IceBreakChron I: ULTIMATE WAR

Started by JasonPratt, April 03, 2020, 03:35:57 PM

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JasonPratt

March 21, 1919, a Soviet republic forms in Hungary. It will last 133 days.

April 12, 1919, a Soviet Republic forms in Bavaria, based in Munich. It will last until May 3rd.

April 1919, the Poles, counter-advancing against the Soviet Russian invasion, take Vilnius.

June 20, 1919, a part of the Hungarian Red Army has marched into Slovakia, and today proclaims the Slovak Soviet Republic. A communist government forms immediately, and (as elsewhere) declares a policy of nationalization of all private lands and annulment of private property. It nationalizes all commercial enterprises, all banks, and all transportation systems. The Slovak Soviet Republic forms the typical Slovak Red Army and Slovak Extraordinary Commission (i.e. secret police death squads to wage war on class oppressors).

During this time, Soviet Ukraine declares war on Romania, and starts preparations to advance west to connect with Soviet Hungary.


June 28, 1919, Germany (primarily meaning the Weimar Republic) signs the Treaty of Versailles, radically abolishing and curtailing its military power. Germany loses one-eighth of its territory, with a population of 5,138,000, and all her colonies.

All merchant ships with over 1600 tons displacement are confiscated, as well as half of the remaining merchants over 1000 tons, plus a quarter of the fishing fleet, and one-fifth of the river fleet. This was part of the punishment for Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, and relatedly for the next five years Germany must build the Allies a total of 200,000 tons of merchant ships -- per year.

Germany must supply France 140 million tons of coal, Belgium 80 million tons, and Italy 77 million tons. Plus it must transfer half its paints and other non-military chemicals, plus a quarter of its future production of these through 1925. This is aside from the astronomic financial retribution.

German people will experience hunger, poverty, runaway inflation, and constant misfortune.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#16
August 5, 1919: Trotsky writes a secret memorandum arguing that "the road to Paris and London lies through the cities of Afghanistan, Punjab, and Bengal," proposing therefore "preparations for a march on India, to help the Indian revolution." To help achieve this goal, Trotsky advises forming "a political and military command center of Asian revolution, and a revolution academy" in the Urals or Turkestan; its purpose being to form a special corps of thirty to forty thousand cavalry horsemen and "unleash them on India" to help the "native revolutionaries".

However, the first second world war is sputtering out across all its fronts, such as they are. In August, the Poles will take Minsk, dissolving the Lithuanian portion of Soviet "Litbel". The Romanian invasion fails; the Slovakian Soviet Republic falls, integrating into wider Czechoslovakia; Hungary's Soviet Republic fails. Estonia has already ejected the Red Army. The German Landswehr took Latvia (itself to be ejected by the Estonian army, too), and despite a hard push by the Red Army in 1919 Soviet Russia will have to pledge on February 20, 1920, to permanently give up all sovereign claims to Estonia.

Don't worry, though. There will be a second second world war.  :hide:
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#17
Beware the Butchers of Blood
---------------------------------

September 1919, member 007 joins the German Workers' Party, and starts what he later calls "my war" against the Versailles Treaty. A failed artist and housepainter, a wounded and gassed soldier (whose mask didn't quite fit), returned from the front, he marched under the slogan of Gottfried Feder, calling for world revolution with the words, "Proletariat of all nations, unite!" (i.e. "Workers of the world, unite!")

Member 007, Adolf Hitler, will adopt this program as the foundation for a movement he will soon come to lead, taking over the German Workers' Party: banning private ownership, nationalizing industry, and putting workers (under tight workers-party administrative oversight) in control of factories.


1919, after being given command of the 1st Soviet Army to protect Moscow, Tukhachevsky was assigned the 5th Army this year by Bolshevik Defense Commissar Leon Trotsky, in order to campaign against the anti-communist "White" forces of Alexsandr Kolchak. Suvorov doesn't mention this campaign specifically, and certainly not Tukhachevsky's concentrated attacks to exploit the enemy's open flanks and threaten them with envelopment. (Perhaps this operational tactic came from a subordinate?)


1920: Otto Kuusinen, who created the Finnish Communist Party (funded by Lenin's government) and tried to stage a coup with local Bolsheviks, declaring himself part of the new Communist government, has been working for over a year in the Finnish criminal underground since Finnish commander-in-chief Mannerheim stopped the coup, conducting intensive terrorist activity against Finland (in the interest of World Revolution of course). His cover is eventually blown, and he flees the country.

