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Just wars and Limited Wars: Restraints on the Use of the Soviet Armed Forces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Christopher D. Jones
Christopher D. Jones
Affiliation:
Marquette University
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Abstract

According to Soviet military theorists, the war aims of a government determine not only the scale of military action and diplomatic alliances, but the “moral-political factor,” the extent to which soldiers and civilians regard a war as “just” and support the policy of their government. Soviet theorists caution that if both soldiers and civilians regard a war as “unjust,” the government runs a greater risk of military setbacks. If such setbacks occur, domestic opposition to the war may develop and domestic tensions that existed prior to the war may become exacerbated. In pursuing “unjust” war aims, a government risks “moral-political” threats to the morale of its troops, the stability of its home front, and the legitimacy of the regime.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , October 1975 , pp. 44 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1975

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References

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30 Sokolovskii (fn. 18), 99. The same argument is made in the 1963 and 1968 Soviet editions.

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64 Ibid., 136.

65 Ibid., 141–44.

66 Ibid., 145. Suslov attributes this quotation to Komintern, No. 16–17 (1929). 32-Dzerzhinsky's view is shared by Adam Bromke, a Western historian: see Poland's Politics: Idealism vs. Realism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1967), 54Google Scholar.

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72 Suslov (fn. 57), 89.

73 Ibid., 141–42.

74 Ibid., 155.

75 Tukhachevsky's account of the war, “Th e March Beyond the Vistula,” is reprinted in Pilsudski's Year 1920 (fn. 60). Tukhachevsky does not refer to Yegorov and Budenny by name but does mention their armies (pp. 259–62). His analysis of the war is open to some doubt. He claims that the Poles did welcome the Red Army enthusiastically, and that if the Provisional Revolutionary Council had been installed in Warsaw, all of Western Europe would have erupted in revolution (pp. 242–44). Louis Fischer questions the validity of Tukhachevsky's assessment of Polish and European politics on pp. 395 and 397 of The Life of Lenin (fn. 61).

76 Suslov (fn. 57), 155–56.

77 Ibid., 156.

78 Zetkin, , Reminiscences of Lenin (New York: International Publishers 1934), 18–20Google Scholar.