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| 'By the rules, it's time for the Russians to surrender.' How Western aggression broke down over Crimea 170 years ago | ||
| 2024-09-26 | ||
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Oleg Shevchenko [REGNUM] Russian General Eduard Totleben, the author of the defensive fortification system of Sevastopol, a genius of military fortification and an innovator of sapper warfare, recalled: “While the English were approaching Balaklava, the commander of the Balaklava Greek infantry battalion, Colonel Manto, was holed up in the ancient ruins. With one company of his battalion, including 80 combatants and 30 retired soldiers. They had 4 copper half-pood mortars with them. <…> The enemy vanguard, approaching Balaklava, was unexpectedly met with fire from Greek riflemen.” This small but extremely important episode of the Crimean War bizarrely reflected the history of ancient Taurida. The enemy who invaded Crimea routed our field army in the battle on the Alma River - at the ancient Scythian fortress. But the Greeks - soldiers of the Russian army stopped the enemy's onslaught under the walls of the medieval Genoese fortress of Cembalo. The famous first defense of Sevastopol began exactly 170 years ago, on September 25, 1854, with the feat of our one hundred and ten “Spartans” under the command of Colonel Ivan Manto. The Russian infantry and artillerymen who fought off the first attacks by Fitzroy Raglan and Leroy de Saint-Arnaud certainly did not know that the siege would last 349 days and take the lives of more than two hundred thousand people. Historians still argue about the exact figures, easily adding and subtracting 10 thousand. Beautiful songs will be written about the war, hundreds of paintings will be created, masterpieces of prose will be born - starting with the "Sevastopol Tales" by artillery lieutenant Count Leo Tolstoy. But that's not all. The first large-scale use of the telegraph as a mass media tool, the first photographs as an element of ideological influence, the birth of the Red Cross and Sisters of Mercy service, the squadron of combat steamships - these are also the results of the siege of Sevastopol. The only result that was not achieved was the goal of the Anglo-French-Turkish-Sardinian coalition that fought against us: to return Russia, so to speak, to the “borders of 1691” and block access to the Black Sea. WHOSE KEYS? In France, which in many ways "stirred up the mess", this war was called not the Crimean War, but the Eastern War. And this is more accurate, because military actions were conducted not only in the Crimea and the Black Sea, but also from Kronstadt to the Caucasus, and from Arkhangelsk to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. De jure, the reason for one of the wars, candidates for the “zero world wars,” was a quarrel over the keys: who, the Orthodox or the Catholics, would unlock the doors of the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Bethlehem.
The Ottoman Empire, which ruled Palestine, handed over control of the Bethlehem shrine to the French, to the annoyance of Nicholas I. Petersburg demanded that Sultan Abdul-Mejid I observe the treaty, according to which Russia had the right to protect the Orthodox in Turkey. The "Padishah of the Faithful" - to put it simply - refused, and demanded that Nicholas withdraw his troops from Wallachia and Moldova. This time it was the Tsar who refused, and on October 16, 1853, the Sublime Porte declared war on Russia. Initially, it seemed that the war would be yet another, the tenth Russian-Turkish war. And in this "format" Russia would probably have easily defeated the Ottomans. This was confirmed by the Battle of Sinop, in which Vice-Admiral Pavel Nakhimov utterly defeated the Turkish fleet. The campaign in the Caucasus was quite successful: we can recall the defeat of the Turks at Akhaltsikhe, the capture of Bayazet and other battles where Russian troops defeated a numerically superior enemy. For example, in the battle at Kyuryuk-Dara, 18,000 Russians under the command of Vasily Bebutov defeated the 60,000 strong army of Mustafa Zarif Pasha and his British curator Richard de Guyon. But there was one important "but" in the Eastern War. Initially, the then collective West was involved in the conflict with Russia. "THE BATTLE OF CIVILIZATION AGAINST BARBARISM" The British Empire of Queen Victoria and the Second French Empire of Napoleon III were not satisfied with the order in Europe established after the defeat of