Don't worry, though, he has a bright future ahead of him! Really! Yes, really!


January 1920, General (or rather Army Commander) Tukhachevsky helps defeat General Anton Denikin in the Crimea in 1920, conducting the final operations (per mil.wik, no further details, and unreported by Suvorov).

February 1920, General Tukhachevsky (per mil.wik, not Suvorov) launches an offensive into the Kuban, using cavalry to disrupt the enemy's rear. In the retreat that follows, Deniken's force disintegrates.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#18
March 1920: Germany, still naturally enveloped in a harsh economic crisis, experiences its largest yet general strike, estimating more than twelve million participants.


July 2, 1920: Lenin starts his next attempt at igniting a revolutionary world war without a Second Imperialist War (per se), by launching the ruthless General (or "Army Commander") Mikhail Tukhachevsky into Poland's main territory, heading for Warsaw. (The distinction between "General" and "Commander" will be important much later, during Soviet Russia's entry into World War II.)

The official Red Army Marching Song ("Budyonny's March") includes the words, "Give us Warsaw! Next, Berlin!" (Or "We're getting Warsaw / give us Berlin!" depending on translation.) A contender for the unofficial march of the Red Army is a song called "White Army, Black Baron", including this verse. "Fanning the world fire / we will level churches and prisons / since from the vast taiga to the British seas / no one is more powerful than the Red Army."

Soviet Communist theoretician Nikolai Bukharin trumps this, in Pravda (the Party newspaper), with "Straight to the walls of Paris and London!"

From Order #1423, given to the Soviet Western Front on this day, "Fighters of the Workers' Revolution! The fate of the World Revolution will be decided in the West. The path to the world fire lies over the dead body of White [i.e. anti-communist] Poland. We will carry happiness and peace on our bayonets to the working people of the world. To the West! To decisive battles and thundering victories!" (found among other places in Kakurin and Melikov's "Civil War in Russia: War with the White Poles", 2002, p.670.)

Lenin holds the 2nd Congress of the Comintern (aka the 2nd Party Congress) during this invasion, issuing this call, "Brothers! -- Red Army Fighters! You should know your fight against the Polish slave drivers is the most just war in history. You are fighting not only for the interests of Soviet Russia, but for the interests of the whole of working mankind, for the interest of the Communist International... Soviet Germany, united with Soviet Russia, will immediately become more powerful than all the capitalist powers combined! The Communist International declared that Soviet Russia's goal is its own goal, too. The international proletariat will not sheath its sword until Soviet Russia joins the Federation of the Soviet Republics of the World as an integral link." (ibid, p.556)

To get to the powder keg of Berlin (and then to Paris and London), first the Red Army must get through a free Polish state -- one which by now has created a traditional Slavic defensive belt with Motte tactics (later also used by Finland in the Winter War against Russia's invasion). The Red Army does push through the motte defense (this having been only recently erected). In its first occupied city, the Red Army declares the creation of the Polish Soviet Socialist Republic, led by Felix Dzerzhinski, an ethnic Pole and currently head of the Russian Soviet secret police.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

July 23, 1920, Lenin telegraphs to Stalin, at the Polish front, directly from the 2nd Congress, "Situation in Comintern is outstanding. Zinoviev, Bukharin, and I, think that it would be proper to encourage a revolution in Italy. My personal opinion is that, to do so, Hungary has to be sovietized [again!], possibly along with Czechoslovakia and Romania."

Around this time, in a conversation with French communist delegates to the Congress, he declares, "Yes, the Soviet troops are in Warsaw. Soon, Germany will be ours. We will conquer Hungary again; the Balkans will rise against capitalism. Italy will tremble. Bourgeois Europe is cracking at the seams in the storm." (from Frossard's 1930 memoirs of "De Jaures a Lenine", p.137)

This is sort-of true; by the end of the 2nd Congress, Warsaw is half-surrounded by units of the Red Army, which crosses the Vistula River near the town of Wloclawek -- about ten marching days from Berlin. The Red Army will be here longer than ten days, though. Tukhachevsky will later lament, "There can be no doubt that if we had been victorious on the Vistula, the revolutionary fires would have reached the entire continent." (Cited by mil.wik from "A century's journey: how the great powers shape the world", 1999, p.175)

