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Gudrun Persson, "Russian Military Thought: The Evolution of Strategy Since the Crimean War" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
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New Books Network Intro
welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:28]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Hello. Welcome to the New Books Network. I am your host Stephen Sakiewicz. My next guest is Gudrun Pearson and we will be discussing her book Russian Military the Evolution of Strategy since the Crimean War, published by Georgetown University Press in 2025. Gudrun Pearson is an Associate professor of Slavic Studies at Stockholm University. He is she is the author of Learning from Foreign Russian Military Thinking 1859-1873 and is a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of War Sciences, Chatham House and the Swedish Writers Union. Gudrin Pearson, welcome to the New Books Network.
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Gudrun Pearson
Thank you, Steven. It's great to be here.
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Stephen Sakiewicz
We always like to begin our interviews by asking our guests, tell us a little bit about yourself and what is the backstory behind this book.
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Gudrun Pearson
All right. Yes. I'm associate professor at Stockholm University and I have a long career in Russian studies, if you will. I actually started back in the Stone Age during the Soviet period and then so I've been following the developments in various aspects for quite many years by now. And the background to the book was it was actually when I was doing my PhD at the London School of Economics and I was living a year in Moscow to do archival research. And then I discovered that discussions among military thinkers were so much there was so in interesting and much more lively than I had the impression before. So I've been wanting to write this book for quite some time. But as you know, Russian studies, when I came home after finishing my PhD, it wasn't that easy to find a job or a publisher who were interested in Russian military thinkers. This is a great idea. And so it took me a while, but I've been gathering material also for quite some time and you can actually access it, some of it online even these days. And I think this is such an important and under researched topic because to me it reflects the very heart of Russia. It goes to the heart of Russia as a state. And although during the Soviet period there were some Western writings and studies on Soviet military thought and Soviet military doctrine, really good work. But then after that, almost nothing. So when I finished the book and it was out in print finally, I thought this is actually kind of strange that this book hasn't been written before. And what I do is I also take into account the legacy from the tsarist period to try to find change continuities, the long, the long story and the long evolution. So that's a bit about the background of this book.
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Stephen Sakiewicz
Very good, very good. Now you touched on this in your previous answer, but what is the significance of studying Russian military thought, especially in light of recent events over the past decade and just within the last four years?
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Gudrun Pearson
Yeah, this is one of my key points in the book, that you cannot understand the current political leadership in Russia unless you have this long evolution of Russian military thought. It goes to the heart of Russia as a state. It's about the national identity. So I focus on periods after defeat in a major war or state collapse, because I initially thought that during these periods, obviously the strategy didn't work. So I expected to find a lot more change than I then did. And also, I mean, you remember 2014 and everyone was so surprised when Russia actually used military force to take Crimea, the Crimean Peninsula. And everyone was so surprised. And then again in 2022, it was like, oh, we didn't think they were going to do this. It's not rational. So this is classic mirror imaging. And if you had been following like I had the Russian military thinking about war and conflict and the entire framework, you would have avoided a rude awakening. You would have avoided very tiresome to my mind, discussions about a Gerasimov doctrine. Is there such a thing? The whole confusion with the hybrid warfare, that was something totally new and recently invented. I mean, to my mind, and I can live with the hybrid concept now, I won't fight it anymore. But to my mind, what's new is not the fact that Russia is using various instruments to gain political objectives. Because that's also one of the key points in my book that I can show that when Russians write and think about military doctrine and strategy, it constitutes a whole with various instruments, political, diplomatic, economic, sports, culture, and the military instrument. And what happened during the war years from 2014 and onwards was that Russia was really trying to push and use all kinds of tools and destabilizing things and meddling in Western elections. But it turned out it was very hard to win that kind of war. So then they used military force. And so. And I think this is important to understand because I realize it might sound very boring and very theoretical, you know, but it's actually a part of Russian history in general, and it also tells you so much about the entire background to what we are seeing today. So this is why I say it's crucial. And in the west in general, for the past 30 years, it's been an ignored subject, both among politicians and academics. And also another thing that I think for too long, we were sort of stuck in old Soviet concepts, not taking into account the legacy from the tsarist period. And so what we see now to a large degree is that when Russia experiences problems on the battlefield, they revert to what they knew. And this is why we're seeing again, you know, the offensive posture, the focus on mass and such things. So it's a very necessary. It's necessary and it tells you about today. It's not just boring writing. It's crucial that we understand this to avoid future mirror imaging and getting surprised again whenever Russia starts to throw bombs.
