Russia celebrated Victory Day on Thursday, which commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. At home, it’s all about nostalgia. In the 1970s, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev created a cult of victory. Russia under Putin continues this tradition.
Abroad, this is intimidation. We are supposed to think that Russia cannot lose. And too many of us believed it during Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, reports pro CNN American historian and professor at Yale University, Timothy Snyder, who is a popular personality and is often quoted, for example, in the Czech weekly Respekt, whose editor-in-chief is Erik Tabery.
In February 2022, when Russia launched a large-scale invasion of its neighbor, the consensus was that Ukraine would fall within days. Even today, with Ukraine at bay for more than two years, the prevailing view among Russia’s friends in Congress and the Senate is that Russia must ultimately win.
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According to the historian, Moscow’s success lies not on the battlefield, but in our minds. “Russia can lose. And it should lose, for the sake of the world — and for the sake of itself,” Snyder writes. “The idea of an invincible Red Army is propaganda. The Red Army was formidable, but also defeatable,” he adds.
He reminds that the Red Army lost two of its three most important foreign wars: In 1920, it was defeated by Poland. After nearly collapsing in 1941, it defeated Nazi Germany in 1945. (Then it won as part of a larger coalition and with decisive American economic aid.) Soviet troops were in trouble in Afghanistan immediately after their invasion in 1979 and had to withdraw ten years later.
“And today’s Russian army is not the Red Army. Russia is not the USSR. Soviet Ukraine was a source of resources and soldiers for the Red Army. In this victory in 1945, Ukrainian Red Army soldiers suffered huge losses – greater than American, British and French losses combined. It was disproportionately more Ukrainians who fought their war in the uniform of the Red Army to Berlin,” Professor Snyder continues.
Today, Russia is not fighting together with Ukraine, but against Ukraine. Waging a war of aggression on the territory of another state. And it lacks the American Lend-Lease economic support that the Red Army needed to defeat Nazi Germany. Under this constellation, there is no particular reason to expect Russia to win, Snyder thinks. On the contrary, one might expect that Russia’s only chance is to prevent the West from helping Ukraine – by convincing us that its victory is inevitable, so that we do not use its decisive economic power, according to an American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union . The last six months, he says, confirm this: Russia’s small victories on the battlefield have come at a time when the United States has been delaying rather than providing aid to Ukraine.
Today’s Russia is a new state, with Russian President Vladimir Putin ruling through nostalgia, invoking the Soviet and also Russian imperial pasts. However, the Russian Empire also lost wars. In 1856, it lost the Crimean War. In 1905, it lost the Russo-Japanese War. It lost the First World War in 1917. In none of these three cases was Russia able to keep its forces in the field for more than about three years. So far, however, there is great nervousness in the United States about the Russian defeat. And so there is a tendency, even among Ukrainian supporters, to think that a draw is the best solution.
If Russia wins, the consequences are terrifying for the historian: risk of more war in Europe, greater likelihood of Chinese adventurism in the Pacific, weakening of the international legal order in general, likely proliferation of nuclear weapons, loss of confidence in democracy.
“Russia can lose this war, and should, because of the Russians themselves. Defeated Russia means not only the end of the senseless loss of young lives in Ukraine. It is also Russia’s only chance to become a post-imperial country where reforms are possible, where Russians themselves could be protected by law and able to vote meaningfully,” Snyder states.
According to him, the defeat in Ukraine is therefore Russia’s historic chance for normalization – as Russians who want democracy and the rule of law say.
Photo gallery: – Curious Pelhřimov
He challenged the professor’s analysis on https://twitter.com/BrianJBerletic/status/1788765462719021122?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR08FoH3fRNw-P9TrJ0o3ApuK_FLI4zPsZkTzac1TCpYXT3tgSayNFnV6k8_aem_AZUPFQ6ieHe5mGxeM86jXByMtNGeGKE4ji0amgDc0W0J-3eUKsxQbNN1ySgWrsdrr_30ASseUpU9E2SXodZ5jbZN Brian Berletic, military expert and former US Army Marine. He doesn’t like Snyder’s words about Russia winning only in our minds. According to him, Snyder ignores the completely defeated Ukrainian offensive in 2023 in Bakhmut even before the West became reluctant to help Ukraine.
According to the former Marine, Snyder avoids any analysis of military-industrial production, which has a major bearing on the outcome of this conflict, and instead resorts to historical analogies that attribute the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II to America’s Lend-Lease and without it, Russia cannot win even today.
“Rather than serious analytical work intended to inform, Mr. Snyder has produced an article intended to achieve victory in the public mind precisely because it is clearly failing to achieve it on the battlefield,” concludes former US Marine Brian Berletic.
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Ukraine (War in Ukraine)
Reports from the battlefield are difficult to verify in real time, regardless of whether they come from any side of the conflict. Both warring parties, for understandable reasons, may release completely or partially false (misleading) information.
PL editorial content discussing this conflict can be found on this page.
author: Natalia Brozovská
