Episode Notes:

On this episode of the Russia Contingency, Mike sat down with Dr. Alexander Burns, a visiting assistant professor of history at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, to discuss Russian military history. The conversation touched on historical battles in Bakhmut, discussed assumptions about Grigory Potemkin, and examined  how to use military history to understand modern conflict.

The Russia Contingency is a bi-weekly podcast featuring in-depth analysis of Russia's military power and the war in Ukraine.

 

Episode Transcript

Michael Kofman: Welcome back for another episode of The Russia Contingency. I'm Michael Kofman. Today I have with me a guest I've been meaning to have on this program for a while. He is a military historian. His name is Alexander Burns. I would love to say that I've been a longtime avid fan, but the truth is that I've discovered his work relatively recently. In small part due to two good War on the Rocks articles he's put out, but also some of his comments, threads, and other things that he's done.

Alex specializes on a period of military history that I really love and appreciate. I would probably describe it more as the period of Kabinettskriege to the Napoleonic Wars, but I will let him tell us a bit more about it himself. Then I hope to have what will be a really fascinating conversation with Alex today. Both about Russian military history, that time period, how it informs our understanding of what's happening today, or at least the traditions and some of the history that the Russian military and the Soviet military inherited from the Russian Imperial Army. What might have been good historical analogies or periods that inform our conversation today. And we'll see where the discussion takes us.

Alexander Burns: Thanks so much, Mike. It's great to be on the show.

Michael Kofman: You wrote a really good article talking about how Putin often references Russian imperial history. Like all political leaders, they pick the analogies and references that they like, they ignore all the ones they don't. They like to focus on the victories. They always ignore the defeats or the caveats that came with those victories. They typically don't like to discuss the arduous journey to success or how many defeats led to the battle that was the actual victory. And you talked a bit about sort of the period of Peter the Great and also Catherine the Great to the 1700s. You also at one point wrote a very interesting thread that made a provocative argument, which was that you could state that the Russian army during the period of, let's say, I don't know, 1720 to about 1790 or so, was one of the better armies in Europe.

And so some folks might say, "How's that possible?" To which I'll also say, "Do you know anything about the Russian army from that time period at all?" Because a lot of history focuses on the Prussian army, the Austrian army, the British, the French, US Revolutionary War period. But actually there isn't nearly as much, I would say, that people tend to consume on Russian military history from that time period. So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

Alexander Burns: Yeah, absolutely. And I should say at the outset, I am primarily a scholar of the American army and the Prussian army in this time. And during my master's degree, I worked with a phenomenal Ukrainian historian at Ball State University named Sergei Zhuk. And Zhuk really rounded out some of my lacking knowledge on the 18th century Russian army. And so it's a subspecialty of mine. It's something I enjoy reading about in my spare time. And as you said, I've written a few pieces for War on the Rocks and also the National Interest kind of talking about this period in 18th century Russian history and move some of the things we can learn.

Yeah, I'd love to address that thread that you mentioned on Twitter. It might be shocking to think if your frame of reference is just what's in the news, but in many ways the 18th century Russian army was probably one of the most technically proficient armies of the 1700, certainly to 1815, period.

This is something that might surprise because often we tell the story of Russian history as a story of backwardness, that the Russians are desperately trying to catch up to the more progressive or technologically efficient West. But in a lot of ways, the Russian army was setting trends in Europe during the 18th century. Certainly by the period after the Seven Years War, which is the middle of the century, 1756 to 1763, the Russian army is highly proficient. And a lot of historians today would argue that they're probably more proficient in some ways than the Prussians, which are often... The Prussians are viewed as the paradigm army of this period of 18th century history. But if you look at their performance, if you look at their doctrines, the maneuvers that they're capable of carrying out, the Russian army truly is a very impressive fighting force in these wars to control Poland, to fight against the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate in the south. Earlier in the century, they do fairly well after maybe a rough start fighting against the Swedes. It's truly an impressive army in many ways.

Michael Kofman: So first I'll ask about what you might think might be some of the pivotal conflicts or wars or battles to look at from that time period, for anyone who wanted to dig more into the 1700s and this period of Kabinettskriege, what might be the ones you might bring up? Not to put you on the spot, right, but you remember on a previous iteration of the show, I got asked for some historical examples and I was badly jet-lagged and I was struggling to come up with both good historical analogies in terms of wars, but also of the better ones to look at from this time period.

Alexander Burns: Disconnected from what's going on today, maybe we can talk about good analogies to the current war in a little while, but I'd say important wars to understand for this period, you have to really understand the Great Northern War. This is a conflict primarily between Sweden and the Russian Empire or the Swedish Empire and the Russian Empire. There are also Ukrainians involved in this conflict, the Cossack Hetmanate becomes involved in this conflict. And also the Ottoman Empire allies itself to the Swedes for sort of a brief period in the middle of the war. Actually inflicts a pretty sharp defeat on Peter the First, or Peter the Great, depending on what you want to call him. But I would say basically the period breaks down into four zones. And I'll kind of talk a little bit about each of these zones briefly.

