Soviet Theory Forgotten: Russian Military Strategy in the War in Ukraine

[Passages]

Jon Klug - U.S. Army War College

Shocking images of Russian artillery explosions, aircraft strikes, and tanks rolling across the Ukrainian border on February 24, 2022, reintroduced Europe to land war on a scale that had not been seen since the Allied extirpation of the Nazi regime. Not only did this Russian offensive usher major international war back to the European continent, but it also upended many twenty-first-century cherished notions, such as American political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” to British military historian Richard Overy’s claim that the Second World War was “The Last Imperial War.” The Russian offensive opened at a breakneck pace as a stunned world looked on in confusion. However, problems quickly arose. Despite wishful Russian assumptions to the contrary, the Ukrainian will did not crack; instead, resistance increased dramatically. Future historians will undoubtedly point to the Battle of Antonov Airport, located in Hostomel near the strategically critical Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where the initial Russian offensive culminated. Kyiv held, and the Russian tide receded, resulting in the character of the war transitioning from a lightning coup de main to a long, grinding conflict.

The outcome of the initial failed Russian offensive and the subsequent war in Ukraine is an opportunity to employ the theme of this Special Edition: What would a military theorist say about strategy in the twenty-first century? This article’s variation on that theme is to explore what the old Soviet military theorists—the progenitors of concepts like operational art, deep battle, and deep operations in the 1920s and 30s—would say about the Russian twenty-first-century military strategy and performance in Ukraine. Led by the so-called “Soviet Clausewitz” Aleksandr A. Svechin, the “Red Bonaparte” Mikail N. Tukhachevsky, Vladimir K. Triandafillov, and Georgii S. Isserson would take the Russian inheritors of their thought to task on many points.

To demonstrate how the Soviet theorists would critique the Russian war effort in Ukraine, this article uses four sections to explore how the Soviet military theorists might critique today’s Russian Army operations in Ukraine. The first section is devoted to the pertinent theory of the four most important Red Army military theorists, providing a framework to evaluate the Russian strategy and operations. The subsequent sections use the military theorists to critique the Russian strategy, preparations, and failed initial offensive; the period of positional warfare, and how the war may end.

Soviet Military Theory: A Framework
The Soviet Red Army produced a mass of literature on military theory, which is far too voluminous to recapitulate in a short article, let alone a section of one. The focus here is to provide the salient points of four of the earliest and, arguably, most important Soviet military theorists to act as a framework for the other sections. Before the twentieth century, armies had collided at a single point, a single battlefield that determined a campaign and often the war. However, Soviet military theorists observed changes in the character of warfare during the First World War—where mass armies fought with continuous fronts with great depth and reserves, causing battlefield casualties at an industrial level—and that continued with the Russian Civil War and the Russo-Polish War. The Red Army’s theoretical answer was a holistic concept of military art of which strategy, operational art, and tactics were its constituent fields, of which “deep battle” and “deep operations” would play an essential role as the Soviet theorists refined their knowledge. While somewhat out of chronological order, the best way to explore the four theorists is by detailing their contributions based on their influence: Svechin, Tukhachevsky, Triandafillov, and Isserson.

Although not well-known in the West, Svechin is the most important of the Soviet theorists for several reasons. He was both the first and the most influential of the Soviet theorists—all the work of those who followed him, no matter the importance or novelty of their contributions, is derivative from Svechin. As a result, it is impossible to conceive of Red Army military theory, such as it is, without his work. Two critical previous military theorists influenced Svechin’s thinking. Carl von Clausewitz’ On War shaped Svechin’s thinking on strategy and the strength of the defense; hence, those who studied Svechin called him the “Soviet Clausewitz” or “Red Clausewitz.”[ii] Finally, Hans Delbrück’s ideas on annihilation and attrition shaped Svechin’s thoughts on the defense and conceptualization of positional warfare.[iii]

SNIP*
War in Ukraine: Failed Coup De Main

https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/soviet-theory-forgotten-russian-military-strategy-in-the-war-in-ukraine/