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Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah, and you touched on a really good point, because after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the narrative has been and still is that, oh, Russia's irrelevant. Russia is irrelevant. It's just a. As I often heard, it was like it's just a gas station with nukes. But then we ignore that. Russia still has quite capabilities. And obviously other parts of the world, like India and China, they still see Russia as a valuable partner and valuable asset on the world stage. But in a lot of the discourse, it's still, oh, Russia is irrelevant. Oh, Russia invaded Ukraine. Oh, because they're irrelevant and they just want to be relevant again, but they're still irrelevant. It just seems like we're still getting this. We're still stuck in that mindset about this. And this is one major misconception. Are there any other misconceptions the west has about Russia and Russian military thought?
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Gudrun Pearson
Well, an important thing is that when Russia thinks about war and conflict, it describes More the supra structure around it. When Western strategists think about strategy, it oftentimes concerns the method of war. And in order to have a strategy, you have this line and you have benchmarks and you put resources into it, and it's very organized. That's the Western in general view, whereas that's not the case at all in Russia. When Russia talks about strategy, it is, as I said, a holistic view that encompasses a number of instruments and sort of tends to answer the question of why war and conflict more than how. And in terms of Russia's relevance, I mean, I live in Sweden, I live in Europe, and the war is being fought here. So in that sense, I think Also in the 1990s and early 2000s, we were so focused on if we cooperate, if we trade with Russia, if we talk to Russia, and it will somehow miraculously become democratic. And this leads to one of the major misconceptions to my mind, namely that we can sit outside Russia, Western countries, and do certain things that would miraculously transform things in Russia. One of my points in the book is that Russia has for a very long time considered the west the main adversary, back from the 19th century and through up until today. But when they do their own threat assessment, the domestic factors are the most important one. Although Russian leaders from time to time point and say, but the west is the enemy, NATO is the enemy, or the adversary, in actual fact, their own calculations are done from their own premises. So the fear of domestic upheaval is very important. It's very important to control the information sphere at home. Those things affect. And also the view of history, as it turns out, is a very important factor when it comes to how Russia reasons about its strategy. And we can see that now when Putin says, we are only correcting historical mistakes and this is our land, it's a recurring thing over these 160, 70 years that I've been examining. It's important also, I think, to stress. I'd like to stress this fact that this is not, how should I put it, a deterministic book or conclusion. There are many, many, many occasions when the Russian leader could have made other choices but chose not to do so. Which leads me to another, and it shouldn't be a misconception in the west, but perhaps ignored at times, that it is policy. Who decides? It's the Russian ruler, whatever his name is, that decides strategy, that decides when Russia is going to use military force. And there have been also many occasions when the military has tried to influence the policy makers if you will, or the policymaker, the tsar, the general secretary. I can make one example. In 1979, when the Soviet Union decided to invade Afghanistan, and as we know now, the then chief of the General Staff, Nikolai Agarkov, he said, no, that's a terrible idea. I mean, those conflicts and that country should be done diplomatically. And then the defense minister was angry and said, look, the politbiro has made a decision, so your task is just to execute the whole thing. And another thing about Afghanistan in the 1920s, a man called Andrei Snyasarev, who was one of the leading military thinkers, he then got repressed by Stalin. So then he wasn't read, but he's considered very highly today. And he traveled, he mapped Afghanistan and he wrote in his book that of course then wasn't published during the Soviet period, but he wrote that a country like this, Afghanistan, it's a very proud people here. And there are no roads, so it's very difficult to take and almost impossible to hold. This was written in the 1920s. I could go on about this, but the priest.
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Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we're definitely going to get into more of this throughout the course of the interview. Now, what are some of the foundations for Russian military thought? And this kind of gets into what are the foundations of Russia, Russian culture and civilization and statehood as a whole as well, which kind of gets back to your point, like how the military and Russian identity are very closely tied.
- [18:37]
Gudrun Pearson
Yeah, well, where, where should I begin? It's. I. It's, you know, one. What. Okay, so you know what?
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Stephen Sakiewicz
Let's get to.
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Gudrun Pearson
I'll talk. Yeah, I'll talk about a bit more about the book and how I constructed it. And one of the things I'm examining is what influences Russian strategy and doctrine. And I had hard factors like weapon systems, geography, armaments, etc. Or is it more the softer factors like policy decisions, the view of history, the influence of mainly Western other military thinkers. And I discovered that over the long period, the softer factors tend to be more influential than the harder ones. And this is not to say that nuclear weapons did not have a big impact on Soviet military thought. It did. But over time, the softer ones tend to dominate. And since you mentioned now, let's get back to the very foundations. And you say let's start with Peter the Great. Yes. And there is a Russian historian, famous Klutzevsky, who basically said about. And I use mainly Russian sources, as you know, and also some archival sources. And Kluchevsky wrote that Peter the Great built a garrison of the country. This is at the time when Russia becomes an empire big time. And as you know, the military and the armed forces as a state builder, it's a big part of Russia, the military, the armed forces, the expansion, territorial expansion of Russia right up until 2017. And then of course, the Soviet Union was with the help of the armed forces. And another sign of this is when Nicholas II abdicated in 1917, he did so to his chief of staff, not to the Duma or any other politician. And to me it's symbolic because only the army could carry Russia's sovereignty destiny into the future.
