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As 1917 began, the Russian army was larger and better-equipped than ever before. Nearly 7 million men served the Tsar and faced off against Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Within w eeks, the Tsar and his dynasty were gone, and by the summer, the Russian army was disintegrating before the eyes of its generals - but how exactly did one of the most powerful armies in the world collapse? From 1914 to 1917, the Russian army fought a brutal campaign against the combined forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary along the more than 1000km-wide Eastern Front. The first two years
of the war were marked by the disastrous defeats in 1914 at Tannenberg and 1915 at Gorlice-Tarnow, and a terrible shortage of rifles and artillery shells. By summer 1916 though, the army had re-armed and nearly destroyed the Austro-Hungarian army in the Brusilov Offensive. Russian industry was pumping out more weapons than ever before, Russian troops had won a major victory, and significant shipments of aid had arrived from Britain and France. It seemed that the Russian Steamroller so many had feared before the war might actually be taking shape,
and Russia's government promised to launch an offensive in spring 1917 to support British, French, and Italian attacks in the west. Instead, the Russian army - a disciplined, structured institution of millions of men, with an intact chain of command, and that had fought effectively - fell to pieces. But it didn't happen all at once. First, let's take a look at the state of the army at the end of 1916. Russian commanders and veteran soldiers were now experienced and well-equipped, but cracks were beginning to show. Total losses were approaching 5.5 million, and of these, more than 1.5 million were dead.
The motivated and well-trained officers and men of the pre-war regular army were mostly gone, and the proportion of older soldiers with no prior military experience, and with less motivation to fight, was much higher than ever before. The costly fighting of 1916 had also dampened morale, since the hoped-for victory did not come. Soldier Vasily Mishnin, summed up his feelings in his diary: "Last day of this year and, God willing, it will never return. Let such a year as this die forever and never come back. How I'd love something new, to cheer my soul and make my heart and soul clean and bright again. I want to be happy.
Instead, there are tears in my eyes. Oh Lord, what is this and when will this end? This is the end of the hateful year 1916 - let it disappear into oblivion, forever." (Palmer and Wallis 286) The home front was also in crisis. Russia's economy was under extreme pressure because so many men were in the army or dead, and because so much of the production capacity had been converted to serve the army. Before the war, Russia had exported food, but now grain production had crashed, and what grain there was couldn't make it from the countryside to the cities.
The transportation network couldn't meet the needs of the army and the civilian economy at the same time. Since 1914, the price of rye was up 47%, boots 334%, and matches 500%. (Figes 299) For decades, Soviet historians claimed that the army had stopped functioning in the winter of 1916/17 to retroactively emphasize revolutionary feelings. But more recent research has shown that although the army was exhausted, it was still a functioning organization at the start of 1917 - even though things were about to get much worse. In February 1917 Russia was rocked by revolution, and the army played its part in the end of Romanov rule and the creation of a Russian
Republic under a Provisional Government. In fact, the Petrograd garrison's participation in the February revolution is what guaranteed its success. Soldiers and workers formed a council, or Soviet, to express their demands to the new government and to the army gen eral staff. The Petrograd garrison was not the only part of the army that overthrew the Tsar, the General Staff did too. The highest echelon of the Russian army pressured Tsar Nicholas to abdicate, and sabotaged all attempts by loyalists to suppress the uprising in Petrograd. They hoped that if the Tsar left, a more stable government might replace him and give Russia a better chance to win the war.
Now, it's important to keep in mind that the Petrograd garrison was not representative - most of the millions of men in the army were not revolutionaries in February, they were simply passive. When frontline troops learned of Nicholas' abdication a few days after the fact, the main reaction was not celebration but confusion. Even in Petrograd, not all the rebellious soldiers acted out of anti-war feelings. Some did want to avoid being sent to the front or were tired of the war, but many others were still willing to carry on the war, they just empathized with the sufferings of civilians who had risen up, or no longer trusted the Tsar.
