The Warrior Peoples of the Month: THE RUSSIANS pt.2

So when we last left off on the saga of the Russian people they were expanding west and east. Killing turkic tribes in Siberia and Poles and Cossacks in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Yet, Russia was still politically a basket-case. When Fyodor the Third died, Peter the first and Ivan the Fourth were made co-Czars of Russia. This had never happened before but obviously someone wished to weaken the power of the Czar, in this case their elder sister Sophia. Luckily for Peter he was intelligent and was highly interested in the West and modern military technology in Europe, which was good because he wished to make Russia a European nation.

He first started to conquer the Khanate of the Crimea which still existed and succeeded by building a navy that was navigable on the Don river. The Crimea was important because he wanted access to warm-water port, Archangel up north just wasn't cutting it anymore, too cold in the winter...this quest would make Russia engage in many other wars in the future. He also toured the west acting like a giant jackass along the way but also learning new skills especially from Germans. Still, a desire for a good port made him and some other countries including Denmark and Poland declare war on Sweden which controlled the Baltic at this time in the year 1700. They didn't know who they were messing with. The Swedish King Charles XII turned out to be a military genius and knocked out Poland and an entire Russian army with less than 30,000 troops at his disposal. He couldn't spare too many troops. There was only (at the most) 1 million people living in Sweden at that time. The war continued until Charles was killed trying to conquer Norway in 1718 and Russia was one of the biggest winners of that war for it kept all its conquests.

After Peter died, the typical dynastic problems that Russia often faced re-emerged since his only son Alexis tried to collaborate with the Swedes but eventually Peter III with his German wife Catherine II took power. Peter was also German so when Fredrick II's capital Berlin got captured by the Russians, as soon as Peter came onto the throne he switched sides helping Fredrick hold out even longer against Austria, France and all of their allies. Anyways, Catherine II took the throne when Peter died and Russia continued to expand much to the chagrin of the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate and Poland who lost independance entirely in 1795. Also, Russia was expanding into the Americas and Russian explorers got as far as California! Furs meant that Alaska was important to Russia...or at least until they sold it to America in 1867. Imagine if Russia never sold Alaska and the Soviet Union had a foothold on the Americas.... a thought to keep in mind.

By this time, the French Revolution had come about and all of Europe was to suffer due to Napoleon's tactical ingenuity. Russia declared war on Republican France and under the generalship of Alexander Suvorov they marched all the way to the Swiss Alps but Suvorov died and at the battle of Austerlitz Napoleon handily defeated Austrian and Russian forces. Still, Napoleon wanted to end his struggle against Russia and tried negotiating with Czar Alexander I about dividing Europe (and also the Ottoman Empire and India) between them but the Czar still wished to do lucrative trade with Britain. Naturally, Napoleon invaded Russia with 600,000 soldiers of his Grande Armeé in 1812. The Russians carried out an attrition type of campaign that burned any resource the French could possibly use since the French army marched on its stomach and pillaged for food instead of using wagon trains. Napoleon did get his big battle at Borodino which was among the bloodiest single day fights in European history and still the Russians had more land they could retreat into. All the way to Moscow, which the Russians burnt down as soon as the French got there. Napoleon wanted to go after St. Petersburg but soon a cold snap came that was so severe many French animal transports froze overnight and the French prepared to march back to Central Europe. Out of every hundred men that joined Napoleon in Russia, only 3 returned.

Russia joined the Sixth Coalition which chased Napoleon all the way to the outskirts of Paris and though Russia was too far away to participate at Waterloo if they did Napoleon would've been given an even greater defeat than the one that Prussia and Britain (and the Dutch) gave to France. At the Congress of Vienna, Russia gained even more land such as Finland and most of modern day Poland. After the Napoleonic Wars Russia got even more interested in European affairs. Russia armed Serbians who rebelled against the Ottoman Empire and in 1817, they freed themselves from Turkish rule much to their and everyone else's surprise. Also, Russia started seizing more territory in the Caucasus and waging war against people like the Chechnyans and Circassians. Russia even supported Greek rebels who now began their own revolt against the Turks and Britain jumped in too to prevent the Russians from gaining too much power. They also decided to ensure that Russia doesn't conquer the Ottoman Empire by agreeing to make sure it remains the "Sick Man of Europe" instead of European cannon fodder. But, Russia decided to press against the Ottomans once more.

Russia demanded the Turkish Sultan give Russia the right to "protect" Orthodox Christians in Ottoman Syria and Palestine. The French and British governments got scared of Russia becoming too powerful especially after it destroyed the Ottoman Black Sea fleet and declared war on Russia. Even Austria got uppity with the Russians which was shocking since Russia helped it with a rebellion a decade earlier or so. The Anglo-Gallic forces landed in the Crimean peninsula and besieged the port of Sevastopol while the Ottoman held them back in sieges in Eastern Europe. To keep it short, Russia lost this war and lost it's control of the Black Sea...and Romania.

