The Structure of Strategic Revolution: Total War and the Roots of the Soviet Warfare State - Hardcover

Schneider, James J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 089141522X ISBN 13: 9780891415220

Publisher: Presidio Pr, 1994

Synopsis

The national defense and security apparatus, internal and external, developed by the Soviet Union was unique in the history of the world. Soviet leaders created a warfare state that, taken in its totality, left no part of life in the Soviet Union untouched. Social, economic, artistic, industrial, politicalall aspects of Soviet society were affected.
Professor Schneider shows how the Soviet security apparatus evolved and how the warfare state was achieved by Stalin. He offers important new insights into the strategic revolution of the nineteenth century that resulted from the Industrial Revolution, providing the technological means and industrial capacity for nations to wage total war.
Ironically, the Soviet warfare state contained the seeds of its own destruction. Professor Schneider shows how the success of Stalin's "revolution from above," which resulted in the warfare state, created the conditions that ultimately made the historical achievement of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms possible.

About this title

About the Author

Professor James J. Schneider holds the chair in military theory at the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Reviews

Schneider's study surveys the theoretical foundations of the Soviet concept of "total war" by analyzing the writings of Russian military theorists, including A.A. Svechin, "the Red Clausewitz," and Boris M. Shaposhnikov, Stalin's national security adviser. He regards the latter, virtually unknown in the West, as "one of the most brilliant military minds of the twentieth century" and describes Shaposhnikov's role in building the Soviet warfare state in the 1930s and '40s. Schneider shows how national security considerations subverted the freedoms of Russian society. His opus is so dense as to be difficult reading, but its wide-ranging arguments will reward the diligence of students of the relationship between state and military. Schneider teaches military theory at the School of Advanced Military Studies in Kansas. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Schneider (military theory, Sch. of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas) has written an excellent collection of essays with a common theme but without a fully developed thesis. While he professes to examine "the origins and nature of Stalin's warfare state" and its impact on the Gorbachev reforms, he does not achieve this ambitious goal. He does, however, mobilize a remarkable bibliographic army-including important unknowns like Shlichting-as he mixes physics, economics, and warfare all at once. The first third of the book marches through military theory and science, with remarkable insights on the U.S. Civil War and the Industrial Revolution. The focus finally shifts to Russia, concentrating on key military thinkers of the early Soviet period. Unfortunately, this impressive tome ends abruptly around 1929; the informed reader is left begging for Schneider's views on 1941, or on the Voroshilov Lectures (USPGO, 1989), or on Marshall Nikolai Ogarkov's ideas. Gorbachev himself is treated almost as an afterthought. Recommended for specialists in the field.
John Yurechko, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Presidio Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 089141522X
• ISBN 13: 9780891415220
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384