Russia's Iron General: The Life of Aleksei A. Brusilov, 1853-1926 1498572510, 9781498572514

Citation preview

Russia’s Iron General

Russia’s Iron General The Life of Aleksei A. Brusilov, 1853–1926

Jamie H. Cockfield

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2019 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019949512 ISBN 978-1-4985-7251-4 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-7252-1 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To the Russian soldiers of Both World Wars, whose enormous sacrifices saved the West, this book is dedicated

Contents

Preface ix 1 The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

1

2 The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

55

3 Between Metal and Men: Near Disaster and Revitalization, May 1915–April 1916

89

4 Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

137

5 Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

165

6 A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

223

7 The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

241

8 Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

277

9 When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

309

Bibliography 349 Index 367 375

About the Author

vii

Preface

General Aleksei A. Brusilov (1853–1926) was unquestionably Russia’s greatest and most successful great war general. Born in the Caucasus and educated in the elite military school Le Corps des Pages, he pursued a military career in the Russian army largely as a teacher and writer of military works, while specializing in the Cavalry School as an administrator and a teacher. A stern disciplinarian, he demanded no more of those under him than he demanded of himself. As a military officer, he was a great proponent of the doctrine of “preparedness,” and in training men, he instructed them in all weather conditions and day-and-night fighting so that they could be ready to perform in all situations. Since he was convinced that Russia would one day be at war with Germany, he devoured books on the German military, toured German military schools, and visited German military installations. His chosen field of expertise was, of course, the cavalry in the waning days of that military arm, made obsolete by heavy artillery, the machine gun, and the airplane. Yet, he did not loyally cling to it as it was becoming useless, but became an advocate for modern weapons, and he was the first Russian general extensively to employ combined arms tactics. One historian has even called him the Father of Combined Arms in the Russian army. Brusilov derives his great fame primarily, however, from his successful offensive in 1916, which crippled forever the Austrian army, requiring Germany to assume a greater role on the Russian front to keep its ally in the war, thus tying down troops and resources that were needed in the West. Austria’s permanent need for help guaranteed that as long as Russia remained in the war, Germany could not win it. What is more, his tactics in his offensive were novel for World War I. Whereas generals on all fronts usually attacked on a very narrow front after a murderous artillery bombardment of the enemy lines, Brusilov developed the innovation of attacking on a broad front (in case ix

x

Preface

of the 1916 offensive, on a 250-mile one) to keep the enemy guessing. When one of his armies advanced, that army received the reinforcements until it stalled. Then resources went onto another part of the front where the enemy was giving away. The enemy was kept in a puzzle as to where to send its resources, and his tactics proved highly successful. After the February Revolution, Brusilov eventually became the commander-in-chief of all the Russian armies, but the Revolution had broken this force to which he had dedicated his life, and his efforts failed miserably as the disintegrating army, to quote V. I. Lenin, “Voted with its feet; it went home.” He remained in Russia after the Communists took power and worked for the Soviet government, earning himself the enmity of the Russian émigré community abroad, but to the Russian nation today, he remains a great hero. The writing of Russian history in the early twentieth century is plagued with a continuous problem: A question of dates. While the remainder of the world had advanced to the Gregorian calendar by the twentieth century, the Russians retained the Julian calendar, which ran in the twentieth century thirteen days behind the Gregorian. That is why in an endnote where there is a date, the date of the event discussed in the text is sometimes thirteen days later. This difference causes the February Revolution to take place in March and the October Revolution to occur in November. I have generally used the Julian dates for the years before 1914, but from the beginning of the World War, since the narrative jumps from the Russian front to the Italian front to the French front, I will use in all cases in the text the Gregorian dates to avoid confusion and to avoid the clumsy “1/14 November” notation, which is rarely used these days anyway. A book is rarely the work of only the author, and this one is no exception. A number of my friends read parts of the manuscript, for which I thank them, but in each case, given the limits on their time, I asked none to read more than one chapter. They are Robert Good, Laura Moody, Wayne Mixon, Buck Melton, Wallace Daniel, David Stone, John Dunaway, Doug Steeples, and Catharine Brosman. Each improved the manuscript in a number of ways, but of course, any flaws still in it are totally mine. I wish also to thank anonymously, unfortunately, the many overworked and underpaid librarians and archivists who assisted me, especially those in the Gosudarstvenniii Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federoratsii (GARF) and Russkii Gosudarstvennyi Voennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (RGVIA) in Moscow. Many of them helped me cheerfully and efficiently despite the fact that they had not, in some cases, been paid in months. From a mechanical standpoint, I must personally thank Joey Tant, Ben Kienker, Ricky Vega, and Ian Rivera. I was given a new computer in the middle of this project, and all my work had to be transferred into it. It never behaved like my old one, and I was constantly having to call the Information

