Editor’s note: Welcome to another installment of our weekly War Books series! The premise is simple and straightforward. We ask an expert on a particular topic to recommend five books on that topic and tell us what sets each one apart. War Books is a resource for MWI readers who want to learn more about important subjects related to modern war and are looking for books to add to their reading lists.
This week, the war in Ukraine triggered by Russia’s February 2022 invasion passed the eighteen-month mark. In this edition of War Books, MWI editorial director John Amble describes six books for nonexperts to read to better understand Russia as a strategic actor.
I’m not a Russia expert. But as Russian forces were collecting along the country’s border with Ukraine in late 2021 and early 2022, I wanted to build up my understanding of Russia. I didn’t necessarily seek the deeply specialized knowledge of somebody whose professional focus is entirely devoted to Russia or some aspect of the revanchist power. Rather, I wanted to read books that would combine to offer a broad-based layer of context within which to understand the actions Russia was taking.
Fast forward to February 24, when the invasion began, and that desire to better understand Russia became an imperative. MWI was suddenly receiving an enormous influx of submissions on the war—insightful commentary and deeply researched analysis—and if I was going to review the articles and edit those that we accepted, I needed to know Russia better. These are the six books I’ve read that have most heavily influenced my understanding of the country, its political and strategic cultures, and the way it conceptualizes, plans, and conducts military operations.
A Short History of Russia, by Mark Galeotti
If you only read one book on this list, make it this one. It covers more than a thousand years of history of Russia as a nation—from the early princes of Kyivan Rus through Ivan the Terrible and the tsars to the Bolshevik Revolution, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the rise of Vladimir Putin. And it does so in less than two hundred pages. Galeotti accomplishes that task in part because of his commendable economy with words—nothing feels superfluous in this guided tour—but in larger part he does so by remaining steadfastly committed to providing what the title promises: a short history. You will understand today’s Russia better by appreciating its history and there is no better place to start. Plus, if you want to continue your journey of learning about Russia, Galeotti’s bibliographies are fantastic resources for further reading. (Bonus: The author’s We Need to Talk about Putin is an equally concise and equally valuable primer.)
Putin’s People, by Catherine Belton
It isn’t possible to understand Russia and its approach to the world without understanding its president, and it isn’t possible to understand its president without understanding his rise to power and the specific ways he has manipulated the elites of the country to strengthen his rule. Belton’s book provides exactly that. From organized criminal groups to the intelligence services, from banks and national resource firms to local, regional, and national governance structures, Putin’s machinations have restructured institutions, given him control over who runs them (and how), and made criminal leaders, billionaires, and politicians beholden to him. If you’re curious how one man could effectively bend an entire nation to his will, read this for answers.
The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, by Masha Gessen
Several years ago, MWI had the chance to host Masha Gessen for a talk about how authoritarianism had regrown its roots in Russia so soon after the fall of the Soviet Union and the optimism—in retrospect, naïve optimism—that the country would grow into a stable democracy and a partner working for good in the world. As an activist and a journalist, Gessen has witnessed and experienced firsthand the persecution of those who criticize the Putin regime. When Russia invaded Ukraine last year and there was extraordinarily little criticism of the war from inside Russia’s borders, I remembered Gessen’s visit to West Point and bought this book to better understand the Kremlin’s ruthless crackdown on dissent.
Red Army, by Ralph Peters
I know, Ralph Peters is not without critics (for, among other things, his argument in favor of redrawing the borders of the Middle East). But as a novelist, his work that built on his professional understanding of the Soviet military—he was a serving US Army military intelligence officer when he wrote Red Army and spent much of his early career in Europe—is deeply insightful. Told from the perspective of Soviet forces engaged in a surprise attack in the 1980s, the novel offers a glimpse into key elements of Soviet military culture that were inherited by and remain with the Russian Army today. A preference for mass. Artillery-centric planning. Micromanaging senior leaders. A propensity for media manipulation to sow battlefield confusion. Tactical inflexibility. A willingness to accept high casualties for limited gains. It’s all there.
Day of the Oprichnik, by Vladimir Sorokin
I mentioned that Galeotti’s bibliographies are a great source for finding your next book to read, and that’s where I discovered this one. Galeotti warns readers that this novel is a bit strange, and I can attest. But it is also a deeply fascinating look at a near-future Russia in which the country’s leader (unnamed in the book) has solidified his grip on power to an even more absolute degree than Putin has so far. The title is a reference to the oprichniki, a coterie of specially selected bodyguards who served Ivan the Terrible in the late sixteenth century. In the novel, set in 2028, Russia’s leader has reestablished this small corps to do his bidding and counter any threat to his rule. The book describes in uncomfortable and gruesome detail the violence meted out to those who criticize the Russian leader—and feels at once to be both the product of a fantastic imagination and a sobering reflection of the dynamics that help to keep Putin in power.
Russia’s War, by Jade McGlynn
Released just a few months ago, this is the most recently published book on the list. Remember I said that I read Masha Gessen’s book to understand why there was so little Russian criticism of the invasion of Ukraine? Most fundamentally, it’s because the world has watched one war, while Russians have watched another. This book tells readers how. The narrative of this war that Russians see paints their forces as heroes and underdogs, fighting valiantly to protect Russia and its values from a decadent and aggressive West. (Be sure to subscribe to the MWI Podcast so you don’t miss an upcoming episode featuring a conversation with McGlynn, to be released in September!)
