What Chapaev Can Teach Us About War and Ukrainian Death Battalions

Recently Maria and I watched the 1934 Soviet film Chapaev, a biopic of Vasily Chapaev, a Russian folk hero from the Civil War. 88 years later, this movie aged well and is still as relevant as ever. Movies tend to grow stale over time and become unwatchable (who wants to watch a typical film from the 1930s, for the love of God), but this isn’t one of them. Chapaev is just as watchable and exciting as any contemporary war movie, and the lessons are just as important now as they were when it first hit the silver screen.

This classic war movie directed by Georgi Nikolayevich Vasiliyev and Sergei Dmitrievich Vasiliyev (despite their shared surnames, Georgi and Sergei were not related), paints a colorful and intimate portrait of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev, a distinguished commander in the young Red Army of 1919.

Sergei Eisenstein tends to get most of the international acclaim of Soviet cinema from this period, but take that reputation with a grain of salt. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Eisenstein, and he is correctly credited with his massive contributions to cinematic theory and montage. The problem with Eisenstein is that he was a monolith, and monoliths don’t move. I think western critics, even people who should know better like teachers in film schools, like portraying the Soviet Union as a monolith, and that’s why they fixate so much on Eisenstein to the detriment of other Soviet filmmakers. Eisenstein just never adapted to the concept of “talkies,” movies with sound and conversations between characters without dialogue cards. Alexander Nevsky (1938) is a great movie, but it is not constructed any differently than his famous silent films like Strike and Battleship Potemkin. He produced astonishing and moving set pieces, cityscapes, and battle scenes, but his characters are props and it doesn’t actually make a difference if they speak through audio or through text on the screen. Eisenstein never took advantage of developing technology to turn his characters into relatable human beings and that did cause his films to suffer in terms of entertainment value.

Chapaev is based on the 1923 book by the same name, written by Dmitri Furmanov, the commissar who served alongside him in 1919. This is a striking similarity with the much later 1969 film Patton, which was based on personal consultations with his fellow general officer Omar Bradley. One of the major storytelling problems with Patton was that it excessively deified Bradley, at (ironically) Patton’s expense. The movie’s script writers often went through extreme lengths to portray Bradley as a wise, stoic leader and Patton as a blustering fool, and this comes across to me as grossly unfair. That’s of course the pitfall of any film that relies on the testimony of a living man about a rival who’s dead and can’t give his side of the story. Perhaps, since Dmitri Furmanov had already died himself in 1926, there’s a reason the Chapaev movie didn’t fall into the same trap as Patton. The historical events in Furmanov’s book could be viewed and analyzed from a position of complete neutrality without the author inconveniently influencing the moviemakers with whatever personal biases he might have had.

When an American thinks of a great 20th Century general, George Patton might come to mind. While Patton and Chapaev were both famous generals, the similarities end right around there. Patton was a West Point graduate from an affluent background. Chapeav was just a regular guy from a humble peasant family. At one point in the movie, he admits that he had only learned to read two years earlier. Chapaev was no Patton, so what was he? A Robin Hood? Well, no. Because even Robin Hood, who yes, was probably illiterate like most people in the 12th Century, was a nobleman. Chapaev wasn’t even that. Think about the guy you just bought cigarettes from at the corner store, or the guy you bought eggs from at the street market. Or maybe the guy you hired to paint your kitchen. That’s Chapaev.

But even the clerk at a convenience store or the guy who painted your kitchen have a huge advantage over the real Chapaev. They grew up in the modern world, literate, and with access to modern literature and technological marvels like the internet. Chapaev had none of those things. Try to imagine someone who has only known how to read for two years, has basically no formal education whatsoever, and everything he knows about the world is based on his own personal experiences in a random Russian village, as a soldier on various battlefields, and whatever books he was able to find along the way and read by candlelight. As a Russian peasant, Chapaev has managed to develop himself into someone who’s at least somewhat familiar with Russian-centric military history, but basically nothing else. For example, he’s deeply admiring of Napoleon’s military genius and is familiar with all of his military campaigns, including in the invasion of Russia, but literally has never heard of Alexander the Great. Chapaev doesn’t even know who Alexander was, and is confused and angry upon hearing about him for the first time. That’s what it’s like to be someone who taught himself how to read and haphazardly read whatever books he could get his hands on in the middle of fighting a war.

