04:00, November 7, 2023no edit summary
A decade ago, as the supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, I would meet occasionally with my counterpart in Russia, General Nikolai Makarov (not to be confused with General Vladimir Makarov, a failed Russian commander in Ukraine who committed suicide in Moscow this month). Makarov would remind me of those centuries of war and humiliation. “Too much history,” he once said. Russians have a lot of scar tissue from the last 200 years.<ref>[https://archive.md/ya4oV#selection-3471.0-3471.55 Getting Pummeled in War Is a 200-Year Russian Tradition] by James Stavridis, Bloomberg News, February 23, 2023</ref>}}
A decade ago, as the supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, I would meet occasionally with my counterpart in Russia, General Nikolai Makarov (not to be confused with General Vladimir Makarov, a failed Russian commander in Ukraine who committed suicide in Moscow this month). Makarov would remind me of those centuries of war and humiliation. “Too much history,” he once said. Russians have a lot of scar tissue from the last 200 years.<ref>[https://archive.md/ya4oV#selection-3471.0-3471.55 Getting Pummeled in War Is a 200-Year Russian Tradition] by James Stavridis, Bloomberg News, February 23, 2023</ref>}}
Yaro Kurfyust, Ministry of Affairs of the Czech Republic wrote:
{{Cquote|Soviet and Russian propaganda gave us a sense of the "invincibility" of Russian weapons and the unsurpassed strength of this geographically large and valuable Asian country. A Czechoslovak socialist upbringing instilled in us respect for the victorious Soviet army, which it mistakenly and purposefully identified with the Russians.
Anyone who opposed this propaganda and manipulative narrative was declared a fascist and a criminal.
We used a distorted image of victory in World War II - in cinema, mass culture and education.
The remnants of the socialist educational program have been preserved and teaching in schools still shows the need for an objective study of modern history.
While not diminishing the number of casualties in the Second World War on the Russian side, we must not forget that the victory was also largely based on the casualties of Ukrainians, Belarusians, and a long list of other nations. And it was not only the victory of the Soviet Union, but also the victory of the Allies, including their own casualties.
We also cannot forget the violent and imperial nature of Moscow's policy during the Soviet campaign, which resulted in the creation of a colonial system of socialist satellites, which Moscow referred to as the "peace camp."
However, Russia - not only the current one, but also the older one - lost most of the wars in its history. Especially those where it has faced a persistent resistance from a united military and civilian population, or a technologically advanced adversary. Not much is said about these wars. Russian propaganda completely silences them. But it is worth turning to this part of the story.
The Russian Empire fought a series of conflicts with the west, in what is now Ukraine and Belarus. Before the reign of Peter the Great, they fought quite unsuccessfully against the Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Poles, and the Swedes. According to statistics compiled by Vladimir Solovyov, a great Russian historian of the late nineteenth century, Russia lost more than 70% of the 50 wars in the north and west from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.
With varying degrees of success, it tried to conquer Ukraine, consolidate its position on the Black Sea coast and penetrate the Persian southern coast of the Caspian Sea. After clashes with the Turks and Persians, the Russians were forced to retreat. Later, Catherine the Great succeeded on these fronts. Her aggressive policy was detrimental to Ukrainian and Polish statehood, as well as to the peoples of Crimea.
At the beginning of the XIX century, the campaign of Russian Emperor Paul I in India ended in complete failure, and in a few decades, Russia was defeated in the Crimean War (1853-1856). At that time, European powers were firmly united against Russia. Thanks to the unity of Europeans and the plight of Russia after the war, it was defeated in the Berlin Congress of 1878.
After these defeats, the Russian leadership was forced to turn away from Europe and begin expansion into Asia.
By the end of the 19th century, Russia already controlled the Pacific coast, so it turned its attention to the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria. Russia's subsequent defeat in the Russo-Japanese War was one of the causes of the end of the Russian Empire.
Russia played a significant role in inciting the First World War. The military leaders in Russia claimed the conflict would lead to control over the Black Sea Straits and Constantinople - today's Istanbul, then in the eyes of the Russians - "the second Rome".
After numerous military setbacks, the Russian Empire completely collapsed from within. The Brest- Litovsk peace, concluded as a result of negotiations between the new Bolshevik government and the German Empire, briefly resulted in a long-awaited statehood for Ukrainians and Belarusians.
Attempts by the Bolsheviks to spread the communist revolution around the globe were unsuccessful...
The collapse of the colonial system and Soviet Russia's false confidence led to territorial greed. Afghanistan fell victim to it in 1979. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan, like the Russo-Japanese War, was a prelude to the end of the empire. Then the Soviet Union disintegrated, becoming one of the great geopolitical blessings of the bloody twentieth century...
In 1996, Russia launched a war against Chechnya. However, the bloodshed in little Chechnya in the North Caucasus proved fatal to the Russian army. In 1999, Russia launched a second Chechen war, choosing a different tactic. Chechnya was ruthlessly defeated, and Moscow appointed a brutal puppet dictator at the head of a "useful republic" within the Russian Federation.
Even Russia's aggression against Georgia in 2008 cannot be called a pure victory.
The Russian forces were uncoordinated, and the army movement did not meet modern standards of warfare. Even the Russian leadership was so disappointed by the inefficiency of its armed forces that they initiated a large-scale reform of the army.<ref>[Russia used to lose wars, says history. Don't buy the opposite myth, and don't write off Ukraine!] by Yaro Kurfyust, Ministry of Affairs of the Czech Republic, European Pravda, 2022<ref>}}
'''Wars Russia lost, Russian military defeats and other defeats:'''
'''Wars Russia lost, Russian military defeats and other defeats:'''