Month: March 2018

Evtushenko: The Part The Poet Played.

On this March 6th, a radio announcer begins, “Dearest Comrades and friends.” He begins knowing that the lives of all those who listened were about to be changed forever. And those poets who listened would somehow know their art could never be the same. The relationship between the Soviet citizens and Stalin is one of …

Continue reading Evtushenko: The Part The Poet Played.

Comment on The Girl with the Tokarev SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle. by rejectedprincesses

Thanks for citing my entry on her! I put in extensive footnotes as to where I took artistic license and added citations as to sources and whatnot. It’s still an artistic interpretation but I tried my best.

I will say that my version hews much closer to her story than Battle for Sevastopol, which wholesale invents characters, plotlines, and events. 🙂 Perhaps that deserves a disclaimer too?

Comment on Religious Return by nschuff7

Interesting how Stalin re-instituted the Church only after realizing it could be of some utility to the country’s war effort. He really was a shrewd politician!

Comment on Literally the Only Time the US and the USSR Didn’t Hate Each Other by nschuff7

I know that soon after the war that both culturally with the Red Scare and foreign-policy wise the United States was obsessed with preventing communism from spreading, but I wonder what we thought of communism and the Soviets before and during the war. As you point out in your post it seems that at least during the war any reservations we might have had about them were trumped by the need to stop the Nazis from taking over Europe.

Comment on Modern System of Force Employment Explanation? by nschuff7

In my post, I talked about the Winter War fought between Finland and the Soviets roughly a year before the Nazis invaded. In the war, the vastly undertrained, undersupplied, and outnumbered Finnish Army was able to not only hold off, but kick the butts of the Red Army for the first month or two of the war. I believe their ability to outperform the Soviets has a lot to do with Biddle’s theory. The Red Army simply did not employ their forces according to Biddle’s theory. They used combined arms, (tanks, airplanes, artillery, infantry, etc.) but they used them poorly with little thought given to much of what Biddle mentions i.e. concealment, dispersion, suppression, maneuverability, etc. The Finns on the other hand were able to use what they did have incredibly effectively because they employed their forces tactically with special attention paid to maneuverability and concealment. It was not until the Soviets reorganized in the 3rd month of the war and altered their tank and artillery tactics that they achieved success. I just thought it was interesting how well the Soviet’s initial failure is explained by Biddle’s theory.

Comment on Innocence Lost: The Great Patriotic War in “Ivan’s Childhood” by awpeake12

Great post, and so well written and informative, I really like how you include links in the text–you will have to show me how to do that. I guess the Russians were ahead of their time in regards to anti-war sentiment.