By now, many of the men believed, for example, that the Tsarina was a German spy. After the February revolution there was massive political uncertainty but the Army's General Staff still wanted to fight the war, and most of the soldiers were still willing to fight on. But not under the old conditions. On March 1, the Petrograd Soviet issued its famous (or infamous) Приказ №1, or Order No. 1. This order reflected the desires of the more politicized garrison, but it resonated with front-line troops as well: • Military units were to elect committees and delegates to the Soviet • Units were to obey the government's Military
Committee only if its orders did not conflict with those of the soldiers' committees and the Soviet • Soldiers' committees were to control the distribution of weapons and not surrender them to officers • Soldiers were to accept military discipline while on duty but otherwise have the same rights as civilians • Soldiers did not have to address officers with the traditional "Your Honour" and the officers would have to address the men using the polite form of address. (Engelstein, 125-126) As you can imagine, Order No 1 destabilized the army. The men questioned officers' coercive powers, dismissed some officers and arrested others, and in a few garrisons behind the lines, some soldiers murdered their officers. The most
extreme case was at the Kronstadt naval base, where sailors killed 30 officers. The General Staff was furious, especially since the Soviet had issued the order without consulting them. Commander-in-Chief General Mikhail Alexeyev begged the Provisional Government to reverse the order, but soldiers had already elected committees and there was no turning back. The new Minister for War, Aleksandr Guchkov warned Alekseev of just how fragile the army had become: "I can say directly the Provisional Government only exists so long as the Soviet allows it to. The disintegration of reserve formations in internal districts
that we have already seen is progressing and those replacements who have been in them for three or four months cannot be used to reinforce the army." (Stone 280) The Soviet did issue an Order No 2 to dial down some radical points in Order No 1, but the men simply ignored it. Order No 1 was now a reality for the Russian army - an army that was overall still intact and willing to fight, but not on the terms of the officer class or the Tsar. The collapse had begun, but it was far from complete. In fact historians argue about just how much influence Order No 1 actually had after the initial period of chaos. Most of the soldiers' committees were moderate leftists,
not radical Bolsheviks. They were against the old system and injustices in the army hierarchy, but they generally supported the new republic. Soon enough, the committees began to try to strengthen discipline and encourage the men to fight. Nonetheless, even if we accept that the soldiers' committees actions didn't accelerate the collapse of the army, the start of the collapse can still be traced to Order No 1 since it destroyed the old system without providing a new model of discipline. Order No. 1 also further poisoned the already bad relationship between officers and men. For the men, at this point in the war, the officers represented the hated old order - not only because
the officers were 50% aristocrats, but also because they came from the land-owning class that dominated and mistreated the peasants, who were the majority of the soldiers. The officers, on the other hand, moved from simply looking down on their soldiers as social inferiors, to seeing them as a murderous, rebellious mob. Officer Vladimir Stankevich, serving as a commissar for the Provisional Government, saw how officers refused to think of their men in a new, respectful way: "In the army there was an ineradicable habit, bequeathed by the old order: to count rifles
and cartridges, but not soldiers. The soldier is only able to obey, and he can live in dirty pits, covered with branches of trees." (Reese, 395) This was the kind of tension that caused some men to write to General Alexei Brusilov, who soon became their new Commander-in-Chief, threatening to kill him if Russia did not make peace. By March 1917, two foundations of an army: hierarchy and discipline, were now weakened. But outside of the military, changes were happening that would bring collapse even closer. An army is part of the society from which its soldiers and officers are drawn, and Russian civilian society was quaking.
Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote in the 19th century that war is politics by other means - which means that if an army doesn't have a clear goal to fight for, cohesion and morale will suffer. After the February revolution, Russians argued fiercely about whether the war should continue, and if so, for what cause. The military establishment and liberal political thinkers wanted to wage war to defeat the Central Powers just like before 1917, but do it better - hence their slogan "war until victory." Leftists like the Petrograd Soviet, the Social Revolutionary Party, the Mensheviks, and the soldiers' committees, wanted to fight to defend Russia but secure a
peace without "annexations or indemnities" - a position known as оборончество or "defensism." Just as tensions reached a fever pitch in April, revolutionary Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia on April 3. He had been in exile in Switzerland, but the German government enabled his journey back to Russia in the hopes that his presence would further destabilize the country and the army. He denounced the Provisional Government and defensism, but at first some soldiers and sailors were against him since they considered him a German spy and traitor.