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Stephen Sakiewicz
So
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Gudrun Pearson
that's one thing. Territorial expansion, as I mentioned, at times driven for economic reasons and at times importantly to protect the heartland of Russia, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and preferably wage war as far away from the heartland as possible. So this is part of what we're seeing now. Another, another phenomenon that keeps coming back is the demand for prestige, international prestige. We're a great power, we're a superpower. And Putin now says we got up from our knees, now we're a global player again. And that have at times led to, to overambition. And an American scholar, William Fuller, who wrote a book about Russian strategy up until 1917, he says it led to this demand for prestige, led to unavoidable overextension. So that's another thing. And also the fourth factor I'd like to highlight here is the nationality question, because Russia has never been a national state like most European states are. Although Russians are in an absolute majority today. There are around 150 Ethnic minorities in today's Russia. So this is the empire. And many people before me has said, look, in 1917, 18, three empires fell, French, British and Russian. But the Russian never really fell. They didn't have this soul searching period. What should we be? So they always revert to this, we must be an empire
- [24:18]
Stephen Sakiewicz
now. One major catalyst for the birth of modern Russian theory as we would know it was of course the 19th century with the Crimean War and then also the Industrial Revolution. What was the impact of this and the development of Russian military thought in the 19th century, the impact of the
- [24:40]
Gudrun Pearson
Crimean War and the defeat in the Crimean War was profound. And of course by then Nicholas I had also died. And one of the major military thinkers at the time, who then became Chief of the General Staff, Nikolai Obrushev, he allegedly said when he learned he was a young officer at the General Staff at the time of Nikolai I's death, when he learned about his death, he allegedly said, oh, finally I can breathe again. So then comes Aleksandre, and it sort of captures the mood, I think, in the empire at the time. But in any case, then comes Alexander II and eventually his Minister of war, Milutin. And this is at a time of, it's called in Russian history, the great reforms. And they covered a whole spectrum
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Stephen Sakiewicz
in
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Gudrun Pearson
Russia and also military. And as you know, Milutin eventually pushed through to introduce conscription to get the masses that. I mean, Prussia was the model that they got inspiration from, you know, a nation in arms and we must do this. But he was also progressive in the sense that he realized since with the modern guns you couldn't march any longer, it wasn't very sensible to march in squares, arm in arm, because you would get shot from far away. So Milutin said, look, we need educated soldiers who can act in the spirit of the commander. So he pushed for education, literacy, and also to let women into the military medical academy against the will of the Education Minister. But so it was a very progressive, dynamic time. And also by then, railways started to come big time, and that also had an impact on the war plans, basically. So it was a fantastic, interesting time. And Milutin, he was a loyal minister, of course, and so he still had this great Russian view, if you will, of things which affected the Baltic states and Poland at the time, but still in terms of developing. A journal was founded at the time, because Milutin realized we must have some platform, if you will, to discuss military science and the development of strategy. So a huge impact on that. And of course, Alexander II was all for reform, so he supported Milutin for the 20 years he was Minister of War.
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Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah.
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Gudrun Pearson
Then of course, what happened was that this is another recurring thing. Milutin resigned and Alexander III never called on him to do any more service for his country. And it was also up to the point that when Alexander III in 1881 was going to be inaugurated, big thing in Moscow, Milutin wrote to Obruchev, who then continued to become chief of the General Staff, and said, look, I'm not sure I'm coming to the inauguration. Everything I fought for. He felt that everything that he fought for would now be reversed by Alexander the Third, who was much more conservative and not very reform minded. And Obrushev wrote to him, dmitri Aleksevich, you must come to the inauguration. Think about Russia, you really must come. Think of something big. So, so eventually he came and then went back to his estate and, as I said, wasn't called upon again. And this is what tends to happen I'm sorry, I'm just flapping away.
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Stephen Sakiewicz
No, no, no, go ahead, go ahead.
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Gudrun Pearson
It's been the fate of many of these military thinkers that I study that they somehow. I mean, during the Soviet period, they were either repressed or basically shot earlier. Suvorov. I have a small chapter on Suvorov, mainly because I thought, I can't write a book like this without addressing Suvorov, since they study him still at the General Staff Academy. And he somehow fell out with the Tsar. And so this big parade that he thought he would get after all his victories in Europe when he got back to St. Petersburg, just didn't happen. So he retired to his estate and was left on his own device. So it's. It's a sad story.
