Waterloo. Disputes over European issues and the question of which
country controlled sites in the Holy Land precipitated a war that left
Russia alone against an Anglo-French entente assisted by Sardinia.
Even Russia’s friend Austria stayed neutral. The struggle between
Russian and Anglo-French forces on the Crimean peninsula—the
war’s main front—between 1854 and 1856 demonstrated the woeful
state of the Russian army. In the four decades since the Napoleonic
Wars, the Russian army had been the “gendarme of Europe,” crush-
ing national revolts in Poland and Hungary. The army had not been
modernized and was used to fighting wars against Muslim rebels in
the Caucasus and poorly armed Polish and Hungarian rebels.
Russian military intelligence was ill prepared to fight a war
against major European powers. There was, for example, no system
for interrogating prisoners of war or deserters. (A few Irish and
Corsican prisoners apparently deserted to the Russians during the
course of the war.) Nevertheless, military intelligence did provide
accurate information about the British and French armies, tactics,
and leadership. Military intelligence information on the enemy may
also have played a role in the inventive way the Russian army, un-
der the direction of E. I. Totleben, built fortifications at Sevastopol
to cope with the Anglo-French forces.
The Crimean war cost Russia 600,000 casualties. It also demon-
strated to the new tsar, Aleksandr II, that social and political reform
was needed if Russia were to remain a great European power. Many
believe that the disastrous performance of the Russian forces in the
Crimean War caused Aleksandr to emancipate the Russian serfs. The
war also led to major reforms in the Russian army and general staff.
The tsar realized that the fabled army that had terrorized liberal Eu-
rope after Waterloo was a paper tiger.CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. U.S. Intelligence won a critical victory
over the Soviet services in the Cuban Missile Crisis by its ability to
collect, analyze, and use intelligence information. Using maskirovka
tactics, the Soviet military and the KGBdeceived the West in the
movement of 40,000 troops and nuclear-tipped missiles to Fidel Cas-
tro’s Cuba in the summer of 1962. Moreover, through the use of
Georgi Bolshakov, an intelligence officer under journalist cover,
Moscow deceived the Kennedy administration as to Soviet inten-60 •CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 60