A Marxian analysis of the USSR's preparation for WWII

I got 34'd into an FCP analysis of agricultural production

Jul 06, 2021

A Random Find

This is an "interest" piece, and I'm already using the first person voice.

I was looking for details of the funding of the Kuomintang as a background to write a piece on the upcoming conflict over Taiwan. During the process, I found a lecture series, in 3 parts looking at the recent history of China. grouped into 4 sections. (See Sources). They were very interesting indeed.

What caught my eye was the use of Marxist class analysis, which I'd never seen before. Of more note was that these are lectures to Riverside College by a Ph.D and he cites his sources. I think I've mentioned this before, is it interesting and can I verify it? These are the "will I bother" questions. Moreover, two of the sources involved Richard D. Wolff as an author, and the discussions whilst using Marxian class analysis strongly focussed on Political Economics.

My interest piqued, the next question was "What else does this interesting man have to say?" Aaah, ha! Pieces on the USSR too! Gimme, gimme. It was during the middle of the second of these (again, see sources) as Dr. Asatar Bair is discussing the fascinating reconfiguration of the USSR's agricultural economy and how that is the largest implementation of the communal Fundamental Class Process (FCP) in history. He explores the various inconsistencies and tensions within and around that change in both society and the nation's agricultural output. I then observed that all of this is happening during the 18 years leading to WWII.

Industrialization

The two pieces on the USSR begin with looking at Russia under Tsar (note this term is a reference to Caesar) Nicholas II and the earlier removal of their peasantry from Fuedal forms of control in 1861. He continues to the abdication of the Tsar, and the 8 month period of turmoil which results in the establishment of the Bolshevik government, the "October Revolution". He then addresses the shock and horror of the various capitalist governments in Europe and North America and discusses the roughly 4 year Russian Civil war in which the Bolsheviks fight the White Russians and their allies from these shocked capitalist governments, including USA, UK, France and many more. Or course, WWI was also happening at the time following which Russia loses territory, and from WWI and the Civil War has lost millions of people.

Left in a position of outright devastation across their society and all areas of the economy, the Bolsheviks have quite a task to rebuild Russia. Under Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) Russia begins the "New Economic Policy" (1921 to 1929).

Just as the Feudal reforms of 1861 had occurred decades, centuries even, after those in western Europe, the same was true for the industrialisation of the Russian economy. This was the primary aim of the "Communist Party", under Lenin. However, there was a war ravaged society to rebuild, and in accorance with Marxist analysis the path to Communism is via Captalism and an intermediary point of Socialism. They thus embark on a period of State Capitalism.

Bair simply classifies the Russian economy into two parts; agricultural and industrial. He had done the same earlier in the series on China, and is using the same FCP Maxist analysis for peering into changes in societal structure.

Now, you cant just create industrialization from a ravaged society. It begins with agriculture, and this is the focus. The state needs surpluses from agriculture to be the raw materials for increases in industrial production. Yes, one needs grain and other foodstuffs, but one also needs Flax, Cotton, Oil Seed, Timber and other primary inputs to industrial processes.

His analysis of the creation of "collective farms" and centrally controlled prices, and allowing the individual households of the collective farms to produce value added products, often subsidized by the outputs of the collective farms, is fascinating.

Perparing for WWII

What struck me was that this whole process was critical for Russia's involvement in WWII. By 1932 the collective farms, which were the dominant agricultural output, had enabled the advancement of Russia's industrial output. Of course, they had also resurrected their iron, coal, petroleum and other core manufacturing inputs too.

By the time you have the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, Russia has at least stabilized its agricultural and raw material input to industry.

Lenin had died in 1924 and Stalin continued the process.

Unpreparing for WWII

Stalin organises a "purge" of military commanders from the Red Army. Debate of the validity of this rages still today. As is so often the case I suggest a bit of "yes, all true". i.e there were military commanders, who are generally conservative, who disagreed with the political direction of the nation and that there was also an unnecessarily widespread purging of military leaders and their abuse.

Whatever the case, this leads to a rather commical situation. I'm ignoring much here, not the least the Winter War of 1939 with Finland around St. Petersburg.

The Ribbentrop-Molotov treaty for peace between Germany and Russia, with the exchange of high tech manufacturing from Germany to Russia and raw materials in the other direction, and the secret "zones of influence" carve up of Poland (back to WWI, readers) had occurred. This left Russia the time to expand its armed forces and particularly their military technology before the recently passed 80th anniversary of the invasion by Germany began.

A Comedy of Engagement

Germany invades Russia on June 22nd 1941, having been forced to delay the attack because of issues in Greece in particular, but invade they do. By this time they have demonstrated a masterful understanding of the mechanics of fast mechanized warfare, 'Blitzkreig', and its devastating implementation.

What happens in the ensuing 5 and a half months could be summarised as the Russian's again using their old Napoleonic Era scorched earth policy, but also, escaping many encirclement battles which were the hallmark of Blitzkreig. There is plenty of equivocation by Hitler in the push towards St. Petersburg and other strategic blunders. But, one little thing which is commonly omitted is the comedy to which I refer.

