Russian Campaign Research Articles

The strategic surprise of Russian information operations on social media in 2016 in the United States: mapping a blind spot

ABSTRACT Despite many years of preparation for cyber conflict against US critical infrastructure and military forces, the US government and cybersecurity industry were unprepared for Russian information operations targeting the 2016 US presidential election. While the Russian campaign had many components, this article focuses specifically on the covert use of social media accounts and online properties impersonating Americans for the purpose of manipulation. This article addresses the strategic blind spot around Russian information operations and the technocentric Western approach to cybersecurity that led to it. The authors explore three fields contributing essential insights to the understanding of information operations on social media: cyber conflict and cybersecurity studies, Internet and Society studies, and the Information Controls literature within human rights scholarship. Each conceptualizes cyberspace differently, but a theory of information operations on social media will bridge conceptual gaps. The article concludes that despite this initial blind spot, great tactical progress in addressing information operations on social media has been made by the US government and large US social media platforms since the 2017 ‘reckoning’. A more robust and foundational theory of information operations on social media remains to be built, integrating and synthesizing concepts from the three fields described in this article. 1

Formowanie landwery podczas pruskiej wojny wyzwoleńczej 1813 roku na przykładzie Śląska

After the defeat of the Napoleonic army in the Russian campaign in 1812–1813, Prussia renounced the alliance with France and entered the war known as the “liberation war”. The King of Prussia, Frederick William III, addressed his subjects with an appeal “An mein Volk” (“To my people”), calling for a fight against Napoleon. One of the pillars of this struggle was the creation of units of a voluntary military formation composed of the "people" - the landwehr. After defeating Napoleon landwehr became part of the legend of the Prussian army's strength, which was to cover the ignominious defeat of the Prussian army during the autumn campaign of 1806. Formations like the landwehr were known as early as the 18th century, but their formation was forbidden because of the fear of violating the prevailing social relations. In the end, however, in the spring of 1813, in the spring of 1813, it was decided to establish a landwehr. Despite the initial optimism, its creation encountered numerous difficulties, including the lack of willing recruits, the widespread phenomenon of desertion and problems with weapons. These problems were obvious in the Prussian province of Silesia. The article presents the genesis of this formation, the uniforms and equipment of the landwehr, problems related to recruiting soldiers to the landwehr in Lower and Upper Silesia, and the final division of the landwehr into military units.

The personality of Marshal Davout in the Russian Campaign of 1812 on the basis of his memoires and documents of personal nature: an analysis of the electronic resources on the topic

Louis Nicolas Davout is still one of the most famous and admired marshals of the First French Empire. His qualities as a great commander and brilliant tactician have been the subject of many historiographical works amongst researchers from all over the world. The aim of this work is to examine the personality of Davout according to electronic documents of personal nature and the historiography about the Russian Campaign of 1812. Specific attention deserve several online documents of Russian works analyzed in the article, which have never been translated from Russian, and whose point of view revealed very interesting information, both concordant and discordant, to cross with that of many European analogues. Historical research requires further translation and analysis of the many and still unknown Russian sources on the topic.

„Hin sinkt der Wall, der alte Schutz, es fallen seine Stützen”. Ryska twierdza w XVI–XIX w. i jej defortyfikacja w 1857 r.