September 22, 1920, Lenin is speaking to the 9th Conference of the Russian Communist Party: "The defensive war against capitalism is over, we have won..." He's talking about the war against anti-communists in Russia. "We are now going to try to attack them [i.e. attack the capitalists], to help the sovietization of Poland..." The Russian Red Army has been attacking 'capitalists' since less than 48 hours after the end of World War I, but Lenin loves his rhetoric. Wait, he told French delegates back in July that Soviet troops are in Warsaw; so where is he planning to attack the capitalists now to help the sovietization of Poland? "We have set ourselves a task: to seize Warsaw..." Oh. Huh. "It turned out that not just the fate of Warsaw is being decided, but the fate of the whole Versailles Treaty." Lenin means that just as Warsaw will be conquered, so will the nations who signed the Treaty -- principally Britain, France, and Germany.

October 15, 1920, Lenin declares, "The order held by the Versailles peace treaty lies over a volcano, since the seventy percent of the world's people who are enslaved [i.e. by property owners] are anxiously awaiting someone to come and start a struggle for their liberation, and to rock the foundation of their countries." (Lenin's Complete Collected works, 5th edition, 41:353)

But at the crucial moment, at the gates of Warsaw, Red Army General Tukhachevsky comes up short on strategic reserves, and Poland wins their epic defense, driving the Red Army from Poland in disgrace and defeat!

This sparks a new anti-communist revolution in Russia. General Tukhachevsky launches (more) mass murder reprisals to quell the (counter-)revolution, legendary afterward in the Soviet Union as an example of what to expect from resistance to the Socialist "Soviets" (the Russian term for the ruling councils).
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

December 22, 1920, Lenin delivers a "Report on Foreign and Domestic Policy" at the 8th Congress of Soviets. How does he regard his disastrous failure to start a second world war over the past two years? "We ended one line of wars, we must prepare ourselves for the second." Ah. Good idea!

At around the same time (from his Complete Collected Works, p.358, apparently not at the same Congress though? -- Suvorov is unclear), Lenin explains the current situation of Soviet Russia, "We are severely lacking in everything, yet we are no poorer than Viennese workers. Viennese workers die, starve -- their children also die, starve -- but they do not have the most important thing that we possess: hope! They die, oppressed by capitalism, so they find themselves in a position to make sacrifices. But their sacrifices are not like ours. We sacrifice for the sake of the war that we are waging against the entire capitalist world!"

There is a subtle shift here. Lenin gives up trying to spark the revolutionary world war in the wake of the Great War, and starts talking again of the historical inevitability of a Second Imperialist War being necessary to trigger the revolutionary world war into international socialism (itself the necessary precursor to worldwide communism). By this (from the same 8th Congress) he means he intends to "create a Communist society with the hands of our enemies."

Stalin will continue following this basic tactic, of using his own enemies to gather all authority over resources and means of production under his control, at every level of his personal strategies. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, quoted in "Portrait of a Tyrant", 1980, p.296, once said "Nobody could make his competitors knock heads like Stalin, always staying on the side and coming out superior to all." Robert Conquest, when analyzing "The Great Terror" (cited from the Russian translation of 1974, page unreported), will write, "Stalin could always find monkeys to bring him nuts from the hottest fire."
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#21
After the (second!) failed Polish invasion, Lenin stops trying to invade westward for a while, and orders the creation of the Soviet version of defensive security borders.

Russia has traditionally been the masters of this technology for centuries, creating the largest known such defensive pockets, hundreds of miles deep, in the medieval period. As pre-Soviet Russia expanded its borders, these old "security corridors" had been breached for convenience but, where feasible, not removed, and only rare roads were laid down. Nor during the industrial era were factories commonly set up in these areas, which was a prime cause of Russia's industrial failures going into the twentieth century and World War One.

Stalin will later institute his Five-Year Plans partly to overcome this problem; but the Soviet Revolution still protected itself from reactionary bourgeois forces by creating new and more modernized security corridors, including the mining of all bridges in the nation's western areas, with guard training to detonate the bridges within two and a half minutes (per Starinov's "Mines Awaiting Their Moment", p.24.) Also rigged: major pipelines, depots, pumping stations, water towers, high earthen dams, deep pits (ibid p.18.)