Preface

xi

Technology Help Desk. Although over the years, I talked with many different people when I called, it seemed to be the fate of Joey and Ben to be on duty the overwhelming majority of the time. They patiently and cheerfully corrected problems when my computer played tricks on me and helped me keep my sanity. Ricky had the task of transforming the manuscript into a format suitable to the press, something I could never have done. Ian had the nightmare of organizing the footnotes. I could never have finished this work without the help of these gentlemen. I also must thank an archivist in our library, Kathryn B. Wright, who had the misfortune of being highly expert in computers and having an office near my library office, who helped me with my computer when the Information Technology folks were unavailable. I also must thank my friend Igor Kuzminov, a graduate of Moscow State University, who assisted me in translating slang, military jargon, and obscure words not in any of my dictionaries. He especially helped with nuances and shades of meaning of words that only a native speaker would be likely to know. He and his mother Irene also acquired for me the latest edition of Brusilov’s memoirs, which I might never have discovered. Finally, a word on the dedication. Since Russia left the Great War well before the Treaty of Versailles and since the Cold War almost immediately followed World War II, the role of the Russian soldier in both wars has been largely obscured in the West. In both struggles, the sacrifices of the ordinary Russian soldier were never fully understood by us, and we were often been quick to disparage and dismiss their role. Their suffering was much greater than ours ever was, and the burden they carried probably saved us. At the very least, their fighting made our total victory possible. To these soldiers, I dedicate this work.

Chapter 1

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

The revolutionary Lev Trotsky once observed that “an army is always a copy of the society it serves,”1 and indeed this observation is often true. The Russian army has been a much-feared military instrument, and even after there was much evidence to the contrary as late as World War I, the cry “Kossaken kommen!” could still send a ripple of terror through an undefeated German force. Yet, the Russian army has produced in its long history only two outstanding military leaders: General Alexander V. Suvorov (1729–1800) and General Aleksei A. Brusilov (1853–1926), the latter a disciple of the former, both of whom broke many military precedents and in the process rose head and shoulders above other “great” Russian “heroic” generals such as Generals Mikhail Kutuzov and Georgii Zhukov.2 Yet, this formidable military power has never by itself defeated another major military power. Its victorious wars have always been at the expense of lesser powers or allied with other major powers, and its military victories have rarely been won by brilliant tactics or bold moves, but instead by the insensitive feeding of cannon fodder at the enemy in overwhelming numbers, frequently resulting in pyrrhic victories. Although Russia ended World War II as a major military power and was the greatest single contributor of all the allies to the defeat of Hitler, there were no brilliant victories (even Kursk was not so great a success), only the simple grinding away to victory in a war of attrition. The fault does not lie in the simple Russian soldier, whose strength and bravery are difficult to surpass. That “great gray slope of men,” as Tennyson called them, are usually unmatched in their tenacity and courage. The answer is twofold. First, crucially, is Russia’s frequent technological inferiority to their enemy. Russia simply has never until perhaps the past three or four decades had the military technology of the major world powers, hence its 1