Don’t think of Chapaev, in the movie or real life, as stupid, because he absolutely wasn’t. In one scene, he grabs a pile of potatoes sitting on a table and uses them to lecture one of his subordinates about how a commander should lead his troops into various combat situations. Watching him emphatically push around potatoes like they’re soldiers on a battlefield is, from a filmmaking standpoint, meant to be comedic and a little ridiculous, but show that all the things he’s saying is 100% true and correct. A typical professional officer knows military doctrine from formal school courses. Chapaev learned everything he knew from common sense, intuition, and brutal, bloody trial and error in a real war.

It’s hard for me to think of American historical equivalents of Chapaev, and that’s because our own revolution, though bloody and tumultuous, was not a class war. The local ruling class rebelled against the crown, and went no further. Even our civil war was fought between industrial free states and swashbuckler slave states. John Brown and Nat Turner took up clubs and axes to chop up slave owners, but they were isolated incidents. Civil War proper was fought by a typical army led by typical affluent middle and upper class officers. Nevertheless, the armies of the Yankee North were clumsy, stupid amateurs fighting against disciplined, elite southern officers trained from an early age to understand organization and warfare in all its aspects. An army of school teachers, merchants, factory workers, and farmers went to war against the West Point-trained professionals of the South and won through industrial attrition, and, above all else, sheer tenacity.

We Americans should not forget our own Marxist period in the early 20th Century, a period when coal miners and steel workers went toe-to-toe against the US Army and National Guard. We should remember when American workers formed international battalions and brigades and went to fight in Spain. And definitely let us not ever forget when our forefathers strayed into World War II, and how the white-gloved officers of Germany sneered at the disorderly mob of American urbanites and farm boys sent against them. Our forefathers were amateurs, clumsy, ignorant conscripted idiots who had no idea how to fight against the disciplined and battle-hardened forces of the Third Reich.

In those early confrontations, Americans only survived through their personal ingenuity, and industrial know-how they learned from working in wheat fields and factories. Americans in those early battles in North Africa weren’t proper, disciplined soldiers. But they did know how to jury-rig a damaged Jeep or a Sherman tank to keep it in the fight against nazism for a little longer. And skills like that, against all odds, is what won the global war against Hitler, from the East and the West. Oh yes, the story of the Red Army in the Russian Civil War should be, in principle, quite familiar to us. So who would be an American Chapaev? Patton won’t do. Not even Ulysses S. Grant would do. Maybe the best American equivalent of Chapaev would be someone like Oliver Law, one of the commanders of our Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, and the first African American commander in American history.

By 1919, revolution and civil war had flipped the Russian Empire upside down to Biblical proportions. The meek had somewhat literally inherited the earth. Consider the Russian revolution, or any revolution, to be like the revolution of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Yes, Jesus was a revolutionary. It’s convenient to paint him in politically correct terms, but he was a revolutionary who literally declared the temple would be torn down brick by brick. For God’s sake, he was nailed to cross. That’s not something that happens to people who are polite and respectful of the rules. Jesus was in every sense of the word a revolutionary. He demanded his disciples abandon their worldly possessions and follow him. Maybe I’m preaching to the choir, but think of the implications of this. A rich man, naturally, will refuse to give up his worldly wealth to serve the revolution, leading Jesus to famously comment that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now imagine yourself in 1919 Russia. Up until 1917, the Russian Empire was a typical European feudalist society. Their population was divided into the haves and the have-nots. The farms, factories, ports, trains, boats, and everything else was owned by a handful of rich oligarchs and pretty much everyone else was an employee in the Marxist layer cake. The Bolsheviks tore all that down. Anyone who benefited in the previous system was, at absolute best, disenfranchised. The problem with revolutions, and part of what makes them so horrible and violent, is that they, by definition, throw away the stability of the system they just tore down. Think of what this meant in military terms. Russia certainly had thousands of well-educated and professional officers for their military. Excellent leaders, scholars, and technicians who understood all the fine details of running an army, navy, and air force. But those men would naturally side against the revolution. Any officer who didn’t would still have to be viewed with suspicion. Besides, what kind of idiot would willingly surrender all his property, servants, and money to the mob? It would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

