Hearts of Iron, Historical Revision, and 'Sovietology'

Sovietology, sometimes known as Kremlinology, is the derisive name given to historians of the Soviet Union, by virtue of their questionable practices and goals. Let's see how those practices seep into Hearts of Iron.
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The Victoria 3 video of mine I mentioned:

The Glubb Video:
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People who helped (yay)

@ArmchairEgyptology :

@StepBackHistory :

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Sources and additional readings

Applebaum:
Note: I've just remembered that the person I have in there for a critique of Applebaum has some... curious theories himself and while not a discredited academic, probably shouldn't be the final word on her questionable credibility. To that end I've included another source below from the trusted (and frequently cited) historian economist Stephen G Wheatcroft.

Additional on Applebaum:

Getty Conquest letters:

Montefiore review, stable link:

Added reading on Orwell’s List:

The Talk Page™

Kremlinology article:

"Eastern Europe" article:

Sources on the new understanding of the numbers
(if these links don’t work I can cite the essays by name and hope people can search them)

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00:00 intro
04:53 Stalin’s Role
09:24 Mass Assault and Human Wave
14:54 Who are the Sovietologists?
35:44 Sovietology and Consequences
39:05 Conclusion
45:28 Outro

[electricVGC]

Good discussion on the complex mess of No Step Back. That said, you really must hate paradox. They asked for one thing, and yet Tristan from StepBack is in the video.

[andrewgreenwood]

One big problem with adding stuff like the holocaust would be that either it would be purely negative for your nation so no one would do it or it would be positive for your nation which would suggest that it was a good idea. Neither of these options would be good.

[jonathanarnfeltramstrom]

The paranoia mechanic was actually called "Stalin's Paranoia" when in development, as can be seen in the dev diaries, but because of fans causing slight controversies surrounding it, it was renamed to what is now called "Political Paranoia".

[logoncal]

In historicity terms, NSB was wacky. In gameplay terms its by far the best Expansion the game ever had (We have historical problems with it, but holy shit the supply system and tank design was a huge change)

[petersmythe]

"estimates of cheka executions range from 12k to 1.7M"

Excuse me what?!

[Waldemarvonanhalt]

Civilian populations are represented in state information in-game, but your only concern with the civilian population is how large it is and what percentage of it you can mobilize for military use.

[Worgrunner]

Obviously not through the entire video yet, but I do feel like the Human Wave part of the tree is intended for China (which was largely due to desperation) and that the other branch is intended for the Soviet Union.

[awilish]

This is one of the most complex and detailed analyses I have seen of this game. I think it comes at a good time because a *LOT* of younger HOI players take the content they are consuming within the game as some level of fact, which is glossed over by most older players and paradox themselves. I think this is a bigger problem than many realize, and people like you bringing light to the problem is the best way to get it addressed in some way. I subscribed because I think the thoughts you share are well-researched and I want to know what you will make next!

[szarekhtheimmortal]

About "bad history begets bad history", I have an example I can give from the study of a teacher of mine, a historian of Medieval Europe, mostly focused on the persecutions of "heretics" by the church in Italy and Southern France, fascinating topic. She found one of her coleagues' books mentioned briefly a story about one such persecution in Italy. Now in this book, the situation was cut and dry, and cited, as a source for this, a work by a XIXth century historian whom himself seemed quite clear on his conclusions that he drew from analysis of a primary source, a parchment detailing the testimonies of a bunch of witnesses of said events. Now where it gets interesting is that due to a miriad of factors, that source is unreliable to come to any kind of cut and dry answer. The testimonies obviously don't all line up, it's a translation from italian to latin, the questions asked to the witnesses aren't known. And yet this simple poor analysis by this XIXth century historian (whom I'm not demonizing as a bad historian, it was also jsut a short part of his work) brought another historian to quote him as a factual source.
It's a fascinating example on how an imperfect interpretation of a source can be echoed as a fact and a reminder that the best historians aren't infalible.

[CruelDwarf]

I must note that you have at least one false premise (I watched first 15 minutes of the video so far) but overall argument is solid, so I would try to argue here. Soviet military never abandoned 'Deep Operation' either during or after the Purge and no association existed between purged theorists and doctrine itself. If you read Soviet doctrinal documents before the Purge, during the Purge and after the Purge, they remain the same and whatever can be described as 'Deep Battle/Deep Operation' remained on the books as central element of military strategy.

