FIGHTING TALK
- Paul Hansbury
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Catherine the Great is usually credited with the assertion that Russia must expand its borders in order to defend itself. During her reign, the Russian Empire expanded southwards to the Black Sea, capturing territory from the Ottoman Empire, including the first Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783. The conviction that expansionism is necessary for security has resonated with Russians ever since, sometimes justified in terms of geography and the need for 'natural' (hence: defensible) borders. Apparently, between 1500 and 1917, 'Russia expanded by an average of 130 square kilometres per day' (p.175). Expansion is sometimes couched in religious terms, as well. Some today invoke the idea of a Holy Rus', larger than contemporary Russia itself, which incorporates Belarusian and Ukrainian territory and peoples, seeing them – along with Russians – as a single triune nation.
This new book from Swedish scholar Gudrun Persson shows us how Russian strategic thinkers have primarily favoured an offensive strategy from the 18th century onwards. 'A step backwards is death,' thought one of Catherine's generals, Count Alexander Suvorov (1730-1800) (cited on p.23); he is known as 'the general who never lost a battle'. A similar offensively-oriented thinking appears to guide Vladimir Putin, which points to the importance of studying the history of Russian military thought.
Putin believes that Russia must be self-sufficient and has in the past quoted a remark attributed to Tsar Alexander III, 'Russia has only two allies: her army and her navy' (cited on p.149 and p.177). In 2017 the Russian president unveiled a monument in Crimea to Alexander, carrying those words as its inscription. Putin's insistence that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is an act of self-defence not aggression, however absurd it sounds to western ears, has many precedents in Russian thought. Discussing Nikolai Ogarkov (1917-1994), the Soviet chief of general staff between 1977 and 1984, Persson notes: '[His] line of thinking, that Russia had never attacked anyone and that Russia was forced by others to react, in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary, could be said to be a core thought of Russian strategic culture' (p.107).