John Amble is the editorial director of the Modern War Institute at West Point.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: mil.ru, via Wikimedia Commons
Assuming that most readers of this site are seeking reading recommendations due to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, I highly recommend "The Russian Way of War" by Charles Bartles and Lester Grau published by The Army University Press (see link below). This magisterial, 402 page study is worthy of far greater attention than it has received. The first 51 pages (Personnel System and Structure and Echelonment) are exceptional because they challenge the reader to confront accepted conventional wisdom about how the Russian Federation mans and structures its Army. I suspect that many will experience the dissonance that I did when balancing the observations of regional experts from the U.S. Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (Bartles and Grau) with what has commonly appeared in the mainstream, Western press.
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/portals/7/hot%20spots/documents/russia/2017-07-the-russian-way-of-war-grau-bartles.pdf
For serious military readers trying to understand the Russian Federation's Army, Bartles and Grau's work should be a priority far before tackling Masha Gessen's 2018 book.
I also highly recommend the authoritative, quarterly Russian military journal "Military Thought" (Voennaia mysl’). East View Press publishes an English language translation of this official publication of the Ministry of Defense of The Russian Federation. I just received the July-September 2023 issue and the article titled "Prospects of Enhancing the Effectiveness of Army-Level Defensive Operations" and its accompanying graphics were directly relevant to current observations of the Ukrainian counteroffensive (hint: we need to prioritize a better understand the Reconnaissance-Fire Complex and Reconnaissance-Strike Complex). The Army should aggressively disseminate English language institutional subscriptions of "Military Thought" to ensure widest dissemination of these concepts to Russian specialists and non-specialists alike. I never knew this publication even existed until an elective course I took last Spring at the U.S. Army War College.
https://www.eastviewpress.com/resources/journals/military-thought/
Perhaps the best way to view Russia and Putin today — and even China and Xi also — this is through the lens of a New/Reverse Cold War; that is, a Cold War in which, this time,
a. It is the U.S./the West that is engaged in attempting to achieve "revolutionary change" (in our case, more along market-democracy lines) more throughout the world — and especially in places such as Russia and China — and one in which, this time:
b. It is nations such as Russia and China who are seeking to "contain" — and indeed to "roll back" — these such U.S./Western initiatives and related activities — especially in their (Russia: think Ukraine; China: think Taiwan) back yards.
In this regard, consider this from Sir Philip Bobbitt and Viola Gienger in the March 24, 2022 "Just Security" article "Real Fear: Ukraine’s Constitutional Order:"
"For Putin, Ukraine has been the outlier. Ukraine has been pursuing freedom and democracy determinedly, though haltingly, on its own, and it has had a good deal of success. The fact that this democratic process has been playing out on Putin’s doorstep, perhaps most notably with the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” against his stooge, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, is terrifying to Putin.
In the information age, a state of terror such as the one that Putin’s Russia has become, cannot countenance states of consent, especially next door. It is Ukraine’s constitutional order — with its independent (though still troubled) judicial system, freedom of the press, multiparty politics, largely legitimate elections, vibrant civil society, and general respect for human rights — that Putin cannot tolerate, lest it provide too tempting an example for democratic activists in his own country who have vehemently opposed him at great risk to their lives and to the public in general that shares so many ties to the people in Ukraine. The “peaceful coexistence” of the Cold War is, in this respect, not acceptable to Putin.
Allowing Russia to advance its borders wouldn’t mollify Putin with some lessening of his perception of a national security threat, so long as each new border abuts the territory of a NATO member. In fact, Putin himself signaled as much in his December demands to the alliance, which included, for instance, that NATO withdraw infrastructure from its own member States in Eastern Europe.
The principal U.S. intention in agreeing to NATO’s expansion to the former Warsaw Pact countries beginning in 1999 was not to create a cordon sanitaire around Russia. Rather, the expansion was intended to shore up the nascent domestic movements toward liberal democracy within those former Soviet satellites. It was the constitutional, not the international, objective that drove NATO enlargement.
So Putin’s war is a consequence of his fear that Russia as it is today will inevitably slip from his grasp and that more democratic-leaning leaders there, not just those in Ukraine, will one day petition to become members of NATO and that it will become a state of consent. If the West can protect Ukraine — with advanced anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and other defensive weapons, with a sustained airlift and land convoy of food and medicines, with global economic ostracism of Putin’s regime — that day will come."
Thus:
a. Much as the U.S. would work hard not to allow the example of a successful communist country (consider Nicaragua) to remain as a threat to the U.S. in the Old Cold War of yesterday,
b. Likewise such nations as Russia and China will work hard not to allow the example of a successful market-democracy country (consider Ukraine and Taiwan) to remain as a threat to Russia and China in the New/Reverse Cold War of today.
Great pick… I would add to this list "The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past" authored by Shaun Walker and "Towards an Understanding of Russia. A Study in Policy and Strategy" written by polish sovietologist Włodzimierz Bączkowski. This second book used to be on a booklist in U. S. military schools.