We might say the 18th century, but I would actually take this back earlier to the 1680s when Peter seizes control of the Russian state from his half sister Sophia, and really begins... Maybe not begins, but continues the process of modernizing the Russian army. He does this essentially because of a failed attempt to capture what is today Ukrainian territory, Crimea. In 1687 and 1689, Sophia launches some ill-advised invasions of Crimea, and these are pretty bad failures. And so the instability that results enables Peter to seize control of the state. He is usually credited as the great founder of the modern Russian army. And that's true, and it's not. All the way back into the middle, and even the first third of the 17th century, Russian czars are trying to improve the army. They're trying to modernize their forces. In the 1640s, there are two regiments of "Western style" troops, like pike and shot troops, created by Muscovy. In the 1680s you have efforts to renew the army, and Peter, he's the most successful of these reformers in the early part of his reign in revolutionizing the Russian military. Creating a more Western style, Western looking, they're adopting Western style uniforms during the Great Northern War. But that first period of Peter the Great's reign, the Great Northern War. I'd say that's fundamental to understand.

And when I would teach ROTC cadets at West Virginia University for the past six or seven years, I would always cover the Great Northern War and specifically Peter's campaigns against Sweden because I think it's a very important touchstone for modern military history.

As far as other conflicts that might be worth checking into for this period, I think honestly the 1736 War is also vital and maybe we can talk a little bit about that in a moment. The war of 1736 to 1739 against the Ottoman Empire, which is something that I've been focusing on a lot recently. Clausewitz, the famous Prussian military theorist, actually writes a short treatise on this in one of his less well known works. It's not on war, but his collected body of works, he has a short, almost an article on this war. And I translated it recently and looked at that in terms of what he thinks the great lessons of this war are and how even could we apply them to what's going on in modern Ukraine today.

But probably the war that changes the Russian army the most in the middle of the 18th century is the Seven Years War where they're projecting power into Central Europe, fighting primarily against the Prussians. They're allied with the Austrians, the Swedes, the French, and they're trying to overrun the relatively small kingdom of Prussia.

Here the Russians are demonstrating, again, great technical proficiency, real focus on artillery in the Russian army at this time. Peter Shuvalov, one of the sort of masters of Russian ordinance in this time, is developing new types of artillery that can particularly be used to support men in an offensive role with indirect fire. In fact, one of my mentors, the historian Christopher Duffy, argues that the Russian orders to provide indirect fire support for their infantry are some of the first we see in all of world history at this time. And so if there's a long legacy from the 18th century, I would say in some ways perhaps it's the focus on fires, the focus on artillery being a really important branch of the Russian army. The focus on developing new capabilities with artillery is something where technologically, the Russians are actually outstripping the West in many ways.

The period that gets the most attention in like HBO dramas and things like this is definitely the reign of Catherine the Second, or Catherine the Great. She is a very expansionistic ruler who drives Russian expansion in Poland in the south, taking Crimea from that old Crimean Khanate. There's a great war, large conflict, against the Ottoman Empire during the middle of her reign. She fights a couple of them, but probably the most important is the 1768 to 1774 conflict. A lot of famous Russian military leaders who were, if you know anything about Russian history, they're household names like Alexander Suvorov. These figures kind of cut their teeth in this war. Suvorov of is coming up through the ranks as a young officer during this conflict.

And in some ways the Russian military has worked out the problems that it would face logistically and in terms of tactical employment of troops during the Great Northern War and the 1736 War and the Seven Years War by the time we get to this war in 1768. So Brian L. Davies, who's probably the leading historian of these wars in English, really focuses on this conflict being a watershed in Russian history, is when they really begin to almost build a war machine that's really running well and everything's sort of synergistically working together. And then kind of last but not least, you're getting into the later reign of Catherine and the reign of Paul where you start to see Russian involvement in wars against revolutionary France or even the Napoleonic conflicts going into the reign of Alexander.

Michael Kofman: Let me jump in here for a bit. First sort of question. At which point do you think the Russian military begins to strongly favor artillery as one of its arms? So often when we think of combined arms, we think of infantry, cavalry, artillery, then of course later on comes air power and what have you. But the Russian military particularly is known as a fires driven military, inherited that from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union inherited that from the Russian Imperial Army. And the Russian Imperial Army inherited that from itself at a certain point where it began to strongly favor artillery as one of the decisive arms. Now, I won't project backwards the way we talk about combined arms maneuver and the employment of these different arms today. But I think it's an important question, where does that cultural heritage really start and why is it proved so impactful or so lasting, at least within the Russian Imperial Army?

Alexander Burns: So perhaps that's surprising. There's a big scholar of literature on this and there are different historians who are in different camps, but broadly I would say it comes from Peter's reign and it's really solidified by the time you get to the middle of the century. One of the reasons why the Russians think they win the Great Northern War is because they invest more heavily in their artillery arm than the Swedish army of King Charles the 12th, which is really light on artillery, and often even when it has artillery available, it just relies on its cavalry and infantry, which are really good at launching fast moving aggressive assaults on Russian positions. They're able to overrun and break through Russian positions that are very well defended. But as the war goes on, the Russian focus on using artillery, particularly artillery firing specialist, anti-personnel munitions, canister. Often the analogy is made that this turns the cannon into a giant shotgun.

These are legacies that stick with the Russian army. And so as a result in the 18th century, you often hear the quote from Suvorov- this later, almost revolutionary Napoleonic general, later revolutionary general- that the Russian soldiers should focus on bayonet training because the bayonet is really where it's at, and firepower, anything could happen if you employ firepower. But really when it comes to most 18th century armies, I would say the Russians emphasize firepower more than they emphasize close combat.