- [31:41]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah, it's. Since we're Talking about the 19th century, it's almost a parallel to some of the more cultural figures in Russia at the time, like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin. They, you know, they're almost like, iconic to the Russian psyche, the Russian soul, as they would put it. But yet they ran afoul of the Tsar and a lot of the authorities as well, at one time or another. So. And of course, this is also mirroring some of the debates in the military theory, I noticed, like in the nationalist and the academic schools that you were. That you talk about in the book and so forth.
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Gudrun Pearson
Absolutely. And Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were writing some of their major works after the Crimean War, just adding to this reform, breathe fresh air, period. And if we're talking about, in the military sphere, the controversy or discussion, if you will, between the academic school and the nationalist school. In literature, we talk about a controversy between the Westerners and the Slavo fields. So the academic school and the national school sort of mirrors this discussion. And in terms of academics, they were much more focused. And Genbes Lear is one of the major representatives of this school. They talked about, you know, the operational lines, and we're more focused on technology. This would be the Westerners. Whereas Dragomirov, for instance, is representative of the nationalist school, who tend to focus on the fighting spirit and the Russian will. To sacrifice yourself for your country, and you have to know why you fight rather than just have the most modern weapons. And that discussion, in some respects, is still going on, but they squared the circle, at least to my mind, when. When the first military doctrine was introduced in the 1920s, first Soviet, when they have a political part and a technological part. And that's still the case today. So I think it's good to know these things, to get a sense of what's going on today.
- [34:40]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yes, that's another contrast between the Western military thought and the Russians. And I've had many discussions on this. History is taken far much more seriously and is incorporated in Russian military theory. Whereas in the west, and especially in America, it's almost like military history and military theory are kind of disconnected. They're treated as something different other than. If you just want to cherry pick like a few examples from history, like for example, 1940, France for a lightning strike, shock and awe offensive. And this is kind of one contrast I notice.
- [35:24]
Gudrun Pearson
Yeah, no, no, absolutely. History, or rather the view of, of, of history, is one of the foundations of Russian military thought. And also, now that you mention it, Kakushin, the current military thinker, he has tried to introduce sociology into the question, into this. What kind of science is military science? It's a very lively, lively debate. And during the Soviet period I discovered that a Soviet thinker, he criticized the American way of thinking about war and conflict and strategy. And he basically said that, look, they invented some good concepts, this is in the 1970s, that are very useful if you view war as strictly technological phenomena, whereas. It totally ignores the political side of it. This is, to my mind, why history is so important for them. And Rai Gartov, an American academic, has written extensively on the Soviet military doctrine. He once noted that we may be the better technological thinkers, they may well be the better political historians. And that sort of captures the, the difference in, in, in a nice way.
- [37:21]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah. And in some ways that even gets back to the sociological view that, you know, different cultures, different culture countries, they're going to address these issues from different angles. So there is no one size fits all approach. And that's why, you know, studying the Russian military theory is really good. And also connecting it to the wider Russian military or Russian history as a whole.
- [37:46]
Gudrun Pearson
Absolutely. And I've tried to do this in my book to explain for each chapter what's going on in the broader sense of Russian history to get. Because again, it's. And when Russian writers and I use a lot of Russian material when they write about these things, they tend to, you know, it's a short period and it's very detailed. A thousand pages, 2,000 pages. And yet they refrain from, for some reason to actually come to the point, what does it mean? So this is why I also thought that it's best that I read this and then I can explain what it means.
- [38:54]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Do you think? I have a quick thought. Do you think they may be doing that because they don't want. Yeah know, they don't want to be purged or anything. It's like it takes a while to get to the point. So it's like so the authorities don't figure out what it is and put them in a gulag or, or have them perched.
- [39:13]
Gudrun Pearson
I think you might have a point there at least during no, all over. You know, the close since policy decides the Tsar decides it's sensitive because you might reach the conclusion that the Tsar made the wrong decision and that would definitely. Or the politpero or the general staff that might be dangerous. And the tragic part of this story during the Soviet period and after Stalin's repressions and they killed off almost the entire generalty before the Second World War. And Kakoshin has been writing about this and he said it has led to. It affects us even today the fear and the memory loss of. Because as I said, they were repressed. But it also meant that what they had written couldn't be printed or was off the shelves in libraries. And in spite of this, the remaining ones somehow kept the memory of these people alive. But that was done, you know, at home or in whispering tone because it was a sensitive, very sensitive issue. So I think you might have a point there. Absolutely.
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Gudrun Pearson
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- [42:39]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah, now we got went to the. So now we started on to the Soviet period and we kind of talked a little bit about that. Do you have any more thoughts about the early developments of Soviet thought? Like in the 1920s up to the outbreak of World War II or.
