War in the Age of Technology: Myriad Faces of Modern Armed Conflict

13. Russia and Warfare in the Postindustrial Age

chapter 13 ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ Russia and Warfare in the Postindustrial Age Michael Orr The Soviet army was built for warfare in the industrial age, and it was undoubtedly among the most successful of the world’s armies during that period. It is no coincidence that Engels and Lenin, the founders of Marxist military theory, were writing as the Industrial Revolution came to its peak. Marxism was a political doctrine of and for the nineteenth century, and it, in turn, ensured that the military doctrine of the Soviet Union remained deeply and uniquely embedded in the assumptions of industrial society . After the debacle of the First World War, the Soviet state strove to adapt the Russian military machine to the conditions of industrial warfare. From the 1920s onward, it became almost impossible to separate the development of the Soviet economy from that of the armed forces; nor was it easy to say where the priority lay. The Soviets believed that, despite the glittering distractions of individual battles and even campaigns of maneuver and strategic brilliance, victory in war was fundamentally determined by attrition between industrial economies. Even the introduction of nuclear weapons did not fundamentally alter this approach, since Soviet nuclear strategy remained in its essence a war-fighting and not a deterrence strategy.1 While other states built their armed forces to protect their society and economy, during most of its history the Soviet Union developed its society and the economy to support the armed forces. As Chris Donnelly writes, 365 “The USSR was not merely a state with a military machine, the state was a military machine.” In fact, most students of Soviet history concur that the Soviet economy was basically a war economy, a distortion that was probably the major reason for the system’s collapse.2 Since that collapse, Russia has had to confront a post–cold war world characterized by what can be termed postindustrial conflicts. This chapter looks at the two wars in Chechnya as case studies in this confrontation. It takes as its starting point an understanding that the Soviet armed forces were highly successful in waging the industrial warfare for which they were intended. It also maintains that Russia has experienced almost complete continuity in military affairs over the last decade—regardless of the many political changes that have occurred. This continuity is particularly striking in the field of military thought, where there is no perceptible break between the Soviet and modern Russian periods. Some changes have, of course, occurred in recent years, but they have been few in number and may well have been natural developments in Soviet military thinking that would have arisen even if the Soviet Union had survived.3 One of the most important features of Soviet-style systems that persists in Russia is the ruling party’s direct control of military affairs through the concept of “military doctrine.” In Western states there is an effective distinction between defense policy, which is set by the government of the day, and the military’s guiding principles, or doctrine, whose development is part of the professional competence of the nation’s armed forces. In the Soviet Union, however, doctrine encompassed much more. Indeed, it was defined as nothing less than “the nation’s officially accepted system of scientifically founded views on the nature of modern wars and the use of armed forces in them, and also on the requirements arising from these views regarding the country and its armed forces being made ready for war.”4 Significantly, the latest Russian document on military doctrine—now approved by President Vladimir Putin—has a similarly broad scope and depth.5 In many respects, the Soviet approach to military doctrine was a michael orr 366 source of strength, enabling the state to match the West in military power from a much weaker economic base. Soviet military doctrine produced a vast array of missiles, tanks, guns, and other weapons, thus making the Soviet Union a superpower. By the playing the most significant role in defeating Nazi Germany, the Red Army validated its doctrine and proved the competence of its commanders, and it remained a formidable force for long thereafter. Hence Russia ’s more recent, apparent decline in military power does not indicate that the Soviet military machine came to resemble a hollow shell, crumbling within. It did not become less powerful but rather, like the battleship in the Second World War, simply less relevant. The...