Red Army

In 1989, Ralph Peters, in perhaps a piqued reaction to the breezy assumptions of many technothriller writers and armchair pundits of the era, wrote a short novel simply entitled Red Army after the foe that NATO would end up facing in any major conventional war in the 20th century. It was, explicitly noted by the author, written as an attempt to humanize the men behind the guns of the Soviet war machine which might come streaming across the West German border.

Does it hold up as a war novel today? Personally, I really think it does.

From wikimedia commons.

It can be described as a very 'grey' novel. There's no sense that one side is winning any enormous moral victory over the other, very few hypercompetent officers, and the people behind the guns, whether they be infantrymen, tankers, artillerymen, pilots or commanding generals are just that, people. They have their flaws, worrying about whether their wives are having an affair, thinking about what to do after the war, and even wondering what the enemy may be thinking. For every man who rises to the occasion to become a hero, there's someone who flees in cowardice, for every noble act towards an enemy there's an atrocity either by mistake or by design.

Peters really puts you in the heat of the action, from the build up to the terrifying and pulse pounding moments when the guns open up all along the front. It has a number of scenes that, even having put down the book, stick with me. There is, to be frank, a lot of pointless death. Peters does not shy away from the horrors of war, and the book is all the better for it. One of the first deaths we see on the page is a young conscript crushed by a crate falling from a supply truck before the fighting has even started. From there Peters directly puts us in the firing line with bullets, artillery rounds, and bombs tearing men to literal pieces. 

That also equals a very high body count in named characters. For every character you see on screen there's a fairly decent chance that they'll be blown away by an act of war, whether from the enemy or friendly fire. I won't spoil who lives or dies, but I was stunned - and truly humbled even - by the rate of attrition. It was a very real reminder of just how deadly truly mechanized modern war could be. Also how personal the losses of the war can be.

We have numerous Russian viewpoints. This novel is rather unique in the genre as it only gives you one sides view of the war, the Soviet one. Our main viewpoints who we can sympathize with and know the most are actually behind the lines. Soviet general Mikhail Malinksy, a career officer descended from the old pre-revolution Russian nobility, will be leading the delicate operation across northern German to push Soviet forces to the Rhine. The second most important character is his chief of staff Pavel Pavlovich Chibisov. Jewish and an indispensable staff officer to his general, he does many tasks and takes much of the personal anger of Malinsky's subordinates who all believe that he, as a Jew in still extremely anti-Semitic Russia, is poisoning their leader against them. Through their eyes we see the grand plan of the battle unfold, with what goes right and what goes wrong.

It can all be somewhat dizzying at times, with characters introduced, fleshed out, and maybe blown away in the next chapter - or even in the next paragraph! I did find latching on to numerous Russian names took a bit of getting used to, but once I grasped the names and a few of the Russian patronymics, it became much easier.

Unlike say, Red Storm Rising, this book was much easier to read because with only a few exceptions, it doesn't throw mountains of technical data at you. A tank is a tank whether British, Dutch or Soviet. There is little real effort to tell you who is driving what, whether it's a T-80 or a T-74, which makes taking the information in so very easy. Even when American forces eventually show up Peters doesn't take time to wax poetic about this or that particular fighting vehicle. That gives us a lot more time to get to know characters, their foibles, flaws, and situation. It humanizes the men rather than dazzle you with the machines.

Speaking of Americans, they aren't really present until the late stages of the novel. This might be perhaps because the author couldn't really bring himself to write the Soviets beating American forces - or very realistic worries for the post-Reagan era of the Cold War that this might be interpreted as being unpatriotic. This doesn't hurt the novel, but it does rob a lot of the climax of some of the necessary oomph you would hope for, even perhaps delving into a dues ex machina territory as the war finds a more political solution, in a manner of speaking. It really could have even used fifty more pages to describe that last desperate fight to drive the story home. Though as stated, that might not be fully possible in time it was written.

Peters also doesn't shy away from the inefficiencies of the Soviet system, whether they be military or political. He stays very far away from the political situation, which allows him to write about the titular forces. It's refreshing to see a real sea of humanity in the Soviet characters with few outright caricatures, and he genuinely tries to write them as real people. It works very, very well to make me, if not necessarily root for them winning, to at least hope they make it out alive as I see them as human beings rather than simply the "other side" of the war.

This is perhaps one of the best stories of World War III I've yet read. A very well done, and extremely nuanced work, it shows you war is hell, and men suffer and die in the most agonizing ways through it. Largely absent of patriotic chest beating and full of compassion for people who were then his enemies, Peters delivers an amazing story of modern war and all its horrors. Definitely a must read for anyone thinking of this genre.