Now, Peter trains his men for both, but by the middle of the 18th century you have all of these new artillery pieces. Like Shuvalov has a type of Howitzer that is, I mean if you've ever been to Gettysburg, for American listeners, and seen cannons, most of them are hollowed out on a round boar. Shuvalov develops a special Howitzer that's rounded out in kind of an oval manner. And so it more effectively spreads out these anti-personnel munitions when it fires. And so playing with different types of invention, things like the Shuvalov secret Howitzer, which is that oval boar weapon I talked about. Things like, sometimes it's called the unicorn or the licorne, which is a Howitzer that can particularly perform indirect fire missions to support infantry advances, by the middle of the century, the Russians have really invested in this type of anti-personnel fire from their artillery arm as a battle winning weapon.

And so in a lot of the fights of the Seven Years War, the Prussians really struggled to defeat them. And Prussia has an incredible army this time. It's the Prussian army of Frederick the Great, they're thought of as being one of the best armies. Frederick the Great's stock as a military commander has gone down in the last 20 years because of a series of negative biographies that have come out. But he's a fairly effective commander and the Russians are often defeating him, or at least inflicting tactical reverses on the battlefield with his forces.

And so the fact that the Russian army is able to do this is very impressive. They're able to do it not just because they're focusing on their artillery arm, but firepower generally. The Russians almost uniquely, certainly uniquely when compared with the Prussian military, are actually employing buckshot rounds for their infantry soldiers. And so a Russian soldier when he is loading his musket, is not just loading a musket ball. He's certainly loading one of those big .69 caliber musket balls, but he's also loading nine buck shot in the barrel after that initial caliber round. And this is something that the Prussians really don't have a frame of reference for, and they're kind of panicked by this. They talk about the way that this buckshot really increases the number of men who are, maybe not killed but wounded in action. They almost think of this is being almost unfair. The Russians are putting out so much firepower. It does cause you to load the musket a bit more slowly. But you're firing 10 projectiles as opposed to one, so there is a much greater spread of fire.

And the crazy thing is there are Polish archeologists like Dr. [inaudible] in [inaudible] who are on these battlefield sort of combing them for artifacts. And one of the main artifacts that comes off the battlefield at Zorndorf and Kunersdorf in the middle of the 18th century are these Russian buckshot rounds, which kind of shows the way that the Russians are focusing on anti-personnel fire at this time.

I read recently from another colleague of yours, I found this fascinating, that in the latter part of 18th century the US, the continental army, loaded buckshot along with ball rounds. The Russian army did as well. The British tended not to and seemed to have emphasized more close combat and banned charges. And I found that difference in kind of innovation emphasizing firepower versus something else in the battlefield quite fascinating. And I'd always thought that most of the militaries had fired either standard ball ammunition or maybe they had two to three buckshot attached to it. But I was surprised to see how much the emphasis on firepower and sort of spread had evolved. And I was sort of curious if in the matchup between these militaries... The Prussian military was always given a lot of credit for being kind of best discipline army, most capable of engaging in platoon fire to the extent that anybody could really do that. As opposed to how you watch in the movies where everyone can do that and everyone can hear everyone else on the battlefield, everyone can see everything else on the battlefield, including yourself, which is I think completely, totally untrue of what battles looked like at the time.

And there's so much discipline and organized fire beyond the first shot, which is probably not at all how it went. But curious how the discipline in these armies matched up. The reason I ask this question is as you know there's always a stereotype of the Russian army. The Russian Army's not as good, not as drilled, not as discipline, force qualities lower, but they have the numbers. And part of the reason for that is a lot of people [inaudible 00:18:48] the Russian army would typically complain that the Russian army had more numbers and that was it. Otherwise they were so good, they were so good at war. They would have totally won it had not been for all the numbers the Russian military brought to the battle. But historically I think a lot of that's actually untrue. And I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts are.

Alexander Burns: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the classic story that comes out of the Second World War. All the German generals writing at the end of World War II, "Oh man, we would've won, but the Russians just had so many men." And that's a narrative that is very false in that context but also, I think you're right, it does often, maybe because World War II history is so popular in a modern context, it can filter into a writing about other periods. The fact of the matter is the Russian army is often outnumbered, particularly when they're fighting the Ottomans. I mean in some of these battles against the Ottomans, if you believe the Russian sources- which maybe that's not the conversation- the Ottomans outnumbered them three to one or four to one. At battles like Kagul in the sort of 1768 war.

And so certainly when they're squared off against the Swedish army, the Swedish army is quite small, so maybe they do have numbers advantages there. When they're squared off against the Prussians, it's actually pretty close. At Gross-Jägersdorf in 1757, the Prussian army has 24,000 men. The Russian army has 55,000 men. That's a big disparity. That's two to one. But the other battles like Zorndorf in 1758, there are 36-38,000 Prussians and only 42,000 Russians. So it's not really a big numbers disparity. And I would treat that idea the Russians are so backward, the Russians are only winning because they have superior numbers... You hear three stereotypes about the Russian army in this period, they're backward, they win because they have greater numbers, and they win because the soldiers are so brave and so stubborn. And it's easier to kill the Russians, Frederick the Great says, than to get them to run away.

