“A report to the Commissar General of State Security (NKVD chief) Lavrentiy Beria on October 10, 1941, noted that since the beginning of the war, NKVD anti-retreat troops had detained a total of 657,364 retreating, spies, traitors, instigators and deserting personnel, of which 25,878 were arrested (of which 10,201 were sentenced to death by court martial and the rest were returned to active duty).[9]”
I mean 10k fatal court marshalls suggests to me that there could be rougher justice on the battlefield. And this is a report from 1941, not 1945.
I think it’s most likely not propaganda to demoralize enemy troops but rather propaganda to demonize the invaders. I don’t think the audience for the propaganda is Russians, especially not Russian soldiers.
Nobody is arguing that the Russians didn’t send troops on what were basically suicide missions and executed those that would retreat or refuse. The specific claim of killing their own wounded is one that I have never seen evidence for but has been claimed by many in different conflicts.
i don’t want to somehow become this weird edge lord defending the possibility of someone shooting a wounded friendly. a categorical ‘never happens’ seems very hard to prove. like are you saying it was never a common thing to do? ok sure, i can’t find anything that says it was. but there were incidents where it occurred. or i guess they could be anecdotes as a part of soviet cultural psyche.
the captured soldier in the video is referencing the implication that wounds are not a reason to refuse fighting, which were a way for soldiers to return not just from ww2 but from soviet afghan and chechen wars. seems there would have been many officers who would have abused such unchecked power.
also just text searching through books on ww2 casualties is seriously triggering. or reading about Shtrafbat, for which kia rates were over 90% and constituted something like 5% of soviet ww2 casualties, although it gets fuzzy became many disciplinary actions on the ww2 front were not accounted for or repressed. officially over 400k people served in penal battalions and only hundreds lived to tell about it. statistically, it’s not even a suicide mission, they were expected to die and sometimes under both enemy and friendly fire.
does this difference matter? stalin’s regime empowered kommisars to summarily hold trial and execute in one day. orders 227 and 270 empowered a lot of people to do the same.
I think it would be cool if you were a bit more open about some shit. I’d personally be a defender of it as far as having the ability to say what you feel, fwiw. But I get that not everybody here prefers that.
The Mearscheimer argument is waaaay less compelling now that it’s clear Russia lacks the capacity to exert control over Ukraine by force. It’s the Mytilenean Debate with Sparta in place of Mytilene lolol!
lol OK ikes. Hilarious how ikes, bob, and suzzer have such strong ideas about what Mearshiemer says when you guys have very obviously never listened to a lecture or read any of his work.