So, inevitably, the communist revolutions of the 20th Century, starting with Tsarist Russia, were disorderly mobs of workers and farmers with rifles and sticks. They were no different than the peasant revolts that routinely rose up and were just as routinely crushed throughout history. Out of Darwinian necessity, the Red Army needed leaders, anyone with the talent and common sense to figure out a modern battlefield without being immediately crushed. Leaders like Chapaev.

The movie relationship between Chapaev and his commissar Furmanov is depicted colorfully and fairly, furthermore, it offers valuable insight into the history of the USSR in this time period, particularly for a westerner. We vaguely know that “commissars” were political officers that existed in the Red Army, but we really don’t fathom why they existed or what their role was. After watching Chapaev, the role of commissars makes perfect sense, and I fully understand why they were so important. Early in the movie, Chapaev holds a war council with his officers, and it is strange from as military perspective. He proposes his plan and gives his officers the opportunity to argue with and oppose him, more like a democratic assembly than an army briefing. To me, this is a brutally realistic depiction of the Bolshevik forces as an “army of the willing” with a lot of ideological baggage. The typical implied martial authoritarianism of “obey or be killed” just doesn’t work in a situation like this. The Red Army of 1919 wasn’t really an army at all. It was a crowd of regular guys pretending to be an army. They pretended well, but they were still pretending.

I would like everyone to just watch the movie so I won’t describe the scene blow-by-blow, but basically, in a nutshell, Chapaev wanted to attack the enemy from both flanks (this was probably controversial because it required spreading his troops farther) and some of his officers intensely disagreed. Finally, Chapaev asked Furmanov for his opinion, and he supported the plan. I find this scene particulary intriguing because at no point in the movie is Furmanov portrayed as a tactical genius. There’s no evidence he understands tactics at all. He is educated and has an understanding of army discipline, grooming standards, uniforms, and punishment, but that’s it. He might not know anything about tactics, but he doesn’t need to, that’s Chapaev’s job. Chapaev has a plan and Furmanov supports it because he’s confident that Chapaev is right, even if he himself doesn’t have the grasp of military strategy to confirm for sure if that’s true.

Two soldiers approach Furmanov in genuine fear for their lives. Their story is hysterical and confusing, but things quickly become quite clear. A doctor had arrived at the camp and Chapaev ignorantly, stupidly, ordered a veterinarian to certify the doctor to treat wounded men. His soldiers tried to explain that an animal doctor and a human doctor aren’t the same thing, causing Chapaev to be confused and enraged. I like this scene because it reveals Chapaev’s innate humanity. He knows he’s ignorant and inadequate for the position he’s trying to fill, and it’s up to Furmanov to coach and gradually develop Chapaev as a proper commander, including how to dress and present himself properly, and stop looking like a slob.

Later, one of Chapaev’s platoon commanders allows (or maybe actively encourages) his soldiers to loot a local village, stealing their food and livestock, provoking one of the local peasants to woefully lament that they are robbed by the Whites, and then by the Reds. Furmanov confronts the platoon commander, giving him an opportunity to explain himself or at least correct the mistake. But the officer is unrepentant, even going so far as to try to attack Furmanov when challenged about his behavior. Furmanov has him arrested and imprisoned. When Chapaev finds out, he arrives at the jail cell and tries to have the officer released. To Chapaev’s astonishment, the guard stands up to him and matter-of-factly states that he can’t allow him to access the prisoner. It’s an astonishing and revealing chain of events. Chapaev is a charismatic and popular leader, but that comes from treating his subordinates like Robin Hood treated his band of merry men. They’re his buddies. They’re like his friends laboring in a wheat field, or around a table at the tavern. They’re loyal and would die for Chapaev, but he has no control over them. That system would work if he was leading a gang of marauders robbing people and stealing pigs from local villages, but unacceptable for a real army. And that’s why a commissar like Furmanov is needed to step in and instill discipline.