Napoleon I, under which the Russian Empire remained one of the hegemons of the continent. And on March 27, 1854, England and France declared war on Russia. Moreover, the British initially did not hesitate in either means or expressions. One of the leaders of English foreign policy, the future Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston pointed out: as a result of the war, Crimea, Circassia and Georgia should be torn away from Russia. And go to Turkey, but, considering the British interest in the Caucasus, these lands should become London's sphere of influence. Finland should be "returned" to the old English ally, Sweden. The restored Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in Palmerston's opinion, was to become a buffer between Russia and the German states - the "anaconda strategy " was not invented in the 20th century. The Baltics were promised to Prussia, and the future Romania to Austria. It is not surprising that both German powers, allies of Russia in the Napoleonic wars, remained neutral in the Crimean War. And in the case of Austria, the neutrality was not at all benevolent (this is how Emperor Nicholas came back to haunt him for saving the Habsburg dynasty during the Hungarian revolution of 1848). The Kingdom of Sardinia, the foundation of the future Italy, also joined the Western alliance, just as in the 20th century the Italians would join Hitler’s adventure in the East. Projects to “contain” and dismember Russia, as in the 21st century, were covered up by the struggle for the cause of progress. On March 31, 1854, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Clarendon, declared from the rostrum of Parliament: Great Britain, they say, is not at all afraid of the Russian threat to the Indian colonies and does not need anything for trade, but only nobly and highly principledly wages “the battle of civilization against barbarism.” On April 22, the "civilizers" subjected Odessa to a barbaric bombardment from the sea. On Holy Saturday, 28 allied ships approached the shore, burned the civilian ships in the port, and attempted to land troops. Fire from Russian shore batteries disrupted the landing, and the allied squadron retreated to the Crimea. WHY SEVASTOPOL? On July 26, the first battle took place between two dozen Anglo-French ships and the coastal fortifications of Sevastopol. But the Western alliance risked landing on land only almost two months later. On September 14, the 60,000-strong expeditionary corps began to be transported to the coast near Yevpatoria. Having managed to defeat the Russian troops of Prince Menshikov at Alma, the corps of de Saint-Arnaud and Raglan rushed towards Sevastopol – and for good reason. If we allegorically compare Russia to a palace, and Novorossiya from the Danube to the Don to a gate, then the Crimean peninsula plays the role of a castle, and the fortress city of Sevastopol plays the role of a keyhole. By taking Sevastopol, the enemies would have "torn off the castle", would have gained access to the Black Sea region, which was critically important for Russia, and would have been ready to destroy the entire structure of the empire. In this case, Palmerston's plan to "decolonize" the recently developed lands of Novorossiya would not have looked so fantastic. After all, it was not Zbigniew Brzezinski who was the first to guess that what makes Russia an empire is control over what is now Ukraine and access to the Black Sea, control over Crimea and Sevastopol. When Admiral Vladimir Kornilov sank the Black Sea Fleet on the Sevastopol Bay line, he “broke the key in the well,” predetermining all the failures of the Europeans under the walls of the ancient stronghold. On September 23, 1854, the beauty and pride of Russian shipbuilders, the sailing heroes of many naval battles - five battleships, "Uriil", "Tri Svyatelitelya", "Silistriya", "Selafail", "Varna", and two frigates, "Sizopol", "Flora" - were sunk at the entrance to Sevastopol Bay. Later, our sailors sank other ships. See here for an explication of that action. Admiral Kornilov died on October 5 during the shelling of Malakhov Kurgan by the Anglo-French forces, but the deed was done, Sevastopol was protected from the sea. "WE SHOOT WOMEN AND CHILDREN, DON'T BE SURPRISED" Meanwhile, on land, the battle was ongoing. Attacks were followed by counterattacks. Enemy sappers dug underground tunnels to blow up fortifications, counter-drifts were dug towards them, designed to lay a mine under the enemy tunnels, and in response, the enemy tried to destroy