Russia has a Long and Losing Tradition of Using Convicts to Fight Its Wars, Historian Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 10 – Moscow’s use of convicts to fill the ranks of its units fighting in Ukraine – see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/09/prigozhin-plans-to-recruit-up-to-50000.html – has surprised some observers. But it shouldn’t, Lyubov Vinogradova says. Russia has a long tradition of doing so and in most cases it has been a losing one.

            In an article for The Insider, the Mozambique-based independent Russian historian and author calls attention to one of the most spectacular and losing examples of this tradition: the tsarist government’s use of prisoners on Sakhalin to fight for it during the Russo-Japanese War (theins.ru/opinions/lubov-vinogradova/257618).

            The effort by the authorities to arm and then deploy prisoners and exiles proved to be a disaster with deserting and fading into the population, something the prisoners could easily do because they were never put in military uniforms even though they were given guns. Vinogradova suggests Moscow’s efforts to use prisoners now in Ukraine won’t work any better.

            Putin may not be aware of that failure. Instead, he likely does view what he is doing as resembling what Stalin did during World War II. At that time, the Soviet dictator released many from the GULAG and they fought well. Unlike the criminals the Kremlin leader is recruiting, however, most of the inmates Stalin ordered to the front were not guilty of any crime.

            But it seems likely that what happened with the use of prisoners in the Russo-Japanese war is a more instructive precedent, not only because of their failure to perform as expected militarily but also because that conflict ended in a Russian defeat and sparked the 1905 revolution.