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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30913 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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In Ukraine news: Russia to withdraw from city of Kherson

As said in the article, this seems like big news, since Kherson was the only "big city" Russia has conquered in this period of war. Even the pro-Russian sources I follow on Twitter aren't trying to spin this ("Feint! Planned withdrawal! Actually good for Russia!") any more.

Of course this means that the new defensive line is harder to crack, but really, at some point, you'd imagine sheer morale questions would make it hard for Russians to proceed, at least. Where will the Ukrainians push next?

but really, at some point, you'd imagine sheer morale questions would make it hard for Russians to proceed

The Russian army managed to proceed westwards under literally Stalin, so I don't really think you can characterise the Russian infantryman as a creature with great susceptibility to morale damage. Lose: concentration camp. Win: gulag!

Stalin, yes. But also Zhukov, Chuikov, Rokossovsky, Vasilevsky, Vatutin, Konev...the Red Army leadership corps was worlds better than the current corrupt clique of yes-men the Russians seem to have.

I think you're wrong here on several levels: both in terms of their objective competence and in terms of their troops' perception of their competence (which is the relevant factor for morale). Consider that Russia's WW2 generals were:

  • Predominantly literal peasants because those were the only people the commies would promote, cough epigenetics cough

  • Predominantly the bottom of their respective military academy classes because all the good ones had been shot 1936-1939

  • Recently guilty of the immense fuck-up of having been totally unprepared for Barbarossa (modern historians might be inclined to attribute this failure exclusively to Stalin personally, but one suspects that the median contemporary Russian would have begun to harbour suspicions about the entire military command, especially given all the pro-Stalin-personally agitprop)

  • Many of the commanders you mentioned were repeatedly demoted for incompetence, e.g. Zukhov in July 1941. Rokossovsky had only recently been fished out of NKVD prison for being a foreign spy and shoved into a uniform, talk about scraping the barrel ffs. Are you really gonna have high morale when fighting under that?

As such, I stick to my guns that Russian morale in 2022 is basically guaranteed to be higher than Russian morale in 1943.

It's worth adding that the Soviet casualties in the early and mid parts of the war ranged from 2-4 times as high as the German. Even during the end when the Soviets outnumbered the Germans 4 to 1 with better equipment, more fuel, and total air superiority, the Soviets usually only achieved around 1 to 1 casualty ratios. Not only is it hard to believe the Russians had much faith in their leadership, its hard to actually call Zhukov et al better than what the Russians are putting out now. They were just in a much more favorable situation materially.

The RKKA had British and American lend-lease instead of sanctions, though.

The United States delivered to the Soviet Union from October 1, 1941, to May 31, 1945, the following: 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the aviation fuel including nearly 90 percent of high-octane fuel used, 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. Provided ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) amounted to 53 percent of total domestic consumption.

I note here a rather egregious goalpost shift from "morale" to "ordinance".

Fighting a war on your own territory with plentiful supplies works wonder for the morale. Fighting on the enemy territory with shit supplies tends to undermine it.

The Russia of WW2 doesn't exist anymore than the US of that day does.

The Russian people will put up with a lot, but I don't think the modern state has anything approaching the capabilities of 1940s USSR.

Literally Stalin's regime, at least as far as I can judge from people's mood today, had better propaganda and uniting myth than Putin.

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