the Russian sappers. Around Sevastopol, a gigantic layered pie of battle unfolded underground: explosions, collapses, suffocation, terrible fights in the cramped underground passages... Thousands of tons of earth were dug by the hands of women and children and became defensive fortifications of a first-class field fortress, against which attacks were broken. Thousands of cannonballs and bombs swept away the quarters of Sevastopol, destroyed the walls of the fortifications, and once again the whirlpool of battles on the ground, underground and the furious struggle of large-caliber artillery began. The large-scale destruction of the city seemed to be a "reminder of the future" - of the coming wars. The second heroic defense of Sevastopol, in 1941-1942, is very similar to the first, both in the duration of resistance and in its tenacity. The Russian soldier demonstrated tenacity that will surprise our European enemies a hundred years later, and now. Historian and writer Yuri Davydov, in his book about Nakhimov, cites a letter from a French soldier who took part in the siege of Sevastopol: "Our major says that by all the rules of military science it is high time for them (the Russians) to capitulate. For every cannon they have, we have five cannons, for every soldier - ten. And you should have seen their guns! Probably our grandfathers who stormed the Bastille had better weapons. They have no shells. Every morning their women and children go out into the open field between the fortifications and collect cannonballs in sacks. We start shooting. Yes! We shoot at women and children. Don't be surprised. But the cannonballs they collect are meant for us! And they don't leave." The same Frenchman spoke about what the “first Russian war correspondent” Leo Tolstoy wrote about on the other side – about “war in its true expression – in blood, in suffering, in death.” Despite the hunger (the French know that in the city the siege norm is: “small pieces of bread are divided among five” ), our soldiers respond to each assault with a counterattack and force the Anglo-French to retreat behind the fortifications. The same letter tells how a seriously wounded Russian sailor, who was captured, tried not only to escape, but to blow up barrels of gunpowder. “It is hopeless to fight with such people,” wrote a French military man. But the European press, which in the mid-19th century was already the “fourth estate”, presented the matter quite differently. TsIPSO 1854 You can fight with fakes too. The first photomontage for propaganda purposes, the first fakes, staged shots also come from Sevastopol. Here is this photo. The viewer was horrified. He thought that thousands of soldiers had died under such intense shelling. But this was a staged shot, and the cannonballs were laid with an artistic vision of the issue. And the title was impressive - "The Valley of the Shadow of Death". Other photographs show beautiful rows of snow-white tents. Clean, confident, cheerful and brave soldiers. And the viewer believed. Of course! After all, this is not an artist-dreamer, this is a miracle of the nineteenth century - a photograph that records reality. How much effort it took the photographer to present the knights of war in their ceremonial costumes, and how much effort was spent to hide all their problems! The same photographer, Roger Felton, wrote in his diary not at all about the beauty of the war near Sevastopol. Here is what he, as a master of fakes, carefully ignored so as not to lose in the unfolding information war: "In the camp, all the animals that are fit for food are killed, they are butchered right next to the tents, the unnecessary parts are left to rot right there. On any trip, you are sure to come across horse corpses, even on a hill by the sea." But thanks to photographs and correspondence of the right tone, the necessary opinion was formed in Europe - and not only among the loyal subjects of the British queen and the French emperor, but also among the radical revolutionaries. Karl Marx criticized the Russians for the destruction of two English merchant ships during the Battle of Sinop and insisted that “the word ‘honor’ is absent from the Russian lexicon.” And Friedrich Engels, as a military expert, asserted: “Among the officers of the Russian army there are very good and very bad, but the former are infinitely small in comparison with the latter.” According to Engels, it is futile to expect a Russian soldier to “display the quick wit of a Frenchman or the simple common sense of a German.”