2

Chapter 1

reliance on human flesh as a military weapon. Russia, like all of the other major military nations, was unprepared for the Great War of 1914–1918, but the other powers quickly adjusted their industry to accommodate their inadequacies, the Russians were slow to do so for a number of reasons that need not detain us here. This shortcoming was a major contributor to the grisly hecatombs that were common on the Eastern Front and to the eventual collapse of the front all together. A second and equally serious problem was the relations between the officers and men. The chiasmic social differences in Russian society were not surprisingly replicated in the Russian army. Until the Milyutin reforms of the 1870s, only aristocrats could be officers, and the attitude that the common soldier was only so much dirt under their feet and a commodity that was both expendable and replaceable prevailed both above and below. Had the Russian soldiers not been largely illiterate and religious to the point of superstition, the Russians would never have provided any significant armies in the field. Both Suvorov and Brusilov were not only innovators in technology and tactics of warfare, they were both generals who cared for their men, and it was very important that this concern was known in the lower ranks. Any human performs poorly for leadership that he or she hates, be it a boss, teacher, coach, or army officer, and doubtlessly many of the latter have lost their lives in the thick of fighting from fire from their own resentful men. Yet, for a soldier who loves and respects, not fears, his leaders, victory is the abiding goal, and both generals had such a deserved reputation among the men they led. There were certainly others in the Russian army with these traits, but they have been few and rarely, if ever, reached top leadership positions in the pre-reform years. Among the reforms brought about by the Crimean War was the opening of promotion to nonaristocratic classes, and although the aristocratic element remained very strong, the army became a vehicle for upward social mobility. By 1917 it was largely a middle class institution,3 although in some component parts such as the cavalry, every general as late as 1911 was a hereditary noble,4 The Nicholas Cavalry School was almost as prestigious as the Corps des Pages, which admitted mostly members of the imperial family, the descendants of noblemen who had reached the first and second levels on the table of ranks, and sons and grandsons of generals.5 Admission was only by order of the emperor. The course of study was nine years, the last two of which were the same as the military academies except for the fact that the students had to demonstrate a proficiency in French and German.6 These graduates, representing the most powerful families in Russia, took first standing over the products of other schools. Although a minority of all Russian officers (the entire school had only several hundred cadets), these officers quite naturally had a built-in sense of superiority and tended to be condescending

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

3

to graduates of other schools. Once, when an officer of the Corps des Pages became head of a Junker school, he remarked, on visiting the dining room, “My God, in the Pages’ school, it’s nicer in the stable!”7 In the basic infantry, however, there begins to emerge decent officers from the lower classes, men like Mikhail Alekseev, Lavr Kornilov, and Nikolai Ivanov. Additional efforts were made after the Russo-Japanese War to promote on merit, but even General Brusilov himself remembered that the Russian officer corps in 1914 “was not composed of first-rate men.” He attributed that to the irresponsibility of promotions boards who gave good reports to rid their units of poor officers and to avoid resentment that might turn on one later.8 Brusilov likewise felt that “ancient traditions” had stifled independent thinking, and any initiative, and strong opinions were not encouraged. Any effort to use innovative techniques with one’s men had to be made in a roundabout way, even though regulations permitted innovations.9 This adherence to a status quo, combined with the snail’s pace of promotions, led to a morale problem,10 and often resulted in the departure of good men from the service.11 Moreover, the leadership for the most part came from the graduates of the General Staff Academy, the genshtabisty, who seem to have excelled in what American graduates of West Point call “ring knocking.” In 1912, 62 percent of Army corps commanders, 68 percent of infantry division commanders, and 77 percent of cavalry commanders were genshtabisty. In the Great War, twenty of the twenty-two front commanders were genshtabisty, Brusilov being of the few exceptions,12 a testament to his great ability and a certain political cunning. Indeed, the evidence of incompetence from the General Staff Academy was appalling. From the time of Suvorov, not one outstanding general had emerged from the Staff College. In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the most outstanding general was V. I. Gurko, who had not been a staff man, and no general staff officers in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904– 1905 had distinguished themselves.13 Yet, these officers won promotions over the others, and they generally felt that if they just waited long enough, they would eventually become generals.14 With these largely stagnant strata of leadership at the top, the general treatment of the Russian soldier below solidified the mediocrity of the Russian army. These loyal, brave men were addressed with the familiar pronoun, just as if they were peasants on the estate most officers had just left. One of the first parts of their training had been to show proper abasement to their leaders. To a colonel, they were to address him as “Your honor.” To a general, “Your excellency,” and for titled officers, “Your radiance.” Soldiers could be brutally struck in the face and flogged, and they were addressed, even after boot camp, by such degrading terms such as “scum” and “scoundrel.” When not on duty, soldiers were limited in their access to common areas on trains or on street cars.15

