The General Russia Thread

I wrote that in a novel series I'm doing months ago.

Russian 'Novaya Gazeta' newspaper set to arm reporters after stabbing

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/25/arrests-moscow-russia-premiere-matilda-film-tsar-nicholas-ii-affair

Do Russian conservatives have to go apeshit over a movie?

Still doesn't top the Chinese government railing against Dunkirk for glorifying a British general who isn't even a character let alone being mentioned in the actual film.

This is top of proclaiming that a film wholly dedicated to portraying a retreat and evacuation instilles cowardly and un-Chinese behavior to audiences.

edited 29th Oct '17 5:52:07 PM by FluffyMcChicken

The wrecking ball swings at Moscow - a photo essay

Naturally critics of this demolition suspect it's a gentrification project.

Wait, so, standing your ground, being captured in the hundreds of thousands, and losing the war in one stroke is proper Chinese behavior?

edited 1st Nov '17 7:37:01 AM by CrimsonZephyr

Proper Chinese behaviour apparently is implied to mean ironically fighting to the death and throwing yourself at the enemy with grenades in hand like the Japanese would.

That's for the enlisted men, obviously. The officers and leaders would be allowed for evacuate "for strategic reasons".

And here I was thinking that Chinese military thought had advanced since the Korean War...

Modern China doesn't into any form of competent military anything.

It's one of the many reasons why the idea that they're a relevant global military is absolutely ridiculous.

I doubt losing a hundred thousand or so matters quite so much when you’ve got a billion to spare. Yeah, the Red Army is presently a ‘mere’ three times the size of the British one at the start of World War II, but they’re not short on room to expand.

edited 1st Nov '17 1:57:41 PM by Iaculus

Well, plenty of leaderships had that mentality.

Japan, Russia, Korea, China. Never ended well for them.

Even when China essentially zerg rushed Vietnam, they still got their asses kicked.

Considering the Soviet Union along with the other allies won World War 2, I don’t think they count in that regard.

Maybe he was referring to the Tsarist era army?

The Soviet Union during the early stages of the war were burning men and materiel at an alarming rate. If were not by the lend lease and the combined Allied campaign, the Soviet Army wouldn't be able to push back the Nazi armies.

It was only after Generals like Sukov that intervened and started using their assets more effectively that the German army started to bulge.

The Soviet Union wasn't winning when they were throwing men after men to the grinder, once the shock and desperation subsided and their leadership realized that maybe losing 1 million men in a year isn't a winning strategy that their strategy and tactics changed to make better use of their numerical superiority.

Or maybe (just maybe) by the Battle of Moscow the blitzkrieg ran out of men, vehicles and fuel and stopped grinding all those troops through encirclements. Remember that the only actual battle experience Red Army had by 1941 were Spain, Finland and Khalkin-Gol, and after Talvisota showed the painful inadequacy of Soviet armed forces in general USSR had only a year to retrain and (more importantly) rearm. The Nazis just attacked when we were the weakest.

About the Chechen gay death camps: you know, those articles look suspiciously like all the "Kim Jong Un shot one of his generals from a cannon at the Moon." Bakaev later appeared on a video saying he is in Germany since the middle of August. Yes, can be fabricated, but at least I have some proofs besides "But Russia is eeevil" https://vk.com/video-141569443_456239139

The problem with the "Matilda" movie is Nicholas II himself being used as a weapon against the Damned Communist Past. He was declared a saint by ROC(foreign), an organisation that hated communists so much they cooperated with nazis during the War, and accepted by ROC during 1990's. Basically that means that anything bad said about him is a "violation of believers' feelings," even the truth. Bonus points for being killed by Bloody Bolsheviks on a direct order from Lenin (that was a decision of Yekaterinburg's soviet/council dominated by Social-Revolutionaries not controlled by Moscow, but who cares).

TL;DR of the previous paragraph: NII, "The Russia That We Lost" and WWI must appear as saintly as possible so we can say "Look what your Bolsheviks destroyed"

Damn, I should stop being so lazy so I don't have to write posts that long -_-

The Soviet Army was at its weakest alright, but that's in large part because Stalin had been shooting, purging, or internally exiling any officer who could count past ten without unzipping their pants. It took the jolt of early defeats to break through his paranoia and get him to allow competent officers some leeway.

Also not sure why you're trying to disprove that Chechnya, and by proxy, Russia, treat gay people inhumanely.

