Abstract
The tendency of historians has been to distort what happened to the Russian Imperial Army during 1914–17 by viewing it through a lens colored by the end of the Romanovs and the rise of the Soviet Union.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Sources and Further Reading
Despite recent readjustments, Western accounts of Imperial Russia’s war effort still tend to be dominated by Bernard Pares’ pioneering study based upon his own service in Russia during World War I, The Fall of the Russian Monarchy (London, 1931). His views reflect those found in the memoirs of most of the exiled former politicians and generals, as well as the tone of such document collections as Frank A. Golder’s Documents of Russian History, 1914–1917 (New York-London, 1927; reprint, Gloucester, MA, 1964) and
Colwyn E. Vulliamy’s Red Archives: Russian State Papers and Other Documents relating to the Years 1915–1918 (London, 1929), which are supplemented for that last year by
Robert Paul Browder’s and Alexander F. Kerensky’s three-volume The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents (Stanford, CA, 1961). The governmental crisis of 1915 can be studied in
Michael Cherniavsky, ed., Prologue to Revolution: Notes of A. N Iakhontov on the Secret Meetings of the Council of Ministers, 1915 (New York, 1967), and the fall of the regime in
Mark D. Steinburg and Vladimir M. Khrustalev, eds., The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution (New Haven, 1995).
Pares’ conclusions also seemed confirmed by the series of emigre-authored studies published by Yale University Press in cooperation with the Carnegie Peace En-downment in the late 1920s-early 1918s during the war (1928), of which the most important—Michael T. Florinsky’s summary survey The End of the Russian Empire (1931), and
Nicholas N. Golovin’s The Russian Army in the World War (1931)—were reissued in the 1960s-70s. So, too, was the influential British attache
Alfred W.F. Knox’s two-volume With the Russian Army, 1914–1917 (London, 1921), which remains an important contribution. Also useful is
Edmund Ironside, Tannenberg: The First Thirty Days in East Prussia (Edinburgh, 1933), but
Ward Rutherford, The Russian Army in World War I (London, 1975), published in a revised edition: The Tsar’s War, 1914–1917: The Story of the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War. (Cambridge, UK, 1992), adds little of value. Yet even S.P. Andolenko’s otherwise excellent Histoire de lArmée russe (Paris, 1967), or such important studies such as
Daniel W. Graf’s “Military Rule Behind the Russian Front, 1914–1917: The Political Ramifications,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteoropas, XX (1974), no. 3, pp. 390–411, and his more extensive “The Reign of the Generals: Military Government in Western Russia, 1914–1915,” (unpublished PhD Dissertation: University of Nebraska, 1972),
Allan K. Wildman’s two-volume The End of the Russian Imperial Army (Princeton, NJ, 1980–1987), or
Robert D. Warth’s even more recent Nicholas II: The Life and Reign of Russia’s Last Monarch (Westport, CT, 1997), fail to challenge Pares’ basic tenets. Even so, the account given of the Caucasian Front in
W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff in Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828–1921 (Cambridge, UK, 1953) remains a shining exception and is still a model for future scholars.
