Lecture
The military-political thought of Ancient Rus' developed on the basis of the military-political practice of the Slavic peoples, who were compelled to wage a struggle against invasions from both the West and the East while overcoming the feudal fragmentation of Rus'. In the chronicles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which were compiled in monasteries and at princely courts, ideas took shape concerning the armed defence of Rus' against enemy invasions, including the struggle against German colonization in the West and the invasions of the Tatar-Mongol hordes in the East. "The Tale of Bygone Years", "The Russkaya Pravda of Yaroslav", the "Peace of God" (twelfth century), "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", "The Life of Alexander", "Zadonshchina" (twelfth to fourteenth centuries) and other outstanding literary monuments bore witness to the striving of the Slavic peoples to defend their lands from raids, to secure the military-political unity of the Slavic principalities and the independence of Russian statehood.
A significant revival of military-political thought in Russia was observed in the middle of the sixteenth century. This was prompted by the need to justify the creation of a standing army in the interests of defending Russia's state borders. Credit for elaborating these questions belongs to the prominent political figures of that time I. S. Peresvetov, A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin and A. S. Matveyev. In his works, written in the form of petitions addressed to Tsar Ivan IV in 1546-1549, I. S. Peresvetov was the first to advance the idea of creating a standing Russian army. He argued convincingly that the mainstay of the state, its true strength, lay not in the boyar grandees, for they "do not serve the tsar faithfully", but only in the noblemen-"warriors", the "men of war".
The most important feature of Russian military-political thought of this period was that it answered the country's pressing needs; its principal propositions arose from the concrete tasks facing the state's armed forces. Its main source was the combat experience of the Russian armed forces. Leading Russian military-political figures were well acquainted with the main propositions of Western military theory and practice and took their achievements into account when elaborating the principles of military policy, strategy and tactics.
At the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the domestic and foreign policy tasks of the Russian state made the creation of a regular army in Russia an urgent necessity. The importance of solving this problem was written and spoken about by the progressive political and military figures of that time, F. Saltykov, F. Prokopovich and I. Pososhkov.
A whole epoch in the development of Russia's military-political thought was constituted by Peter I, who raised Russia to unprecedented heights of military might. The tsar-reformer boldly accelerated Russia's development and the overcoming of a profound crisis and of its lag behind the West, and substantiated the necessity of Russia gaining access to the Baltic and Black Seas. His reforms created a powerful army and navy. His era shaped the people's military-patriotic consciousness, which played an enormous role in establishing Russia as a great power.
The creative development of military-political theory to a considerable degree determined the innovative approach to drafting new regulations and normative documents. In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, Russian military-political and military-theoretical thought developed the most advanced strategy and tactics of waging war and battle of its time. The Petrine era lasted little more than a quarter of a century. Yet in so short a period the enormous spiritual forces and capabilities of the Russian people were revealed. Military victories determined Russia's place among the strongest powers.
Thus, in the period under consideration the rise of Russian military-political thought coincides with the time when centralized absolutism was taking shape in Russia (the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries). In order to establish itself, the absolutist regime needed a new military force on which it could rely in resolving domestic and foreign policy tasks. Only a regular army and navy could be such a force.
The nineteenth century is of special significance for Russia and for its military-political history. The victory in the Patriotic War of 1812 showed that the outcome of armed struggle is to a considerable extent determined by the people's attitude towards the war, by the strength of their resistance to the invading enemy and by their moral superiority over him. Representatives of Russian military-political thought actively elaborated the problem of the dependence of the troops' moral fortitude on the organization of the state system. Thus, for example, Colonel A. I. Astafyev held that the high morale of soldiers and officers is conditioned not only by the high morality of the military estate, but also by the moral fortitude of the whole people. "The military spirit," he asserted, "is not the property of the military estate alone, but must be the property of all the estates of the people from whom the army is recruited, because if the moral principles from which the military spirit arises are not rooted in the people as a whole, that is, in the entire organism of the state, the troops can scarcely acquire it by themselves."
An outstanding place in the development of Russian military-political theory belongs to Dmitry Alekseyevich Milyutin (1816-1912), professor at the military academy and later Minister of War. He comprehensively substantiated the proposition that a state's military strength depends on the economic, political and spiritual capabilities of the country. "By the name of military forces," he wrote, "is of course understood not the army alone, nor the armed portion of the people alone, but all the means and methods necessary in a state for waging a defensive or offensive war, taken together." One of the first reforms carried out under D. A. Milyutin's leadership was the reorganization of the system of central military administration and the creation of local territorial bodies in the form of military districts. Under the Statute of 6 August 1864, the entire territory of Russia was divided into 15 military districts. Each district was simultaneously an organ of line command and an organ of military-administrative organization, concentrating in itself all the functions of military administration.
