21952

Just to nitpick, this isn’t quite true. Most pre-modern societies very much did not arm the marginalized part of their populace for fear of revolt. And military performance was very much part of the image of being an elite: you were expected to strap on the shiny armor and ride your chariot/warhorse/etc in front of the lines and win the battle. Which is not to say that there weren’t peasant levies, but they were not the focus of the army (either in terms of military power or societal credit).

It wasn’t until the modern era (16th / 17th centuries and the musket) that enlisting the poor to stand in a line and trade shots with each other became a thing.

21953

I mean, in Korea, even if you are a KPOP star at the height of your popularity, you gotta serve in the Military.

21954

Sigh, I’m resoundingly pro-Ukraine, but knowing the enormous stockpiles of shit Russia/Soviet has piled up, I am also worried about the future, Putin is merciless but also has to win, its a game of thrones for him.

I think it will turn into, how many conscription rounds can he do before something breaks in Russia.

21955

I for one don’t think Janster comes off as pro-Russian, but it may be confusing as he seems to take some pro-Russian information sources at face value, when they are in fact nonsense propaganda and disinformation.

21956

Probably so, yeah, but I guess I have a hard time getting my head around a government that would literally say “you people are useless, go and die, mmkay?” I mean, yeah, it happens, but usually there’s at least some fig leaf!

For instance, in Rome, before Marius at least, the legions were recruited from people with a certain level of wealth; they had to provide their own arms and armor. When Marius kicked off a for lack of a better term more modern approach to raising armies–and partly this was due to demographics; there simply weren’t enough suitable men who met the property qualifications to fill the number of formations Rome needed, as I understand it–they started recruiting actual poor people, and providing at state expense their gear. But there was much opposition to these measures, for the reasons you offer as well as other, more Roman, considerations.

The “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” is definitely a product of the age of Revolutions, or at least the Enlightenment. By then the idea of a military aristocracy and war as the purview largely of the elites had evaporated in the haze of gunpowder smoke and the need for mass armies.

21957

It’s making me think of 1984, where perpetual war is part of the mechanism of social control.

21958

Yes, this.

21959

What you say is largely true of the Middle Ages but history didn’t begin then :) The mass armies of the Hellenistic/Roman eras largely relied upon the poorer classes for troops. The aristocracy usually were horseman, but your phalanx/legionnarie were the lower classes, even many barbarians by the late Roman Empire. The later Romans even used conscription so that tells you something about who was going to end up in the army. THe same also goes for the earlier Persian, Babylonian, Assyrian, etc, empires.

21960

I mean, that is somewhat true. Peasants have always been the cannon fodder. But in most ancient civilizations citizenship = military service. So, while the peasants were in the phalanx even the rich were still expected to participate in the military when at the right age. The rich had it a lot better though, because they could afford better armor, equipment, and training. They got the “cushy” jobs in the wars. But, they were still on the field, so to speak.

We have just kind of cut out that part of it over time. Now the powerful and wealthy just use the poor to fight.

This is why some of those stories of Russian soldiers getting killed, or even the videos blaring the loud music are particularly icky in my mind. The average Ivan on the front line probably doesn’t want to be in Ukraine, or if he does, he has been brainwashed into thinking it a good idea.

The true evil, and the people who deserve a visit from a drone carrying a grenade, sleep in mansions or penthouses overlooking the Moskova river.

21961

Peasants were absolutely not in the phalanx. The phalanx was the core formation and would be made up of well-off citizens. And in general pre 16th/17th century the core formations of larger settled peoples would be made up of a military elite, largely because of the price of equipment and amount of training needed.

The Romans are the big obvious exception because the population under Roman rule became so large they had to mobilize and professionalise poorer citizens and non-citizen auxiliaries rather than rely on part-time citizen service (and the state was both wealthy and capable enough to do this). From the 16th/17th century we see a return to the Roman model of an aristocratic leadership commanding a force whose core formations are made up of the lower classes - right down to the expectation of personal courage on the part of the aristocrats.