Some protested for his arrest. Despite his rough start, Lenin would soon galvanize the Bolsheviks and their message would reach more soldiers at the rear and the front. The result were more frequent refusals to go into combat and more anti-war rallies. These divisions came to the surface after the initial revolutionary fervour calmed down. On April 18, Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov stated that Russia would continue to fight the war to win, which caused outrage among soldiers and workers. Thousands of soldiers of the Finland Regiment surrounded the Mariinskii Palace in Petrograd, demanding that Milyukov resign. Many of the men carried banners with slogans associated
with Bolshevik propaganda, like ""Down with the Provisional Government!" "Down with the War!" and "All Power to the Soviets!" The protests forced the government to resign, and a new government was formed, this time with more socialist politicians like new Minister for War Alexander Kerensky. The new government adopted "defensism": the goal was now to protect the Russian Republic against the German militarist threat. The problem was most soldiers interpreted defensism differently than the government. The soldiers did not want to attack at all, only defend,
whereas the government felt strategic defence still required attacking under some circumstances. So in spring 1917, most soldiers were willing to defend Russia, but radical Bolshevik propaganda was becoming more influential and the Provisional Government still had a hard time making the case for its vision of the war. Meanwhile soldiers' committees formed networks, and mass fraternizations with Central Powers troops over Easter were ominous signs of things to come. In spite of the chaos, the Provisional Government was still confident the troops were willing to
fight. But the Republican government also distrusted the aristocratic officer corps, so they dismissed 140 generals and rapidly shuffled officers from position to position in the high command. From February to November 1917, there were 5 different Chiefs of Staff. This was the unstable command structure that would lead the army into its next and final offensive. Back in 1916, the Tsarist government had agreed with the British and French that Russia would launch a major attack in May 1917. Many generals now opposed the idea, but by early summer, they had changed their minds and agreed with Government demands
for what would become the Kerensky or Summer Offensive. Russian leaders hoped an offensive might maintain Russia's standing with its Allies, prevent the collapse of the army, defeat Germany while the Russian army could still fight, and strengthen the position and legitimacy of the Provisional Government. It was a very ambitious gamble. Kerensky had staked everything on the attack, so he did not mince words when trying to motivate the troops: "Soldiers! The Fatherland is in danger. Freedom is threatened, the Revolution stands before the abyss […] in the name of the salvation of free Russia, you will go where your
commanders and your Government send you. On your bayonet-points you will be bearing peace, truth, and justice. You will go forward in serried ranks, kept firm by the discipline of your duty and your supreme love for the revolution and your country." (Engelstein, 147) He even visited the front himself before the attack began on July 1. He toured the front with General Brusilov, and the general asked soldiers if they would attack if he ordered them to. The fact that a general would ask his men such a question was a sign of how fragile
things had gotten. Even so, Kerensky did manage to convince many of the soldiers' committees to back the so called "revolutionary offensive." But as the army prepared, it began to fall apart under pressure. The soldiers' ideas of mutual respect, consent and equality were incompatible with a normal functioning army, and they simply stopped behaving like soldiers. Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov recalled the spiral of lawlessness gripping the country, in which thousands of soldiers took part: "Lynch-law, the destruction of houses and shops,
jeering at and attacks on officers, provincial authorities, or private persons, unauthorized arrests, seizures, and beatings-up-were recorded every day by tens and hundreds." (Engelstein 148) Other problems included soldiers launching pogroms and raping peasant girls behind the lines, since the military police had ceased to function. Even as the army moved units towards the front for the coming offensive, men like junior officer Roman Gul' observed the signs of breakdown: "Something absolutely unbelievable was going on with the march battalions at that time. The
march battalions differed in sizes, but usually only about thirty percent of their men came to the front, because people just fled once they got off the trains. They fled to their homes, deserted, fled anywhere they wanted. There just wasn't any discipline anymore." (Гуль) Many of the soldiers who went home did so to lay claim to land back on their home estates, which were being divided up amongst the peasants after they'd dispossessed the landowners. The government and the high command b ecame ever more desperate to somehow keep the army together. To boost morale, they created volunteer "shock formations"
or "death battalions" of revolutionary patriots, including all-female units. Maria Bochkaryova, the creator of the first women's battalion, was clear about its role: "Brusilov wondered whether one could rely on women, since after all the formation of the female battalion is a world first. 'Might the women bring shame on Russia?' he asked. I told Brusilov that if he gave me full authority, then I guarantee that my battalion will not be a disgrace for Russia. Brusilov told me that he trusted me and would do his best to help the formation of a female volunteer battalion." (Базанов, 28) Another step the Provincial Government took to give the men something to fight for was the
creation of units based on nationality, the first of which were all-Ukrainian formations. Even the Orthodox Church rallied to save the revolutionary republic and priests urged on the troops. But many soldiers were not motivated by the appeals of politicians, priests, generals, shock battalions, national units, or women's units. One man's open letter to female soldiers was typical: "Dear women comrades! Well, I didn't know that there were such brave people that will go to fight instead of us. Thank you, comrades. At least we will have a rest.
You can feed the lice [in the trenches] instead of us." (Доброволицы, 189) These attitudes continued to turn deadly. Commissar Linde, an officer who'd been sent to the front as a representative of the Petrograd Soviet and wanted the army to fight on to protect the republic, developed a reputation for restoring order amongst Bolshevized units. On one occasion, he reassured a nervous general, who was about to set the Cossacks on the unruly infantrymen: "You see, General, I shall make them listen to sense. One has to know how to talk to the soldiers. It's all a question of psychology." Figes 439 Linde gave a rousing speech to the men under the whistles of German
shells flying overhead - but the men did not respond to his patriotism, so he began insulting them, at which point the men killed him on the spot. With the high command in chaos, with discipline breaking down among the ranks - but still with an army in the field, the Russian army began the Summer Offensive. On July 1, 1917, after two days of a massive artillery bombardment, the final Russian offensive of the First World War began. The plan was for the 7th, 8th and 11th Russian armies to smash the German and Austro-Hungarian forces in Galicia in a giant push towards the Austro-Hungarian city of Lviv, supported by smaller attacks against Romania.
