Stepping back a moment, let's look at the Russian mindset, they've been the whipping boys for Europe through-out most of the 19th century and into the first half of the 20th. Out of all the nations in the Second World War, only Russia and Germany suffered the greatest of casualties and saw some of the most brutal fighting, this wasn't warfare as we see it, it was warfare at its most base level. Sure, from place to place there was traditional honour in war, but in other places there was systematic extermination, and brutality. The Russian people got trapped between the hammer of the Reich and the Anvil of the Soviet government, and they bled, they bled a lot.
Ever since then, there has been a sort of almost paranoia that someone will try to complete what Hitler failed, whereas in the west the very idea of invading Russia is talked about as insanity, in Russia they still have a generation who remembers what happened when someone tried and did very well (to begin with). That paralysing shock in the opening days of Barbarossa, particularly Stalins three day breakdown, is something that anyone who has the security of the country in mind will have learnt, studied and vowed never to have happen again.
Therefore any threat to the safety of the home nation must be countered or dealt with before it becomes as large a danger as the Third Reich became.
With that mindset it makes sense to work on defensive structures in order to try and protect the civilian population in a nuclear exchange. Of course, such things are primarily hopeful talismans because the aftermath would be so terrible that the living would indeed envy the dead, however if a government did not try to protect its people it would be seen as negligent, especially a government of a country which had suffered so much in a war not a few decades before.
That being said, the whole British approach to protecting its civilians in a nuclear war makes for an interesting comparison, because basically it gave out leaflets, made sure that local government would survive and then left the civilians to it.
03-10-17, 01:45 PM
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