The whole myth of 'abandoning Deep Battle' is more or less a product of post-Stalinist revisionism of the Soviet military leadership who wanted to explain failures of the initial stages of the war as 'it was not our fault'.

[leiffitzsimmonsfrey]

Growing up in Canada, I've frequently heard "human wave tactics" used to describe the Somme -- in fact, the word evokes images of World War One before anything else.

[nathantripathy]

The numbers conversation make me love being a medievalist. I feel like we are trained to literally read numbers as "I want to say this is or isn't noteworthy". Sometimes it seems like modern historians or 'historians' lean on fighting over numbers to argue over correctness/power in debates. Not to say that we aren't prone to our own stupid arguments over characterizing events/ideas, it seems like we are maybe more fundamentally curious versus fundamentally try to win minded.

[Waldemarvonanhalt]

At the outbreak of hostilities between the Axis powers and the Soviet Union, the USSR was the side at a numerical disadvantage, although most people wouldn't believe you if you told them that.

[theoheinrich]

the ""Who are the Sovietologists?" part of the video is peak scholarly banter, filled with back-and-forth insults from all sides

[thefilthycasual]

"Human wave" may be used pejoratively by people who want to dehumanize the Soviets or the Chinese but it doesn't need to be - it's very accurate to call many attacks by all sides in WW1 human waves, for instance. Indeed, I think the fact "human wave" isn't a "real" tactic is mostly for optical purposes, since such a label implies a willingness to sacrifice troops en masse to succeed. It doesn't mean human wave tactics are not used - in fact, large infantry forces without proper fire support MUST use human wave tactics when they are attacking, there is no other option. The Chinese, both Communist and not, used human wave tactics for most of the 20th century because they had almost no armaments industry and thus no fire support to destroy enemy forces from afar. Thus, they were forced to storm enemy positions by concentrating large numbers of troops against a small section of the enemy frontline to overwhelm them before reserves could be deployed to stop them. The Soviets had the firepower to not need human wave tactics but due to a variety of factors - poor training, poor leadership, strict timetables and orders, etc - they often ended up performing them anyway even when they weren't necessary. It would also be accurate to describe any opposed amphibious landing as a human wave attack if it is sufficiently unmechanized (ie lacks amphibious assault vehicles, ie pretty much any landing prior to 1944) since the open nature of water and beaches is such that there's no way to avoid it.

[srobin]

Love how your videos aren’t just about the games but also provide a good education on these topics. Always enjoy these

[darkfool]

I dunno, I think sticking to 1.5% population loss figure for Turkey is inherently problematic, since it basically denies the Armenian genocide. There were at least a million Armenians living within Turkey before the war outside of the modern borders of Armenia (which was part of Russia) though they didn't all die, and many would have fled or been forced to abandon their identity, that 1.5% figure doesn't account for them at all.

[tylerchristian]

Well, hey, looks like I got in on the ground floor for this one! Love your work.
Edited to add: have you ever read a biography of Trotsky? They're pretty much all either hagiographies or condemnations. I read one that suggested he didn't need glasses, and was just obsessed enough with self-image that he started wearing them as an affectation. Wild stuff.

[Cybonator]

More of a political concept argument, rather than Historical, is my pet peeve about the "Stage Coup" mechanic. It's not a coup. It's a civil war. The very antithesis of a coup - a quick blow against the state.

[bobbranagan]

39:52 Something i would say at this point is that this isn't a declaration of belief by paradox. It is a talking point within the nation, a part of the in-game narrative drive of the point in question. For turkey to have lost 'nearly' 25% of its pop in the Great War is the fulcrum of the debate, irrespective of the validity of the claim.

'We lost 25% of our pop in the last war, how many more are we to sacrifice in this new one?' This could be a question asked by those opposed by your choice to modernise the army (if you make that choice), as they are in the camp of ensuring "that the war never reaches our borders".

The statistical claim isn't the point of the text blurb. It's the framing element for the player choice.

Besides, when has factual basis and clarification ever gotten in the way of a good sound bite? 😉