100 Years: Russia

From the MT:

"Half of Russians Believe Country Won WWI, State Pollster Says"

Almost half of Russians think their country emerged victorious in World War I, despite the country having left the war before it ended to deal with domestic upheaval, according to a state-backed survey published ahead of the centenary of the end of the war. Russia joined the European-wide conflict on Aug. 1, 1914, but after losing an estimated 3 million people it signed a separate peace with Germany in March 1918 as the Bolshevik revolutionaries took over Tsarist Russia. World War I ended in an armistice on Nov. 11, 1918.  According to the survey published Wednesday by the state-funded VTsIOM pollster, 49 percent of respondents said they believe Russia won in World War I, while one-third said Russia lost. “Some may find it surprising, but awareness and understanding of history among Russians is steadily growing,” VTsIOM’s head of research, Stepan Lvov, said. In 2014, 34 percent of respondents said they thought Russia won the war and 35 percent said it was defeated. Meanwhile, the percentage of respondents who believe that Russia should have participated in the war has increased to 42 percent this year, up from 30 percent in 2014. Only 0.1 percent of this year’s respondents named the year “1917” or the “Treaty of Versailles” when asked to recall the most memorable events linked to World War I. Ten percent named the Brusilov Offensive counterattack that broke the back of the Austro-Hungarian army in 1916, followed by 6 percent who named the use of chemical weapons. Three-quarters of respondents were unable to recall a single event. VTsIOM conducted the survey among 1,600 Russians on Saturday, Nov. 3.

^ This is just amazing. It shows how little the ordinary Russian knows about World War 1  - even though 3 million Russians died in the war before the Communists took over. The Russian Republic that was created after the February 1917 Revolution which overthrew the Czar continued to fight in World War 1 until the October 1917 Revolution where the Communists took over and surrendered to the Germans. 

It reminds me of hearing Russians say that they could have won World War 2 by themselves (ie. without any help from the UK or the US) even though the Soviet Union only fought the Germans on the Eastern Front in Eastern Europe and didn't even declare war on Japan until August 9, 1945 after the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 (technically Russian and Japan are still at war since they never signed a peace treaty due to the Kuril Islands which the Soviets took from the Japanese and Russia still has. 

There is no way the Soviet Union could have won World War 2 by itself because it did not even fight in: Western Europe, North Africa, Asia (except for a few days) , the Middle East, Alaska, across the Atlantic Ocean, etc. I'm sure they would have won the Eastern Front in Eastern Europe without the British or the Americans, but it would have taken a lot longer to do with many more millions dead.

This poll just shows how uneducated people can be. Many Russians believe the Soviet Union won World War 1 when in fact they were one of the few countries to surrender to Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. ^

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/half-russians-believe-country-won-wwi-state-pollster-says-63440