This is the earliest chronological reference to Starinov, by the way, discussing the earlier defensive habits of the Russians going into the early twentieth century. Suvorov seems to admire Starinov, at least in some ways, and quotes from him a lot. More about Starinov as we go...
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

1920 through 1921: as might be expected, taking away all the people's production for "the people" -- all a peasant's bread, all his potatoes, all his cows and pigs -- reduces the motivation of Russian peasants to produce anything on "the people"'s property, owned by all the people on paper, but managed by Lenin and his gang. This results in horrible famines for these two years.


1921: this year, Otto Kuusinen, the terrorist operative who tried to stage a coup in Finland to take over the government for Lenin back in 1918, enters the ranks of the highest officials of the Comintern, becoming one of the leaders of the World Revolution. He'll also become a deputy of the pre-GRU military intelligence service by the time we hear of him again.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#23
March 1921, St. Petersburg (Petrograd), the "cradle of the revolution" has been experiencing one workers' strike after another. The workers demand bread and freedom -- not world domination!

The Bolshevik Red Army has been crushing these demonstrations, along with other anti-communist uprisings since the failure to take Warsaw; but the same sailors of the seaport naval base of Kronstadt who famously kicked off the October Revolution to give power to Lenin and Trotsky, now intervene to demand that the workers' and peasants' councils, the "Soviets", the basic organizing units of society created by the Communists, be purged of all Communists!

This creates another national wave of peasant uprisings against Lenin and his gang, such as the peasant anti-communist army organized in the forests of the Tambov region. General Mikhail Tukhachevsky shows inhuman cruelty and disregard of all international rules of law and human rights, stomping his anti-counter-revolutionary operations into a yet higher gear. Under his leadership, thousands of hostages are executed by firing squad; peasants are shelled with poison gas; villagers are drowned in swamps while their villages burned; the sailors are pushed into holes cut into the ice at sea.


Still, matters look dire for the Comintern and Lenin's gang. They decide the only thing that can save Bolshevism is a revolution in Germany!

So Grigorii Zinoviev, head of the Comintern (under Lenin) sends his loyal follower Bela Kun, who had been the actual head of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, to seize power in Berlin.

March 22, 1921, under Kun's (and Lenin's) instigation, a general strike is declared in the industrial regions of central Germany.

March 24, 1921, the Communists take control of government buildings in Hamburg. In Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz, and other central German cities, the Communists organize a takeover of courts, municipal buildings, banks, and police headquarters. The German Communist publication (created and distributed from Petrograd under Lenin's oversight), "the Red Flag", openly calls for revolution.

Walter Krivitsky, one of the most highly positioned chiefs of Soviet intelligence, took part in these (and many other) events. From his memoir "I Was An Agent of Stalin", 1991, pp.97-98, "We were sent to Germany for reconnaissance, mobilization of dissident elements in the Ruhr region, and preparation of workers for an opportune moment to start an uprising. We immediately formed three types of organizations in the German Communist party: an intelligence and reconnaissance service, acting under the supervision of the Fourth Directorate of the Red Army; military formations to serve as the core of the future Red Army of Germany; [and] small fighter squads, whose orders included lowering the morale of the Reichswehr [the German army]."

The intelligence officers of the German and all other Communist parties worked under the leadership of the Fourth Directorate of the Red Army. This Directorate, after changing its name many times, will come to be known in 1942 by its designation through into the 1990s: the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces -- or, in an English acronym of its Russian name, the GRU.

This attempt to take control of Germany by armed uprising will fail; but on the other hand, the mass atrocities being inflicted by Tukhachevsky will eventually succeed at quelling anti-communist counter-revolutions -- with a few carrots thrown out grudgingly by Lenin. More on this soon.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Behold the Butcher of Blood
-------------------------------

June 23, 1921: Suvorov writes (in "Chief Culprit") that "Many of Tukhachevsky's combat orders are not about how to use a clever maneuver to bypass the enemy and hit him in the flank and rear, but about how many hostages are to be taken and when they are to be executed."