There’s also the ideological and political aspects of a revolution. Lenin ended World War I for Russia, established the Soviet Union, and dictated policy. But the Russian Civil War was fought and won by regular guys like Chapaev, with no understanding of politics and ideology. Based on what I’ve told you already, imagine trying to have a debate with Chapaev about communist theory, and the nuances of Marx, Engels, Trotsky, and Lenin. It should almost go without saying that Chapaev would, at best, not understand the conversation, and probably get confused and angry if you persisted. But again, it wasn’t Chapaev’s job to understand politics, that was what Furmanov was there for.

Now I want to bring up the most poignant moments of Chapaev, and what I found to be the most single inspiring and insightful scene in the movie.

Say what you will about Soviet movies, but they never depict their enemies as stupid or incompetent. This is true of the nazis in WWII, and equally true of the White Russian forces in the Civil War. Really though, it’s common sense, especially with the Civil War. The Whites were, after alll, Russians, and why would Russians depict themselves as stupid? The Whites in Chapaev, and Soviet cinema in general, are depicted as swaggering aristocrats, with a high degree of skill and professionalism that made them deadly on the battlefield. Furthermore, the Whites weren’t alone. They had the full support of the “collective West,” and rightly so. The regimes of western Europe and the USA feared the rise of the Soviet Union and were determined to crush it at all costs. The Whites received reinforcements. Not just weapons, not just money, not just soldiers, though all of those things were certainly helpful. The Whites received military advisors from NATO… errr… I mean the British Empire. Together, Russian and British officers developed a plan to crush Chapaev in a sudden, devastating attack.

That is perhaps the most amazing aspect of Chapaev. The movie depicts extraordinary events in 1919, and yet, more than a century later, it seems that nothing has changed. Even after the end of WWII, the Cold War, and the fall of communism, still, it’s all the same. Look at the western propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine over the past 8+ years, and really think about the implications of it, and how those implications apply to ethnicity and most of all, social class.

Western Europe has a heritage of producing extraordinary professional armies forged by great leaders like Oliver Cromwell, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Slavs, specifically, Russians, are the niggers of Europe. Just like American Confederates saw Black soldiers as cowardly, weak, and stupid, Western Europeans view Russians in exactly the same way. From the “European perspective,” as Ursula von der Leyen would put it, any Russian horde, no matter how vast and powerful, can be broken by a properly sudden and disciplined display of military might. We have seen this assumption play out over and over again throughout history, from the Northern Crusades’ foray into Russia in the 13th Century, the Swedish Empire’s ill-fated expedition ending at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, Napoleon’s march on Moscow in 1812, the Third Reich’s Operation Barbarossa in 1941, and we’re seeing it now with the Ukrainian offensive across the Kharkov region in 2022.

If you think I’m making a logical stretch here, consider this theatrical trailer for the 2018 Ukrainian propaganda film Donbass.

The trailer tells you everything you need to know. The heroes of the film, emphasizing the German journalist, and the middle class car owner. Really, think about this for a moment, and how telling it is that the very first “hero” shown in the trailer is a German journalist, not even a Ukrainian. See, the Kiev government and their propagandists strive to portray themselves as affluent middle class liberals, and that’s part of the reason why this “drama” goes to such ridiculous lengths to stroke the egos of western liberal journalists. Meanwhile, Donbass depicts Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine as dumb, ignorant, redneck white trash. There’s a long sequence making fun of dumb, stupid Russians in a trashy wedding, and another long sequence making fun of a trashy Russian woman trying to convince her grandmother to leave her apartment and go to a separatist stronghold. These cinematic sequences have no value or moral lesson except to emphasize to the western viewer that “Ukrainians” are affluent (and probably homosexual) liberals consistent with “European values.” Meanwhile, Russians are portrayed as working-class people who are stupid and should be viewed with contempt.