(The other exception is … wait for it … the mongols :). Although I guess post conquest the mongols themselves formed a hereditary military aristocracy)

It’s only really in WW2 and afterwards that the idea of an hereditary military elite as commanders falls away in most of Europe.

21962

Fucking A brother, preach.

On the one hand, I rejoice in reading the Ukes’ hitting that occupied school full of mobiks because it’s a big hit on orc combat power and morale. As a strategist, It made me cheer.

But as a human, I weep when I see the footage of a drone mortar bomb dropping in a trench where private conscriptovich is curled up whimpering for his mamma.

Still it’s a war, and that means killing and maiming as hard and as cruel as you can. And this war, unlike some previous ones is a just one imo. One that can’t end easily and quickly with a negotiated settlement. The Russians need to go home, all of em and then, perhaps this shit can be over. Sucks to be on the wrong side of it, even worse than being on the right side of it.

21963

They absolutely were. Maybe not initially as it was envisioned in ancient Greece, with small armies of completely professional soldiers. When it was created, the phalanx was certainly all professional soldiers, but later on the Macedonians used conscripts and peasants to fill out the phalanx. They were trained to become professional soldiers and would move out of the phalanx, it was literally the first job you had in the military. They built an army in which any man that could hold a shield and sarissa could become a professional and well paid soldier. It was genius and the results speak for themselves.

Fuck, Alexander threw anyone he could find into the middle of the Phalanx.

They were quite literally called “foot soldiers” while the more elite troops were either in the Calvary that would charge in when the Phalanx had the enemy pinned, or serve as elite. They were very much the “cannon fodder” of the Macedonian army and served as a tool to let the calvary do their work.

So, to say they didn’t take men from the peasantry is completely wrong. This is literally how Phillip II and Alexander the Great conquered most of Europe and Asia. They created the peasant-to-soldier industrial complex. You could argue that the Macedonian phalanx is a completely separate thing than the Hoplite phalanx, but… the results speak for themselves here.

21964

History didn’t begin in the Hellenistic/Roman era, either. :)

In pre-Alexander Greece, the hoplites (before the phalanx, I think there’s some confusion of the terms in this thread) were made up of the citizenry, i.e. not the lower classes; similar for Republican Rome. The bottom rung of society were, of course, slaves, and enslaved soldiers were exceedingly rare. (It’s unclear to what extent the Spartans’ helots served as soldiers but I think most people believe they just accompanied their masters as servants.)

The main point is that the “the poor die in the wars of the rich” is very much not a historical truth, but a modern one. I’m not a historian but here is one:

21965

More armor coming to Ukraine:

21966

Right which is why I mentioned the Persians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians, which you conveniently choose to ignore :)

There’s more to ancient armies than the Greeks, who had the rather unique “citizen soldier” thing going on where every citizen fought, rich and poor. Someone above has already covered the Macedonians so I won’t discuss that. But the ancient Persians didn’t raise armies of 100,000 men or more just from the aristocrats. Aristocrats made up their cavalry but most ancient infantry in Persia (and across the board consisted of the lower classes) - they couldn’t afford horses and it was not prestigious enough for the upper classes. There were professional units like The Immortals but they were the minority of infantry. And further back, the armies of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt largely consisted of peasant levies that fought when they were not needed on the farm. Later on there was some professionalization as kings wanted/needed to campaign year round, but it wasn’t the rich volunteering or being conscripted into the professional armies as infantry.

And that doesn’t even count ancient China, where peasant levies were quite common early on during the Bronze Age. Like the Romans, they raised large armies, which was impossible without conscription from the lower classes. Later on it became a more professional volunteer force with some conscription, but it seems unlikely that those with good prospects were volunteering in large numbers. In fact those well enough off could buy their way out of conscription with money or supplies.

The simple fact is that 90% to 95% of the population in the ancient world were farmers, and the raising of mass armies was impossible without tapping that resource. It was European Middle Ages that were an exception because the warrior classes did not want to arm the lower class peasants, which helped to limit the size of European armies, along with economic issues (early on) and the lack of centralized authority.