- [42:54]
Gudrun Pearson
Yeah, that. That was also a pretty dynamic, dynamic period. And you know, first of all it was to have a military doctrine. And then I must go back to before the First World War because after the loss in the Russo Japanese War, there was a lively debate on, you know, we should have a military doctrine in the General Staff. Various officers pitched in and so what we lost again. This is the identity crisis of the armed forces and the empire after the loss to Japan. So they said we must have a military doctrine. What should it contain? And there were various theories about that until Tsar Nikolai II stepped in and said, I ban all these discussions because military doctrine is what I say it is. Okay. In any case, to jump back to the 1920s. Military doctrine is finally agreed upon and I write about the various debates and what it should be. So now it contains a political part and the technological part, as I said earlier, and that's still the case today. Then of course you had Tokhachevsky with his ideas on revolutionary warfare. You have Svechin and Partis Nyaserev, who were. And Svechin is pretty well known in the West. He wrote, his major work was called Strategy. It's magnificent. And if you read Russian, it reads very easily. It's a beautiful language, not like some of the Soviet texts that I also write about, much, much harder language and, you know, not as vivid, if I can put it like that. And then of course you had the development of the deep strike theory, Triandar Filov. But after the repressions and Stalin made the deep strike was labeled as being bourgeois and you know, so it wasn't used. But they come back to that also these days. So it was a pretty dynamic period. But then the, the repressions before the Second World War sort of put a lid on and caused this fear and reluctance to think broadly about these things. And the next Book on strategy came out in 1926 and 27. And then the second book during the. Only. The second book during the Soviet period came out in 1962 and that's it. Then they, then they didn't publish any more of that. That's a comprehensive book.
- [46:25]
Stephen Sakiewicz
And now we get to World War II, which was a major event for not only the Soviet military but the Soviet Union as a whole and still holds a. A hold on Russian society. What was the impact on. Of that on the Soviet military thought? Now you mentioned deep strike. Is this the. The origins of the deep battle theory that emerges out of deep battle?
- [46:52]
Gudrun Pearson
Deep battle, yeah, that's the one.
- [46:54]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Sorry.
- [46:54]
Gudrun Pearson
Deep battle. And now of course you can't overestimate the impact of the. It's called the Great Patriotic War on Russia as a country and its history. And also in terms of military. But in terms of learning process, there was a conference in 1945 where they took up major lessons from the war. But then of course, when nuclear weapons came, that was the weapon system that had the most impact, rather than soft factors, if you will. So it did have a great impact on. On Russian military thought. And initially there was this idea how to, you know, the initial period of the war that was so important obviously was very much shortened by the advent of the arrival of nuclear weapons. So they were discussing, and there was a blood believe somehow in the beginning that you could win a nuclear war. It was just a matter of working out how to do it. Eventually in the 1970s, they came to the conclusion that it's not really viable end of the 60s to have this planning to win a nuclear war. I mean, the destruction would be terrible. So then they developed other theories which basically led to. Was a part of detente during that period and the big agreements with the United States to reduce the strategic nuclear weapons. By then Russia had reached parity. So. So there was no need to plan how to win because they felt that okay, now we're equal and we can start to discuss how to reduce. And Nikolai Yogarkov who was chief of the general Staff, he later claimed because he had this idea that you can't win this kind of war, therefore we can have reductions because there is still enough nuclear weapons to assure mutual destruction. And he then got fired in 1984 and allegedly said. Took caution later that he was fired because he opposed the development of SS24amongst other nuclear missiles. And as you know, the SS20 and 22s had already been developed. And Kirkozyn says that it's too bad because the cost of this arms race against the west and the United States was a major factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
- [50:43]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah. And how did the collapse of the Soviet Union impact Russian military theory? Because obviously, of course, it was. I think even Putin has used this. It's almost like Russia went through a heart attack, you know, in a way, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in many ways, the Russian military went through a similar process as well.