And so this idea that there's a lot of Russians and they're really stubborn, I think we're going to talk maybe about some of the ways history is misused here in a little while. So I don't know how much you want me to get into this right now, but I'm kind of allergic to these ideas because I think one of the things that history should do, if you actually read in detail, is you should reject explanations that come down to chauvinism and essentialism. And you should really focus on what the sources say, what the data says. I mean, if you look at the Russian army in the 18th century, it doesn't increase a large degree. The field armies themselves don't balloon an enormous amount in size. So in 1709 at the Battle of Poltava, Peter the Great has an army of 44,000 men.

By the time you get to 1757 at Gross-Jägersdorf, as I said, it's increased to 55,000 men at that battle, but it actually gets smaller as the century goes on. And some of Suvorov's most successful campaigns are waged with an army that's 22-28,000 men in size and he's actually outnumbered by his opponents. So here I think we should be kind of wary of the idea that there are hoards of Russians and that's why they win, and the Army's not that good. Suvorov's Army is incredibly well drilled. You mentioned platoon fire. They are very competent in doing this sort of activity, this sort of battlefield tactical practice. They're also really great at operational movement. The Russian Army under Suvorov is one of the fastest armies of the 18th century. And so often there's this stereotype about 18th century armies that they're all guys in powdered wigs wearing lace, wearing big tricorn hats. How serious can we possibly take these armies?

But it's actually 18th century armies that are moving faster in some ways than the armies of Napoleon. In fact, this is something Clausewitz harps on in On War. He says in the era of Frederick the Great, there are marches conducted at speed that we have not matched in modern warfare. Talking about Napoleonic warfare. So Suvorov's crossing Poland in the 1770s and 1780s, his army's marching 20 to 30 miles a day. I mean this is an army that's capable of moving at great speed operationally. I would say I don't know that the Russians are necessarily sort of leading when it comes to sort of spit and polish. I'm not sure if it's a phenomenal parade ground army, this is something that is often associated with the reign of Czar Paul. He tries to sort of make them more proficient at this parade ground efficiency.

But they are very good at operational movement. They're good at fighting and speed of fire and employing firepower on the battlefield in an effective manner. It's a highly effective army in a lot of ways. And it doesn't just come down to numbers. Now to your point about the battlefield itself, the Russians probably are not as well drilled in terms of executing platoon fire and things like this as the Prussian army is. At the battle of Gross-Jägersdorf in 1757, I was just reading the memoir of a Russian officer, Andrey Bolotov, who fought there. He describes very clearly that the Prussians are kind of advancing on their position cautiously and the Prussians are firing volleys at the Russian army trying to get the Russians to begin firing out of control, and this happens. The Russian army does just start firing as fast as possible, every man loading as fast as he can.

But this is a really common problem and I wouldn't even say it's a problem, it's just something 18th century armies did. The Prussians also complain that they fall into this same trap. Here, maybe the Prussians are a little bit more tactically proficient. The Russians usually stand on the defensive, they're not great at complicated battlefield maneuvers. Their goal is to get to the battlefield, concentrate their army, deploy in a defensive manner and kind of hold on against the Prussian assaults. And usually they're capable of doing this. At Kunersdorf in 1759, they wreck the Prussian army as it tries to attack them. At Zorndorf in 1758, they cause massive casualties, even if maybe the Prussians win the battle or tie depending on which historians you might agree with. But by and large, the Russian army gets where it needs to go. It is capable of fighting in this really complicated and difficult to control 18th century world of battle.

And this is actually something Bolotov talks about. He says, "Well, we saw the Prussians a lot as they were approaching, as they started firing on us, but as soon as our men started firing, we couldn't see a thing. We had no idea what was going on." So this world of battle in the 18th century is one where officers really struggle to exert control. Certainly if you watch things like the Patriot or other movies set in 18th century warfare, you get the perception the men are basically robots doing whatever the officers are telling them to do. This is completely false and this comes down to us from Prussian sources and from Russian sources. It's really difficult to control these armies in combat when they're actually shooting at each other.

Michael Kofman: Do you know much about Prince Potemkin as a military leader?

Alexander Burns: A bit. So he's a little bit further on in the 18th century where the core of my research is. I mean, obviously I've read a lot of secondary works about the campaigns later in the century, but as I recall, he's a fairly effective field commander in the '87 war, the '87-92 war, but not a ton.

Michael Kofman: So Alex, I want to turn now to sort of this aspect of the conversation I'm hoping to draw out of how we make some of the history relevant to today. So I'm want to turn to a conversation on the Battle for Bakhmut, which everybody listening to this podcast is familiar with. Except we're going to talk about the first Battle of Bakhmut at 1708, which to me is perhaps one of the most interesting and that is the clash of the Russian Imperial Army with what we could, kind of looking back, say were Ukrainian forces. You wrote a little bit about it in an article for War on the Rocks that you did. But I would love to ask you just a bit about what set up this initial Battle of Bakhmut, which I guess takes place in the midst of the Great Northern War with Sweden and all the kind of shifting coalitions within that conflict.