I don't know what sounds so ridiculous about an area with heavy Islamic extremism putting gay people in concentration camps, and just because you don't want to believe it to be true, doesn't mean it isn't actually happening.

In fact, those camps have already been confirmed as true by many different and trustworthy news sources and organizations, in addition to the many gay men who escaped from the region and told their tales, confirming the reports as true.

edited 2nd Nov '17 3:19:26 PM by Grafite

, Sadly, I am not smart, so I cannot disprove it outright.

What I managed to find are many respectable sources all referring to two primary ones: Novaya Gazeta's publications and a video of an escapee. The escapee speaks perfect rural-ish Russian - okay, perhaps he grew up outside Chechnya. What bothers me is why the people in charge of an allegedly top-secret and well-executed operation (no eyewitnesses, no evidence) managed to lose not one, but several prisoners. You know, like the usual tales of evil Russians being omniscient, almighty and morbidly stupid. Also, why don't they tell the names of the escapees or at least the names of those already killed, by authorities or by relatives? Jailers should know the names anyway.

There are prisoner escapes in just about every facility, unless it is a maximum security type, and I doubt the makeshift camps in Chechnya are that secure.

And there isn't only 1 eyewitness to the situation, there are about 50, plus human rights groups which have confirmed the situation as being true. There weren't many willing to be interviwed, but given the persecution and fear they face, I can't blame them for not wanting to give one.

Until Moscow, the Red Army was fighting a scorched earth war and retreating to more defensible positions, though with each retreat there were several unsuccessful counter offensives. The Red Army not only had poor leadership and organization, even having better equipment and tanks than the German army at the early stages of war.

Even if you exclude the purges, it was Stalin himself giving strategic military orders at the early stages of the war. By the time the Wehrmacht reached Moscow outskirts, the Soviet Generals with actual expertise were put in charge, where Stalin unlike Hitler, realized that it would be a better if he left the command to his Generals, like Zhukov.

The Germans were at full speed and inflicting heavy casualties on the Red Army. The Battle of Moscow was the first successful mass counter offensive by the Red Army, with a little help of the Wehrmacht outrunning its logistics lines, the autumn rains and winter taking its tool on the Wehrmacht.

The depletion of the Wehrmacht began after Operation Uranus leading to the Battle of Stalingrad, where after launching several encirclement tactics against the German and foreign auxiliary troops echelons, cut off the supplies to the German armies and leaving them stuck on Stalingrad. Some time after that Kursk happened and from there on the Wehrmacht began retreating from the Soviet Union as they were now almost completely depleted on the Eastern Front.

edited 2nd Nov '17 6:17:32 PM by AngelusNox

There's a World War II article that details much of this, and uses Glantz as a source extensively.

People managed to make a break out from Treblinka. Was that unrealistic?

edited 2nd Nov '17 7:13:49 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Because Kadyrov is totally not the type of waste of semen who would be able to extend his revenge to entire families/friends if he were to know who the escapees are, and who is telling the world about his utterly perfect behavior.

edited 3rd Nov '17 8:24:04 AM by Julep

He already knows who they are. How can you track a man for being gay, then imprison and torture him and contact his family without knowing his name? Why would he take revenge on relatives of those already dead? He is brutal, his standards are that of 18 century, but he is not an emotionally unstable 14 year old.

Did Nazis hide the existence of the camps or the fact that people were being moved there? This one has exactly as much evidence as counter-evidence, that being "I swear!!" from different people.

Okay. How about the failed Rzhev operation of 1942 which let the Nazis to Stalingrad And Rostov-on-Don? The failed Demyansk encirclement of 1942, the lessons from which, though, let Red Army to succesfully complete the Uranus operation? Also, how come that allies in 1940 were defeated in a month, while the USSR managed to stop Wehrmacht's advance in six? Both theaters had 3vs3 mln troops, give or take. Gamelin and Weygand were six times worse than even the totally incompetent Stalin?

Um, yes, they definitely did, they tried to hide it really hard from the people of Germany, the rest of the world and of members within the Nazi Party, in order not to look so bad and get more members for their cause.

And you keep being deliberately obtuse, there is much evidence of these camps existing than not (see my posts above), yet you keep denying it just because it doesn't feel true to you, which sums up a lot of what's wrong these days. And it reminds me a lot of Holocaust Denial.