The following article presents the issue of the fortification of Riga and associated plans of the suburbs in the 17th and 18th centuries (plans of Johann van Rodenburg and Rudolf Friedrich Härbel), as well as the projects of the transformation of the former fortification zones in the 19th century. Additionally, the paper covers the question of an unknown plan of Riga from 1843. In 1812, as a result of an intentional arson during the Russian campaign, the suburbs were completely destroyed. This prompted Filippo Paulucci to create a new plan that, among others, carefully delineated the transformation of the glacis into a wide esplanade. In 1856, after the Crimean War, a decision was made to de-fortify the city. In November 1857, in a very solemn manner, the process of Riga’s defortification began. Torch -bearing citizens participated in marches across the city, taking part in concerts and collective singing; during all these festivities, the city was brightly illuminated. This event was an amalgamation of solemn state celebrations and a folk, carnival-like fiesta. Celebrations connected with the process of Riga’s defortification belong to a small group of defortifications in European cities celebrated so uproariously.
 In early 1857, the architect Johann Daniel Felsko created a remarkably interesting plan developing the former fortification grounds, as well as a new idea of the spatial development of the city. Felsko used the modern division into functional zones: the trading-communication zone (port, depots, railway station, and ‘gostiny dvor’ (‘merchant yard’) and the stately-park zone (palaces, elegant revenue houses, public buildings), which, at that time, was still a great rarity. The conception utilized in Riga definitely overtook the ideas for the Vienna Ring Road (the second half of 1857). In my opinion, Felsko’s idea shares the most similarities with the former fortification zones in Frankfurt am Main, which were reclaimed in 1806. However, his plan was never faithfully realized.
 Out of numerous projects concerning the esplanade and promenade on the grounds of the former glacis, in the second half of the 19th century, there emerged one of the most interesting and beautiful European promenade complexes. Some of the first public buildings were the Riga-Daugavpils Railway Station and the theatre; later, school buildings, the Riga Technical University, and numerous palaces and houses were erected there. In the early 20th century, Riga was the third biggest and industrially developed city east of the Oder, reaching the population of over 470,000 citizens in 1913, following Warsaw and Wrocław. Its spatial development ideas, created in the 19th century, were then fully implemented.

Excluding Agency

Excluding Agency

An Ethnolinguistic conflict on the compulsory learning of the state languages in the republics of Russia: policies and discourses

ABSTRACT Until recently, not only students of the titular nationalities (ethnicities) learned their native language but also ethnic Russians and other nationalities in some ethnic republics of Russia had to learn titular state languages of those republics. The political campaign in Russia against the compulsory teaching of state languages of republics started two years ago and culminated in the adoption of the amendment to the Russian education law on 3 August 2018. The law enacted some additional mechanisms to ensure the voluntary study of non-Russian languages. The law adoption signified the escalation of the conflict around linguistic rights and the compulsory study of state language. The problem is that the official discources typically overshadow the discourses of individuals and non-govenrmental ogranization who have their own language attitudes and agendas, which distorts the depiction of the conflict. In this paper, we will study official and public discourses together, combining the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ perspectives, in order to explore both the language policy and language ideologies, and, thus, to provide a multifaceted picture of the conflict. We use policy analysis and discourse analysis to study official documents, surveys, mass media, social media discussions.

An integrative approach to studying plasticity in growth disruption and outcomes: A bioarchaeological case study of Napoleonic soldiers.

The aim of this study was to investigate how much variation in adult stature and body mass can be explained by growth disruption among soldiers who served in Napoleon's Grand Army during the Russian Campaign of 1812. Linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) were recorded as representations of early life growth disruption, while the impact on future growth was assessed using maximum femur length (n = 73) as a proxy for stature and maximum femoral head diameter (n = 25) as a proxy for body mass. LEH frequency, severity, age at first formation, and age at last formation served as explanatory variables in a multiple regression analysis to test the effect of these variables on maximum femur length and maximum femoral head diameter. The multiple regression model produced statistically significant results for maximum femur length (F-statistic = 3.05, df = 5 and 67, P = .02), with some variation in stature (adjusted r2 = 0.13) attributable to variation in growth disruption. The multiple regression model for maximum femoral head diameter was not statistically significant (F-statistic = 1.87, df = 5 and 19, P = .15). We hypothesized stress events during early life growth and development would have significant, negative, and cumulative effects on growth outcomes in adulthood. The results did not support our hypothesis. Instead, some variables and interactions had negative effects on stature, whereas others had positive effects. This is likely due to catch-up growth, the relationship between acute and chronic stress and growth, resilience, and plasticity in human growth over the life course.