THE WHOLE WORLD IS GOING TO WAR AGAINST US Allegedly "clumsy" soldiers under the command of "very bad" officers pinned down the forces of two leading global powers and their allies near one Crimean city for almost a year. At the same time, our troops repelled the enemy’s attempt to land at Nikolaev; at the same time, the empire was fighting in the Baltic, the North, and the Pacific Ocean. And this despite the fact that there was a real lag in some types of weapons, which the new Emperor Alexander II, who took the throne at the last stage of the war, would have to correct. The British-French-Turkish-Italian forces, which lost more than 150,000 men killed, managed to capture only the southern half of Sevastopol. The Russian army, which lost no less, continued to fight, but the forces to hold the fortifications were running out. The treacherous blow was dealt by "neutral" Austria. On March 2, 1855, Kaiser Franz Joseph I presented Alexander II with a list of demands: Russia's renunciation of the mouth of the Danube, a ban on keeping the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, etc. In the event of non-compliance, Austria threatened to join the Western alliance and move the troops already concentrated in Galicia. Another of our “ally”, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, “advised” the tsar to accept the Austrian conditions. Russia could no longer fight against the entire collective West of that time, and on March 30, 1856, a peace treaty was signed in Paris. THE WEST'S VICTORY TURNED INTO ITS DEFEAT In comparison with the "Palmerston Plan", the losses of the Russian Empire were minimal. The most painful was the loss of the Black Sea Fleet. According to the Paris Peace, the Black Sea was declared neutral, and both Russia and the Ottoman Empire were prohibited from having military fleets. The Russian borders were moved several miles away from the Danube - the extreme south of Bessarabia was given to the Moldavian Principality, and the Danube delta to the Turks. Occupied Sevastopol and Balaklava were returned to Russia in exchange for the Transcaucasian fortresses of Kars, Bayazet and others recently occupied by our troops. And this entire Parisian world order was reset literally a decade later. All that was left of it was the demilitarized status of the Aland Islands in the Baltic. Incidentally, it can only be revised now, with Finland's entry into NATO. Russia more than compensated for the remaining losses - somewhere through diplomacy, and somewhere by force of arms, after the victorious Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. In 1856, many European politicians smiled mockingly when the head of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prince Alexander Gorchakov, answered a question about the enslavement of the Paris Peace Treaty: "They say that Russia is angry. Russia is not angry, Russia is concentrating." Ten years later, no one smiled, Russia took everything with interest. In 1888, in correspondence with the German ambassador in Vienna concerning a possible "preventive war" against Russia, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck wrote : "It is not so easy. Victory over Russia is not a rout, but the acquisition of a neighbor in the east who is seeking revenge." Another statement by Bismarck, recorded in the archives, sounds like a prophecy about post-Soviet and current times: "Even the most favorable outcome of the war will never lead to the disintegration of Russia, which is supported by millions of Russian believers of the Greek confession. These latter, even if they are subsequently separated by international treaties, will reunite with each other as quickly as separated drops of mercury find their way to each other." These conclusions, drawn in part from the experience of the Crimean War, which was “victorious” for Europe, have now apparently been forgotten in the West. | ||
| Posted by:badanov |
| #9 Regardless of the whys and wherefores of domestic Ukrainian politics, it is not in the US interest for the Russian empire to be reconstituted, whether to the Tsarist or Soviet boundaries. As is, Russia is the size of the next 2 largest countries on earth combined, and 4x the size of European NATO combined. We don't need Russia getting any bigger. What is this called if not preemptive action? |
| Posted by: badanov 2024-09-26 22:16 |
| #8 You seem to like the notion of preemptive action, but the only thing NATO et al have managed to do is to poke the bear, with no good strategic cause other than what the Russians might do. Keep poking the bear. Win or lose, Russia will win in Ukraine. And the only legacy NATO et al will have to show is the mounds of dead Ukrainians and mercenaries who died for a cause based on a flawed strategic assumption. There was no pre-emptive action. Russia, not the US, invaded Ukraine in 2014, and again in 2022. The US jockeyed for influence with Russia in Ukraine as all countries do. So long as Europe and the US continue to throttle military equipment shipments, Ukraine will slowly lose ground. Only a Trump administration offers hope for Ukrainian victory, through unfettered shipments of somewhat current hardware in quantities large enough to make a difference. At minimum, Biden's endless obstruction of transfers of mothballed US-made equipment from other countries will end. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2024-09-26 21:58 |