Alexander Burns: Yeah, absolutely. So this Battle of Bakhmut is in 1708. It occurs as a result of a Cossack rebellion led by a Cossack leader named Kondraty Bulavin. And there are a couple of these rebellions, probably the one that people if they're familiar with the war, they might be familiar with Mazepa's alliance with the King of Sweden. But this actually happens the year before and essentially comes back to kind of local disputes. Kondraty Bulavin thinks he's being ill used and he raises the standard revolt. At one point I think he actually does promise his followers, "I'm going to march all the way to Moscow and kind of change the system." It doesn't actually turn out this way. There are some initial successes as so often happens when you try and rebel against an 18th century state. You know, think of what happened kind of famously with the Jacobites rebelling against the British imperial government in the 1740s.

So there are some immediate successes and then the Russian military begins to send more forces into the region and Bakhmut is one of Bulavin's centers of power. It's a fortified city in this time, and it's taken by the Russians after a short struggle. The Russian commander, I think the exact quote is, "The bandits den at Bakhmut has been destroyed," is the field report that he gives back to Czar Peter. Peter actually comes through in the following year and tours the ruins at Bakhmut. And so this is a eventually a horror from the Ukrainian perspective. It's a horrible failure. I mean he's one of these- especially in the 19th century- pre nationalist, romantic figures that are associated with early Ukrainian identity and he's killed. I think by some accounts he commits suicide to avoid capture. So I mean it doesn't end in a sort of terribly positive way for the Cossacks who are raising the standard of revolts against the Russian Empire, but it's a very important struggle and it's one of the things that inspires Mazepa to go on and lead the larger revolt where he allies with Sweden in the following year.

Michael Kofman: Another question, and this is just kind of a personal hobbyhorse of mine. I'm often driven mad by Potemkin analogies because they're terrible cliches and we know that whenever people try to say that something may have appearances that lack substance. And these have come back recently due to poor Russian military performance in the war relative to expectations. People immediately throughout, "So Potemkin army?" And the first two things that come to my mind, first and foremost, Potemkin wasn't a particularly bad military leader, and the Russian army under Potemkin wasn't a bad army. This is issue one. So the analogy isn't very good in that regard. But the second one of course, and this is the origin of those cliches, that Potemkin built these fake villages to show Catherine to great her new possessions and what have you. I think that's grossly overstated, I don't think that actually happened all that much. I think that this is sort of like 80% legend relative to actual history.

But I wanted to ask you, I know this is not necessarily your area of specialization, but one, was the Potemkin army actually a bad army? And second, do we know much about the reality of this kind of cliche that always gets trotted out whenever a military does poorly relative to expectations?

Alexander Burns: Sure, absolutely. So yeah, I guess I would say from my perspective calling something a Potemkin army or Potemkin's army... It's a very good army. This is the army that reaches the heights of technical excellence late in the 18th century under Catherine's rule. And so here this is the army that Suvorov is coming up through. I mean he and Potemkin are both kind of field commanders in the 1787 war, where Potemkin is able to storm and take these Ottoman fortresses that really kind of challenge the Russians earlier in the century and they struggle to take. I mean back in the period I'm most familiar with in the 1730s with Field Marshall Münnich, a German officer of the Russian Army, the Russians really struggle against these fortified cities that the Ottomans are constructing to defend the Steppe frontier. And Potemkin and this army in the 1787-92 war, it's a highly effective army. It takes some of these fortresses that have bedraggled the Russian army up until this point.

As far as the Potemkin village story goes, it's important to remember that there's a process of internal colonization that is happening in Eastern Europe all throughout the 18th century. And it's not just happening in what we today think of as the modern territory of Ukraine. It's going on in sort of the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth. There are Prussian settlers, quote unquote colonists who are moving further east at this time, building new villages. And so the idea, I think, behind this story of the Potemkin villages is an area that's in the process of being colonized, being sort of developed. New cities are being built, and so Potemkin in wanting to impress Empress Catherine is bringing these settlers to the fore so she can see them. Whether or not these villages are half constructed or what exactly is going on, I think the story here is as Catherine is progressing through this territory, she's seeing a land that Russian imperialism is trying to develop. Turn the land from their perspective, this kind of blank steppe grassland, which is very important for nomadic peoples up until this point, into a land that looks more like the settled cities of Russia. And so this is where maybe this story comes from in a lot of way. I wouldn't say it's a total myth.

Michael Kofman: Yeah, it's not.

Alexander Burns: Also, there's a lot more going on here than, "Oh, Potemkin is a cheapskate and he's trying to sort of save some money and make himself look good." It's a complicated process.

Michael Kofman: Well, let's turn a little bit to its historical analogies then. I don't want to confine ourselves to the 18th century, but I got asked on the previous version of this podcast, what's a good war that we could use an analogy for the current Russian military experience in this war? And my own view on those subjects, first, that you can definitely use different aspects of this war for one analogy or another because wars go in phases. Whether it's the initial invasion, whether it's a prolonged phase of attrition, first battle of Donbas, second battle of Donbas, what have you. I think some commonalities, for me at least that stand out, is that a lot of Russian military history to me is characterized by really questionable political decision making and use of force and bad assumptions. Whether Russia's the aggressor or the defender in the war. Poor assumptions about coalition politics or how European politics will stack up resulting from the invasion.

