Thanks for another excellent article and the “shout out” to NAFO. I know military establishments -- even the Russians -- plan for a myriad of scenarios, but I’d wager having your propaganda campaign derailed and defeated by a bunch of “cartoon dogs” was not one of the contemplated contingencies. Slava Ukraini!
I hadn't heard about Moshchun, thank you for that memorable description. Thirty thousand attacking soldiers for 16 days could not take the village. Do you have any sense of how many Ukrainian soldiers were defending and what were their losses?
The piece in Small Wars Journal says that about 3000 Ukrainian soldiers defended Moshchun. 84 of them are said to have been killed. Here are their names:
Sep 29, 2023·edited Sep 29, 2023Liked by Mick Ryan
Thanks for the instructive article. Strictly speaking, however, it wasn't Mao who developed the concept of people's war. Marx and Engels had already analysed people's war in detail in the 19th century in its two main forms as an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and national liberation war and a "proletarian" revolutionary war, even if they didn't summarise it systematically. Although Mao drew on these analyses, he didn't reconstruct them systematically, but instead conceived his own systematic theory of people's war for Chinese conditions. Due to the power-political fusion of the anti-imperialist guerrillas with the workers' movement in the 20th century, Lenin, Mao, Võ Nguyên Giáp and Che Guevara were considered protagonists of the people's war, but in fact the concept didn't emerge just in the 20th century (cf. Wilfried Metsch: Die Kunst des Aufstandes. Studies on Revolution, Guerilla and World War in Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, 2020, pp. 143-177).
By the way, a detailed and well worth seeing documentary about the Battle of Moshchun (with English subtitles) was made by Radio Svoboda:
More great insights from the field, Mick! Thank you! On the people’s war concept I see tremendous parallels between your observations in Ukraine and Vietnam with the Viet Minh against the French and the Viet Cong against the South and Americans. Maybe it is just closer context to Vietnam being in my lifetime and having studied the history of that war.
I do hope your descriptions of a people’s war find its way into your final analysis of the Ukrainian way of war and become requires study here in US military colleges, and foreign policy schools and history departments.
In your penultimate paragraph, you wrote ‘… While military forces might fight battles, it is actually nations that fight wars. Building a cohesive society, and then providing it with the right purpose, is critical in building and sustaining a nation’s war fighting capability.‘ It’s something that few Australians people, including some of our politicians, probably do not fully comprehend.
Thanks for another excellent article and the “shout out” to NAFO. I know military establishments -- even the Russians -- plan for a myriad of scenarios, but I’d wager having your propaganda campaign derailed and defeated by a bunch of “cartoon dogs” was not one of the contemplated contingencies. Slava Ukraini!
I hadn't heard about Moshchun, thank you for that memorable description. Thirty thousand attacking soldiers for 16 days could not take the village. Do you have any sense of how many Ukrainian soldiers were defending and what were their losses?
The piece in Small Wars Journal says that about 3000 Ukrainian soldiers defended Moshchun. 84 of them are said to have been killed. Here are their names:
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Список_загиблих_у_боях_за_Мощун
Thanks for the instructive article. Strictly speaking, however, it wasn't Mao who developed the concept of people's war. Marx and Engels had already analysed people's war in detail in the 19th century in its two main forms as an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and national liberation war and a "proletarian" revolutionary war, even if they didn't summarise it systematically. Although Mao drew on these analyses, he didn't reconstruct them systematically, but instead conceived his own systematic theory of people's war for Chinese conditions. Due to the power-political fusion of the anti-imperialist guerrillas with the workers' movement in the 20th century, Lenin, Mao, Võ Nguyên Giáp and Che Guevara were considered protagonists of the people's war, but in fact the concept didn't emerge just in the 20th century (cf. Wilfried Metsch: Die Kunst des Aufstandes. Studies on Revolution, Guerilla and World War in Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, 2020, pp. 143-177).
By the way, a detailed and well worth seeing documentary about the Battle of Moshchun (with English subtitles) was made by Radio Svoboda:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfDWi-VNdE0
More great insights from the field, Mick! Thank you! On the people’s war concept I see tremendous parallels between your observations in Ukraine and Vietnam with the Viet Minh against the French and the Viet Cong against the South and Americans. Maybe it is just closer context to Vietnam being in my lifetime and having studied the history of that war.
I do hope your descriptions of a people’s war find its way into your final analysis of the Ukrainian way of war and become requires study here in US military colleges, and foreign policy schools and history departments.
In your penultimate paragraph, you wrote ‘… While military forces might fight battles, it is actually nations that fight wars. Building a cohesive society, and then providing it with the right purpose, is critical in building and sustaining a nation’s war fighting capability.‘ It’s something that few Australians people, including some of our politicians, probably do not fully comprehend.
Great article. Thank you.
Thank you Nathanael, I should read the article! They were outnumbered 10:1 and inflicted 7:1 the casualties. It must have been some crazy battle..