The Great Surplus of

less Pact was in a far more advanced state of decay than NATO. In 1915 a French marshal, opposing efforts to get Italy into World War I as an ally, allegedly noted that it would take seven divisions to conquer the Italians, ten to defend them; the Soviet commander-in-chief in Europe must have had similar concerns about his satellite forces. An economic analyst would add that the Pact was an immensely expensive welfare program.

In the Lithuanian case you had an identity of interest between Gorbachev and the military. Gorbachev wanted to stamp out a display of ethnic nationalism pour encourager les autres, as Napoleon said when he shot a general: i.e., to put a stop to the centrifugal rumblings in all corners of the Russian empire. The army’s concern was that if the Lithuanians got away with deserting, the conscript force would rapidly disintegrate. This nonsense had to stop.

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less Pact was in a far more advanced state of decay than NATO. In 1915 a French marshal, opposing efforts to get Italy into World War I as an ally, allegedly noted that it would take seven divisions to conquer the Italians, ten to defend them; the Soviet commander-in-chief in Europe must have had similar concerns about his satellite forces. An economic analyst would add that the Pact was an immensely expensive welfare program.

In the Lithuanian case you had an identity of interest between Gorbachev and the military. Gorbachev wanted to stamp out a display of ethnic nationalism pour encourager les autres, as Napoleon said when he shot a general: i.e., to put a stop to the centrifugal rumblings in all corners of the Russian empire. The army’s concern was that if the Lithuanians got away with deserting, the conscript force would rapidly disintegrate. This nonsense had to stop.