Forged in War: A Military History of Russia from Its Beginnings to Today by MarkGaleotti. New York: Osprey Publishing, 2024. 368 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4728‐6251‐8
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: Mark Galeotti begins his overview of a thousand years of Russian warmaking with a quote from Joseph Stalin: Russia "was beaten … because of her backwardness, military backwardness, cultural backwardness, political backwardness, industrial backwardness, agricultural backwardness" (p.17).The invaders in Stalin's history lesson included Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes, Mongols, Turks, Japanese, British, and French, among others.And this idea applies, albeit uncomfortably, from the 1400s to the early 1900s.Over the course of hundreds of years, Russian leaders believed they were threatened by raiders, hostile neighbors, decaying empires, and frontiers without natural geographic boundaries, a belief that became fixed in Russian thought, even if it was only partly accurate.Russia's political and military aims have ebbed and flowed over the generations from its earliest years, as Galeotti shows.The Rus' sought to raid and attack Constantinople precisely because of its wealth and power and magnificence.In ironic contrast with the plaints of later rulers, these Varangians and Slavic tribes found themselves in the role of raiders, attacking a more modern civilization that was itself confronting threats across multiple fronts.Moving ahead in time, the author gives us a glimpse of the "backwardness" described by others that can just as easily be attributed to the tsars themselves.Motivations for war often failed to neatly support the theory of a besieged Russia.Nicholas I, for example, understood the interconnectedness of "warfighting, technology, economy and society," as he was a trained engineer (p.213).Yet when faced with reactionary or liberalizing choices as tsar he would choose the former-limiting the number of factories that could be opened, maintaining serfdom, and helping fellow monarchs to crush revolution abroad.At the turn of the twentieth century, the incompetent Nicholas II sought out "a nice, victorious little war" against eastern neighbors, as Europeans would not allow the Ottoman Empire to be carved up by Russia and its allies (p.241).Rather than accepting a diplomatic victory that would divvy up Manchuria and Korea between Russia and Japan, Nicholas II languidly prepared for war.He ceded strategic initiative and local commander General Alexei Kuropatkin ceded operational initiative, resulting in the loss of Port Arthur and the destruction of much of Russia's Pacific Fleet, whose poor condition-an enduring problem of the navy through the Cold War-also contributed to its demise.The issue of Nicholas's racism is offered as one cause impelling Russia toward war.However, this raises important questions that largely go unaddressed here and in other periods and campaigns.To what extent did racism in the Russian officer corps contribute to a lack of preparedness against Meijiera Japan?And, looking beyond the Japanese, when and where else did such racism undermine the Russian military?Certainly, this issue still dogs the military.Current-day hatred spurs on racialized atrocities against Ukrainians, or the khokhols, as Russians often derogatorily refer to their enemy.
Source: The Russian Review
DOI: 10.1111/russ.70034
Author: Michael S. Coffey
Institution: College of Southern Maryland
Language: English
Topic: Soviet and Russian History
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4409597663