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Author: Carol Belkin Stevens
Publisher:
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780875801988
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Soldiers on the Steppe charts the process of Russian army reform, not as reflected in laws and government edicts but rather as it was lived on the southeastern frontier of Europe.
Author: Hope Hamilton
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2011-06-08
Total Pages: 400
ISBN-13: 1612000029
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →When GermanyÕs Sixth Army advanced to Stalingrad in 1942, its long-extended flanks were mainly held by its allied armiesÑthe Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians. But as history tells us, these flanks quickly caved in before the massive Soviet counter-offensive which commenced that November, dooming the Germans to their first catastrophe of the war. However, the historical record also makes clear that one allied unit held out to the very end, fighting to stem the tideÑthe Italian Alpine Corps. As a result of MussoliniÕs disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany, by the fall of 1942, 227,000 soldiers of the Italian Eighth Army were deployed on a 270km front along the Don River to protect the left flank of German troops intent on capturing Stalingrad. Sixty thousand of these were alpini, elite Italian mountain troops. When the Don front collapsed under Soviet hammerblows, it was the Alpine Corps that continued to hold out until it was completely isolated, and which then tried to fight its way out through both Russian encirclement and ÒGeneral Winter,Ó to rejoin the rest of the Axis front. Only one of the three alpine divisions was able to emerge from the Russian encirclement with survivors. In the all-sides battle across the snowy steppe, thousands were killed and wounded, and even more were captured. By the summer of 1946, 10,000 survivors returned to Italy from Russian POW camps. This tragic story is complex and unsettling, but most of all it is a human story. Mussolini sent thousands of poorly equipped soldiers to a country far from their homeland, on a mission to wage war with an unclear mandate against a people who were not their enemies. Raw courage and endurance blend with human suffering, desperation and altruism in the epic saga of this withdrawal from the Don lines, including the demise of thousands and survival of the few. Hope Hamilton, fluent in Italian and having spent many years in Italy, has drawn on many interviews with survivors, as well as massive research, in order to provide this first full English-language account of one of World War IIÕs legendary stands against great odds.
Author: Carol Stevens
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-13
Total Pages: 346
ISBN-13: 1317893301
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Russia's emergence as a Great Power in the eighteenth century is usually attributed to Peter I's radical programme of 'Westernising' reforms. But the Russian military did not simply copy European armies. Adapting the tactics of its neighbours on both sides, Russia created a powerful strategy of its own, integrating steppe defence with European concerns. In Russia's Wars of Emergence, Carol Belkin Stevens examines the social and political factors underpinning Muscovite military history, the eventual success of the Russian Empire and the sacrifices made for power.
Author: Erik Hildinger
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2001-11-08
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780306810657
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The nomadic peoples of central Asia—Huns, Bulgars, Magyars, Mongols—are still known to us for their legendary fighters Attila, Genghis Khan, and Timur Lenk (Tamerlane), as well as for their feats of calculated brutality. (Timur Lenk would leave piles of severed heads in his conquered cities; another tribe sent nine sacks of ears to their khan.) Less studied is the remarkable effectiveness of their battle techniques: For two thousand years, these horse-archer armies were an unstoppable force to sedentary peoples, be they Romans, Crusaders, Chinese, or medieval. Erik Hildinger introduces the most important of these raiders as well as a host of other tribes and examines in detail their tactics, strategies, and weaponry—a form of highly mobile and defensive warfare that even armies of today can learn from.
Author: Esther Hautzig
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 1995-05-12
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 006440577X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Exiled to Siberia In June 1942, the Rudomin family is arrested by the Russians. They are "capitalists -- enemies of the people." Forced from their home and friends in Vilna, Poland, they are herded into crowded cattle cars. Their destination: the endless steppe of Siberia. For five years, Ester and her family live in exile, weeding potato fields and working in the mines, struggling for enough food and clothing to stay alive. Only the strength of family sustains them and gives them hope for the future.
Author: Dr. Robert F. Baumann
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2015-11-06
Total Pages: 215
ISBN-13: 1782899650
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →[Includes 12 maps and 4 tables] In recent years, the U.S. Army has paid increasing attention to the conduct of unconventional warfare. However, the base of historical experience available for study has been largely American and overwhelmingly Western. In Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, Dr. Robert F. Baumann makes a significant contribution to the expansion of that base with a well-researched analysis of four important episodes from the Russian-Soviet experience with unconventional wars. Primarily employing Russian sources, including important archival documents only recently declassified and made available to Western scholars, Dr. Baumann provides an insightful look at the Russian conquest of the Caucasian mountaineers (1801-59), the subjugation of Central Asia (1839-81), the reconquest of Central Asia by the Red Army (1918-33), and the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89). The history of these wars—especially as it relates to the battle tactics, force structure, and strategy employed in them—offers important new perspectives on elements of continuity and change in combat over two centuries. This is the first study to provide an in-depth examination of the evolution of the Russian and Soviet unconventional experience on the predominantly Muslim southern periphery of the former empire. There, the Russians encountered fierce resistance by peoples whose cultures and views of war differed sharply from their own. Consequently, this Leavenworth Paper addresses not only issues germane to combat but to a wide spectrum of civic and propaganda operations as well.
Author: Carol Stevens
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-13
Total Pages: 324
ISBN-13: 1317893298
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Russia's emergence as a Great Power in the eighteenth century is usually attributed to Peter I's radical programme of 'Westernising' reforms. But the Russian military did not simply copy European armies. Adapting the tactics of its neighbours on both sides, Russia created a powerful strategy of its own, integrating steppe defence with European concerns. In Russia's Wars of Emergence, Carol Belkin Stevens examines the social and political factors underpinning Muscovite military history, the eventual success of the Russian Empire and the sacrifices made for power.
Author: Erik Hildinger
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
Published: 1997-07-21
Total Pages: 322
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A Military History of Central Asia, 500 B.C. to 1700 A.D.
Author: Brian Davies
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-04-04
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13: 1134552823
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This crucial period in Russia's history has, up until now, been neglected by historians, but here Brian L. Davies' study provides an essential insight into the emergence of Russia as a great power. For nearly three centuries, Russia vied with the Crimean Khanate, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire for mastery of the Ukraine and the fertile steppes above the Black Sea, a region of great strategic and economic importance – arguably the pivot of Eurasia at the time. The long campaign took a great toll upon Russia's population, economy and institutions, and repeatedly frustrated or redefined Russian military and diplomatic projects in the West. The struggle was every bit as important as Russia's wars in northern and central Europe for driving the Russian state-building process, forcing military reform and shaping Russia's visions of Empire.
Author: Sarah Cameron
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2018-11-15
Total Pages: 433
ISBN-13: 1501730452
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Hungry Steppe examines one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalinist regime: the Kazakh famine of 1930–33. More than 1.5 million people, a quarter of Kazakhstan's population, perished. Yet the story of this famine has remained mostly hidden from view. Sarah Cameron reveals this brutal story and its devastating consequences for Kazakh society. Through extremely violent means, the Kazakh famine created Soviet Kazakhstan, a stable territory with clear boundaries that was an integral part of the Soviet economy; and it forged a new Kazakh national identity. But ultimately, Cameron finds, neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves integrated into Soviet society the way Moscow intended. The experience of the famine scarred the republic and shaped its transformation into an independent nation in 1991. Cameron examines the Kazakh famine to overturn several assumptions about violence, modernization, and nation-making under Stalin, highlighting the creation of a new Kazakh national identity and how environmental factors shaped Soviet development. Ultimately, The Hungry Steppe depicts the Soviet regime and its disastrous policies in a new and unusual light.
