First Edition, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776
Understanding why Putin invaded Ukraine and Russia’s fragile state can help accelerate Russia’s ending of hostilities.
Chris Snow, at Medium, on the rise and fall of the Soviet Empire (Part 1, Glory Blog part 3), provides enough revelations for more than one blog of which this is the third. Excerpt:
The Russian Tsar had to abdicate his throne in February 1917. Soon thereafter, the Russian empire found itself in a bloody civil war that lasted from November 1917 to October 1922. The war caused 7 to 12 million casualties, most of the civilians.
Some of the institutions, such as the Okhrana secret police were transformed but never really dismantled.
A bloody Civil War between right leaning conservatives “Whites” and the revolutionary Bolsheviki “Reds” emerged. Wars erupted in many parts of the former Tsarist sphere of influence. For example, between Poland and Ukraine.
Ukraine formed the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and fought for her independence from Moscow.
Ultimately, Ukraine was defeated and became one of the constituent republics of the USSR in 1922. At its core, the Russian empire remained the same oppressive structure under new Soviet management.
In 1924, Stalin took over and transformed the Empire.
Russia paid a heavy price for his process of industrialisation. Millions would die, including 4 million Ukrainians. The Soviets committed a most horrendous hunger genocide against Ukraine. This genocide is known as “Holodomor”.
Let us now jump forward to WW2.
The history of 20th century industralised warfare, and particularly the history of WW2, shows why Russia cannot win against the West.The major wars in the past 220 years that Russia has won (Napoleonic war and WW2) required them to be allied with the major economic powerhouse of their time. Namely, the Brits or the Americans.
Nazi Germany broke their alliance with the Soviet Union in June 1941, and the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa.
Barbarossa caused Russia 4.5 million Soviet casualties. Roughly 800.000 KIA, 1.4 million WIA, 2.3 million MIA.
Barbarossa lasted for 5 months until December 1941. The Soviets lost 21k aircraft and 20k tanks. Stalin realised that he would need money and equipment from the US to win the war.
In 1941, Stalin signed a Lend Lease with America. Later, Stalin admitted that the war would have been lost without this agreement,
The total aid for the Soviets amounted to 11.3 billion dollars. The US had riddled the Soviet Union’s defense industry with technological bottlenecks in the years prior to the war.
Stalin needed the US and Great Britain to achieve victory over the German Wehrmacht.
The United States provided 8 percent of the Soviet total equipment by war’s end. This included ample amounts of food, locomotives, ammuntition, hundreds of thousands of army boots, and hundreds of thousands of military vehicles.
The victorious USSR paid the highest price of all the parties involved.
The Nazis also starved roughly 3.3 million captured Soviet soldiers to death. This was part of their genocidal “Generalplan Ost” (GPO) The Soviets suffered in between 20 million and 27 million civilian and military casualties.
Even today, the demographic echo of WW2 haunts Russia.
In 1945, the Soviet economy was economically ruined. However, the economies of Nazis Germany and her defeated fascist allies were also completely ruined.
Glory to Ukraine!
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