Thus, subjected to closer scrutiny, the Russian “steamroller” appeared quite unimpressive. In the course of the war, Russia managed to mobilize a considerably smaller proportion of her population for active military duty than either France or Germany: 5 percent compared with Germany’s 12 and France’s 16 percent.15 To everyone’s surprise, in 1916 Russia ran out of manpower for her armed forces.16
The army that went into combat in August 1914 was a highly professional body, in some respects not unlike the British Expeditionary Force, with great emphasis on regimental esprit de corps. Its outlook, however, was pre-industrial and even militantly anti-industrial. The command staff, dominated by the Minister of War, Vladimir Sukhomlinov, and his appointees, modeled itself on Russia’s most successful general, the eighteenth-century marshal Alexander Suvorov, emphasizing offensive operations and hand-to-hand combat. It had little use for the whole technological and scientific dimension of modern warfare. Its preferred weapon was the bayonet; its favorite tactic, storming enemy positions without regard to casualties.17 Greatest value was attached to courage under fire—a quality for which the mechanized, depersonalized combat of World War I, after the initial battles, would provide few opportunities. The Russian High Command believed that too much reliance on technology and too scientific a calculation of the balance of forces adversely affected troop morale. Russian generals disliked war games: a game scheduled in 1910 was peremptorily called off an hour before it was to have started on orders of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich.18
The Russian soldier on whom, in the ultimate reckoning, everything depended was an uncertain quantity. For the most part, he was a peasant. Village experience, reinforced by army discipline, had taught him to obey orders: as long as these were given in a manner that brooked no opposition and carried the threat of punishment, he cheerfully obeyed. He faced death with fatalism. But he lacked inner motivation. As noted previously, he was a virtual stranger to the sentiment of patriotism. The failure of the Imperial Government to develop mass education meant that much of the citizenry lacked awareness of a common heritage and common destiny, which is its principal ingredient. The muzhik had little sense of “Russianness.” He thought of himself, not as a “Russkii,” but as a “Viatskii” or “Tulskii”—that is, a native of Viatka or Tula province—and as long as the enemy did not threaten his home territory, he had no quarrel with him.19 Some Russian peasants, on reading the Imperial Manifesto declaring war on the Central Powers, were uncertain whether it applied to their village. This lack of commitment accounts for the extraordinary number of Russians who during the war would either surrender or desert. The absence of a sense of national identity was, of course, aggravated in the case of non-Russian soldiers, such as the Ukrainians. If one considers further that the muzhik had his ears keenly attuned for the approach of the “Great Leveler” who would distribute land, it is clear that he made a good soldier only for as long as the Imperial regime held firmly together and enforced discipline. Any weakening of military discipline, any sign that the village was stirring, was likely to transform the men in uniform into rabble.
The British military attaché, Colonel Knox, who spent the war at the Eastern Front and got to know Russian soldiers probably better than any other foreigner, formed a low opinion of them:
The men had the faults of their race. They were lazy and happy-go-lucky, doing nothing thoroughly unless driven to it. The bulk of them went willingly to the war in the first instance, chiefly because they had little idea what war meant. They lacked the intelligent knowledge of the objects they were fighting for and the thinking patriotism to make their
morale
proof against the effects of heavy loss; and heavy loss resulted from unintelligent leading and lack of proper equipment.
20
“Unintelligent leading” and “lack of proper equipment” were, indeed, the Achilles’ heel of the Russian military effort.
The Ministry of War was entrusted in 1909 to General Sukhomlinov, whose only combat experience had been in the Turkish war of 1877–78, in which he is said to have displayed impressive courage. By the time he reached the pinnacle of his career he had turned into a courtier, a servitor of the old patrimonial kind, whose loyalty was not to the country but the dynasty. Good at amusing the Tsar with anecdotes, he enjoyed popularity at the Court for his devotion and bonhomie. As Minister of War, he was nowhere as incompetent as later charged, when he became a scapegoat for Russia’s defeats; and he was certainly not guilty of treason. But he did live far above his means and is known to have supplemented his modest income with bribes: after his arrest in 1916 it was discovered that he had in his bank account hundreds of thousands of rubles in excess of his salary.21 Perhaps his worst sin, however, was the refusal to grasp the requirements of modern warfare. For one, he rejected the “interference” of private citizens in the war effort and disdained the politicians and industrialists who wished to help prepare Russia for the coming war. For another, he carried out in 1912 a destructive purge of officers, popularly known as “Young Turks,” versed in modern warfare, among them his deputy, Alexis Polivanov, who in 1915 would replace him. By favoring officers of the Suvorov school and demoting more talented rivals, he bore heavy responsibility for Russia’s poor performance in the first year of the war.
