The Specter of Lenin

 

As I understand it, that last point -- that seeing a war as a mistake and wanting to lose are entirely different things -- informs our policy.  

The war that becomes unpopular is invariably a war that one is losing.  Victory is never unpopular.  When a war is not going too well and does not show any immediate prospects of getting better, the population often becomes war-weary and wants out.  But very rarely are they willing to take that all the way to its logical conclusion and actually lose.  

Our own experience in Afghanistan is instructive. The war had become unpopular, mostly because there seemed to be no end in sight and no prospect of victory.  The American public wanted out.  We just didn't want to lose. So the war dragged on, year after year, as Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump were unable to win but unwilling to lose.  When Biden decided it was time to bite the bullet and lose, his decision proved highly unpopular, and his popularity never recovered.  Granted, the loss was messy.  One likes to think we could have gotten out more cleanly.  But in the end, losing does tend to be messy.  That is why it is so unpopular.

Reports are coming out of the White House (not going to find them) that the Biden Administration is holding back to some degree and is trying to avoid too overwhelming a win for fear of the consequences.  Their fear is not of nuclear war, but of all-out social breakdown in a defeated Russia with unforeseeable but dire consequences.  

They are thinking about the breakup of the Soviet Union following 1991, which is a reasonable concern. Any attempt to understand Vladimir Putin and his appear has to begin with an understanding of just how painful the breakup of the Soviet Union was for the country's inhabitants. It wasn't just that all the different republics declared their independence.  The economy suffered a deeper decline that the US during the Great Depression.  Government largely broke down, and a Mafia-like oligarchy became a law unto itself, rising to obscene levels of wealth while the rest of the country fell into ruin.  Life expectancy fell by as much as six years, as perhaps 70% of the male population responded to unbearable conditions by falling into alcoholism. In short, conditions were really bad.

This also raises the same question.  The Soviets were trapped in the Cold War and ultimately could not win.  But considering that this was what losing looked like, continuing seemed like a better choice by comparison.

One can argue how much credit Putin deserved for turning things around, but the improvement did start about when he came to power. Underlying the fear of a repeat of 1991 is a realization that, bad as Putin has been, a whole lot worse things could have emerged.

And I must admit that ever since Yevgeny Prigozhin launched his failed putsch, I have been thinking about something considerably worse, something that no one today is old enough to remember.  I have been thinking about Lenin and the civil war that he set off and wondering if anything short of that can end the war.

And just to be clear, I am not a scholar of Lenin and his revolution and civil war.  I no more than a Wikipedia level familiarity with the subject, but some of its horrors come through.  Revolution broke out in Russia in 1917.  The revolution was not so much against the Czar as against a ruinous war -- WWI -- that Russia had no hope of winning but could not get out of.  Conditions seemed unbearable.  The army was in retreat, suffering devastating rates of death and desertion.  Petrograd suffered severe inflation and food shortages.  The people revolted, and the Czarist government quickly fell -- and no good came of it.  The war continued, food shortages in no way abated, and the Provisional Government remained paralyzed, incapable of taking action. Lenin certainly spoke for the aspirations of most Russians when he proclaimed, "Peace!  Bread!  Land!"  There was just one problem -- he had no idea how to achieve any of these things.

Armistice line vs. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Peace proved elusive for the usual reason.  Russia was trapped in a desperately unpopular war that it had no chance of winning.  The only way out was to lose.  And if one thing was even less popular than continuing the war, it was losing. Lenin, in exile at the time the war began, had actually advocated Russia's defeat as a way of bringing about revolution.  Well, now revolution had occurred, and Lenin found himself in charge of the Russian state and in the position of somehow having to achieve peace.  He began, promisingly enough, with an armistice, achieved in about a month and a half.  That put an end to the killing for a time, but was established in place with German and Austrian forces occupying large portions of the Soviet Union, and no permanent peace.  Negotiations stalled, as the Germans sought to annex the lands they were already occupying and the Bolsheviks held out, hoping that revolution would break out in Germany any day and render the matter moot.  

In the end, the Bolsheviks took the worst possible option -- they declared the end of the war an demobilized without a peace treaty.  The Germans, predictably, went on the offensive, effortless capturing territory from the demobilized Bolsheviks, and demanding even greater annexations with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.  Lenin recognized that he had no choice and capitulated. This led to the rupture with the Bolsheviks' last coalition partners, the beginning of the Bolsheviks' one-party state, and all-out civil war.

To be clear, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was not the sole cause of Russia's civil war.  With the collapse of the Czarist government, some sort of civil war among people with very different notions about what should follow it was probably inevitable. Certainly Lenin saw such a war as inevitable.  Along with his slogan "Pease! Bread! Land!" was a much darker slogan, "Turn the imperialist war into a civil war!"  

But Lenin's hardline policies did much to worsen the situation.  He sought to deliver "bread" to urban areas by forced seizure of grain from the rural population.  Instead, this led to food shortages so severe that half or more of the urban population fled to the countryside.  The territories captured by Germany and Austria had populations that were happy to throw off the yoke of Russian domination, but by no means willing to submit to German control.  Widespread guerrilla warfare broke out against both.  At the end of the war, numerous new countries were carved out of the ruins of the Russian, German, and Austrian empires.  The Civil War was devastating.  By the end of the war, the "unbearable" conditions that led to revolution seemed mild by comparison.  Russia saw more people killed in the Civil War than its WWI losses that started the revolution.  The urban food shortages that led to the revolt became so bad that half or more of the urban population fled to the countryside.  Industrial production fell to 20% of its pre-war levels.  In short, it made the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union look very mild by comparison.

Russia, present-day borders

And I have to think that most Russians are well aware of this history.  And that, while they may dread a return to pre-Putin days, the thought of their WWI defeat and the horrors that followed must be in the back of their minds, and haunt their fears of what might happen if they lose.  Many people might answer with an obvious rejoinder.  The Russo-Ukrainian war is nothing like WWI.  Far from being an attempt by Western powers (as Russians would see the Germans) to alter borders by force, this time the Western powers are simply seeking to prevent any forcible change in border.  The Ukrainians have no desire to take even one step across the border and no designs on any Russian territory whatever.  They simply want to return to the pre-2014 borders.

To this Russians might have a few rejoinders. One is that they have annexed Crimea and consider it sovereign Russian territory.  But, more chillingly, they might point out that Russia's present-day borders are not so far from the borders set by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk -- borders that everyone at the time saw as unduly harsh and unreasonable.