A major, academic challenge to Pares’ assumptions finally appeared in the form of George Katkov’s Russia 1917: The February Revolution (London, 1967). Although many remained skeptical, Katkov’s conclusions on military events soon received considerable support in
Norman Stone’s The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (London, 1975) and David R. Jones, “Imperial Russia’s Armed Forces at War, 1914–1917: An Analysis of Combat Effectiveness” (PhD dissertation: Dalhousie University, 1986), which appeared in an edited form as “Imperial Russia’s Forces at War,” in
A. R. Millet and W. Murray, eds., Military Effectiveness, 3 vols. (London and Boston, 1988), I: The First World War, 249–328. A similar reassessment began in the Soviet Union as well, an excellent example of which is
I. I. Rostunov, Russkii front pervoi mirovoi voiny [The Russian Front in the First World War] (Moscow, 1976), and all contain important bibliographical notes for interested researchers. Additional bibliographical data on Russia’s war effort is available in
David R. Jones, ed., The Military Encyclopedia of Russia and Eurasia, formerly The Military-Naval Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (MERE), 8 vols, to date (Gulf Breeze, FL, 1978),
Marvin Lyons, The Imperial Russian Army: A Bibliography of Regimental Histories and Related Works (Stanford, 1968);
Charles G. Palm and Dale Reed, Guide to the Hoover Institution Archives (Stanford, 1980), and
Joseph L. Wieczynski, ed., The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, 57 vols, to date (Gulf Breeze, FL, 1976). Otherwise, a full account of Imperial Russia’s strategic planning for World War I is provided by
William C. Fuller, Jr., Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600–1914 (New York, 1992) while the issue of the wartime supreme command is in
David R. Jones, “Nicholas II and the Supreme Command: An investigation of motives,” in: Study Group on the Russian Revolution, Sbornik 11 (Durham, UK, 1985), 47–83, and more generally in
Marc Ferro, Nicholas II: The Last of the Tsars (London, 1991) and
Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Emperor of All the Russias (London, 1993). Lieven also provides an updated account of Russia’s conduct in August 1914 in his Russia and the Origins of the First World War (New York-London, 1983; rev. ed., 1984), while wartime diplomacy and inter-Allied relations are dealt with generally in
C. Jay Smith, Jr., The Russian Struggle for Power, 1914–1917: A Study of Russian Foreign Policy during the First World War (New York, 1956) and
Keith Neilson, Strategy and Supply: The Anglo-Russian Alliance, 1914–17 (London, 1984).
Issues of munitions and supply are covered in Peter Gatrell, The Tsarist Economy, 1850–1917 (London, 1986) and
Lewis H. Siegelbaum, The Politics of Industrial Mobilization in Russia, 1914–17: A Study of the War Industries Committees (London, 1983). Other useful studies of individual topics include
Christopher D. Bellamy’s, The Red God of War (London, 1986) on the artillery,
Alexis Wrangel The End of Chivalry: The Last Great Cavalry Battles, 1914–1918 (New York, 1982) on the cavalry, and
V. Hardesty and G. Sikorskii, Igor Sikorskii: The Russian Years (Seattle, 1988) and
David R. Jones, “The Beginnings of Russian Air Power, 1907–1922,” in R. Higham and J. Kipp, eds. Soviet Aviation and Air Power: A Historical View (London and Boulder, CO, 1977–1978) on the air services. As for the navy’s role, this is usefully outlined in chapters 13–15 of
Donald W. Mitchell, A History of Russian and Soviet Sea Power (New York, 1974. In addition, recent campaign histories include
Dennis E. Showalter’s Tannenberg: Clash of Empires (Hamden, CT, 1991) and
Louise Erwin Heenan, Russian Democracy’s Fatal Blunder: The Summer Offensive of 1917 (New York, 1987). The relation of the army to the revolutionary movement, both before and after the February Revolution also is treated extensively in Allan K. Wild-man’s two-volume study mentioned above, in
George Katkov, Russia 1917: The Kornilov Affair. Kerensky andthe Break-up of the Russian Army (London, 1980), and
Rex A. Wade’s The Russian Search for Peace, February-October 1917 (Stanford, CA, 1969). Finally, the end of Russias war is chronicled in such works as
John W. Wheeler-Bennett, Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace, March 1918 (London, 1938, 1963),
Michael Kettle, The Allies and the Russian Collapse, March 1917-March 1918 (London, 1981),
Richard K. Debo, Revolution and Survival: The Soviet Policy of Soviet Russia 1917–18 (Liverpool, UK, 1979), and
Oleh S. Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–1918 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1971).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2002 Frederick W. Kagan and Robin Higham
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jones, D.R. (2002). The Imperial Army in World War I, 1914–1917. In: Kagan, F.W., Higham, R. (eds) The Military History of Tsarist Russia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-10822-6_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-10822-6_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-60258-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10822-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)