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.
Author: nschuff7
Comment on The Soldiers’ Revolution by nschuff7
Yup Nicholas didn’t do himself any favors with his handling of the war. I didn’t even mention how he shot himself in the foot again by taking personal control of the Imperial Army in Fall of 1915. With this brilliant move he now bore full responsibility for continued losses. Additionally, this meant he was separated from the goings-on in Petrograd and thus possibly unaware of how bad things were getting in the lead up to the February Revolution. Whether his presence would have changed much in the long run however, is debatable.
Comment on The Soldiers’ Revolution by nschuff7
Hmmm I probably should have been a little more clear with my dates, but I only took it back to 1905 briefly to explain that the state of the pseudo-constitutional order has been weak since its institution after the 1905 Revolution and mention the parallel between the Russo-Japanese War and World War I in their effects on popular discontent. The focus of the post, however, was on the events leading up to and surrounding the February Revolution of 1917. Sorry about the confusion!
Comment on The Conspiracy of General Kornilov by nschuff7
As others have noted, I am skeptical as to how successful Kornilov’s coup would have been even if he had succeeded in overthrowing the Provisional Government. I can’t imagine, unless Kornilov was a very popular figure, that his rule would have lasted very long at all. I also wonder why the affair resulted in heightened distrust of the Provisional Government. Was it that the people saw it as a sign of weakness? Did they see the Soviets as more powerful and legitimate because of their ability to stop Kornilov’s coup?
Comment on Lenin’s Soviet Children by nschuff7
You mentioned that used bureaucratic power to enforce tradition. Do you mean a new Bolshevik tradition or did the Bolsheviks utilize elements of the old tradition to bring more people to their new ideology?
Comment on Portrait of Imperial Russia by nschuff7
It certainly is interesting to consider the breadth and diversity of Imperial Russia. It makes me wonder if the peoples that populated the edges of the empire concerned themselves or were even aware of the discontent fomenting in the more urban and modern western part of the empire.
Comment on The Melon Vendor by nschuff7
Samarkand is certainly a perfect example of the incredible diversity that existed in the Russian Empire at the time Prokudin-Gorskii took these photos. I wonder, did any ethnic Russians live in Samarkand at the time or was it almost entirely populated by minorities? Were there any attempts to Russify Samarkand and the surrounding region or did those efforts not reach that far?