Now, back to Chapaev. The Whites launch a massive frontal assault against the Reds, with appropriate dramatic buildup leading to the attack. Finally, we do get to see what the Whites had planned, and it’s something I never would have correctly predicted, even if I had a thousand guesses. The Whites send a death battalion in full dress uniform, banners unfurreled, soldiers in parade formation, bayonets glistening in the sun. I’ll admit that I was utterly confused when I first saw this, which I guess doesn’t matter since this is a Russian movie for Russian audiences, but anyway, it made no sense to me. This is 1919, after World War I and long after everyone in the world knew about the importance of cover and dispersion in the face of modern machine guns and artillery. And still, the Whites kept marching in perfect lines, taking monstrous casualties every step of the way.

Yet, as bizarre as it looks, the tactic works. The Red soldiers are terrified, disheartened, and start to flee. Only the actions of a handful of people, particularly Anka, a female machine gunner (who was a real person and a semi-legendary character in Chapaev mythology, by the way) saves the Red Army from total disaster.

Maria and I watched Chapaev months ago, I was fascinated by this scene then, and I’m even more fascinated now, in light of current events in Ukraine. The Whites’ attack isn’t portrayed as stupid at all. On the contrary, the concept of a Russian army attacking in parade formation against another Russian army is portrayed as a brilliant idea that came very close to succeeding. There is a stereotype that Russians are more hysterical and emotional than westerners and, well, there’s apparently some truth to it. Russian media acknowledges the stereotype, including this scene in Chapaev. The White Russians (and their British advisors) knew how to make the Red Russians hysterical, and I don’t think the premise is silly or made up. If it was silly, Soviet filmmakers in 1924 wouldn’t have depicted it like this.

More than a hundred years later, something strikingly similar happened. The new, modern White Russians, rebranded as the Ukraine, launched massive attacks from both the North and South in Kherson and Kharkov. It is truly an astonishing turn of events, and not so different from attacking in parade formation in 1919. Tens of thousands of White Russian soldiers charged across open terrain in the face of withering artillery fire and air attacks, apparently ignoring casualties and driving forward no matter what. In practical terms, it makes no sense to sacrifice thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles for a small land grab, but it isn’t terrain that matters, it’s the psychological effect. If the goal was to throw Russian news outlets and social media into a total panic, they’ve certainly succeeded.

There are similarities between Russians and Americans, but one of the crucial differences is on display right now. Historically, it’s difficult to coax American soldiers into bloody unsupported attacks. Yes, of course there are countless examples of American forces holding difficult defensive positions against overwhelming attack, or conducing brave attacks against well-defended enemy positions. But I cannot think of even one case of American troops advancing 50+ kilometers into enemy lines with effectively no fire support or air defense. But apparently, this is fairly easy to do with Russian soldiers. Put a crazy idea in their heads, like resurrecting the monarchy in 1919, or reestablishing Ukraine in 2022, and they’ll move heaven and earth to make it happen.

I won’t spoil the rest of the movie except to say Chapaev is worth finding on YouTube or another service and watching in full.

Yesterday, I started a Buy Me A Coffee account for Reading Junkie to raise funds for the webhosting costs, and I am extremely pleased with the outpouring of support. Not even 24 hours after I posted the link I have two supporters who have contributed $30 total toward my $550 goal. These two sponsors are Pkreter ($25) and Dan Summerhill ($5). Thank you so much, guys. I truly appreciate it! To view my donation page, navigate here.

Ian Kummer

Support my work by making a contribution through Boosty

• Facebook
• VK
• LinkedIn

All text in Reading Junkie posts are free to share or republish without permission, and I highly encourage my fellow bloggers to do so. Please be courteous and link back to the original.

I now have a new YouTube channel that I will use to upload videos from my travels around Russia. Expect new content there soon. Please give me a follow here.

Also feel free to connect with me on Quora (I sometimes share unique articles there).

---

---