- [51:05]
Gudrun Pearson
Yeah. Talk about identity crisis. I mean, here you are. So it wasn't an easy period. But here's what's interesting to me at least Gorbachev had introduced a much more defensive doctrine. 1987, the Warsaw Pact. And so they were developing different concepts and reasonable defense and everything. And it looked all right on paper, but as it turned out, that sort of more defensive line of thinking and not to focus so much on the armed forces for the continued existence of Russia, it sort of never stuck. It didn't have time to root. Which meant that when the first military doctrine, who was on the. Partly published, again, it's the west, it's NATO that is the adversary, and this is what we have to deal with. And then, of course, again in the 1990s, having said that, the debate, the writings, there was nothing wrong with the Russian way of thinking about war and strategy and conflict. And you had various theories. I mean, I quote, for instance, Mahmoud Garyev, who wrote a book in 1995 about if war comes. And I think it's a very interesting one. And he said, look, we have been pushed back so that our borders are basically where they were during Ivan iv, Ivan the Terrible, and we were pushed back from Europe, the center was pushed back so much. And he also discusses a future NATO membership for Russia. And he is adamant it's out of the question. He says, we cannot have this. First, it would mean that our forces would be under an American commander. That can never happen. Secondly, it would look bad for China if we did this, because China is a partner and we should. Maybe he didn't say partner, but it's something we have to relate to and have good relations with. And I think this is. Again, it's very interesting because you can hear, even today, as I'm sure you're aware, that, you know, Putin was really serious when he suggested that Russia should become a NATO member in the beginning of the 2000s, and it was the west that declined the whole thing. I mean, that was never an issue. It was just something he said so that he now can use it as evidence for Western betrayal. Somehow. And it's like, well, that even, that
- [55:01]
Stephen Sakiewicz
even kind of goes back to Bar's proposal of the Soviet Union joining NATO back in 1953. They were kind of like, well, we know they're going to say no, but their no allows us to later form the Warsaw Pack.
- [55:15]
Gudrun Pearson
Yeah, yeah. So again, a continuity.
- [55:21]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah. So now we get to Valerie G. Off, who we did discuss earlier. But of course he's very popular in the media because of the so called Gerasimov doctrine, which doesn't actually exist. But who is he and what is his significance to Russian military thought in the contemporary period?
- [55:42]
Gudrun Pearson
Right. Well, he's the longest serving chief of the General Staff since Nikolai. No, yeah, Nikolai obruchev in the 19th century. He still has a few years to go, but he's getting there. Joke aside, to me, I mean there have been published articles of his writing, but to me he's more of an. And he's been in that position since 2013. To me he's a doer, he's operational general staff leader. He makes things happen. Rather than being this deep thinker about what strategy should we have, where should our armed forces be in 10, 15, 20, 30 years. And I want to say this about the current affairs, the current war against Ukraine, that initially it was not the Russian armed forces war, it was the security service, the fsb, who made up the plan. Now with the support of the Russian armed forces, and either history will tell whether Gerasimov did or did not oppose this plan, I suspect he might not have done it. There were other militaries out there, military officers warning for doing this, saying that we will not be met by flowers and bread. It's a crazy idea, but they weren't listened to. So in they go in four different directions. Only that would be more or less against doctrine. And there wasn't a single commander responsible until after eight months of the war. And now it is Gerasimov who is responsible for the operation. So now it is the Russian Armed forces war, but initially it wasn't. And I think it's important to bear that in mind. And then people also say, well, they haven't made much progress and everything. Yeah, but they are still there fighting, recruiting 400,000 soldiers a year and we are now entering the fourth year of this war. And then you might argue, well, they take people from prisons and the quality isn't very good. No, but still they are there. So that's Gerasimov for me, more operational rather than a deep thinker. Although in his texts he lays out various. The Theory of active defense and the like. I also come to think of this that the initial article from 2013 when he writes about the relationship between military and non military means four to one, don't forget the one. And I think the west forgot the one. In the years after the invasion of Crimea to 2022. I tend to think, you know, the Anton Chekhov, the Russian 19th century writer, he allegedly said that, look, if you have a gun hanging on the wall in the first part of the play, it must be fired before the play is over. But it was like we tended in general in the west to forget that.
- [60:16]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah, I've even seen analysis where in Small Wars Journal where it even said if NATO invaded Ukraine, yes, they would have done it differently than the Russians, but they would have also been encountering a lot of the same issues that the Russian military was happening. So I think sometimes when we assess well, the Russians aren't doing as well, I think it's more about, well, they're just not doing it the way that the west would do it. But then the whole point is they're not the west, they're the Russians. They're going to do it their way. And you know, they are still there. But the same issues would have been encountered by NATO if they chose to invade Ukraine as well.
- [60:58]
Gudrun Pearson
And that's another thing that, I mean Russia is a land power. They take the train to the war and the ground forces, that's the main, it's a land power. Because I remember years ago there was this discussion that they didn't have an airborne command central. It was like, why would they need that? They have train command centers. And yeah, so that's, and you know, just a reflection that if we are talking about, you know, cultures and various ways of seeing wars and conflicts, I'm thinking too this idea or hope to conquer countries by dropping bombs on them, that really doesn't, it's not a huge success story either.
