Brian M Downing
Discipline is essential to armies. It can be achieved through able and perhaps even personable leaders, an unquestionably just cause, pay incentives, or corporal punishment. Most armies have all four.
The Russian army’s leaders are of dubious quality, pay is low, and there hasn’t been a just cause since taking Berlin in 1945. There’ve been only interventions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan – all of questionable justness. Discipline depends considerably on severe and extensive corporal punishment.
Harsh discipline is a remnant of the tsarist army which was based on noble officers who owned estates and peasant soldiers who toiled on them. Whether working the field or serving in the army, harsh treatment was ever present. The knout on the estate, the fist in the army. The Prussian military was based on a similar Junker-serf social order but Frederick the Great realized excessive punishment was weakening his army and ordered it cut back. Russia awaits its enlightened despot.
Harsh discipline and excessive punishment still pervade and weaken the Russian military. The hard hand is felt from boot camp to garrisons until the day of discharge. It’s especially hard on conscripts, who are deemed soft outsiders who will be strengthened and made better soldiers.
Effectiveness is hurt in two ways:
First, trust between soldiers and their NCOs and officers is reduced. Why risk your life for someone you loathe? Exceptional leaders may overcome this but the problem remains.
Second, initiative, critical in small-unit actions, will be severely limited. The platoon leader will not deviate from orders, regardless of how ill-advised they might be in taking a hill or defending one. Opportunities will be lost. Initiative has never been prized in Russian life. The language has no indigenous word for it.
Some Russians will see greater initiative and cohesion in the Ukrainian troops in front of and behind them.
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The problems identified in this series – conflicting worlds in rank and file, dubious leadership, and harsh institutional culture – have not been addressed by the general staff. This is in part because of institutional inertia but also because of the absence of a jarringly poor performance in war that underscored the problems and demanded reforms.
Change will not come amid the Ukraine war. Protracted casualties over the course of many months or more in an unwinnable war may be catastrophic. The army may be rocked by refusals, desertions, and occasional fraggings. Back in Moscow a collision is coming between an isolated autocrat expecting great prestige from conquest and his army performing poorly in that pursuit.
©2022 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to fellow Hoya Susan Ganosellis.