I think everyone was surprised by how the rot of pervasive graft, corruption and theft ate into the Russian military. In 1941 the Soviet Army was ill-prepared and outdated, but corruption under Stalin was virtually non-existent.
And whatever technical and strategic shortcomings became obvious in 1941, there was an existential threat and enough room to recover, if barely. The fall of Leningrad and Moscow was very close, as well, and with some better German planning (and not as harsh a winter) could have easily happened. Certainly if Germany decided to focus on beating Britain first and delay the Eastern operations by a few years, while getting oil and raw materials from all too willing Russia, the outcome might have looked very different.
Basically, it was really hard to predict the current situation with any sort of confidence, and whatever experts happened to guess correctly are probably lucky more than anything.
In 1941 the Soviet Army was ill-prepared and outdated, but corruption under Stalin was virtually non-existent.
This I think is a little misleading. Perhaps during the war itself the army shapened up, but by western liberal democratic standards Stalin and his general associates took tons and tons of money from their own people to spend on dachas and palaces. It was just not “corruption” because it wasn’t “illegal”.
As far as I know it is not true. I didn’t know about any very spectacular palaces for Stalin or any his associates.
There was a corruption under Stalin. But as far as I know the main problem was false reports. Superiors demanded to fulfil (and to overfulfil) the plan, subordinates were afraid to confess that they cannot to do it and they was sending reports about a plan fulfilment.
They definitely got tons of money from the budget… I don’t think it was stolen from military contracts, or whatever passed for military contracts in Stalin’s economy.
This is intriguing, but I haven’t seen any reporting on it. What are your sources? (That sounds combative on the Internet but is just me being curious.)
Your sources confirm that corruption is a problem, and it’s plausible that corruption is a factor in how poorly the war has gone (which I note is the strongest claim, i.e. “plausible”, in the Politico article), but your original claim, in the context of the OP you responded to, seemed to be that underestimation of corruption is [a huge part of? perhaps a majority of?] what caused everyone to be mistaken about Russian military power, and I definitely don’t think these sources add up to that conclusion. 7 billion rubles of corruption in the military (Moscow Times article) is a drop in the bucket compared to a total budget of at least 2.5 trillion rubles, even if the corruption estimate is off by an order of magnitude.
The real corruption is and will always be maze-like behavior, not some guy embezzling a few billion dollars. Taxes we mortals can handle, mazes we cannot.
I think the common part in the current situation in Russian military and the situation before WWII is big problems with feedback. Before WWII in USSR you cannot tell about inabilty to fulfil a plan. And you had a very little chance to change superiors minds. Now in Russia you cannot criticize decisions of authorities efficiently. A criticism is a something which only western agents are doing.
But I think there is a distinction. I think a part of current problems in Russian military have emerged due to mass unbelief that a big war is possible.
Basically, it was really hard to predict the current situation with any sort of confidence, and whatever experts happened to guess correctly are probably lucky more than anything.
I agree with this. My problem is not in the direction of my prediction, which I still think was correct ex ante, it’s with the degree of confidence I had. I think predicting ~ 65% to 70% of the war going well for Russia with ~ 15% to 20% chance of a Winter War scenario would have been a better prediction in advance.
I think everyone was surprised by how the rot of pervasive graft, corruption and theft ate into the Russian military. In 1941 the Soviet Army was ill-prepared and outdated, but corruption under Stalin was virtually non-existent.
And whatever technical and strategic shortcomings became obvious in 1941, there was an existential threat and enough room to recover, if barely. The fall of Leningrad and Moscow was very close, as well, and with some better German planning (and not as harsh a winter) could have easily happened. Certainly if Germany decided to focus on beating Britain first and delay the Eastern operations by a few years, while getting oil and raw materials from all too willing Russia, the outcome might have looked very different.
Basically, it was really hard to predict the current situation with any sort of confidence, and whatever experts happened to guess correctly are probably lucky more than anything.
This I think is a little misleading. Perhaps during the war itself the army shapened up, but by western liberal democratic standards Stalin and his general associates took tons and tons of money from their own people to spend on dachas and palaces. It was just not “corruption” because it wasn’t “illegal”.
As far as I know it is not true. I didn’t know about any very spectacular palaces for Stalin or any his associates.
There was a corruption under Stalin. But as far as I know the main problem was false reports. Superiors demanded to fulfil (and to overfulfil) the plan, subordinates were afraid to confess that they cannot to do it and they was sending reports about a plan fulfilment.
They definitely got tons of money from the budget… I don’t think it was stolen from military contracts, or whatever passed for military contracts in Stalin’s economy.
This is intriguing, but I haven’t seen any reporting on it. What are your sources? (That sounds combative on the Internet but is just me being curious.)
I thought it was all over the internet? And has been known for years if not decades, just not how deeply it affects the fight readiness.
https://twitter.com/andreivkozyrev/status/1500611398245634050
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-military-corruption-quagmire/
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/21/corruption-in-russias-military-quadrupled-in-2018-prosecutors-say-a64907
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0095327X06294622
https://www.ffi.no/en/publications-archive/russian-military-corruption-scale-and-causes
Your sources confirm that corruption is a problem, and it’s plausible that corruption is a factor in how poorly the war has gone (which I note is the strongest claim, i.e. “plausible”, in the Politico article), but your original claim, in the context of the OP you responded to, seemed to be that underestimation of corruption is [a huge part of? perhaps a majority of?] what caused everyone to be mistaken about Russian military power, and I definitely don’t think these sources add up to that conclusion. 7 billion rubles of corruption in the military (Moscow Times article) is a drop in the bucket compared to a total budget of at least 2.5 trillion rubles, even if the corruption estimate is off by an order of magnitude.
The real corruption is and will always be maze-like behavior, not some guy embezzling a few billion dollars. Taxes we mortals can handle, mazes we cannot.
I think the common part in the current situation in Russian military and the situation before WWII is big problems with feedback. Before WWII in USSR you cannot tell about inabilty to fulfil a plan. And you had a very little chance to change superiors minds. Now in Russia you cannot criticize decisions of authorities efficiently. A criticism is a something which only western agents are doing.
But I think there is a distinction. I think a part of current problems in Russian military have emerged due to mass unbelief that a big war is possible.
I agree with this. My problem is not in the direction of my prediction, which I still think was correct ex ante, it’s with the degree of confidence I had. I think predicting ~ 65% to 70% of the war going well for Russia with ~ 15% to 20% chance of a Winter War scenario would have been a better prediction in advance.