And the Russian military, while maybe stereotypically seen as not being as good as other European armies, typically suffers much more from rather poor political decision making that usually puts it in a very bad position at the opening of the war. Whether it's attacking or defending. And then it has to kind of claw its way out of this. I'm obviously making this a bit of a generalization, that it has to claw its way out from a bad start, often suffering a lot of attrition and then having to go to phases of adaptation, independent of the causes of the war. I don't know what you think of that, but I was curious in general, what you might point to as some of the better historical references from the 18th or 19th sanctuary in looking at the conflict today or at least what speaks to you as being useful and relevant?

Alexander Burns: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think the question of historical analogies is often a difficult one because you have to ask, analogous how? And drawing threads of parallel or threads of continuity between different wars maybe more helpful than just saying, "Well, the war in Ukraine is exactly like War X," like the opening World War II or something like this. So when I think about this war, if you're looking for wars where Russia has performed poorly at the outset, but then managed to adapt, suffer attrition, and claw their way to victory, in my period in the 18th century it's definitely the Great Northern War. I mean the Russian opening performance here is abysmal. At the battle of Narva in 1700, a Swedish army about a fourth of the size of Peter's field army, is victorious. They're able to drive the Russians out of a fortified camp off the battlefield.

Peter is already gone. This is a huge embarrassment for Russia. And despite all of that, the army reforms continue. Russia continues to recruit more men there. There's waves of mobilization or whatever we want to call it. Usually the focus is on conscription because this is the period where Russia really begins conscription in their military history. But there's also not just conscription, there's volunteers brought into this new Russian army. Many serfs are allowed to volunteer and 11,000 of them sign up for the army to such an extent that the noble landlords say, "Whoa, we've got to stop allowing serfs to volunteer. They're leaving our estates in too large numbers." So yeah, I would say that the Great Northern War is a great analogy for the 18th century, if you're looking for a war where Russia is in some ways fighting a smaller power, they're fighting a power with a much smaller military than their own. They get absolutely crushed at the beginning of the war, but they still manage to through attritional strategy, by adapting, overcome a more technically proficient opponent.

Now more broadly in history, depending on what type of thread of analogy we want to draw... I mean if we're just looking at comparable geopolitics, I do think Korea is a very helpful analogy. You could also say Vietnam or Afghanistan. To me, this war, one of the major themes is it's a collapsed or a down and out imperial power that's trying to reclaim some territory and maybe restore a little bit of their form of grandeur. And here I actually think there are a number of different wars that could inform us in this regard. The one that really springs to my mind the most is the wars between Alexander's successors, or the Diadochi. Where you have essentially one large imperial successor state, the Seleucid Empire, and they're waging wars of aggression, trying to carve bits of pieces off of their rivals in order to rebuild this old imperial state.

And eventually they managed to take most of the territory controlled in Egypt by the Ptolemies. They managed to take a lot of territory from the old Antigonid Empire and the old Macedonian [inaudible 00:39:02]. Now there are other more modern examples that we could draw here. I mean, to some extent the Polish Soviet war, they're trying to do this exact same thing. I mean, Lenin is trying to take retake old territory that was lost at Brest-Litovsk with the end of World War I, the Winter War. Something that really stuck out in my mind was what happened in Yugoslavia the nineties where the Serbs are not trying to necessarily rebuild the Yugoslavia but take bits of territory that they feel belong to them in this old imperial settlement. So what happens when empires break apart and when resurgent parts of old empires try to constitute themselves? I think there's some analogies to be drawn there.

Michael Kofman: I've often used kind of a combination of the Winter War except imagined that in the Winter War the western countries actually show up to Finland's aid. Another one I've used from a sort of broader perspective in terms of political decision making and coalitions and economic pressure over time has been the Crimean War. Because I don't think this war is going to end for the Russian military in anything that they'd be able to call a victory. I don't necessarily think that the war will end with Ukrainian troops in [inaudible 00:40:21], but it might. That's actually one potential outcome for this war. I think that that analogy, at least the part of it that's suitable, is that the longer the war goes on, the greater the significance of economic pressure, of blockade, and of other powers potentially joining a larger European coalition aligning itself against Russia and the relevance of that coalition to the war, to the big picture.

And also independent of the initial military performance that the war reveals issues within the Russian military, that the Russian military is not as good as, at least they thought they were. And of course, all my analogies are imperfect. It doesn't say analytically. There's always big problems sticking with parallels because you discard important aspects of context to look for similarities that you like. And I like to say that there's a lot of parallels between a tiger and a zebra with a few very consequential differences. And so whenever you've reached for historical parallels and you ignore some of the big differences, you can miss something that's very consequential. But I don't know what you think about Crimean War and some of these other analogies. To some extent they might be useful.

Alexander Burns: Yeah, I think probably the analogies that are really helpful are Korea and Crimea. I think both of these, not least because I think to some extent Crimea is a watershed in the history of the Russian army as a whole. I mean, you could essentially break the history of the old imperial army up into a period from Peter the Great to Crimea and then from Crimea afterwards. So yeah, I do like that idea of Crimea. I think there are threads here, especially with the British and the French coming in. Maybe they're showing up in a way that's a bit more material than the assistance that say Ukraine has received from western countries up until this point. If it's just about the Ottoman Empires is Ukraine in this analogy. But no, I think both Korea, particularly with the balancing battlefield successes versus the potential of atomic employment, these are questions in Korea that I think transitioned to this war pretty well.