Good News, Bad News: A Sentiment Analysis of the 2016 Election Russian Facebook Ads

In the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the notion of “fake news” and Russian election interference became somewhat interchangeable. We argue that “fake news” insufficiently describes the Russian disinformation campaign. Our analysis of Facebook ad texts shows that they incorporate emotional appeals differently at unique moments in the political campaign of 2016. We use sentiment analysis to demonstrate the use of positive and negative emotional messages. Sentiment ratings dipped to more negative scores before the November 2016 election and rose to new positive heights after the election. This provides some evidence that the varying uses of positive sentiment and negative sentiment may have been strategic.

Napoleon's Russian Campaign of 1812 and the German States: Perception, Interpretation, Collective Memory

The article touches upon the problem of the unity of the German national history in the early 19th century which is analyzed in the context of Napoleon's Russian Campaign in 1812. All German states were obliged to participate in the Campaign, but in the Northern Germany, specifically in Prussia, the War of 1812 was interpreted by the contemporaries as preparatory phase to the Liberation War of 1813. In Southern Germany (Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg) however the Russian Campaign was viewed as a military catastrophe, its impact on the mentality of Southern Germans turned out to be much more dramatic than that of the Liberation Wars against Napoleon. Only in 1840s the defeat in Russia was re-interpreted as victory. It is quite clear that regional differences conduce to reconsideration of conventional conceptions of German history in the 19th century.

Evaluation of the Setting of the Global Promotion of the Czech Republic Destination

Internationalisation is an increasingly common strategy for all types of companies across sectors, especially for tourism and destination management. The paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the current setting of marketing promotion of selected economies in the global market. The cost benefit analysis method compares the costs of individual international campaigns with the benefits measured by the number of arriving tourists from each target market. The costs and benefits of the internationalisation of the Czech Republic’s marketing strategy (based on the CzechTourism data evidence) are subsequently quantified per unit, or how much money was needed to attract one tourist (given the cultural distance between economies) and the total amount of consumer spending of the tourist with the relevant source economy. The analyses showed paradoxically the low efficiency of the international campaign in Austria and Slovakia which, due to the amount of money spent, could not attract enough tourists. The net benefits of these promotions are EUR 74.84 for Austria and EUR 96.52 for Slovakia. On the other hand, the most effective was the campaign in Russia, which brought EUR 301.08 net profit. Marketing campaigns in India and the USA, where net profit exceeded EUR 200, can be considered successful.

АНАЛИЗ ЗАКОННОСТИ ПРОВЕДЕНИЯ ОПЕРАЦИИ ПО УКРЕПЛЕНИЮ ВОЕННО-ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКОЙ БЕЗОПАСНОСТИ ОДКБ НА ТЕРРИТОРИИ СИРИЙСКОЙ АРАБСКОЙ РЕСПУБЛИКИ В СООТВЕТСТВИИ С НОРМАМИ МЕЖДУНАРОДНОГО ПРАВА

In 2015, the Russian Federation returned to world politics as a powerful sovereign power. The Russian military campaign launched in 2015 in Syria caught not only ISIS by surprise, but also the security services and Western analysts. This was the first large-scale military operation of post-Soviet Russia outside the territory of the former USSR. The article considers the legal basis of the Russian military operation in Syria and its compliance with the norms of international law. The legal aspects of the actions of our troops in Syria are disclosed in more detail. Russia's participation as a CSTO member state in military operations in Syria is determined by the need to combat international terrorism. The actions of the Russian Federation are carried out in accordance with the basic principles and norms of modern international law and, above all, the principle of State sovereignty. Russian military aid came to Syria at the request of the legitimate Government of the Syrian Arab Republic. According to the authors of the article, Russian military assistance to Syria, which fully complies with domestic and international law, at the same time seems to be extremely important, a new phenomenon in international politics, namely, a radical attempt to stop the process of destroying the UN and preserve progressive international law.

Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman behind the Making of On War by Vanya Eftimova Bellinger

Reviewed by: Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman behind the Making of On War by Vanya Eftimova Bellinger Elisabeth Krimmer Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman behind the Making of On War. By Vanya Eftimova Bellinger. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 312. Cloth $31.95. ISBN 978-0190225438. It is well known that Carl von Clausewitz's On War was published posthumously by the author's wife, who also edited the unfinished work. And yet, though her involvement has been acknowledged—the first biography of Carl von Clausewitz by Karl Schwartz is, in fact, devoted to the couple rather than to the famous theorist alone—little has been written about Marie von Clausewitz's life. Bellinger's groundbreaking biography sets out to remedy this by drawing on a treasure trove of letters that has recently come to light. In 2012, the Buttlar family bequeathed its papers to the Prussian Privy State Archives. These papers contained the correspondence between Carl and Marie von Clausewitz, including 283 letters by Marie that had never been published before. In addition, Bellinger also had access to Marie's diary from 1813 and her journal from 1831 through 1836. Born Countess von Brühl on June 3, 1779, Marie was from an aristocratic dynasty with direct links to the royal family. Her mother Sophie Gomm was the daughter of a leading British merchant who prospered as court banker in St. Petersburg. Her father Carl Adolph von Brühl served as the governor of the Protestant Prussian crown prince, even though he was Catholic. At age 18, Marie became a lady-in-waiting to Friederike Luise, the widow of Friedrich Wilhelm II. In 1809, she became lady-in-waiting to the king's oldest daughter Princess Charlotte. Marie also took care of her own niece after [End Page 165] the death of her sister, who had been married to Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz. While the family remained prominent, its financial fortune declined. Marie lived off a modest annuity that made it difficult for her to afford the lifestyle expected at court. Highly educated, she found comfort in art and literature and was a practicing artist herself—though, with the exception of a portrait of General Gneisenau in the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin, many of her paintings are considered lost. Bellinger argues that Marie was drawn to the impecunious Carl, whose social standing was decidedly below her own, because of the promise of an intellectual partnership. The couple first met in 1803 when Carl served as adjutant to Prince Ferdinand's youngest son. After a prolonged courtship and in spite of her mother's disapproval, Marie married Carl in 1810. To their great disappointment, the couple was unable to have children. Bellinger portrays Marie and Carl as a "power couple." She argues convincingly that Marie used her social connections to help her husband rise and that her disappointment at his failure to achieve public recognition was greater even than that of Carl himself. After her husband's death, Marie retained an important position at court and was even appointed chief lady-in-waiting to Augusta, wife of the future Emperor Wilhelm I. Bellinger depicts Marie as an outspoken woman whose passion for politics frequently met with disapproval. Marie resented the French occupation with all her heart and was an ardent supporter of Major von Schill's insurrection against the French. While her antipathy to the French is clearly motivated by Napoleon's expansionist campaign, she also appears to have shared her husband's antisemitism, his contempt for Poland in general, and Poland's "dirty German Jews, swarming like vermin in the dirt and misery" (114), in particular. Furthermore, Marie supported Carl's decision to leave the Prussian service and join the Russian army's fight against Napoleon. Subsequently, he was accused of having done so without permission. Since the couple stood to lose their property if Carl was convicted, Marie took the precaution of transferring her property to her cousin, though in the end the government decided not to prosecute. While the Russian campaign involved a long period of separation for the couple, the Wars of Liberation not only forced Marie to leave Berlin but...

From Neman to Smolensk: the Beginning of the Russian Campaign in Representation Soldier of Great Army of Napoleon

In article the attempt is made, having addressed transformation of representations of soldiers of Great army at the initial stage of the Russian campaign, to track sources of formation of the Western European memory of a campaign of 1812. The author comes to a conclusion that the relative unity of memory of soldiers of army of Napoleon of events of 1812 was dictated by a number of factors. So, even prior to opening of military operations the big role was played by official promotion which promoted creation of ideological stereotype of ideas of the French soldiers of the enemy. However immersion of soldiers of Great army in the Russian reality began to change their initial representations. If at the very beginning of the campaign soldiers believed in the idea of rescue of the Poles groaning under oppression of the Russian tsar, then soon thanks to the begun contacts with the population of “the Russian Poland” they quickly were disappointed in nobility of the mission. Now war which obviously dragged on thanks to “Scythian” tactics of Russians became a symbol of fight against barbarity for Napoleonic soldiers. For the majority of the ranks which are not devoted in plans and details of actions of Great army, the only thing that soon remained it is belief in the genius of the emperor.