In the context of Suvorov's rhetorical goal, this seems like he's denying Tukhochevsky ever did any such things, which appears to be untrue; and Suvorov himself (when it is more convenient to his thesis) will insist upon Tukhachevsky's strategic theories being constantly influential upon Stalin's Soviet Union -- theories which involve just this type of "deep penetration" Suvorov seems to be denying Tukhachevsky had much experience doing!

In any case, Suvorov quotes in full the Order from (more like a recommendation from Tukhachevsky sanctioned by) the Plenipotentiary Commission of All-Russia, Central Executive Committee, June 23, 1921,

Quote"The experience of the first combat area shows a high predisposition for quick cleansing from banditry through the following measures. Some localities with particular strong bandit tendencies are noted, and representatives of the region's Political Commission, of a Special Section, Sections of the Military Tribunal and Command, together with units designed to conduct purges, are [to be] sent there. Upon their arrival, they [are to] surround the area, take hostage 60-100 of the most prominent persons, and introduce a siege. Entering and exiting the area must be forbidden during the course of the operation. After this, the entire population of the area is gathered, and the orders #130 and #171 of the Commission of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, and the signed sentence for this area, are [to be] read aloud. The residents are given two hours to give up the bandits and their weapons, as well as the bandits' families, and the population is told that in the event of refsual the above-mentioned hostages will be shot in two hours. If the population does not give up the bandits and weapons within the two-hour time limit, they are once again rounded up and the hostages are shot before their eyes, after which new hostages are taken and those gathered are told once again to give up the bandits and their weapons. Those who wish to comply with the demands are separated, divided into groups of a hundred, and each hundred is put through a questioning commission (consisting of representatives of the Special Sector and the Military Tribunal.) Each person must give a testimony, and not be allowed to claim ignorance. In the event of stubbornness, new executions are enacted, etc. From the material obtained through the questioning, expeditionary units are formed with the compulsory inclusion of the persons who gave the testimony, and they venture to capture the bandits. Upon the end of the purge, the siege is ended, and a revolutionary committee and militia are established to rule the area. The current Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee commands to execute this order fully. Chairman of the Commission Antonov-Ovseenko. Troops Commander Tukhachevsky."

In criminal gangs, this is known as forced snitching -- and the Russian mafia will learn to refine their own techniques from such examples! Twenty years and one day later, the National Socialists' Workers' Party of Germany will start doing the same thing to Russians as they conquer and occupy Russian towns and cities.

Tukhachevky and all other participants of this murderous war against their own people, will meanwhile declare themselves heroes of the Civil War, by introducing such universal betrayal -- not unlike the secret police of the former Tsarist regimes, but even more ruthlessly. The explicit strategy is to use fear to crush and destroy the centuries-old Russian village morale, replacing all moral codes with fear for one's own skin, making each person accountable unto torture and death for the deeds of any other person.

July 8, 1921, Tukhachevsky sends this order to his Chief of Staff Kakurin, by the Political Commission of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Districts,

Quote"Defeated bandits are hiding in the forests and taking out their impotent rage on the local population, burning bridges [and] damaging dams and other government property. In the interest of securing the bridges the Commission of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee orders: immediately take from the population of villages located near important bridges no less than five hostages, who in the event of damage done to the bridge are to be immediately executed. Under supervision of the Revolutionary Committees, the local residents are to organize the defense of the bridges from bandit attacks. The local residents are also to take on the responsibility of repairing the damaged bridges no later than within a 24-hour deadline."

To fight bandits hiding in the forests and supposedly attacking the local population, Tukhachevsky (and Lenin's gang generally) orders the execution of hostages from the same local population! Hostage taking (per Suvorov) has always been regarded as the most serious war crime, and at Nuremburg and all subsequent trials of Nazis the practice of taking hostages carried a sentence of death by hanging.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#25
Suvorov somewhat inaccurately says that, aside from fighting Poland, all of Tukhachevsky's experience can be narrowed down to hostages and executions. That may be false strictly speaking, but it must be acknowledged that Lenin and his gang used Tukhachevsky as their personal enforcer of terror operations against Russian civilians during their early years, in what they called their Civil War.

Suvorov judges Tukhachevsky's own "March Beyond Vistula" memoir as demonstrating that "[he] was incapable of relating his own thoughts," and in his attempts at "scientific" military theory, Tukhachevsky intentionally used incomprehensible terms and long phrases, the meaning of which could be interpreted any way anyone wanted.

