Under Joseph Stalin's iron-fisted rule, the Soviet state tried to
forge an army that would be both a shining example of proletarian
power and an indomitable deterrent against fascist aggression. In
reality, Roger Reese reveals, Stalin's grand military experiment
failed miserably on both counts before it was finally rescued
within the crucible of war.
Reese greatly expands our understanding of the Red Army's
evolution during the 1930s and its near decimation at the beginning
of World War II. Counter to conventional views, he argues that the
Stalinist state largely failed in its attempt to use military
service as a means to indoctrinate its citizens, especially the
peasantry. After 1928, the regime's recruits became increasingly
disenchanted with Stalin's socialist enterprise--primarily due to
the disheartening changes brought on by collectivization and
dekulakization. In effect, these reluctant soldiers turned their
backs on both the army and Communist Party leadership, neither of
which regained credibility until after World War II.
The soldiers' alienation and hostility, Reese demonstrates, was
most clearly manifested in the highly volatile tensions between
officers and peasant recruits following the military's chaotic
expansion during the 1930s. Those tensions and numerous internal
conflicts greatly undermined the regime's effort to create a
well-trained, cohesive, and politically indoctrinated army. In
place of this ideal, the regime stumbled along with a disunited and
ineffective fighting force guided by outdated doctrines and led by
an undeveloped officer corps. All of those elements made the Soviet
Union particularly vulnerable to the devastating military disasters
of 1941.
Along the way, Reese persuasively dispels a number of myths. He
shows, for example, that the Red Army's humiliating defeats at the
start of the war were not, as many still believe, due to Stalin's
bloody purges of the officer corps during the 1930s nor to
overwhelming German military and economic superiority. Stalin,
Reese argues, was only one of many key influences on the Soviet's
disorganized effort to field an effective fighting force. And,
while the Red Army was actually technologically superior to the
Wehrmacht, the Germans made far better strategic and tactical use
of their forces to overwhelm the poorly-led Soviets.
A fascinating portrait of an army at war with itself, Reese's
study illuminates the daily lives of soldiers, officers, and
civilians and forever changes the way we look at the relation
between political motives and military needs in the early Soviet
state.
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