- [62:04]
Stephen Sakiewicz
This brings up a point that I've often remembered right after 911 on American television, one former US general, General McCaffrey, he was asked the question, well, if we, if, if America goes into Afghanistan, how are we going to avoid getting the same type of situation that the Soviets did? And his answer was is, well, our military is better so we're not going to have that issue. And I immediately kind of thought back on that. Especially when we, when the United States withdrew from Afghanistan and it's like, okay, well I guess other than, but the Soviets, it took them 10 years to get out. For America, it took them 20 years, but it was still the same end result in the end. And that kind of gets back to the point you made about Snov, who said, yeah, it's very difficult to hold this country because of the culture and the terrain and. But, you know, but again, it kind of gets back to that point I made is like, when you hear a lot of the analysis of the Russian military in America especially, it's usually like, well, they don't do things our way, and our way is just. Is always better. And I think that's not a really productive way to enter this discussion or to understand the Russians.
- [63:27]
Gudrun Pearson
No. Because then you will run into these rude awakenings and misunderstandings. And, you know, in the academic field, I get the point that the Russians are. Their military thinking is. Is retarded and backward and lagging behind Western. And here. The point is that it's sometimes said in the Russian debate as well by various people that we're oversleeping the revolution of military affairs. We are backward. But that has always been used by war ministers, chiefs of general staff, as a tool to promote change. So it's a rhetorical tool. It's not an analytical statement, if you will. And that's another thing. I think the key word in my book is thought, the title, because that's another thing that war start basically behind a desk. They start in someone's head because someone has been thinking about it. And the fact that wars start unannounced, that was a realization among Russian thinkers in late 19th, early 2002, 20th century. And yet I don't know when Crimea was invaded and the military operations continued in Donbass. And I came to work and I had been interviewed by a news agency, and they said, well, what do you call this that's going on there? I said, to me, as a historian and political scientist, it's war. I'm not a lawyer in that sense, but it's war. If you go in, use military arms to take another part of the country, that's war. But I came to work and some of my colleagues, they were so upset with me, and they said, you can't say that. And you know, the Foreign Ministry, and they're international law specialists. And I said, look, fine, but to me, the war started in 2014. And also, if I just come think of this is not the first time Russia is waging war against Ukraine according to their own calculations. Former Russian chief of the General of staff back in the late 19th century published a book, and he said, look, it took us eight wars and 37 years to take the Crimean Peninsula from the Ottomans. And then he writes about this discussion, should there be offensive or defensive wars? And he said, From 1700, Peter the Great up until 1898 when the book was published, we only had two defensive wars. All the rest were, were offensive. So he bragged about that. And I'm not saying that Russia is the only country that likes to, you know, the cult of the offensive, so. But it's one of the recurring things.
- [67:34]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah. Now, what does the future hold for Russian military thought in your own view and based on your research for this book?
- [67:45]
Gudrun Pearson
That is a very good question. And unfortunately we know that Russia learns a lot from the war and a scholar at Ram, Dara Masicot, has written about this fantastic study, so we know that. But what, unfortunately, has happened in terms of a more open and public debate, it's going silent again. So I'm sure there are people in the Russian general staff who are thinking and discussing these issues, but it's not done in such a public way as it had been until the war, so it's hard to tell. And I think also this war with the repressive laws that has been introduced, that people are double careful to publish what they really think. So as any historian will have to wait and see, see what really comes out of it for the future. And that's another thing that keeps recurring, that from time to time these people, they complain that there is such a big difference between theory and practice. And someone asked me just the other day if they are so, you know, think so deeply and broadly and intelligently about these things, how come, you know, it looks the way it does on the battlefield? And so, but this is a recurring thing. And, and, and, and to me means that we, we have this idea that in order to have a strategy, it should be fulfilled to 100%. And whereas, as I said, the Russian are more about why. And also it's sufficient for them to maybe accomplish 10, 20, 30% of their strategy. And that causes enormous damage to its neighbors and to international relations and, and the world. And the Ukrainians are experiencing that at the moment.
- [70:33]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Now, I was going to ask, is Russian military thought taken seriously enough in the west right now? And we kind of discussed this a bit in the way, short answer, no, but it's like, what can we do to try to better understand what the Russian military thinks, how it thinks things and so forth?
- [70:54]
Gudrun Pearson
Well, although I said silence is spreading, there are still a rich material to examine, all from the 1990s up until 2022. So I think, just pay attention to that side and take it seriously. Then we can avoid mirror imaging or just thinking that, oh, we are so much smarter than they are, because that is a mistake. I think that's. That would be my advice. Another thing, I mean, for instance, policy decides, the ruler decides. Read all the doctrines from the 1990s and all Putin's yearly speeches. He has missed a few of them, but more or less yearly. And it becomes absolutely clear that they mean what they say. What's another thing people ask? You know, they can't really believe in this. You know, the proclaimed threat assessment, you know, that the west is surrounding us, NATO is planning to attack us. And, you know, they can't believe that it was so wrong. Yeah. But they believe it because. Or rather they were planning for it because it's been in all the strategic document and in Putin's speeches. Pay attention.
