The Lost Army: War veterans could pose a problem for Putin’s Russia, just like they did for interwar Germany

RU

In the summer of 2024, Vladimir Putin claimed that 700,000 Russians were fighting in Ukraine. Even if that figure is inflated, it already surpasses the number of Soviet troops who served in Afghanistan over the course of a decade — 620,000 — and Soviet losses were far smaller than Russian casualties in the current conflict: 15,000 deaths then compared to over 100,000 confirmed dead in today’s so-far much shorter war. Yet even the Afghan invasion had a profound impact on Soviet and Russian society — from the formation of veterans' associations that quickly evolved into major criminal gangs, to the rise of combat generals like Alexander Lebed and Alexander Rutskoy who became key political players of their time.

After the fighting in Ukraine ends, the return of as many as one million men from the front could have significant consequences for modern Russia. A new social group has effectively formed within Russian society — the “participants of the special military operation,” or more traditionally, war veterans. Their expectations about their role and status are unlikely to match the realities they will face. In this context, the experience of German soldiers returning from World War I in 1918 offers a telling historical parallel.

Veterans as a pillar of power...

German World War I veterans were welcomed home with flowers, but the country they returned to was not the same one they had left in 1914. Events in Germany followed a trajectory similar to that of Tsarist Russia, though a year behind. In November 1918, a revolution took place in Germany, the Kaiser fled, and a provisional government made up of parliamentary parties came to power, preparing for elections to a constituent assembly. There were even local Bolsheviks — the Spartacus League — who planned an armed uprising.

The difference was that in Germany, the government managed to forge an alliance with the generals. (Russia’s Provisional Government Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky had allied with General Kornilov, but that ended in conflict and a failed coup.) However, the German generals no longer had a regular army — it had been demobilized. In its place emerged the Freikorps (German for “Free Corps”): volunteer units made up of former soldiers, armed and financed by the government. Between 250,000 and 400,000 men served across hundreds of units.

Most Freikorps members were young soldiers who had known nothing but war. German historian Bernhard Sauer described them as, in short, lost:

“They couldn’t find a place for themselves in the postwar world. Skilled at nothing but fighting, without education or profession, and with no prospects of joining the downsized peacetime army, the only path available to them was the Freikorps.”

Though the majority of these volunteers held staunchly conservative views and had little sympathy for the leftist Weimar government, they helped crush the Spartacist uprising in January 1919 and featured in the suppression of several regional revolts. The volunteers viewed supporters of Soviet-style government as even worse enemies. They also defended German interests in the Baltics, which Germany had fully occupied by early 1918 and where it attempted to establish protectorates. After losing the war, Germany had to withdraw its forces, but the Freikorps continued fighting the Bolsheviks and the national armies of Latvia and Estonia for some time.

In March 1919, the Weimar government passed the “Temporary Reichswehr Act,” setting the size of the new republic’s armed forces at 400,000. The War Minister could incorporate certain Freikorps units into the Reichswehr, while those not selected lost state funding and were disbanded. With the Treaty of Versailles soon coming into effect, Germany’s army was to be reduced to just 100,000 men.

It was at this moment, in November 1919, that Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, summoned to parliament to testify about the causes of the war, declared that Germany had lost because it had been “stabbed in the back.” In his telling, as the army was fighting on foreign soil, traitorous revolutionaries had undermined Germany from within and caused its collapse. Soldiers already suspected as much, but now their revered marshal had said it out loud. Though Hindenburg providede no names, everyone understood he was referring to the socialist ministers in the government.

...and as a force for destabilization

In March of 2020, the Freikorps rose up — this time against the Weimar Republic itself. With banners unfurled, they marched into Berlin, paraded through the Brandenburg Gate, and occupied the government district. Ministers fled, and troops loyal to the republic declared their neutrality. Only a massive general strike, joined even by civil servants, paralyzed the government apparatus seized by the putschists and prevented them from holding power.

Although the Freikorps were eventually disbanded, their members did not become any more suited to civilian life. The most radical among them turned to terrorism and even managed to assassinate Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau — a moderate conservative who, nonetheless, was Jewish. By 1922, the Freikorps were responsible for more than 300 political killings.

