Our Notes & References

First edition of this important work of military theory and Cold War analysis, commenting world politics and events of the 1960s under the light of Messner’s new concept of “miatezh voina”, which he introduced in three earlier books. Those were published 10 years earlier and couldn’t therefore cover the many wars and unrests which unfolded in the 60s, making this Miatezhevoina all the more interesting. Among other comments, Messner attacks a Soviet an anti-Zionist work which he denounces as typical of Soviet antisemitism – a position not always expected among Russian émigrés in South America.

An officer in the Imperial Russian Army and the last chief of staff of the Kornilov Division in General Vrangel’s army, Evgenii Messner (1891-1974) fled to Yugoslavia and became an active member of the Russian All-Military Union. During World War II, he was close to the Axis powers and the Russian Liberation Movement, and briefly served in the propaganda services of the Wehrmacht as head of the Russian section. In 1949, he relocated to Argentina, where he worked as a journalist, publisher, and writer.

In Argentina, Messner worked on his concept of ‘miatezh voina’, or ‘subversion war’: he thought of a new type of war and military destabilisation where small terrorist cells and special forces would take a prominent role in fighting, subverting and organising revolutions, rather than the traditional warfare. He claimed that the Third World War would be a mutiny-war, and that conquering the hearts and souls of people in the enemy country would be more critical than conquering territory.

Some analysts recently suggested that Messner’s work directly influenced Russia’s current leading authorities. Interestingly this work wasn’t published there until 2004.

Provenance

Avenir Nizoff (a pianist in the second half of the 20^th century, living in Edmonton, Canada, who gathered a very large library of Russian works of all kinds, with a strong representation of émigré works).

Bibliography

Andre Savin 29139 ‘very rare’.