Unknown Sources and Archives of Military History: The 1848-1850 Tsarist Campaign Diary from the Romanian Lands in the Russian State Military-Historical Archive in Moscow

The present article approaches the ample Tsarist campaign diary (1,300 folios), describing Moldavia and Wallachia’s 1848-1850 military occupation by the Russian 5th army corps led by general commander Alexander Nikolaevich Lüders, and the protecting power’s armed interventions in Transylvania (1849). The echoes of this long military campaign were feebler at that time, than those of the much- clamored Russian campaign in Hungary (June-August 1849). Ignored so far by the Russian and Romanian historiographies (even if for different reasons), the 1848-1850 occupation of the Romanian Lands is minutely related by an unknown source, recently discovered in the Russian State Military-Historical Archive in Moscow and edited by us. Also analyzed the difficult conditions of access in the War Archive of the former Tsarist Empire, today Eastern Europe’s largest military archive of medieval and modern history.

Challenges for Ukraine’s cyber security: National dimensions

The usage of information as a weapon in the foreign and domestic policies of Russia is not a new phenomenon. Still, the sophistication and intensity of it grow with each passing year. Recently the EU and USA have realized the powerful latent influence of Russian media and propaganda, including on electoral processes and the activities of State administration. They have realized that Russian disinformation poses a serious threat to the United States and its European allies, first and foremost with regard to Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine. Moreover, unlike Soviet propaganda, the modern methods of the Russian information war do not rudely promote the agenda of the Kremlin. Instead, they aim to confuse, daze and divert citizens from supporting the EU and Ukraine. Russia seeks to undermine the support for European values; producing disarray among European allies in order to increase its influence. Ethnic, linguistic, regional, social and historical contradictions and stereotypes are used for this purpose. As current experience shows, Russian advocacy efforts in Europe make up an important part of their hybrid approach to the projection of force. Despite the fact that the crisis in Ukraine for the first time drew the attention of the West to the importance and real meaning of the information campaign in Russia, the Kremlin’s use of disinformation was launched long before the crisis. Russia carefully and purposefully prepared an information war against Ukraine.

Digital vigilantism and anti-paedophile activism in Russia. Between civic involvement in law enforcement, moral policing and business venture

ABSTRACT The rise of a reactionary political agenda in favour of traditional values led to the launching of an anti-paedophile campaign in Russia in the early 2010s. Taken on by ‘moral entrepreneurs’ well known by the general public for their familialist ideology and homophobic speeches, the issue of paedophilia was used to justify the adoption of legislative measures reinforcing a clampdown on child abuse and punishing those who disseminate propaganda about ‘non-traditional’ sexual relations to minors. This political agenda fuelled the emergence in Russian cities of self-proclaimed and competing ‘rule enforcers’, who began acting like vigilantes, setting traps for presumed paedophiles, purportedly in order to defend children. Contributing to a man-hunt atmosphere, these volunteers mix features of classical and digital vigilantism. However, they use digital tools not only to gather evidence or to publicise the identity of an alleged offender, but also to make a profit.

Russian campaign in Syria – change and continuity in strategic culture

ABSTRACTThis article explores the extent to which Moscow’s modus operandi during the military campaign in Syria demonstrates change or continuity in Russian strategic culture. It discusses five main characteristics of the Russian conduct and argues that these traits demonstrate more continuity than change in the Russian style of war. However, it suggests that change possibly might be evolving on the tactical-operational level – the emergence of a mission command culture. The article offers competing explanations for this eventuality, which the Syrian campaign has highlighted, and advances a conceptual debate in IR on the shifts in strategic culture.

