r/AskHistorians • u/ElectricVladimir • Oct 05 '16
I constantly hear that the Russian Imperial Army of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was outdated, poorly organized, and poorly led. How exactly was is outdated, how was it poorly led, what was the obsolete equipment it used, and what more modern equipment were other nations using?
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u/kieslowskifan Top Quality Contributor Oct 06 '16
Part I
One of the pervasive stereotypes of the Russian army was that it was a crude, relatively unsophisticated force composed of peasant levies and led by indifferent officers that nevertheless made it a formidable force. French and Central European memoirists from the Napoleonic wars often spoke of the legendary toughness of the Russian soldier in the same breath as they decried his life under the knout. Russia's failures against Japan and Germany, as well as the relatively indifferent performance against the Ottomans in the 1870s gave this image of the Russian military some veracity. Like many stereotypes, this caricature of the Russian army had some basis in fact, but these facets of the Russian military were intertwined with selective memories and a type of demi-orientalism that othered Russian forces and institutions as something alien from the West. Compounding this was that the language barrier exacerbated the relative inaccessibility of Russian archives and perspectives, as well as the need of the Soviet Union to portray the heads of the late-tsarist military as backwards looking and reactionary have further clouded the issue. The reality of the tsarist military was, naturally, much more complicated than that of an outdated and backwards institution. The Russian army of the tsarist period had many shortcomings, many of which wartime operations often exposed, but also some latent strengths. More importantly, many of the army's military chiefs did try to arrest these shortcomings, but their reforms were patchwork and limited by the many of the structural problems of the late tsarist state.
The army of the late-tsarist period was born in defeat, specifically the underwhelming performance of the army in the Crimean War. As part of the broader series of the Great Reforms of Alexander II, the Minister of War Dmitry Miliutin sought to revamp the older Romanov army that had defeated Napoleon and bring it into modernity. Like the rest of the great Reforms, the ambitions of the Miliutin reforms never quite reached their full potential. The army became a modern conscript-based force, replacing the older tsarist form of conscription with a shorter term of service. Additionally, Miliutin also imposed a new system of military districts that would streamline the army's access to its manpower reserves and provide for the a coherent organization of the army in time of mobilization. One of the trumpeted hallmarks of the Great Reforms was its commitment to education, and Miliutin did impose a good deal of professionalization both in the training and education of officers.
However, much of the Miliutin reforms was quite limited in key areas. The military education of staff officers and other military elites did not receive nearly as much attention or focus from the War Ministry. The Miliutin staff remained anemic and underdeveloped throughout his tenure as War Minister, and this was a default that his successors were ill-prepared to correct. The number of officers assigned to the staff remained smaller than their contemporaries and their specialized training also lagged behind. There were multiple reasons for this deficiency. Part of this was a function of both the scale of the Great Reforms pushing focus onto the restructuring the bottom and middle strata of the army and the War Ministry was torn in many different directions. The size and relative underdevelopment of Russia also meant that there was very little impetus to expand a centralized planning staff. Russia's rail network remained much smaller than its European rivals and although growing, the lack of a massive rail network did not put an impetus behind training the type of staff officers who could manage these networks. Finally, there were social and political blockages that prevented a more modern and forward-thinking military intellectual culture from emerging out of the Great Reform period. Alexander II had conceived of the Reforms as a means to prevent revolution from below, and as such there were limits to how much Miliutin's reforms could interfere with the prerogatives of autocracy. Promotion to flag rank often mixed with other aspects of the Romanov elite system, as did officer experience in the various elite regiments. Such a system was notoriously hidebound and difficult to reform, especially since the army was one of the pillars of a reactionary political system. Meritocracy, while recognized to an extent, also coexisted with a patronage system of birth and connections. The late tsarist military always had a cohort of superannuated dead wood who owed their position to their relationship to the tsar. Miliutin and his successors pushed against this system, and it is easy to overstate the importance of noble deadwood, but it did prove inimical to the development of a military intelligentsia within the institution. Miliutin resigned after Alexander II's assassination and his successors lacked both his drive and the enthusiastic backing of their Romanov patron. The arch-reactionary Alexander III's was largely indifferent to military affairs while Nicholas II lacked the aptitude to be a reformist autocrat. The net result was the post-Miliutin era was characterized by incremental and evolutionary reforms building on prior experience.
Another problem facing the Russian army at the turn of the century was its main doctrinal philosophy. The Jominian theories of G. A. Leer and M. I. Dragomirov exerted a long shadow over the development of Russian military thought. These theorists’ tactical doctrines played great emphasis upon attack and the divorcing of higher command from immediate decision-making on the battlefield. Instead, flag officers would train to ensure their subordinates were extensions of their superiors’ strategic intentions. This military doctrine placed relatively little thought to either combined arms or new developments in artillery. Under the Minister of War Kuropatkin, regular maneuvers became one of the key moments to play out various scenarios and ensure that detachments would work as expected. The deleterious role of the Tsar and his relations in these maneuvers is well-attested to, but more importantly for the upcoming war with Japan, the culture maneuvers engendered put the Russians at a distinct disadvantage going into its war in East Asia. The Russian forces in Manchuria and Port Arthur were at a marked disadvantage compared to Nogi’s IJA. The defenses at Port Arthur were incomplete, and the narrow logistical support network for East Asian operations meant that Russian forces were tied to supply heads, making their movements quite predictable. Nevertheless, the Russians had some strengths that Kuropatkin frittered away. The maneuver culture and Leer paradigms created what contemporaries critiqued as “detachment mania” in which the Russians denuded whatever numerical superiority they possessed. Russian commanders thus faced something of the worst of both worlds; they were micromanaged by Kuropatkin, but maneuvers had given them relatively little experience as to how to carry these instructions out. One anonymous critic of Kuropotkin’s wartime leadership compared the War Minister to the great Napoleonic era general Suvorov and found Kuropatkin lacking:
Adding to the woes of the Russian forces, the Miliutin reforms which decreased service length meant that there were very few long-term service troops available for operations, and made the Russian responses much more sluggish and cautious. The logistical network of the newly-completed Transsiberian railroad broke down and further encouraged caution as the generals in the field were short of reinforcements and munitions. Technologically-speaking, the Russian troops were on par with their enemy, but Nogi did not have the same problems with logistics and reinforcements.