Kombinasjonen russiske styrker + russiske stepper + russisk vinter har som kjent spilt en avgjørende rolle i militærhistorien ved flere anledninger. Før Hitlers armeer fikk juling, var det Napoleons La Grande Armée som ble knust av denne trippelutfordringen.
Men mens tyskernes tap på østfronten vanligvis kobles tett sammen med nazistyrets endelig sammenbrudd, er ikke Napoleons endelige tap blitt knyttet like intimt til det katastrofale felttoget i Russland. Eller sagt på en annen – og kanskje mer presis – måte; russernes rolle i nedkjempingen av Napoleon er undervurdert. I det minste har vi i Vesten en tendens til å undervurdere den.
De russiske styrkenes innsats har gjerne blitt inkorporert i en mer generell fremstilling av hvordan de allierte troppene kjempet mot franskmennene, og om noen har blitt gitt spesiell oppmerksomhet har det som regel vært den reformerte prøyssiske hæren. Brorparten av kildematerialet har gjerne vært fransk, og fokuset på russerne har vært svært fiksert på året 1812.
Men nå kommer Dominic Lieven (hvem ellers?) med en ny bok som tar mål av seg å endre perspektivet på den russiske innsatsen i kampene mot Napoleon også utover Russlandsfelttoget i 1812. “Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814″ presenteres slik av forlaget:
This book tells the story of one of the most astonishing dramas in Europe’s history. In the summer of 1812 after years of uneasy peace, Napoleon, the master of almost the whole continent, marched into Russia with the largest army ever assembled, confident that he would sweep everything before him. Less than two years later the Russian army was itself marching into Paris and Napoleon’s empire lay in ruins.
Professor Charles Esdaile anmelder boka i Literary Review, og er full av godord. Men først bruker Esdaile litt spalteplass på å påpeke unnlatelsessyndene jeg har nevnt. Han summerer opp den russiske rollen i krigene og maktspillet slik:
… from 1805 onwards Russia was a key player – indeed, in some respects the key player – in the international relations of Napoleonic Europe; the campaign of 1812 was not just an episode of positively epic dimensions, but also a moment of seminal importance in the history of modern Russia, the echoes of which continued to reverberate throughout the life of the USSR, if not beyond; and finally in the bloody battles of 1813-14 it was Russian troops who made up the largest part of the Allied armies and, arguably at least, Russian leadership that ensured the overthrow of Napoleon.
Esdaile trekker fram hvordan Lieven understreker tsar Alexanders aktive rolle i byggingen av alliansen mot Napoleon, og hva slags strategiske mål den skulle ta sikte på (uthevelsene er mine):
Particularly in 1813-14, ‘war, war’ was at all times accompanied by ‘jaw, jaw’, as the growing number of members of the Allied coalition jostled for position with one another and gradually elaborated a common position in respect of Napoleon (a process that, in testimony to the immense differences that bedevilled the anti-Napoleonic camp, was not completed until March 1814). In this respect, Lieven places great weight on the efforts of Alexander himself. Having already been the heart and soul of Russian resistance in 1812 and, according to the author at least, a leading influence in the great victory of Leipzig, the tsar struggled to ensure that the Allies aimed at nothing less than the overthrow of Napoleon. In this, of course, he was not alone (Britain’s Lord Castlereagh was a strong exponent of the same policy), but, as Lieven points out, it is almost certainly the case that, without the Tsar’s commitment to war to the death, Napoleon could well have been left on the throne of France in 1814, thereby rendering null and void all the slaughter and suffering of the previous two years.
Men hvordan maktet den russiske hæren å slå så effektivt tilbake utenfor eget hjemland og ekstreme vinterlige forhold? Var ikke den russiske hæren et sørgelig umoderne skue?
… what about the much touted idea that Russian soldiers were simply too stupid to run away? As might be expected, Lieven does not dignify such claims with a direct response, but instead we hear a great deal about the internal organisation of the Russian regiment. Utterly isolated from civilian society, Russian soldiers evolved in a very close-knit world of their own, and this imbued them with immense loyalty to one another; it was this loyalty that sustained them in such dramatic fashion on the battlefields of Borodino and Leipzig.
This leads to the central message of Lieven’s work. For him, the Russian army of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was clearly a force of great strength and versatility that was more than capable of meeting the challenges posed by the French Revolution and Napoleon without having to engage in fundamental change. And, as with the Russian army, so with the whole of the Russian state. Far from being some ramshackle eastern despotism, this was in many ways a vibrant and forward-looking organism that possessed extraordinary resources and even offered a number of the advantages that are normally associated only with the French Revolution.
Bonustips: Se også intervjuene svenske Axess TV har gjort med Lieven.
Den brittiske historikern Dominique (sic) Lieven har ägnat sin forskning åt den ryska staten och det ryska imperiets tillväxt genom seklerna. I det här programmet tar han upp Rysslands säregna historiska öde att vara en stat som ligger i utkanten, först av det bysantinska imperiet, där Konstantinopel var centrum, och sedan av Europa, där stater som Frankrike och England var de imperiala stormakterna.
Thomas Gür intervjuer Lieven om temaet imperier.
Mellan det förkristna Assyriska väldet och tjuguhundratalets Sovjetunionen har begreppet imperium getts vitt skilda innebörder.