Michael Kofman: I was going to ask something, it might be really helpful to look at in terms of Napoleonic war period. This is a fascinating period. It's probably the one that people focus on the most. That's why I actually prefer that we spend a lot of conversation more on the wars of sort of 1700s as opposed to the the Napoleonic wars. But this is a really fascinating period of history for one, because it's definitely a period where at the very least Napoleon's 1812 campaign, that's one campaign where the Russian military definitely does not outnumber the opponent. And the dolly has to essentially fight a prolonged retreat to try to whittle French numbers down before eventually wheeling about and having a major battle at Borodino, where France, in terms of numbers, they're maybe not advantaged but the overall French force in the campaign is still strongly advantaged.

And to me it's a very interesting campaign because I think it's worth noting that obviously a lot of Russian officers and leaders at the time are also foreign. It's very common to find somebody German of German descent or Scottish descent in the Russian military, even though the Lord and Savior of American military thought Clausewitz was in the Russian Imperial Army at this point and writes some of the things he wrote based on his impressions from that time period. Do you think this is accurate?

Alexander Burns: Yeah, so I think this is a really fascinating period and I'd love to talk a little bit about the Napoleonic wars. I mean certainly it's another one of these watersheds. I mean you could say maybe 1815 equal with Crimea is important in watershed in Russian military history. On that note of there being so many Germans, I mean this is true in Napoleonic Wars all the way throughout the 18th century. The regulations of the Russian army in the 18th century are printed side by side. One page in Russian, one page in German in the 1750 and 1780 regulations. The memoir that I mentioned earlier by Andrey Bolotov, he's terrified when he reaches his regiment for the first time as a young man because the colonel of the regiment only speaks German. He's like a German bolt and he knows a couple words in German. He is like, "How am I going to talk to my colonel? He's going to think I'm some kind of Rub who doesn't speak German." It's sort of an odd thing to be thinking about in the context of the Russian military.

But I do think the Napoleonic wars are a watershed for Russian power projection. You have moments in the 18th century, say in 1748, the Russians send a core of 30,000 men all the way to the Netherlands to try and help at the tail end of the war of Austrian succession. In the Seven Years War, they reached the North German plane, I mean there are Russian forces there. But here a Russian army fights all the way through Russian territory and back and then goes all the way to Paris, allied with the Prussians, with the Austrians. And I think you're absolutely right to point out this is not a war in which numbers save Russia. It's a war in which maybe there are 300-350,000 Russians when the campaign begins. And there are 600,000 French and French allies from all over Western/Central Europe crossing the Neiman to invade. We often remember this as a story of when winter saved Russia, and that's completely false and historians have known this for a while. And so every semester when I'm teaching my ROTC cadets, I'm like, "It's not all the winter."

Michael Kofman: The two most common excuses we usually hear historically is totally outnumbered by the Russians, and also I did not know about winter and when winter comes in Europe. This was a surprise and we had no idea that winter was going to happen during winter. And I mean, just to be honest, going through multiple wars, usually the side that loses or doesn't do as well, these are the two number one excuses that they write.

Alexander Burns: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, this is a war where certainly the French imperial army struggles as a result of the winter on the way out. Conducting a retreat in the face of a superior enemy force is never an easy thing, especially not in winter, but way more Russian soldiers die of illness on the way into Russia than die of freezing to death on the way out. And so if you look at the opening of Napoleon's campaign, he loses so many men on his way through basically the [inaudible] marshes on the way in, and this actually dwarfs the number that he loses on the way out. And so really, I think we might say a failure of logistics or disease is what brings down Napoleon's invasion of Russia rather than, "Man, it was so cold and we didn't really have a frame of reference for this."

Certainly the Russians themselves get a vote, right? At Borodino, The Russians take a lot of losses. They also do a lot of attritional damage to the French. At Napoleon's playbook, so often, is you have to wipe out the enemy army in such a crushing defeat very close to their capital. He does this again and again. In 1805, he does it to the Austrians. In 1806, he does it to the Prussians. In 1809, he does it again to the Austrians. Here in Russia, his goal is for Borodino to be one of these knockout punches and then he's going to seize Moscow. And this double psychological shock will force Czar Alexander to sue for peace. And he doesn't. Czar Alexander continues to employ his line, "We will not negotiate while one French soldier was left alive on Russian soil." And so this decision to continue the fight past in sort of old regime terms, "Well, they've defeated our army and they've taken our capital, we've got to surrender."

This is why some historians would say, "Well, is this a modern war? Is it a nationalistic war? Is it a war where it's the Russian nation, not just simply the elites of the old regime who are fighting?" On this note, if you're interested in reading more about the Napoleonic Wars, I'm not a Napoleonic historian, but you should really check out the work of Alexander Mikaberidze. He's written a huge amount on the Russian army, the Napoleonic Wars. He's written the defining volume on their officer corp. He's come out with biographies recently of award-winning biography of Kutuzov. He's translated more kind of ordinary Russian soldiers' and officers' memoirs than, I think, any other historian certainly alive today has done. Made them available in English. So it's possible even if you don't speak Russian, to really have a sense of what this war was like for the Russian army as a result of the pioneering work of scholars like Alex.

