Tag: Asia

Book: Nikolai Voronovich “The Russo-Japanese War: Memoirs”

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The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 was a huge failure for Russia, practically a disgrace. It also exposed a host of internal problems, helped fuel the 1905 Revolution, and set in motion events that, twelve years later — after the failures of World War I — led to the collapse of the entire Russian Empire.

But I hadn’t really come across many books about that war, and then I suddenly spotted the memoirs of one of its participants. Nikolai Voronovich began his military career in the Page Corps, where he studied quite well, but at some point he ran off in search of glory and adventure to the Russo-Japanese War as a volunteer. He didn’t get much adventure, especially since he only reached the war closer to the end, when the grim outcome was already a foregone conclusion. Still, even in that period he managed to earn a St. George Cross; after returning, he was reinstated in the Page Corps (though only after nearly a month in the guardhouse for his escape), graduated with honors, and would have continued climbing the military ladder, but… World War I, the Revolution, the Civil War on the side of the “Greens,” and then emigration.

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Book: Igor Mozheiko “West Wind — Fair Weather”

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We often reproach Americans for supposedly knowing nothing about World War II, for thinking they “won it,” when without the Soviet Union Hitler wouldn’t have been defeated. Of course, that’s all true. But it’s just as true that we ourselves know very little about their side of the war.

What can most of us name off the top of our heads? The Normandy landings (which have been chewed over from every angle in movies and in dozens of games)… and then the meeting on the Elbe. Oh right — we might have heard something about Pearl Harbor, and that they fought the Japanese a little bit over there, and that the evil Americans dropped two nuclear bombs, and that was that.

As executive producers, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg decided to tell more of the war through American eyes. First, in 2001, they released Band of Brothers about combat in Europe. And nine years later, in 2010, they followed with The Pacific about a part of the war we barely know at all — because the Soviet Union didn’t take part in it, and so it simply wasn’t something people talked about. (And I very much recommend both series if you haven’t seen them.)

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