The higher a Russian’s rank, the less likely was he to possess the requisite military qualities. Many of the generals were careerists more adept at politicking than fighting. After the 1905 Revolution, officers were advanced mainly on the basis of personal loyalty to the Imperial dynasty. Promotion to the post of commander of a division or higher had to be confirmed by a Supreme Examination Board (Vysshaia Attestatsionnaia Kommissiia), chaired by Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, which used dynastic loyalty as its main criterion. Photographs of Russian generals of the period show amiable, portly gentlemen, usually bearded, who must have made better dinner companions than combat leaders. According to Knox,
the bulk of the regimental officers of the Russian army suffered from the national faults. If not actually lazy, they were inclined to neglect their duties unless constantly supervised. They hated the irksome duty of everyday training. Unlike our officers, they had no taste for outdoor amusements, and they were too prone to spend a holiday in eating rather more and in sleeping much more.
22
23. General V. A. Sukhomlinov.
Some of the highest commanders of Russian troops in World War I, including chiefs of staff and heads of armies, had made their entire careers in administration and lacked any combat experience.
Field-grade officers were better, but in short supply. Because of the low pay and low prestige of officers (except in the elite Guard Regiments, open only to persons with the proper social background and wealth), the army had difficulty recruiting able young men into the service. There was a persistent shortage of junior-grade officers. The situation with noncommissioned officers was plainly disastrous. Inasmuch as few NCOs reenlisted, a high proportion of those on active service were privates given stripes after cursory training. They enjoyed little respect from the troops.
Russia’s capacity for waging a protracted war did not look much more promising from the economic point of view.
The one sector of the economy that was adequate to the demands of a war of attrition was agriculture. Throughout the war years, Russia would produce ample food surpluses, which allowed her to avoid food rationing. The suspension of grain exports and two successive bumper harvests (1915 and 1916) provided an abundant reserve of food. This was one of the reasons for the smugness with which many Russians contemplated the prospect of war. But, as will be noted later, this advantage was in good measure vitiated by the government’s difficulties in extracting grain from the cash-rich peasants who withheld it in anticipation of higher prices, and by the inadequacies of transport.
Russia’s industries and transport fell in nearly every respect short of the task that lay ahead of them.
Russia traditionally depended for the
production of military equipment on government factories, a practice motivated by an unwillingness to entrust national security to civilians.* How poorly Russian state industries were prepared to cope with the demands of modern warfare may be illustrated by the following figures. At the end of 1914, with the initial mobilization completed, Russia had under arms 6.5 million men, but only 4.6 million rifles. To meet these shortages and compensate for combat losses, the army required each month a minimum of 100,000 to 150,000 new rifles, but Russian industry could at best provide only 27,000.23 In the first months of the war, therefore, some Russian soldiers had to wait for their comrades to fall in order to arm themselves. Serious proposals were then advanced to equip the troops with hatchets mounted on poles.24 Even after energetic measures had been adopted in 1915 and 1916 to involve civilian industry in war production, Russia lacked the capacity to manufacture all the needed rifles and had to import from the United States and Japan; even so, there were never enough of them.25
Another serious shortcoming occurred in artillery ammunition, especially 76mm shells, the standard caliber of Russian field artillery, which the armed forces would expend at a much higher rate than the General Staff had anticipated. At the beginning of the war, Russian artillery was allotted 1,000 shells per gun. The actual consumption proved many times higher, with the result that after four months of combat the ordnance depots were depleted.26 The most that existing manufacturers could provide in 1914 was some 9,000 shells a month.27 The result was an acute shortage, which had the most adverse effect on Russian performance in the campaigns of 1915.
Transport was arguably the weakest link in Russia’s war preparedness: Alexander Guchkov, who would serve as Minister of War in the First Provisional Government, told Knox in early 1917 that the disorganization of transport had dealt the Russian cause a worse blow than any military defeats.28 It was also the most difficult one to rectify under war conditions because of the time required to lay down railroad beds, especially in the cold northern regions. In relation to her territory, Russia fell far behind the other major belligerents: whereas for each 100 square kilometers, Germany had 10.6 kilometers of railways, France 8.8, and Austria-Hungary 6.4, Russia had a mere 1.1.29 This was one of the major reasons for the slowness of her mobilization. According to a German expert, in Western countries a mobilized soldier had to travel 200–300 kilometers from his home to the induction point; in Russia the distance was 900–1,000 kilometers.* But even these dismal comparisons do not tell the whole story, because three-quarters of Russian railways had only one track. As soon as the war broke out, the army requisitioned one-third of the rolling stock, which left too little for industrial and consumer needs, eventually causing shortages of food and raw materials in areas remote from their sources of production.