Still, the majority of former volunteers joined a different one of the numerous legal veterans' associations. These organizations were often divided along political lines: nationalists joined the “Steel Helmet,” communists had “Red Front,” and even the republican government created its own group, the “Reichsbanner.” The Reichsbanner became the largest of these formations, though also the least effective in combat.

While these associations were officially unarmed, they wore uniforms, provided security at party rallies, and frequently clashed with each other. These confrontations sometimes escalated into full-scale street battles, leaving dozens dead. Soon enough, the infamous SA and SS — the paramilitary wings of the National Socialists, who would become Hitler’s primary strike force — emerged from among former Freikorps members. Ultimately, Hitler succeeded in uniting all right-wing veterans under his banner, even if his political victory owed less to the veterans themselves than to the backing of generals and industrialists. But to win that support, Hitler first had to seize attention in the streets.

The postwar decade — right up to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 — entered history as the “Roaring Twenties”: a time of sharp cultural, social, and economic transformation. Jazz, art deco, skyscrapers, airships, cabaret, and “talkie” films flourished. But war veterans were, by and large, left out of this dazzling new life.

Ordinary citizens viewed them with suspicion and unease — especially those who had fought on the Eastern Front, whom many believed to have been infected with Bolshevik ideology. Celebrated fighter ace and close Hitler ally Hermann Göring, a Nazi MP in the Reichstag, declared from the parliamentary podium in 1928 that veterans were made to feel ashamed of their past. And while those who fought in the West could at least drown their shame in alcohol and distraction, those who returned from the East often lived in abject poverty.

The future of veterans in Russia

There is a high likelihood that returning soldiers will become a “lost generation” in modern-day Russia as well. Since the beginning of the war, Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that those who take part in the “special military operation” — the “true patriots of the homeland” — should become Russia’s new elite. In 2024, the government launched the “Time of Heroes” program, which has already selected 80 individuals to be groomed for public service. Its most prominent figure so far is Artyom Zhoga, presidential envoy to the Urals and former commander of the separatist Sparta Battalion. However, many of those grouped with him are career bureaucrats who have taken part in the “special military operation” without ever leaving their desks — such as Yevgeny Pervyshov, who became acting governor of Tambov.

“You know, people sometimes ask me how [‘special military operation’] veterans can avoid the ‘Afghan syndrome,’” Zhoga said in an interview with state-run news agency TASS. “As in, after the Afghan war, guys turned to crime, drank themselves into oblivion... I say it’s not a syndrome — the state just didn’t care about them back then. It was the 1990s, the collapse of the USSR — everyone was just trying to survive. When the guys came back, they were told: ‘We didn’t send you there.’ I’m sure we won’t return to the Afghan syndrome today — because it doesn’t exist. As long as we engage our guys returning from the [‘special military operation’] and give them purpose.”

However, since there are nowhere near enough job openings in Russian state agencies or corporations to absorb all the soldiers who fought in Ukraine, the only realistic form of support may come through a system of broad benefits — ranging from the right to cross streets on red lights to preferential treatment for their children when applying to university. But such measures could also deepen tensions between veterans and civilians.

If postwar Russia, like Germany in the 1920s, accumulates a critical mass of people unable to find their place in civilian life, the question of who might lead them will arise. The Putin regime appears to be removing potential leaders before they can gain a critical mass of followers. Igor Strelkov, currently serving a prison sentence and lucky not to have met the same fate as Yevgeny Prigozhin is merely the most notable name on a long list of “patriots” who have run afoul of the Kremlin.

Very few of the deceased Donbas field commanders from the so-called “Russian Spring” era of 2014 actually died on the frontlines. Most fell victim to assassinations or, at best, died in prison. Yet, as the German experience shows, a mass movement often produces its own leaders. Both Ernst Thälmann, leader of the communist veterans, and Adolf Hitler, who led the nationalists, appeared on the German political stage in the 1920s seemingly out of nowhere. It is a lesson the Kremlin appears to be taking very seriously.