"Marshal Joseph Pilsudsky [continues Suvorov] crushed Tukhachevsky, first on the battlefields and later in the pages of his [own] book "The Year 1920". Pilsudsky exposed both Tukhachevsky's incapability to fight and his incapability to relate past events. Pilsudsky did not leave any part of Tukhachevsky's book standing."

Pilsudsky himself will write, "The extreme vagueness of the book gives us the image of a man who analyzes only his own brain or his heart, purposefully rejecting or simply not knowing how to tie his own thoughts with the everyday existence of troops, which not always corresponds to the plans and intentions of their commander, but often contradicts them... Many events in the operations of 1920 occurred as they did precisely because [of] Tukhachevsky's propensity to command the army with such an abstract method."

On this point, the mil-wik article (which uses "Chief Culprit" as one of its sources, by the way), presents uncited claims to the effect that Tukhachevsky could not choose his division commanders or even move his headquarters from Moscow for political reasons during the Polish War (which is still sputtering along in July 1921, after Tukhachevsky's failure and reassignment to quell consequential new anti-communist rebellions in Russia's interior.) Though uncited, this seems plausible.

He also complained that his orders were frequently disobeyed even by high ranking officers which led to his Polish campaign's failure. While uncited, this is also plausible, and can be harmonized with Suvorov's account and Pilsudsky's critiques: Tukhachevsky was demanding unrealistic theoretical expectations which his divisional commanders found impossible to meet, thus disobeyed either explicitly (unlikely in the lethal Soviet system watching for military rebellion) or by accusation when parceling blame away from themselves (very plausibly).

Tukhachevsky, unable to write clearly himself (on Suvorov's judgment at least), took it upon himself to edit the official three-volume Soviet history of the Revolutionary Civil War, where he rewrote parts to make himself its greatest hero. In his memoirs and elsewhere, the butcher of blood shamelessly praises and lauds himself, transforming his disgraceful defeat near Warsaw into a brilliant victory -- lost by those incompetent traitors over there who wouldn't follow his commands. Suvorov quips, "Everyone who has read Tukhachevsky's books clearly saw that they were written by a very strange man completely infatuated with himself, a man with impossible ambitions. Such a man is extremely dangerous in a position at the top of the military command."

In a Tukhachevsky paper (published in the 1965 collection "Questions of Strategy and Operational Art in Soviet Military Works 1917-1940", p.117), he describes World War I as "Multi-million [strong] armies deployed on the fronts stretching hundreds of thousands of kilometers."  :o :wow: Suvorov presents this as an example of the man's wish to astound the reader and listener by providing unbelievable numbers. Suvorov notes that this essay among similar ones continued to be published not only in Tukhachevsky's selected works, but in compilations like the cited one which were trying to demonstrate the best accomplishments of strategic thought! (The cited volume seems to be taking its own title from Tukhachevsky's classic and highly influential "Questions of Modern Strategy"; more from which later...)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

1921: the Soviet war against Poland formally ends. As part of their peace deal, Poland and Soviet Russia (not officially the USSR yet) divide up the Byelorussian territory among themselves. The region of the Republic of Byelorussia goes to Poland's control. Its senate or Rada go into exile; and as of 2019 they and their elected successors remain the world's longest running government in exile! Soviet Byelorussia remains part of the ComIntern and will be a founding member of the coming USSR.

1921: Lenin slightly relaxes his ideological socialism and imports some fragments of free market capitalism (promoted as the "New Economic Policy", in English abbreviation NEP) to keep the foundering Soviet state afloat in the wake of his disastrous invasion attempts and ongoing military reprisals against anti-communist resistance throughout Russia. The gold ruble is introduced. The nation needs some time, but revival starts immediately.

Among Lenin's followers, theories are split on how to create the Second World War which the faction (once again) agrees will be necessary for setting off the final "liberation": the worldwide revolutionary war of the workers against the property owners.

Trotsky recommends something like the eventual Cold War, with low-intensity but permanent hammering at the weakest links in capitalist societies while launching occasional small scale invasions against weak neighbors, supporting armed coups against weak states, and diplomatically stirring up the greater powers to fight each other.

Stalin recommends that while propaganda and diplomatic maneuvering should continue, the nation should stop frittering its strength on minor invasions and uprisings, and rest up, building "Socialism in One Nation": strengthening its military and industrial power for one massive push of overwhelming "liberation crusades" at the appropriate time.

