Thread by @kamilkazani

This article by David Johnson raises an important question of whether the US defence community underestimated the Russian military capacities. It's a good article. Some observations are very astute, while others lack the context and may be misleading. Let's discuss it🧵

David Johnson points out to the Ukrainian leadership carefully selecting and censoring the information in order to create & reinforce the positive narrative. That's correct. And that indeed created a certain bias in reporting the course of this war

For Ukraine to get any help it needed to persuade others it can survive at least the initial Russian offensive. Which it did. The belief in the Ukrainian defeat could have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they fall in two weeks, there's no need to send heavy weaponry

Johnson points out to the Z-war being a completely new experience both for Russia and Ukraine. Neither of them fought wars like this since the WWII, wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya etc, being completely different in their dynamics. That's correct

Johnson argues that both Russians and Ukrainians both have systems to conscript their citizens, a practice abandoned in the West. That's not technically *wrong*. But it's very misleading. It's so misleading that I need to make a lengthy commentary here

Describing any form of compulsory recruitment into the army as "conscription" is not wrong. It's just too vague to be useful. So let me introduce some nuances here

Let's make a difference between two types of compulsory-draft-based armies:

1. Professional (rekrut-based)
2. Non-professional (conscript-based)

They sort of look similar in a sense you are being recruited against your will, but they have little in common in other respects

What is a rekrut army? It's a professional army comprised through a compulsory draft. Like the Russian Imperial army, 1699-1874. Some fraction of males was drafted by force, first for life than for 25 years. So basically for life. It is a *professional*, though non-volunteer army

Rekrut-based army has pros: experienced & qualified soldiers. But it also has cons. First, it's costly. Second, it's non-elastic. You know that once the war comes you won't be able to quickly expand it. So you need to keep too big&costly rekrut army in the peacetime just in case

Till the 1860s Russian Tsars sticked to the rekrut army, which was professional, but too big for a peacetime and too small for a wartime. It was the Franco-Prussian war that changed everything. Russians saw that an alternative model - the conscript army - is now more effective

The conscript army works differently. You don't draft a few males for 25 years to form a professional rekrut army. Nope. You draft as many as possible for a short term of service. Yeah, they will be less professional. But that's how you create a pool for a wartime mobilisation

Conscript-based army is more flexible than a rekrut army. It has two modes: peacetime and wartime. In a peacetime mode it's small. But in a wartime mode it can expand rapidly through a mass mobilisation, growing far larger than any professional army ever could

But a conscript-based army can't expand by the force of the will. In order to keep its ability to expand, it should maintain an expensive infrastructure of training centres and grounds, military schools, keep the extra number of officers, on active service and in reserve

Even more importantly, in order to keep its ability to expand the conscript-based army should operate under a social contract that allows such expansion. People should kinda implicitly agree that at any age and at any moment they can be suddenly called to the active service

Like the post-1874 imperial army, the Soviet army was also based on conscription and was designed for a perspective of mass mobilisation (=rapid wartime expansion). During the WWII it did it effectively, replenishing its massive casualties. But that was the last time they did it

In theory nothing changed after the WWII. Soviets still had a conscript-based army with a short term of service that could be quickly expanded in a wartime through the mobilisation of the trained reserve. In practice though they stopped expanding it in the wartime

During the pacifications of Eastern Europe, in Afghanistan, in Chechnya, the USSRussian army always fought with those short-term conscripts, never calling its reserve pool for the active service. Though the perspective of mobilisation existed, it became purely theoretical

Why did it happen? Well, it made social order and economy more stable. At the age of 18 you kinda have to serve a short term (three years of service ultimately reduced to one year) and that's it. You're free now. You'll never be *really* called for the active service later

In practice though the Soviet army gradually evolved from a conscript model to a quasi conscript model. We are drafting males for a short service (like conscripts), but in practice we use them like rekruts. It's a standing army without a possibility of a wartime expansion

If you wanna visualise this quasi conscript nature of the Soviet/Russian army, watch this video from the Chechen war, year 2000.Soldiers all look under 20, only the officer is visibly older. 18-19 year olds were not just thrown into the war, they were the *only* ones thrown there

Why you don't see any 25 y.o. soldiers here? Because the reserve can't and won't be called back to the active service. While theoretically the conscripts are being drafted mainly for training, to become the qualified reserve, in practice they serve as rekruts. The standing army

That was a video from 2000. Since then the Russian army has been very much professionalized. Most of those sent to Ukraine are professional "contractors" and judging from the casualty lists they are usually older than teen soldiers of the Chechen wars. See the age statistics

At this moment Russian army presents a somewhat idiosyncratic combination of:

1. Quasi-conscript rekrut troops
2. Professional contractor troops

Notice what is missing here? The mobilised reserve. Because that supposed wartime expansion via mobilisation didn't happen

In fact, Russia might have no capacity for that rapid wartime mobilisation. On the one hand, its social contract doesn't allow mobilisation of older ages, that's why it fought so much with 18-19 year olds. Yes, the social contract can be renegotiated, but that's not so easy to do

Even more importantly, Russia may have no infrastructure for that wartime expansion. In the Soviet era they gradually switched from the real conscript to the quasi conscript rekrut army. But they still kept all the infrastructure for the wartime expansion intact

Russian Federation didn't really have the cash to maintain the mobilisation infrastructure and its quality deteriorated. Finally, under the minister Serdyukov they simply dismantled it. Much of Serdyukov's reforms were about saving the money on useless mobilisation infrastructure

That allowed to improve and expand the standing army. It was significantly professionalised. But in order to fund these reforms they had to dismantle the infrastructure necessary for a proper wartime mobilisation. Now it just can't expand in the wartime like the Soviet army could

In this respect I find Johnson's argument not wrong, but rather misleading. Yes, Russia has all mechanisms and infrastructure to draft its citizens to a quasi conscript rekrut army. But it doesn't have any mechanisms or infrastructure for a Soviet style mass mobilisation

The infrastructure for mass mobilisation has been dismantled. Regarding the legal mechanisms, they largely stay intact, but only formally. Informally though they are now forgotten and obsolete. I think that's enough for today, I'll continue tomorrow in another thread. End of 🧵

PS Although I find the conceptualisation of the late Soviet/Russian military as the quasi conscript rekrut army absolutely brilliant, I'm not its author. I borrowed it from Alexey Roschin's book. He's a Russian psychologist who unlike me has served in the army, in the 1980s

Late 1980s were an interesting period. Usually the military draft was for peasants, while the good boys could dodge it through the university studies. However, in 1985 (almost all) of university students lost their отсрочка and were drafted as anyone else

Previously, when it were mostly the peasants who were drafted as soldiers, few cared about the atrocities happening in the army. Now, as good kids suffered too, dedovschina became a focus of public attention. And that's when Roschin was drafted

What I value about Roschin's book is his ability to generalise and conceptualise his actual lived experience and tacit knowledge that many have but few talk about. You can find an online version in his livejournal sapojnik.livejournal.com/3870156.html

I personally found this take especially interesting. It's not exhaustive as it had been written before the Serdyukov reforms and obviously doesn't take them into account. But it accurately describes the basic framework that was later modified by Serdyukov

sapojnik.livejournal.com/159975.html