The Red Army, with the support of the industrialisation which had been established due to specific efforts by the "Communist Party" under both Lenin and Stalin, had the production capacity to build mechanized armaments. The Russian people have always produced brilliant people in every sphere from arts to science and engineering. They had produced the T-34 tank.

It is classic for the era. It is clunky, hard to drive or operate, has mechanical failures which are relatively easy to replace or fix, but fail nonetheless. But, it is simple to produce, uses interoperable parts and is designed to operate in their territory. It also possesses quintessential Russian engineering; the simplest and cheapest solution to a problem.

One of the greatest criticisms that I have seen during my study of WWII tank warfare of the German efforts are that what they produced were brilliant pieces of engineering, but difficult to produce and thus over-engineered for strategic advantage.

Tanks

Drop back to early WWII military strategy. To control the ground, you need to occupy it, and that means infantry. To get the infantry there you need to remove the defences, and for that mechanised armour is the tool. That mobile armour needs aerial and artillery support (and logistics). Simple, right? ;)

As German tank groups meet their Russian counterparts during their offensives reports are sent back to Army Group command about these Russian tanks which they cannot penetrate. What is going on?!

Geometry, my dear Watson

A tank, ignoring the tracks, side and rear, has a front which can largely be divided into three parts, from bottom to top; the lower, and upper and the turret (with the gun). Now, the lower is hard to hit as its close to the ground. The turret with the gun in it is the most visible, but the next more difficult to hit as its narrower than the tank and has the highest armour, and lastly the "upper", the natural target. The dastardly Ruskies had done something with that "upper" part which really annoyed the Germans. There were no "flat" (meaning vertical) plates at which to shoot. All of it was sloped at about 45 degrees. This simple piece of engineering does two things at the same time. For example, a thickness of 40 mm of steel becomes 1.4 times more (1/sin 45 degrees), or 56 mm, but you only carry the weight of the 40 mm thus providing faster mobility and/or longer range movement.

Euclid is not rolling, but dancing in his grave.

The Germans were a bit peeved, but the Russians had many problems too. Their officers have been purged during the "Purge" and only the lead tank in a group had a radio, so they are left using flags (or yelling) to communicate between tanks in the group.

In the end, superior offense meets superior defense (and a reasonable offense) but it is command-and-control which wins. Germany has well developed tactics, but more importantly, effective communications by which those tactics can be brought to bear while the Russians are waving flags.

The German advance is repelled only a few tens of kilometres from Moscow at the end of 1941, which I and some historians count as the decisive battle in WWII. Germany's defeat attacking Stalingrad is to this day assigned the "key battle" by many, and it certainly defeated Germany, for their efforts to obtain access to the petroleum resources in the Caucuses were denied.

The Russians counter attacked across their captured and devastated territory with a significantly upgraded T-34, the T-34-85, with not only radios, but a bigger and far more devastating gun. Oh, and they had air support and an army the likes of which had never been seen.

T-34-85 and Industrialization

Military historians disagree about the number of variants of the T-34 to T-34-85 chain. Maybe 8, maybe more, maybe a little less.

To understand, the USSR, having been invaded, relocated factories significant to war production away from the changing front with Germany. They literally disassembled them, packed them up on trains, and reassembled them "in the rear": entire factories. Meanwhile, the Russian military technology developers were constantly trying to rectify the many weaknesses of the T-34 and create improvements.

The key understanding is that what they did, and the German's did not, was the continuous reuse of parts, wherever possible, across these related but different tanks, the T-34 to T-34-85. I've done no research at all into Russian aviation during WWII but would be very surprised to not see a similar approach.

Its all about maximizing effective industrial output.

The Elements of Successfully Killing Members of Your Own Species

I have never been, and will never be a member of any nation's military and have never undergone formal study in military anything. Nonetheless, military research I have enjoyed. My takings are that there are a few keys to "winning a war", and that "winning" requires most of these:

Motivation: this is basically propaganda. Your armed forces need to believe that the enemy are sub-human and deserve to die. This requires massive effort for an aggressive war, but is far easier in a defensive war. Narrative control.
Financial Control and Stability: Wars cost lives, but also a tax on national economies. You need to feed, equip and pay your soldiers. There is no way around this.
Command and Control: No war force can be effective if it cannot implement its plans, and receive back reports from the field. Equivalently, counter-intelligence is critical; any warning of future counter attacks or movement of military materiel is crucial knowledge.
Production: War produces deaths, and destruction of hardware. The dead people need to be replaced with equivalently trained new people (to die) and the materiel also needs to be replaced (to be destroyed).
Technology: Cold or Hot war is an arms race in technology; arrows versus artillery.

For anti-war activists, undermining any of the above helps.

Peace be with us.

The weeds are all there. Listen to David Willey (second last source). For an exploration of the different understandings of “quality” between German and Russian engineers enjoy The Mighty Jingles (final source).

Sources

China (i.e background)

Introduction to Political Economy: Economic History of Pre-Revolutionary China, Asatar Bair