- [72:51]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah. And with the whole notion of being surrounded by the west, in a way, they can even point to Cold War history and the policy of containment, and it's like, well, it's just another form of containment that we have to fight against. Which again, brings back the historical angle.
- [73:11]
Gudrun Pearson
Yeah. Although this is not a new Cold War to my mind, there is in fact, a big difference, and that is that during the Cold War, as it developed, there were treaties and agreements that the parties adhered by, abided by. And now we don't have practically any major agreements left.
- [73:43]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Indeed, it's like a whole new world out there, and I think even international relations theory is trying to catch up because it's still stuck in the Cold war or even 1990s paradigms. And I'm noticing that as well in my own research.
- [74:03]
Gudrun Pearson
Yeah.
- [74:04]
Stephen Sakiewicz
And I think another thing that we also, to better understand the Russians, I think we need to get rid of that concept that I mentioned earlier, is that, oh, Russia, where we just dismissed Russia as irrelevant. No, Russia is not the Soviet Union. It's not the number, necessarily the number two power. But then Russia has very rarely been the number two power in the world. But it has always been like a major power. Like Even in the 19th century, it was, you know, if you compared it to Britain and France, yeah, it wasn't as powerful, but it was still a power to be reckoned with on the world stage, even after its defeat with Japan. You know, obviously the Entente tried to bring them on board in order to contain Germany. So I think we need to kind of understand that. Yeah, there are. It's not just the 1, 2 or the binary of the Cold War, where there's two superpowers. Now we're kind of getting back to where there's multiple world powers on the stage. You know, America, China, Russia, and then maybe India and a few other powers. We have to kind of look at Russia in that type of ecosystem, so to speak.
- [75:15]
Gudrun Pearson
No, absolutely. And then I'm thinking this is also nothing new for Russians. Actually, the policy of introducing a multipolar world was done by Yevgeny Plimakov in 1996 when he was foreign minister in Russia. And again, the west didn't pay attention. And when they heard this, they sort of laughed, basically. But the interesting thing is that this trajectory of having a strong man, the head of Russia, is described now by Putin as the right one. And the multipolar world, and all this, that economic considerations. And this is how in the west to be a great power, you have to have a strong economy. But Russia sort of never had a strong economy. And the financial crisis in 98 and the one in 2008, it changed the pace to achieve this, but it didn't change the trajectory at all.
- [76:33]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Indeed. Well, this has been a very fascinating discussion. We could probably talk about this all day long, but do you have any final thoughts, maybe cover anything in the book that we didn't get to in the main discussion?
- [76:48]
Gudrun Pearson
That's a good question. I think we covered most of it right here. Right. One thing, again, why this is so important to understand what's happening today. On several occasions throughout history, military writers have been drawing conclusions and explaining war contra negotiations. And basically the. The lesson and what they say is that if things aren't going as good as they should on the battlefield, we should engage in negotiations. But during the negotiations, the military operations must never stop under any circumstances because they might improve our position at the negotiation table. This was done in the late 19th century and also as a lesson of the chechen wars in 2000. So I think it's worth bearing in mind with all this talk about peace negotiations and the hope to have a quick ceasefire, that that's not the Russian tradition. So when the negotiations get along, the military operation continues the violence.
- [78:27]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Yeah, very fascinating. That reminds me, even during the negotiations in World War I, both with the Bolsheviks and the Germans, the Germans still continued their operations. But even in the Western Front, the French insisted, nope, we're going to continue our operations. Because the Germans were like, well, can we just have a ceasefire while we negotiate the end of the war? And they're like, nah, we'll end the war. In fact, the war continued for several hours after the signing of the armistice. A lot of people don't realize that it literally ended at 11:00 clock on the 11th, but the armistice was signed at 5:00am yeah.
- [79:09]
Gudrun Pearson
Yeah.
- [79:11]
Stephen Sakiewicz
So it's again, kind of the relevance of history to military doctrine. Well, we always like to end our interviews by asking our guests, what are you working on now?
- [79:25]
Gudrun Pearson
Okay. Again, it's an old project and it's a bit early to talk about it, actually, but I'm planning on doing something on Russia, Swedish relations. So over a longer time period, I think there are many lessons there that could be useful.
- [79:48]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Well, when you finish that, maybe we can have you back on the podcast.
- [79:53]
Gudrun Pearson
I'd love to come. It's been great talking to you, Stephen.
- [79:57]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Well, Gudrun Prasan, thank you for joining us on the New Books Network.
- [80:02]
Gudrun Pearson
Thank you so much.
- [80:03]
Stephen Sakiewicz
Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. I am your host, Stephen Sikevich. Until next time,
- [80:22]
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