He mentions the Roman army only recruiting citizens, but just because you were a citizen didn’t mean you were well off. It was more a matter of geography and birth. There were a lot of poor citizens. And by the 200’s that’s irrelevant because Caracalla made every free man across the empire a citizen at that time. And given the size of Roman armies, it’s obvious that they were largely made up of the poor that had no better prospects.

The only thing he talks about from the Bronze Age is that the upper classes fought by chariot. However, this totally ignores that chariots while the main striking force, they did not make up the majority of the troops. The majority would have been lower class infantry. His main point is that both aristocrats did fight and play a prominent role unlike today.

But I’m not denying that. My point is that in most ancient armies, the lower classes made up the infantry, and hence made up most of the army. Both fought, which I agree is unlike today when the wealthy upper class largely doesn’t. So I am not disagreeing with that conclusion regarding today’s military. What I am disagreeing with is the idea that prior to the Middle Ages, the aristocracy or upper classes predominated in the armies of the times. That’s just not true. The large armies of the ancient world largely consisted of farmers serving as infantry - the economics and demography of the times demanded it.

21967
21968

But, when does an army recruited from the potentially rebellious start to, well, rebel?

I think the state of the Russian army today is the closest analog to 1917.

I suspect it’s a mistake to look for change back at the home front because the power and resources available to the modern bureaucratic state dwarf what the Tsar had available. Once the army became unreliable, he had no other force capable of enforcing his rule in his own capital. Putin has hundreds of thousands of police and national guards who are well equipped and seem perfectly willing to violently suppress whatever demonstrations might occur. (But at some point the incentives might change. Suppose rumours about Putin’s health become demonstrably true and common knowledge? Murdering citizens might seem like a good long term career while the regime seems capable of going on for decades. But murdering citizens to defend a man who won’t be here next year may feel a lot more risky.)

But back on the front line, the officers and commissars and military police are heavily outnumbered and outgunned by the mass of the recruits. Just like in 1917, those recruits are under-trained, increasingly badly equipped, often under-fed, terribly led and dying like flies. At some point, increasingly large units and formations stop functioning as military organisations when soldiers choose not to fight.

Because this is a phenomenon of social psychology, it’s impossible to predict when it will happen. But as long as Putin’s regime continue to act like the Tsar - throw more peasants at the enemy until our inevitable glorious victory! - I’m convinced that it will.

21969

You confuse aggressive indifference with brainwashed support. Average Ivan is promised monthly pay he won’t otherwise earn in a year, and also a prospect of bringing home some loot. There were no volunteers till the huge bucks were promised. Were, there were some - in Russian prisons.

Have you seen Russian propaganda clips? Nowadays none of them are about some ideas or national pride. It’s all about “your life is shit, do you know you can legally escape paying the mortgage by going into the army?”

A lot of mobilized people were just doing what they were told or were tricked into the draft. No one in Russia was punished for evading the draft. And you can probably see from the videos soldiers aren’t very motivated. They’re there mostly out of their own free will, but they don’t care about the war itself.

Edit: I realize your point was different, itvs just I’m irritated by the idea of brainwashed people who believe in some absurd. This implies they’re just not informed enough. I don’t believe this is the case.

21970

Almost scared of posting on this forum, the level of hostility makes this topic hard to discuss in an honest way.
I think it’s weird to find that people are so hard on their bias they can’t see anything but. I still recommend seeing both sides…and no, don’t watch RT or Russian propaganda…djiz, but there are some that are way more level-headed on what’s going on in Ukraine.

21971

Janster, people aren’t being hostile to you because they are pro-Ukrainian (just like you are too!), it’s because of the way you write your posts. I think if you tried to take a bit more time writing and approached your posts with a bit more empathy and with the idea of assuming the best in other people, you would get a much friendlier reception and a better quality of discussion.

As is, your posts are often quite insulting to others motives and intelligence. And I certainly think you’ve also had your motives and intelligence insulted! But that’s not going to change if you insist on dashing off quick posts with lines like “I think it’s weird to find that people are so hard on their bias they can’t see anything but.”. That’s just insulted everyone else in the thread for no reason!

Be kind and open and you’ll receive kindness more and openness. Call everyone else biased and naïve and they will reflect it back at you.