eBook The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands ePub

Statiev is overly reliant on tainted Soviet sources: both tainted archives and tainted scholarly sources published by the political agencies of the Soviet regime. Statiev levies broad condemnations, for example:

The national guards and police in Latvia and Estonia also hunted Jews. Most Latvian Jews who died under the Nazi occupation and those transported to Latvia from Austria, Hungary, and Germany were killed by Latvians rather than Germans. The notorious Latvian Arajs Commando Unit with 3,000 men, led by the lawyer Viktors Arajs, killed 26,000 and indirectly facilitated the extermination of 34,000 civilians, mainly Jews. The 18th Latvian Police Battalion, commanded by Major Rubenis, executed all Jews in the Belorussian Slonim town of 1942. These executioners were mostly former Aizsargi members and soldiers of the Latvian Army.

Digging under the covers, Germans commanded every aspect of the execution of the Holocaust in Latvia. Arajs Commando numbered 300-500 during the Holocaust in Latvia, not 3,000. Arajs and his men were convicted of killing tens of thousands--but they did not operate independently. And it was the Germans--Friedrich Jeckeln's hand-picked team--who executed the largest mass killing in the Baltics, in the Rumbula forest: 25,000 dead. Notably, even Statiev's (non-Soviet) source on the question of collaboration states Latvians mostly guarded or dug pits while Germans did the shooting. But moving to the question of Slonim and my quarrel with Statiev's scholarship:

The 18th Latvian Police Battalion's officers were convicted for war crimes in a Soviet show trial and subsequently executed. The problem? (1) The battalion had not yet been formed when the Germans--as documented in their own records--executed Slonim's Jews. (2) One of the officers the Soviets executed was indisputably documented to be hospitalized at the date of slaughter alleged in Soviet "records." (3) The battalion was not even in Slonim when the Soviets allege their war crime. Last, but not least, (4) not a single one of Statiev's non-Soviet sources says anything about Slonim or the 18th Police Battalion.

Statiev cites demonstrably false show trial propaganda and propagandistic Soviet-era histories as historical fact. He also misrepresents Western sources. Having done so, Statiev calls into question the objectivity and historical accuracy of his entire work.

One star for citations as a reading of what sources contend, The only crime here is Statiev's--against scholarship, for not separating facts from Soviet fiction.

Bought this on Amazon as a damaged book and received a copy in absolutely pristine condition. The subject matter, counterinsurgency operations in Western Russia 1944-1954, has been under-researched. This volume changes that. It is well organized and details the rules under which the anti-partisan forces operated. It includes background and historical context, and accounts by agents and soldiers who fought on both sides. The words are densely packed and reading glasses are recommended. There is duplication. Through it all, I felt that there was a distance between now and the actual events, sort of a wooden presentation.. Three stars for ease of reading, but an additional two stars for the enormous amount of research and effort that went in to creating this work.

Soviet Pseudo-Ops

"The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands" by Alexander Statiey is an excellent introduction to the soviet policy for dealing with partisans, guerrillas, and banditry with what one would think is draconian methods of counterinsurgency and pacification. As a byproduct of covering early soviet counterinsurgency doctrine you get a detailed look at Nazi anti-partisan operations and doctrine employed in the borderlands during WW II. All I can echo is R. L. Huffs Amazon review is spot on. I would like to add from my perspective is that chapter nine on police tactics is my favorite section of the book with its focus on the tactics, techniques and procedures employed to counter this threat. In particular is the coverage the soviet use of pseudo operation and units to penetrate, isolate and eliminate the partisan and guerrilla human and physical infrastructure. It is by far the best coverage I have read on the use of this strategy by the soviets. Overall I highly recommend this book and think it was well worth the cost.

I've given it four stars due to certain redundancies, but as English does not seem to be the author's native language these are no real handicap.

This is an excellent overview of the anti-Soviet resistance groups operating in the Western borderlands of the USSR, and the author pulls no punches in describing their origin, composition, and conduct as well as delineating the ruthless Soviet counterinsurgency techniques employed by KGB special forces. I don't know if any "sharing" was done between the USSR and USA in the Vietnam era, but it seems the "Phoenix project" of targeted assassination and black operations was not just a CIA invention.

The author connects all the dots: the history of pre-Soviet and early Soviet-era rebellions (Tambov, Kronstadt) and the often Nazi-collaborating background of the postwar guerillas and their leaders. The West vainly sought to turn these insurgencies into early "contra" forces; but without outside support the logistics of revolt behind the "iron curtain" deemed armed struggle to certain defeat. In the end, of course, this period of history was ended by non-violent mass action and political dealmaking, not insurgent armies.

A telling irony here is how much this account parallels US counter-insurgency strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan at present. But then, "good guys are allowed to do what bad guys get hung for."