Nothing better reveals the lack of foresight on the part of Russia’s leaders than their failure during peacetime to prepare transportation outlets to the West. It should have been evident for some time before hostilities that the Germans would seal off the Baltic and the Turks the Black Sea, leaving Russia effectively blockaded. Wartime Russia has been compared to a house to which entry could be gained only by way of the chimney.30 Alas, even that chimney was clogged. Aside from Vladivostok, thousands of miles away and linked to central Russia by the single-track Trans-Siberian Railroad, Russia had only two naval outlets to the external world. One, Archangel, frozen six months of the year, was linked to the center by a one-track narrow-gauge railroad. Murmansk, far and away the most important port under wartime conditions because it was permanently ice-free, had no railway in 1914: a line to connect it with Petrograd was begun only in 1915 with the help of English engineers and completed in January 1917, on the eve of the Revolution.† This incredible situation is explainable in part by the unwillingness of the tsarist government to rely on foreign suppliers of military equipment and in part the incompetence of the Minister of Transport from 1909 to 1915, S. V. Rukhlov, a dyed-in-the-wool, anti-Semitic reactionary. In consequence, the Russian Empire, a great Eurasian power, found itself as effectively blockaded during the war as Germany and Austria. Much of the raw materials and equipment sent to Russia by the Allies in 1915–17 ended up stockpiled at Archangel, Murmansk, and Vladivostok for lack of transport.‡ Inadequacies of railroad transport also bore heavy responsibility for the food shortages which afflicted the cities of Russia’s north in 1916 and 1917. Here, as in so many other respects, the mistaken expectation that the war would be short accounted for the initial shortcomings; but it was political and managerial failures that prevented Russia from overcoming these deficiencies once they had become apparent.
The Russian performance in a protracted war would also be hampered by flaws in the military command as well as in the relationship between the military and civilian authorities.
Although Russia had, in theory, a Commander in Chief of all armed forces, in practice the conduct of military operations was decentralized. The combat zone was divided into several “fronts,” each with its own commander and its own strategic plan. Such an arrangement precluded a comprehensive strategy. According to one authority, the function of headquarters was in large measure limited to registering the plans of operations of the commanders of the separate fronts.31
A statute of field administration, adopted at the outbreak of the war, vested the army command with full authority over territories in the zone of combat as well as military installations in the rear. In these areas, the command administered both the civilian population and the military personnel without even being required to communicate with the civilian authorities. The Commander in Chief was empowered here to dismiss any and all officials, including governors, mayors, and chairmen of zemstvo boards. In consequence of this procedure, designed for a brief war, vast regions of the Empire—Finland, Poland, the Caucasus, the Baltic provinces, Archangel, Vladivostok, and even Petrograd itself—were withdrawn from civilian control.32 Russia found herself administratively bifurcated. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the Commander in Chief, said that Prime Minister Goremykin felt quite comfortable with this arrangement, believing it was none of his business to interfere with the areas in or near the theater of operations.33
Paradoxically, some of Russia’s leading figures saw her economic backwardness as a source of strength. It was said that the advanced industrial countries had become so dependent on the supply from abroad of raw materials and foodstuffs, on the cooperation of the various sectors of their economies, and on the availability of skilled labor that they could not withstand the rigors of war. With her more primitive economy, Russia was less vulnerable to disruption: abundant foodstuffs and inexhaustible manpower enabled her to fight indefinitely.* The optimism did not go unchallenged. In 1909 Struve warned:
Let us say frankly: compared to Germany and Austria, which, realistically viewed, are our potential enemies, Russia’s weakness lies in her insufficient economic power, her economic immaturity, and the resulting financial dependence on other countries. Under modern conditions of military conflict, all the imaginary advantages of Russia’s natural or semi-natural economy will turn into a source of military weakness.… Theoretically, no idea is more perverse and none more dangerous in practice than the one which holds that the economic backwardness of Russia can bring some sort of military advantages.
34
Such “defeatist” arguments were ignored. When the Duma Defense Committee expressed concern over Russia’s industrial unpreparedness for war, the Court expressed displeasure and the matter had to be dropped.35 Sukhomlinov got rid of Polivanov and the other Young Turks precisely because they wanted to establish working relations with the leaders of the nation’s economy, whom the Court suspected of political ambitions.
The Court and its bureaucracy, both civilian and military, were determined not to allow “society” to profit from the war to enhance its political influence. This attitude explains a great deal that would otherwise be inexplicable in the behavior of the tsarist regime in preparing for and conducting the wa
r. The patrimonial spirit remained very much alive despite the introduction of a constitutional regime. Deep in their hearts, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their entourage continued to regard Russia as the dynasty’s private domain and to treat every manifestation of patriotic concern on the part of the population as intolerable “meddling.” A general recalled an incident illustrative of this attitude. During one of their conversations at Army Headquarters, the Tsar let drop the phrase “I and Russia.” The general had the temerity to correct: “Russia and you.” The Tsar looked at him and replied in a low voice, “You are right.”36 But the patrimonial mentality would not die and there were times when the government found itself waging war on two fronts: a military one against the Germans and Austrians and a political one against domestic opponents. It was only under the pressure of military disasters that the Court finally and grudgingly made concessions to society and agreed to involve it in the management of the war.
Unfortunately for Russia, the attitude of society, as articulated in the Duma, was even more uncompromising. The liberal and socialist deputies undoubtedly wanted to do everything possible to bring victory, but they were also not averse to taking advantage of the war to promote their political interests. In 1915 and 1916, the opposition would prove unwilling to meet the Crown halfway, aware that the discomfiture of the government offered unique opportunities to strengthen parliament at the expense of the monarchy and bureaucracy—opportunities unlikely to recur once the war was over. In a sense, therefore, the liberals and socialists entered into an unwritten alliance with the Germans, exploiting German victories at the front to gain political advantages at home.
The Russian Revolution Page 34