Russia sulked for a bit..even liberated its serfs and then got back into. It used the power of ethnic nationalism, the same kind that liberated Serbia and Greece and used that as a crutch to fight the Ottomans once more over Bulgaria. The Russians nearly got to Constantinople but Britain cried foul again. The Russians were forced to allow the Turks to live but the Turks lost Cyprus, Tunisia, Bosnia, part of Armenia and Thessaly to European nations. Nonetheless, Russia had done well for herself and was slowly industrializing and conquering parts of Central Asia and was consolidating the East when Russian interests collided with another Empire's interests - Japan. Japan had just suddenly gone from feudal isolationist kingdom to burgeoning Eastern Empire. Japan wanted Korea and had already defeated the Chinese for control over it. Now it was Russia's turn. Russia was defeated on land at the battle of Mukden (then the largest battle fought) and then at sea at the battle of Tshumina. This made the Russian populace go crazy. It had lost a war against a nation of small Asians and most of its people were still living in abject poverty despite the mid 19th centuy reforms against serfdom. The 1905 revolution made the Czar adopt a constitutional government and a parliament called the Duma and allied itself with France to protect itself from a powerful Germany. Austria allied with Germany to protect it's holdings in the Balkans and the Serbs found a patron in Russia. The stage was set for a great war...

The First World War was terrible for Russia. The Russians mobilized quicker than Germany thought and invaded Germany with two armies....both of which were destroyed at the battles of Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes in Prussia. Fighting against the Turks in the Caucausus was much easier than the Eastern Front and so were battles against the multi-ethnic goulash of a state like the Austro-Hungarians whose armies generally have sucked since Napoleon III bled them to death in Northern Italy 50 years ago or so. Eventually, a competent general emerged named Alexei Brusilov who launched a million man offensive into Austro-Hungary which was on the verge of success - until German troops showed up.

By 1917, the people in the cities were starving and cold and angry. Riots in Petrograd led to a new Russian Revolution which put in Alexander Kerensky in charge. The only foolish thing that Kerensky did was not end the war against Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans. Extreme leftists came out of exile, or hiding to spread their propaganda. As soon as the United States entered the war, soldiers and workers joined leftists parties which toppled the Provisional governement of Kerensky. Their councils or Soviet coalesced into a vast movement and one of these parties called "majority" or (Bolsheviki in Russian) seized power. They ended the war against the Central Powers since they deemed it as a capitalist fight over Empire - which it was and then Russia fell into Civil War between the Red Russians (being Communists and led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trostky) and the White Russians (anti-communists).

The Bolsheviks formed a Red Army as differing ethnic groups whether they be Pole, Czech, Russian or even Tartar fought over the remnants of the Russian Empire with France and Britain seizing Russian seaports. Even America and Japan occupied Russian cities. The Reds controlled most of European Russia or the core of Russian cities along the Volga and Don rivers and pushed into Ukraine to capture Kiev. They also pushed along the Trans-Siberian railroad to reconquer the Eastern regions of Russia. By 1921, most of the Anti-Soviet armies had disintergrated due to Red Army attacks and general incompetance and Russia's vast multi-ethnic empire became the marxist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Close to 20,000,000 people died due to the First World War and the Civil War.

Some Communists like Trotsky wished to spread Communism deep into the heart of Europe. He wished a Permanent Revolution and advised Leftists across Eastern Europe to take the the streets. They failed everywhere. After Lenin's death in 1924, a new leader arose named Josef Stalin. He wished to Socialism in One Country and slammed Trotsky as a traitor and banished him finally. He instituted Five Year Plans to industrialize the Soviet Union and calmed down Capitalists who feared Communist revolution in their own countries after the war. Though Stalin was initially isolationist, he did establish Communist parties in China and Vietnam and supplied arms to the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. While the Great Depression didn't affect the USSR that much, Germany erupted into political violence between fascists and communists and somehow Adolf Hitler won out in the end with 35% of the popular vote in 1933. His Nazis took power and wished to spread Fascism all over Europe starting in Spain. As we all know, Hitler hated Slavs and Communism so the Soviet Union was the chief enemy in his mind. In 1939, Stalin made a deal with Hitler to ensure that he had some time to build up the Soviet Red Army in case of World War II....which did occur when Germany invaded Poland in September of that year with Soviet assistance.