While Trotsky agreed that the Soviet Union should be made into a military camp, for the sake of defending the home of world socialism (after Lenin's failure to export it by invading his neighbors), Stalin will take more radical military measures, including the "GULAG" system of labor camps, forced collectivization, and forced industrialization.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
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Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

November 26, 1922: Lenin signs an agreement with the German aviation firm Junkers Flugzeugwerke, to produce metal airplanes and plane engines.


December 18, 1922: the Central Committee of the Communist Party issues a decree that (as Y. Felshtinsky puts it in his "Criminal Leaders", 1999, p.290) "charged Comrade Stalin with personal responsibility for the isolation of Vladimir Illych [Lenin] from both personal contacts with employees and correspondence." Stalin controls Lenin's security, feeding, and medical treatment (such as it is). Lenin is allowed to read only what Stalin permits. Everything Lenin writes is given to Stalin first, to decide whether to publish it; but in fact Lenin's Stalin-appointed physicians do not allow him to write much out of concern for his health.


December 30, 1922: Lenin and Stalin (but primarily Stalin with Lenin as a controlled figurehead) formally establish the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR. Stalin takes the position of General Secretary to the Communist Party, from which he shall raise his command above state and governmental oversight and accountability.

The "Declaration of the Founding of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics" announces the USSR as the first step toward achieving the worldwide Soviet Socialist Republic of the Communist International: in effect the Comintern works to bring new socialist republics into the USSR until the whole world has become part of the USSR. The diplomatic flag of the USSR until its dissolution in the 90s is never subtle about this! -- Soviet emblems cover the whole map of the world, with all land masses painted Soviet red! The Soviet declaration of war against the world, in its Founding Declaration, also remains in force until the dissolution.

On this day, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Sergei Kirov, proposes to build a "Palace of the Soviets", explaining, "This building must serve as the symbol of future might, the victory of communism not only here, but also there, in the West." The purpose of the palace is to hold the ceremonies of acceptance for republics into the Soviet Union. As such, it is (later) designed to be the largest building in the world: in effect a 400-meter-tall pedestal for a 100-meter-tall statue of Lenin. Friendly disputes will happen over which nation will be the final nation for the purpose of the palace: will it be the Argentine Soviet Republic? the Uruguay Soviet Republic? (Suvorov will pass over the Palace mostly in his works, aside from a photo to reference its final fate, so most references hereafter will be from wiki articles.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

1923: Tukhachevsky, in "War and Revolution" (in his collected works Vol.22, p. 188, original date unclear), explains how to have the freedom to control populations through "unfettered use of brute force", as he has done by mass-murdering civilians across Central Russia, the Northern Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia, and during his Poland invasion: "To guarantee yourself freedom to use brute force you must first and foremost annihilate the enemy's armed forces [...] butchering it [i.e. the enemy army] to the last man."

From "Questions of Modern Strategy", in Tukhachevsky's Selected Works, Vol.1, p. 196 (original date unreported by Suvorov): Soviet military headquarters need "to issue timely instructions to the political directorate and corresponding bodies on setting up Revolutionary Committees and other local administrative machinery for all the various areas," namely the areas to be invaded by the Soviet military. The strategy is to secretly set up a local government ready to go when the Red Army arrives to liberate the workers.

Hitler will echo this plan later, after he takes control of Germany, to bring what he regards as true socialism (Nazi Party socialism) to his neighbors, including to Russia.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#29
(Had to stop for the night, but not quite done with the pre-Stalin thread yet!)

July 1923, Lenin makes two new agreements with Germany: to construct a chemical plant (capable of making poison gas and more mundane war chemicals, forbidden under the Versallies Treaty), and to produce munitions and military equipment (ditto).

The develpoment and production of poisonous agents such as mustard gas, is set up on the premises of the firm Bersol in Ivashcenko (now Chapavsk), near the city of Samara. The daily output of mustard gas will reach 3.3 tons, and the daily output of the successor to mustard gas, phosgene, will reach 2.6 tons.

Joint testing of chemical weapons will be conducted on two training ranges: one called "Tomka" near the city of Volsk in the Saratov region, and another called "Podosinki", a district of Moscow itself, today called Kuzminki.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!