A recent panel discussion at the Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the German Armed Forces (ZMSBw) in Potsdam, Germany, focused on the theme of “Illegitimate Violence in Russia’s Wars.” The event can be viewed on YouTube.
The introductory remarks by the center’s deputy commander, Scottish Professor Dr. Dr. Alaric Searle, set the tone for the discussion. He expressed his belief in the credibility of accounts of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, citing his years of research on Russian military history, from the time of the tsars to the present.
The causes of the unbridled violence in Ukraine by the Russian army, according to Searle, lie in Russian military history and society. Germany should learn to cope with this reality and discuss it openly, even if they do not plan to go to war with Russia.
The impromptu speech by Professor Dr. Sönke Neitzel, “What are and to what end do we study military violence cultures?” was refreshing and insightful, aside from a brief mention of Butcha. Neitzel emphasized that national violence cultures can change over time. The British and Canadians, for example, had a similar military organizational structure, yet the Canadians committed more war crimes during World War II than the British.
In World War I, the British (and the Scots in particular) were notorious for mass shootings of German prisoners of war. Neitzel attributed this change to the unique phenomenon of British public opinion, which, while unable to prevent war crimes in the moment of their occurrence, did prevent future war crimes through its subsequent outrage.
The purpose of engaging with violence cultures, according to Neitzel, is to prevent war crimes in the future. The stance of the public (or its absence) is a crucial criterion.
The level of the discussion, however, dropped significantly after Neitzel’s presentation. The most disappointing aspect was the lack of a Russian perspective, the absence of research reports by Russian scholars and the lack of participation from the Russian counterpart of the former military history research institute. The event, in Potsdam, seems to be treating Russia like a dead frog on the dissection table, trying to dissect it without a genuine dialogue partner.
It was almost racist, in a way, when Professor Dr. Jan C. Behrends took the floor. His one-sidedness was already evident on the Ukraine sticker on his jacket. Ah, the myth of the stolen washing machines was revived again. And then Behrends launched into a tirade: the processes of dehumanization and de-entitlement in the Soviet Union never really came to an end. Under Gorbachev’s perestroika, there was the “octroyed civilization” an attempt from above to civilize Soviet society. This, of course, failed. (And so, the Russians are less civilized than we are; maybe they’re not even civilized at all.) It’s not the case that one can’t break out of this continuity. And the example of this is, in fact, Ukraine. Ukraine is not fighting like Vladimir Putin’s Russia. (At these remarks, Dr. Fischer was so taken aback that she later mentioned the Russian society of the 1990s in an interview.)
Behrends, still enthralled by an Ukraine event at the Swedish Embassy, reported on a conversation with a Ukrainian female officer from the Donbass, a drone pilot. She confirmed what is known from the news, the dehumanization of the Russian army, that they don’t care about their dead and wounded, that they are eaten by rats. She promises her 30 men that no one of their comrades will be left behind. (If she really made that promise, she is either a liar or foolish, or at least dangerous.)
This is already how it was in World War I, where wounded soldiers would hang in barbed wire for days, crying out for their mothers and their comrades wouldn’t rescue them because the enemy snipers prevented it. And in the current drone war, it has only gotten worse. If a wounded soldier is ever recovered, it’s a wonder that is rightly celebrated in the media. If someone claims that the abandoning of a comrade is a purely Russian problem, he is denying the inevitable consequences of modern warfare and is already preparing for the next war: We would never be as inhumane as the Russians, we would wage a more humane war, wouldn’t we?
Of course, the allegedly widespread sexism and chauvinism in Russian society under Putin must also be mentioned, as Dr. Fischer claimed. The Ukraine would be degraded in the Russian discourse through metaphors of rape, as research from a feminist perspective has shown. This way of speaking about Ukraine as a rape victim opens up new avenues for action. Therefore, the documented cases of rape by Russian combatants at the UN are just the tip of the iceberg. Sexualized violence, both against men and women, is used as a weapon by the Russian side. There are also cases of rape of Russian war prisoners by the Ukrainian army, but Russian women are not affected (or at least, Dr. Fischer is not aware of cases like the one in Russkoje Poretschnoje in the Kursk region – or does not want to know).
It fits that Dr. Kristiane Janeke was also present, as she had already given space to the alleged Russian chauvinism in an interview (“War and Gender in Ukraine”) with Gender Advisor Sabine Barz, where the two women discussed the chauvinstic Russian culture, whose ascriptions of gender images make the Russian man a soldier and the Russian woman a trinity of children, kitchen and church. The Russian violence, which we can see in Ukraine now, did not arise in a vacuum, but has its roots in the violent heritage of Russia. The climax of the conversation was the almost embarrassingly sycophantic admiration of the two Bundeswehr employees for “President Zelensky” who, unlike President Putin’s macho image, is a human being who can show weaknesses.
This time, Dr. Janeke was also allowed to express her views on the Russian memory culture – and the Soviet honor monuments in Germany. One could sense her regret that, due to legal and historical reasons, these could not simply be torn down.
Russians as (alleged) war criminals seem to have become a fashionable theme, as almost simultaneously to the Potsdam panel discussion, a two-day conference took place in Nuremberg, which mainly focused on this theme (RT DE reported). The two-day conference was also broadcast live (here and here). Regrettably, one must note that the old rule “Russia always pays” (as stated by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg) no longer holds true. The political rapprochement between the two presidents, Donald Trump and Putin, had thoroughly ruined the “living humanity” (the title of the conference).
These events in Potsdam and Nuremberg seem out of date: while the rest of the world is seeking ways out of the Ukraine crisis, in Germany, from Berlin to Brandenburg, people are still working on the enemy image of Russia in state or state-funded events. This is not sustainable.