| #7 Most portfolios in the Ukrainian government post coup were occupied by EU bureaucrats, which set, as policy, privately recruited groups against Russian speakers. They enforced enforced policies of eliminating Russian language as one of the languages used by the government. I can't think of many things which could enrage a populace more than being cut from their formerly legitimately elected government, not even a post coup amalgam of EU politicians. If I am the president of Russia and I see a coup fomented by the US and Eu governments, I want to protect my aircraft carrier, and I especially don't want Crimea to be used by a hostile actor against Russians on either side of the border. You've offered arguments justifying on what the Russians might do, but the only thing that we have is what the Russians have done and will continue to do until there is a settlement, which includes Russian security requirements. You seem to like the notion of preemptive action, but the only thing NATO et al have managed to do is to poke the bear, with no good strategic cause other than what the Russians might do. Keep poking the bear. Win or lose, Russia will win in Ukraine. And the only legacy NATO et al will have to show is the mounds of dead Ukrainians and mercenaries who died for a cause based on a flawed strategic assumption. |
| Posted by: badanov 2024-09-26 21:42 |
| #6 Thank you for admitting the US's role in fomenting the civil war in Ukraine. There was no civil war. Russia's puppet attempted to make himself king, hand the country over to Russia. When the Ukrainian security services stopped obeying his orders to kill as many of the opposition as necessary to keep him in power, he fled to his master in Moscow. Then, in 2014, Russian troops invaded Ukraine with regular troops, claimed they were locals who wanted to secede. They stopped because they met more resistance than expected. The 2022 invasion was just a continuation of Russia's 2014 land grab. In that interval, the Russian military attempted to remedy the defects that resulted in serious difficulties for Russian invasion forces. In fact, the only relative progress Russia made since 2014 was in suborning Ukrainian officials. While incomplete, it was responsible for almost all of Russia's early gains, which it has retained through extensive fortification. While Ukrainian accounts tend to downplay Russia's efforts to buy Ukrainian officials, it was a smashing success. In one fell swoop, 20% of Ukraine crumbled before Russia. Incomplete, but excellent bang for the buck, however many billions were spent. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2024-09-26 21:00 |
| #5 Thank you for admitting the US's role in fomenting the civil war in Ukraine. |
| Posted by: badanov 2024-09-26 20:44 |
| #4 Excellent argument, as long as you ignore the US's role in the coup which ovethrew an elected government in Ukraine in 2014. Otherwise, it is your argument that is "ironic." You've ignored the Russian role in the coup that attempted to make Russia's puppet, Yanukovich, a dictator. He ran on a platform of joining the EU, then not only moved away from that, but attempted to annex Ukraine to Russia. In most places, they call that high treason. Ukraine elected a president, not a king. After his men shot the Maidan protestors and it became clear, from the popular reaction, that his future as an elected official was not only dim, but chances are he stood to be impeached, then indicted for abuse of power and murder, he ran to his master in Moscow. He could have stayed, fought the charges, run for re-election. But he ran. Russophiles like to call Yanukovich's departure for Moscow a coup. Real coups are followed by dictatorships. Whereas when it became clear Yanukovich's departure was permanent，Ukraine promptly held new elections. Poroshenko won one term, then lost to Zelensky. Regardless of the whys and wherefores of domestic Ukrainian politics, it is not in the US interest for the Russian empire to be reconstituted, whether to the Tsarist or Soviet boundaries. As is, Russia is the size of the next 2 largest countries on earth combined, and 4x the size of European NATO combined. We don't need Russia getting any bigger. Today, Germany, Italy and Japan are not just our military allies, but also our friends. Would we stand for them rebuilding their old empires? In a word, no. Russia is not a military ally and definitely not a friend. There's no reason to acquiesce in this latest land grabs. We wouldn't stand for it even from our closest allies, Britain and France. Russia doesn't get a free shot. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2024-09-26 20:10 |
| #3 #2 That Russia, the biggest and most aggressive empire on earth, calls others aggressive is a little ironic Excellent argument, as long as you ignore the US's role in the coup which ovethrew an elected government in Ukraine in 2014. Otherwise, it is your argument that is "ironic." |
| Posted by: badanov 2024-09-26 19:21 |
| #2 That Russia, the biggest and most aggressive empire on earth, calls others aggressive is a little ironic, Ukraine is unfortunate in having to deal with feckless allies, in Europe and the US alike, who give it the minimum necessary to lose slowly but steadily to Russia. Ultimately, the gain of Ukraine will give Russia the resources it needs to rebuild the old Russian empire - first the traditional tsarist lands, then the postwar Eastern European states. And the US will again be embroiled in a cataclysmic war in Europe to deny the Russian army its bid to wash its collective bid to wash its feel in the Mediterranean. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2024-09-26 19:09 |
| #1 Some people never learn. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2024-09-26 11:15 |