Michael Kofman: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Maybe we can conclude briefly and just talk about what are great ways or not so great ways to assess history. I am obviously as an analyst, like you, also driven mad by what can bleed into analysis. Chauvinism and essentialism. Essentialism to me is often, to be honest, the most comical because if you look at Russian history, you will quickly discover that a lot of Russian leaders and military leaders are not actually Russian. So meaning they are not from Russia, they are not ethnically Russian. They were not even originally Russian speaking. Okay. So whenever I hear something "the Russians" or "the Russian Army" or "Russian leadership", and it's sort of like a generalization of 300 plus years of Russian history, I immediately begin to wonder about the accuracy of what I'm hearing.

But I want to also ask you, to what extent do you believe that military history for prior wars, prior conflicts, is useful in explaining what's happening in the war today? And as a historian, what's the best way to do it? Because I love your work. I am very passionate about military history, as somebody who's a perpetual student of it. I can't always tell what the right balance and what the best collaboration is between military analysts who work as practitioners, who work in the applied side of the field, and military historians. How best to use that work and how best not to abuse that work.

Alexander Burns: Absolutely. So I think it's kind of a two-way street, and I try to be careful about this because just because I research and write about military history. I mean, I got my doctorate in military history and I'm teaching at a university now, it doesn't mean I'm really qualified to be speaking about modern military affairs. I'm a military historian, I'm not a military analyst. And in the same way, I think often when I'm teaching my ROTC cadets, even those who really love history, their first level of analysis and way of thinking about the past is, "Well, I'm going to Monday morning quarterback Napoleon and see what he did wrong and see if we can fix that." And neither of these are very helpful. Historians shouldn't be trying to say, "Well, if only the Ukrainians would do this like we know from history," and likewise, it's probably not terribly helpful when professional military educators or men are saying, "Hey, Napoleon got it wrong. If only he followed my plan, it all would've worked out really well."

I think again, this comes back to the idea that history should guard us against several things. Should guard us against chauvinism, should guard us against essentialism. I always drive home to my students every semester, taking a military history course should provide a constant warning to you against the idea that one system or piece of tactical equipment is going to really solve all of your problems. I mean, if you look at the second World War, I have so many students who can give me all of the stats for a Tiger tank, but they maybe don't realize the way in which actually probably the Studebaker truck was a more important vehicle for explaining how the World War ends the way it does in the Eastern front.

History should make us think carefully. It should make us shy away from easy explanations. It should make us close readers. I would say by and large, if you think about ways to apply history, I lean that there's kind of a dichotomy between Jomini and Clausewitz. So Jomini is saying, "Well, if I can come look at the past and come up with a checklist of things that I'm going to do and really have a formula for how to find military success." Whereas Clausewitz attempts to understand how war works via the use of relevant examples. I think that is probably a more effective way of using the past to try and understand war than trying to say, "Well, just because Napoleon and Alexander and Frederick II or Frederick the Great did this in this situation, that means it's the right thing for us to do today in Ukraine or World War II," or whatever the modern situation is.

So using history as a way to become more informed about how war works through the application of relevant examples as opposed to trying to find some sort of magical formula that's always going to help us out in all times and all places. Yeah, I would say history is often abused and there are even times when, say, my work is referenced in a news article where it's giving specific advice to Ukrainian commanders. I wrote a piece in Army University Press and there was an article that came out saying, "Well, maybe looking at what the Prussian army did in this specific instance could really inform you what exactly the Ukrainian commanders should do today." It's possible, but I think we have to carefully contextualize these examples and realize that they don't just exist in the vacuum. Apply the ideas and the relevant examples or anecdotes that we might be able to share from the past in the context of historical data in the context of logistics.

I mean, Frederick the Great didn't exist in a vacuum. Peter the Great, Catherine, Suvorov, they weren't simply maneuvering armies on a chess board. They existed as real people in the real world. Suvorov probably tore his hair out thinking, "How on earth am I going to provide my men with ammunition and feed them and get fodder for my horses?" This is something that I really looked at in one of my pieces on the 1736 war. Because really that is a war where logistics is the main headache of the Russian Army. Logistics causes more deaths than enemy action. If you don't have enough food to feed the horses, they're going to die, then you can't bring enough food to feed your own men, then they're going to start dying. Just looking at the history of battle is a great place to start, but read broadly about these armies. Read about the administration of these armies, read about the logistics of these armies and that can maybe help inform, if not perfectly guide, modern military decision making.

Michael Kofman: There are two approaches that are incorrect and a third one that I like, and the way I would make this an analogy is, the first approach is, "I know a lot about the Battle of Bakhmut in 1708. Let me tell you about what's happening Bakhmut today." All right. The second approach is. "I know a lot about the Battle of Bakhmut today." That would be my side of the story. "Let me tell you about what happened in 1708, which I actually don't know much about at all." Okay. And the third one is, "I know a lot about the Battle of Bakhmut today. You know quite a bit about the Battle of Bakhmut 1708, or at least the wider war and what's useful to know about it. Let's have that conversation together." That to me, is the best combination of contemporary military analysis and military history, even when separated by this kind of timeline.

Anyway, I really appreciate you joining me today. We're going to continue this conversation. I'm confident it's not the last time we're going to speak and I want to entice it to keep writing for War on the Rocks because I really enjoyed both your article on some of the relevance from the history of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and also your article looking at historical analogies to Wagner in Freikorps and what have you. So thanks a lot for joining me on the program.

Alexander Burns: Thanks so much, Mike. It's been a real pleasure talking to you.