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The Value of Human Life in Soviet Warfare

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The Value of Human Life in Soviet Warfare The value of human life in Soviet warfare Is the Soviet Union more ready than other countries to sacrifice human lives in warfare? This is a key question for all Western military strategists. If the Soviets are indeed willing to tolerate high human sacrifice in warfare this obviously puts them at a military advantage. The perceived wisdom, hitherto, is that the Soviets are indeed willing to tolerate high human sacrifice in warfare—this, initial, view is reinforced by myths about Stalin clearing minefields in the Second World War by marching penal battalions across them. Professor Sella, however, comes to a different conclusion. He surveys Soviet attitudes to the military-medical service; to its own prisoners of war; and to the ethos of fighting to the death, considering how attitudes have changed from Czarist times to the present. He concludes that the Soviets are less ready to tolerate massive sacrifices than has hitherto been supposed; but that this position stems as much from utilitarian- military logic as from any altruistic compassion. Amnon Sella is Head of the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations and Associate Professor of International Relations and Russian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published three books and over twenty papers on Soviet military and strategic questions. The value of human life in Soviet warfare Amnon Sella London and New York First published in 1992 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1992 Amnon Sella All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Sella, Amnon The value of human life in Soviet warfare. I. Title 355.033547 ISBN 0-203-99133-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-02467-6 (Print Edition) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sella, Amnon. The value of human life in Soviet warfare/Amnon Sella. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-02467-6 (Print Edition) 1. Soviet Union—Military policy. 2. Life. 3. Soviet Union—Armed Forces—Medical care—History– 20th century. 4. Prisoners of war— Soviet Union—History– 20th century. 5. Battle casualties. I. Title. UA770.S46 1992 355.1′29′0947–dc20 91–18072 CIP Contents List of figures and tables vii Introduction viii 1 The Soviet Military Medical Service 1 Introduction 1 The history of the Service 1 The Military Medical Service after the Revolution 6 The first tests of fire 12 The Molotav-Ribbentrop Pact—an interregnum 19 The composition of the Military Medical Service 23 2 The performance of the Service during the Great 31 Patriotic War Introduction 31 Medical theory under fire 33 Reorganization and coordination 41 The Air Force 55 The Navy 56 Medicine and voluntarism on the home front—the ‘rear’ 57 Women’s health 59 Disease and epidemics 60 The policy of medical staff replenishment 63 Assessment of Soviet casualties in the Great Patriotic War 64 v An assessment of Soviet medical treatment 71 The contemporary Military Medical Service 78 3 The Soviet attitude to POWs 87 Introduction 87 The changing attitude to the status of POWs 88 The legal legacy of the Soviet Armed Forces 91 The Soviet Government’s wartime attitude to its POWs 94 Order No. 270 96 Analysis of the effects of Order No. 270 98 The attitude on the battlefield 101 The diplomatic struggle during the war 106 The situation towards the end of the war 112 The roots of the Cold War 116 The Vlasov case 118 POWs on the international agenda after the war 123 POWs in Afghanistan 124 4 Fighting at all costs 127 Introduction 127 Military experience after the Revolution: discipline and 131 morale through education Morale and discipline in the Great Patriotic War 146 An assessment of the Soviet attitude to the cost of fighting 163 A new strategy for the 1990s and beyond 167 5 Conclusion: the value of human life in Soviet warfare 179 The fire power/manoeuvre component of the equation 180 A behavioural observation: the rationale of fighting armies 185 Compassion and the utilitarian approach 188 vi Notes 191 Bibliography 209 Index 219 Figures and tables FIGURES 1.1 Features of provisions in the rear for mountain-desert 28 locations 2.1 Casualties per month: an average percentage for World War 68 II TABLES 1.1 The growth of the Soviet defence budget 1933–40 11 1.2 Evacuation of sick and wounded—infantry 12 1.3 Evacuation of sick and wounded—armoured forces 13 1.4 Structure of the USSR Ministry of Defence Central Military 24 Medical Administration 2.1 Hospital and medical personnel provision—western districts 38 (1941) 2.2 Proximity of medical facilities to the front 45 2.3 Number and percentage of wounded evacuated by air in 53 certain operations Introduction Of the many ways to evaluate the price of victory two are perhaps more prominent than others: the moralistic and the utilitarian. The moralistic approach deals with the justification for wars and with the obligation of the State towards protection of the citizen and the obligation of the citizen to defend his country. At the logical end of this argument lie problems of pacifism and conscientious objection. However, pacifists and conscientious objectors form only a minority and countries in the midst of war attempt to face the moral dilemmas involved as best they can, or not at all. Every war has left its imprint on individuals, groups and nations. The accumulative process of learning is the collective memory of human kind which is in turn the basis for ethics in international relations and a generator of international law. In response to compassionate entreaties and for reasons of expediency, elaborate ethical conventions were solemnly signed between belligerent countries to reduce as much as possible the pain and suffering of war. The utilitarian (the word is not used in its philosophipcal meaning) proach does not deal with the rights and wrongs of waging wars but with the best way to do so in order to achieve victory at the minimum cost to human life. Despite the fact that military logic differs from the diplomatic in that the latter is for ever looking for the best compromise and the former for the quickest way to break the enemy, every military establishment is saddled with utilitarian problems. Scarcity of human resources, cost-effectiveness of using manpower where fire power can be put to a better use, the attitude to soldiers who have become prisoners of war as well as the morale and the discipline of the troops, all these and several more may be classified as utilitarian problems. However, they usually also involve value judgement. Over the years there has been more than one reason to question the moralistic as well as the utilitarian approach of the Soviet Government to the value of human life: the brutality, the arbitrary use of the judicial ix system to persecute innocent people and the ‘purges’ which were the hallmarks of the Stalin period. The background to the ‘purges’ is important because three years— 1936–1939—of senseless murders and arbitrary lawlessness cast doubt on the judgement of the Soviet Government in moral matters and in questions of life and death. The aim of this book is to find out whether the Soviet Government conducts war differently from other countries. Has it been impervious to the suffering of its soldiers or to the loss of life among the troops during times of war? Has it been reckless in the use of human resources when there was a choice between manpower and other means of warfare, say, firepower and manoeuvre, or was it prepared to throw in more troops rather than give up space and time? It is one of the assumptions of this book that there is a correlation between space, time, firepower/ manoeuvre and human lives and that these elements may be calculated as an equation. An attempt will be made to find out whether the Soviet authorities paid attention to this equation. The book is divided into four chapters and a conclusion: 1 The Soviet Military Medical Service; 2 The performance of the Service during the Great Patriotic War 3 The Soviet attitude to POWs; 4 Fighting at all costs. The general concept is that through a careful analysis of the subjects mentioned above it is possible to develop a theory about the Soviet attitude to human lives in warfare. It is assumed that the attitude has changed over the years and as a result of different circumstances in an evolutionary process that can be traced methodically. The aim is to look at quantifiable elements as much as possible, along two lines of comparison; a comparison of the performance of the Soviet military machine at various times, and a comparison of it with other armies. The value attached to human life in the context of this book is analysed with a special emphasis on the utilitarian approach, or to put it another way the price of victory in Soviet warfare, namely, given a choice, how many lives is the Soviet Government prepared to sacrifice in order to achieve a military goal? Has it developed any conscious procedure to assess the number of casualties under given circumstances? Is it possible to prove that it chose one alternative and not the other? However, human life is assessed in many ways under civilian as well as under military circumstances.
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