The Russian Way of War: Operational Art, 1904–1940 by Richard W. Harrison. University Press of Kansas (http://www.kansaspress.ku. edu), 2501 West 15th Street, Lawrence, Kansas 66049-3905, 2001, 368 pages, $39.95.

In the summer of 1941, the Red Army was nearly annihilated during the opening phases of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Poorly led, improperly deployed, and in the midst of reorga-nizing and reequipping, even the finest and most lavishly equipped Soviet formations fared poorly in their initial confrontations with the German army. Yet, following the catastrophes of 1941, the Red Army recovered and was able to conduct ever more complex and effective operations, ultimately grinding down the Wehrmacht.

Sheer weight of numbers- both human and material- certainly played a part, but the stereotype of the "Soviet juggernaut" is only part of the story. This significant, major study is more concerned with examining the intellectual and theoretical roots of this remarkable resurgence. Harrison has produced a concise, thoroughly researched examination of the development of "the operational art" in tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. In the author’s own words, this study strives to illuminate "the rich heritage of operational thought and practice accumulated by the Soviet army and its imperial predecessor" (p. 1). The result is an exceptionally readable and convincing "intellectual history" of an army.

Systematic study of the operational level of war- defined in Soviet parlance as "the connecting link between strategy and tactics" (p. 2)- is essentially a twentieth-century phenomenon. Dramatic advances in the practice of war, including the expansion of armies, increased weapons range and lethality, and the advent of modern command and control, necessitated changes in military thought. The author convincingly argues that operational art represents "a distinctly Russian response" to these challenges.

Harrison develops a series of quantitative "indices"- number of troops engaged, length of front, depth of operation, and duration. He argues that significant increases across several indices amounted to a qualitative change in the military art and that the Soviets developed new terminology and concepts to confront this change. His excellent narrative traces the development of Russian/Soviet operational thinking from the Russo-Japanese war through military symposia and war games on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. The intellectual underpinnings of the sophisticated, multifront operations of the later years on the eastern front emerge clearly as Soviet thinkers developed the theory of the "deep operation" in the mid-1930s.

Harrison’s account richly details the role of the theorists and their ideas, but he does not neglect the context within which this theorizing took place. He deftly analyzes the effect of combat experience in the Civil War, the Polish-Soviet conflict, the Spanish Civil War, and (most notably) the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s. While highlighting the sophistication of the Soviet theory of the deep operation, he also emphasizes the human cost of the purge and the heavy price paid by the Red Army in dealing with the resulting frequent, politically motivated reorganizations. Students of military reform may greatly benefit from studying this account.

The author is somewhat less successful in his rare forays into comparative history. He attempts to distance his discussion of Russian and Soviet operational art from parallel developments in Germany, notably blitzkrieg, on the grounds that "blitzkrieg is, at heart, a strategy for waging war, while operational art is subordinate to strategy" (emphasis in original, p. 268). This represents a seriously outdated view of blitzkrieg. More recent scholarship on German combined-arms warfare has effectively discredited the idea of "blitzkrieg strategy," and the comparisons between Soviet and German operational practice are far more complex than Harrison allows.

The author’s research is thoroughly grounded in the military-theoretical literature of the period. It is filled with insights into the formulation of doctrine, the problems of military transformation, and the role of professional military education. At the same time, one emerges with an appreciation of the importance of individual reformers and the social dynamic within the officer corps. The Russian Way of War is a most important study and should be mandatory reading for all students of the operational art.

Richard R. Muller
Maxwell AFB, Alabama