THE RUSSIAN SHIP СAMPAIGN TO KAZAN IN THE SPRING OF 1545

In the given article the Russian ship campaign to Kazan in 1545 is comprehensively explored. Sources mentioning it are listed. The inexpediency of attracting the story of the Kazan chronicler for the reconstruction of the events of 1545 is substantiated. The chronology of the campaign, the number and composition of its participants, and the order of military actions are considered. A solution to the controversial issue of the original objectives of this campaign is proposed. The author came to the conclusion that the main objective of the campaign was not achieved and reveals the participation of Kazan troops in the fight against Russian shipyards. Yet the Russian campaign to Kazan led to changes on the Kazan throne. The author concludes that Kazan’s unsuccessful fighting set up Khan Safa-Girey against local nobility, which ended with his overthrow.

Towards Storytelling with Animated Pictorial Map Objects – An Experiment with Convolutional Neural Networks

Abstract. Storytelling is a popular technique applied in many fields including cartography. On the one hand, stories can be told intrinsically by map elements per se. An often quoted example in this regard is Minard’s map of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign (e.g. Denil 2017) which depicts the loss of troops in a spatio-temporally aligned Sankey diagram. On the other hand, stories can be conveyed extrinsically by multimedia elements aside the map. For instance, the travel route of a soldier during the First World War can be shown on a temporally navigable map and accompanied with photos, videos, diary entries, and military forms (Cartwright & Field 2015). In this experiment, we follow a mixed approach where human figures on the map will be animated and address the map reader via speech bubbles. As source data, we consider pictorial maps from digital map libraries (e.g. the David Rumsey Map Collection) and social media websites (e.g. Pinterest). These maps contain realistically drawn representations which are in our opinion very suitable for communicating personal narratives.We present a workflow with convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a type of artificial neural network primarily used for image recognition, to detect human figures in pictorial maps. In particular, we use Mask R-CNN (He et al. 2017) for identifying bounding boxes and silhouettes of figures. For the segmentation of body parts (i.e. head, torso, arms, hands, legs, feet) and the detection of joints (i.e. nose, thorax, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hip, knees, ankles), we combine the U-Net architecture (Ronneberger et al. 2015) with a ResNet (He et al. 2015). In a final step, we implement a simple 2Danimation of waving and walking characters and add speech bubbles near head positions. As a first training dataset, we created parametric SVG character models with different postures originating from the MPII Human Pose Dataset. The second training dataset contains real image human body parts from the PASCAL-Part Dataset. Humans from both datasets are placed randomly on pictorial maps without any other figures. Preliminary results show that the validation accuracy is the highest when synthetic and real training datasets are combined. We implemented the CNNs with TensorFlow’s keras API, whereas training data and animations are generated with the web browser.Our approach enables giving storytellers a physical presence and anchoring them spatially within the map. By animating characters, we can gain the map reader’s attention and guide him/her to special and possibly hidden places (e.g. in touristic maps). By telling personal stories, we may raise the interest of people to explore the maps (e.g. in museums) and give a better understanding of the often abstractly encoded information in maps (e.g. in atlases). When a certain aesthetic value has been reached, pictorial objects may also generate positive emotions so that anxieties about the complexity of data may become secondary (e.g. in education). Overall, the goal of our work is to engage map readers, give them valuable support while studying a map, and create long-lasting memories of the map content.

The European Union as a child molester: sex education on pro-Russian websites

ABSTRACTAs a part of education fostering diversity, human rights and gender equality, sex education has proved an ideal target for disinformation. This article offers an analysis of articles on sex education published between 2007 and 2016 on pro-Russian websites in Czech and Slovak. The extreme and manipulated representations of sex education on these websites are part of a Russian disinformation campaign that activates social anxiety by triggering emotions and utilising regionally sensitive issues to foment feelings of inferiority in post-socialist countries. The Russian Federation strives to be perceived as a saviour of traditional values, actively feeding a conservative backlash and anti-gender and anti-LGBT movements. It therefore recruits conservative allies across Europe to expand its sphere of influence.