The Soviet Union also took over the Baltic states and invaded Finland to prove a point. The Finns kicked the Red army's ass. Finnish troops clad in white and on skis destroyed Red Army columns with relative ease when looking at the number of Finns vs the number of Russians engaged in what is now called the Winter War. Hitler observed this and stated it'd be easy to march on Moscow. On June 22, 1941 the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union with over 3 million troops and captured millions of Soviet troops and killed millions more. By December, the Red Army managed to slow the momentum of the Nazis just outside the gates of Moscow and also Leningrad and launched offensives to push them back at great cost using Siberian troops which would've been stationed in the East guarding against the Japanese which decided not to go to war with the Soviet Union, especially considering how the USSR destroyed them when they tried invading Mongolia 2 years earlier. General Georgy Zhukov emerged as the pre-eminent Soviet commander and Stalin let the generals conduct the war, opposed to Hitler who acted like the Supreme Field Marshal of Nazi Germany.

Axis armies then launched offensives towards the South in an attempt to seize Soviet oil refineries to fuel their own armies in 1942. The Red Army engaged the Nazis in the battle of Stalingrad which is the Bloodiest battle of the 20th century and in the history of warfare which killed more than 2 million men on both sides which ended with the Soviets encircling and trapping the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad. In 1943, the Soviets launched a huge offensive in the Battle of Kursk which is the largest tank battle ever fought where Soviet defence in depth which trenches, mines and anti-tank batteries which cut panzer divisions to pieces. In 1944, Operation Bagration was launched which pushed the Soviet Red Army to the center of Poland, back where the war started 3 years earlier and by May 1945, Berlin was in Soviet hands. In the East, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan to aid America and tie down Japanese imperial forces and perfectly encircled Japanese forces in Manchuria and destroyed them with piercing attacks. The Soviet Army by August 1945 was the most powerful land army on Earth and at the cost of 20,000,000 Soviet citizens it was a Superpower but with its armies controlling most of Eastern Europe it was in prime position.

By 1948, eight European countries had communist governments and the Soviet Union had formed the Warsaw pact to counterbalance NATO. The Soviet Union became more belligerent under the rule of Khrushchev. It invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1956 and '68 when they protested and rebelled agains the Soviet Union. It blockaded Berlin in 1948-49 and almost had a nuclear war with the United States in 1962. It started a rivalry with the People's Republic of China in the 60's over Indo-China. It funded Arab armies against the West's ally Israel and funded many marxist movements in Latin America and Africa but it took one step too far when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to protect the marxist government there. It soon became the Soviet Union's "Vietnam" and just like in Vietnam with the Soviets...the Americans gave the Afghan mujahadeen weapons and training to fight the Soviet armed forces. All this happened while the USSR built thousands of nuclear weapons to counter America's nuclear arms race. The Soviet system couldn't cope with foreign wars, an expensive arms race and large army with a command economy. By 1989, all Soviet troops had left Afghanistan under Mikhail Gorbachev and the Warsaw Pact dissolved when the people of Eastern Europe voted against the Soviet system and the Cold War was over.

In 1990, Soviet republics voted to leave the USSR one by one until just Russia remainded. Russia became democratic, weak, poor and Russians began dying by the millions due to disease and starvation. The Russian Federation was born and so apparently was the idea of an independant Chechnya. Russia had controlled that part of the caucasus for the past 150 years and it didn't want to lose anymore territory to allow Canada to be the largest country in the world. And so - Russia carpet bombed Grozny, the Chechen capital and invaded in 1995. Grozny was besieged but not without heavy Russian casualties whose conscripts lacked morale befitting the post Soviet malaise of the Russian people. It got even worse when the Muslim Chechen clerics declared a Jihad on the Russian invaders and that recruited thousands of foreign fighters to the region and the violence spread in the Caucasus. With the threat to totally destroy Grozny hanging over the air of the Chechen leaders, an accord was signed to end the war. The war obviously wasn't finished, especially when Chechen fighters invaded the neighbouring Russian republic of Dagestan and the Chechens set off bombs in Moscow. Russian airpower forced thousands of civilians to flee and the new Russian PM, Vladimir Putin launched a ground invasion of Chechnya which captured Grozny in early 2000. An insurgency was launched by the surviving Chechen fighters which caused many bombings, hostage crises and other terrorist attacks.

The last time the Russian people flexed its strength was against Georgia. Just on the eve of the Olympic Games in Beijing, where Putin was relaxing with the Russian Olympic team - Georgian forces shelled the South Ossetian capital and attempted to invade and reconquer their lost territory. Within a week, Russia was deep inside Georgia and was threatning Tblisi. France had to negotiate a peace between Georgia and Russia but, Russia was back with South Ossetia firmly a part of area of expanding Russian influence.

The Russian people have been around for awhile and probably will be around for a lot longer too. They've fought most Eurasian powers and live to tell the tale with a huge rich country to boot. Never underestimate the Russians. They fight even harder when weakened. In an increasingly multi polar world, the way Russia acts towards its neighbours will determine the future of Eurasia.