As a result of the military district reform, excessive centralization of administration - one of the principal shortcomings of the former military administration - was eliminated. The Ministry of War was entrusted only with general direction and oversight of the districts' activity. The military district system made it possible to command troops promptly and to mobilize them quickly. In the event of war, the military district administrations could easily be converted into the headquarters of a field army. Finally, the creation of military districts ensured the unity of military and civil authority: the commander of the district's troops was, as a rule, also the governor-general.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, especially during the period when the military threat in Europe was mounting, in the course of the First World War and after the revolution of October 1917, military-political questions in Russia were elaborated within the Marxist tradition by V. I. Lenin, L. D. Trotsky and others.
V. I. Lenin, developing Clausewitz's idea of the interconnection of war and politics, noted that war is the continuation of politics by other (violent) means. He emphasized in this connection that war is the continuation not only of foreign but also of domestic policy. V. I. Lenin worked out the foundations of a scientific typology of wars and substantiated their class character. Considerable attention in V. I. Lenin's works "The Russian Revolution and Civil War", "Marxism and Insurrection", "Advice of an Onlooker" and others is devoted to disclosing the role of armed violence in revolution and in the seizure of power.
A certain contribution to the elaboration of the theoretical and practical questions of military-political development after October 1917 was made by L. D. Trotsky. He substantiated the need to overcome partisan irregularity in the units of the Red Army; the extensive recruitment into the army and navy of military specialists from among tsarist officers and generals; universal compulsory military training in schools and factories; and the appointment of commissars as guardians of the higher interests of the revolution. In L. D. Trotsky's view, the use of violence in its extreme form - civil war - is a historical necessity. To him also belongs the idea of exporting revolution to other countries by the forces of the Red Army. "Revolutionary war," wrote L. D. Trotsky, "is an indisputable condition of our policy."
Possibly under L. D. Trotsky's influence, the well-known Soviet military-political figure M. V. Frunze exaggerated the role of the military factor both in theory and in practice. "In all states," he wrote, "founded on social inequality and torn apart by intra-class contradictions, the outcome of the struggle of classes has always been and continues to be decided in the final analysis by armed struggle.
A notable contribution to the development of military-political thought was made by M. N. Tukhachevsky. In his works "National and Class Strategy", "War as a Problem of Armed Struggle", "New Questions of War" and others he analyses the difference between so-called "national" wars and civil wars, and discloses the significance of the class factor in armed struggle. M. N. Tukhachevsky considers war as a socio-political phenomenon in a broad sense, that is, as a contest between the economic, social, political, spiritual and properly military forces of classes, peoples and countries. In the mid-1930s he put forward a number of innovative ideas and predicted the main features and character of the coming Second World War and Great Patriotic War.
During the years of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), the works of military political scientists disclosed the just, liberating character of the war against fascist Germany and militarist Japan, substantiated the sources of the Soviet people's victory in the war and the possibilities of successful military-political cooperation between countries with different social systems, and offered forecasts of post-war international development.
It is well known that after the end of the Second World War the military-political cooperation of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition was destroyed. Relations between the USSR and the USA, between the countries of East and West, grew ever more acute and issued in the "Cold War".
Under conditions of sharp confrontation between two opposing social systems and two military blocs, the idea was advanced that capitalism would perish in a possible Third World War. Thus it was asserted that "if the imperialists unleash a third world war, this war will become the grave not merely of individual capitalist states, but of the whole of world capitalism." Reliance on the inevitability of a military clash between the two opposing social systems led to an arms race both in the USSR and in the USA. It carried with it not only the risk of nuclear catastrophe but also undermined the economic foundations of our country.
A reassessment by political scientists of relations between the two mighty nuclear powers - the USSR and the USA - began in the 1960s. In our country it was undertaken by the scholars and publicists A. Krylov, A. Dmitriyev, N. Nikolsky, A. Bovin and others. In the works of these authors, the proposition that nuclear war could be a means or instrument of policy, and that political aims could be achieved with its help, was called into question. But this innovative approach was subjected to sharp criticism from official party and state bodies.
The formation of concepts of political thinking based on the idea of a transition to a non-violent world inevitably entailed a radical reassessment of views on the role of military force in social development and on the correlation between political and military means of ensuring a state's security. The possibility of the physical annihilation of humanity in the event that a missile-nuclear war were unleashed required a gradual shift of emphasis towards diminishing the military and increasing the political factors in resolving inter-state contradictions, towards elaborating a mechanism for ensuring not only national but also international security, and towards a comprehensive substantiation of the idea of preventing war rather than preparing for it.
Thus, Russian military political science was created by outstanding statesmen, military figures and major thinkers in close, organic connection with the national state interests of Russia. It is important to stress that military-political views, ideas and theories are in most cases original in character and are conditioned by the specific features of Russian state and military development.
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