Russian command placed Siberian, Finnish and Czech units in key sectors since they were more reliable than units from the ethnic Russian heartland. at any time of the war, and at first, all went well. The Russians, including shock troops using similar tactics to German stormtroopers, pushed back the Austro-Hungarian 2nd and 3rd armies in southern Galicia - and then stopped. Thousands of Russian troops felt they'd done enough and simply refused to continue the attack. Then came the German-led counterattack. On July 19, 9 German and 2 Austro-Hungarian divisions completely turned the tide. The Central Powers now
advanced eastwards as fast as the Russians could retreat, taking Ternopil on July 24 and Chernivtsy on August 2. Commander-in-Chief Brusilov ordered counterattacks, but the soldiers would not obey. Russian losses were heavy: in just four days, they lost 80,000 men against just 16,000 Germans. Russian troops deserted, mutinied, and fraternized on an unprecedented scale, to such an extent that the army was no longer a real fighting force. In all, 2 million men would desert between the February revolution and the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. Russian junior officer Roman Gul saw it happening: "Two hundred of our soldiers have also crowded into No Man's Land, one can see the Germans giving
them a light, and how they laugh together […] The field telephone in my dugout rings, it's the battery. 'The Kinburn Regiment's 2nd Company is fraternizing,' I tell them, 'I ask you to open fire on their position immediately.' The battery commander's voice is sleepy: 'Traitors, bastards…do you think it's so easy to fire on them?' I climb up on the parapet and watch the shrapnel burst overhead, scattering the fraternizers back to the trenches." (Гуль) The Russian army was now collapsing in the fullest sense of the word - the Summer Offensive was the straw that broke the very fragile camel's back. Yet another blow to the
soldiers' shaky confidence in the Provisional Government came just as the offensive was sputtering to a halt. Hardline General Lavr Kornilov was appointed Commander-in-Chief, and he tried to restore discipline by convincing the government to re-instate the death penalty for desertion. Many officers welcomed this decision. Around the same time, the July Days protests in Petrograd saw workers, soldiers, and sailors take to the streets in violent demonstrations against the Provisional Government. Mostly, they were Bolshevik supporters, but Lenin refused to join the protests (though he would later take control of the country in a coup in October), and the Petrograd Soviet refused the
protestor's demands that it take power. The government then cracked down on protesters and the Bolshevik party. Radical soldiers, of whom by this point there were millions, turned even further away from the hated government, its army, and its war. The blows did not stop falling on the disintegrating Russian army. Somehow, it retained enough cohesion to keep units along the front, but as soon as the Germans attacked most units simply gave way, which led to the fall of Riga in September. Relations between the conservative army high command and the leftist Provisional Government were at an all-time low. What shreds of discipline remained evaporated on September 9,
when Kornilov attempted a coup. The coup failed when his troops refused to march on Petrograd, and Kerensky dismissed him. Very few Russian soldiers were willing to listen to their generals anymore. By October 19, just weeks before the Bolsheviks overthrew the government and took power, the War Ministry advised the Provisional Government that the army could no longer fight, or even feed or clothe itself, and they should demobilize the troops and request peace terms. Soldiers, regardless of their views on the war, now firmly believed that the revolution was happening back
home, not at the front, and so they headed back to their villages and towns in droves. The Russian army, once feared as a Steamroller that threatened Germany itself, was no longer a fighting force by the summer of 1917. Years of heavy losses, poor relations between officers and men, and a loss of faith in the monarchy all caused the army to either support or remain passive in the face of the February revolution. The resulting tensions between the Provisional Government and High Command, breakdown in discipline due to the Soviet's Order No 1, and continued influence of Bolshevik propaganda sapped the army's strength far more than combat.
In a matter of months, most Russian soldiers lost complete faith in their officers and the political systems they were fighting for. When their leaders asked them to put their lives on the line for the republic in the Summer Offensive, it turned out to be what one historian has called "Russian democracy's fatal blunder." The once-fearsome army of the Tsars, that had conquered a vast empire and stood toe-to-toe with the Austrians and the Germans since 1914, was no more. When I travel from my home in Vienna to the Real Time History studio in Berlin, the night train passes through multiple countries and that is a headache. Suddenly,
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