4

Chapter 1

In this system that generally placed birth above talent, however, rose the exceptional Aleksei A. Brusilov. Easily the greatest Russian general of the Great War,16 Brusilov might arguably have been the greatest general Russia ever produced. A recent historian of World War I who has little good to say of the Allied leadership describes Brusilov, along with French generals Marshal Philippe Pétain and Emile Fayolle, as “the only Allied generals with any talent.”17 Churchill noted that Brusilov “will certainly go down in history as an officer of exceptional energy and comprehension.”18 Trotsky, who had nothing but criticism for the tsarist system, gave him the nearest expression of a compliment he gives to any tsarist general, when he wrote that Brusilov and Alexander Kolchak “a little excelled the others in culture . . . but in nothing else.”19 Reviewers of Brusilov’s memoirs lavish orgiastically praiseworthy comments of the man such as “brilliant,” “one of the best leaders of the Russian army,” “the greatest soldier Russia produced in the Great War,” “One of the greatest soldiers of modern times, “this brilliant soldier,” “one of the greatest, highly-thought of commanders of the Russian army.20 Greatness in a soldier, as Brusilov himself noted, cannot be manufactured, just as no school can by itself make great musicians or teachers. It cannot be a trait that is acquired or learned. Experience and training, as in any other profession, can hone a talent but cannot create it where none exists. Brusilov himself wrote, “There has certainly never been an institution capable of manufacturing great soldiers, because a great soldier must have many different qualities of mind, character, and will which are only given by Nature and cannot be taught.”21 Pictures of Brusilov reaffirm the verbal descriptions of this frail-looking man of medium height, who remained slender until the end of his life, with an aesthetic and spiritual mouse-like face garnished with a large thin handlebar moustache,22 and reinforcing this weakness in the pictures is a sort of feminine body language when he smoked his long Russian cigarettes.23 The cameras, though, must have been unfriendly in their presentation of Brusilov, for the descriptions of him by those who were around him refer to a charisma evident in his presence. Many speak of his “piercing gray eyes”24 as his most salient physical characteristic and an air of authority that the pictures conceal. People speak of the fear he inspired in those around him.25 In his presence, one felt, as one of his friends said, “an air of commanding dignity which instills duty to love him and at the same time to fear him.”26 This personal power led to his appellation “The Iron General.”27 All accounts speak of his stern sense of discipline, of the absolute obedience of those under him. Finnish national hero Marshal Carl Mannerheim called him “a keen and severe chief,”28 but Brusilov demanded no less of himself than he required of those under his command. An article on him in of all places the St. Louis Post Dispatch spoke of his being a “martinet and a severe one,” but added, “He is no

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

5

stricter with himself than with anyone else.”29 Easily in his position he could have gained leave to visit his wife, but he never left the war zone from the outbreak of the war until the February Revolution, and when his wife visited him at headquarters, he would allow her to stay no longer than the wives of junior officers.30 Brusilov was a meticulous planner, believing that study and preparedness were the most important part of military leadership and planning. Equally important was his interest in the common soldier. Even in the days of the Revolution, Alexander Guchkov, the first minister of war of the Provisional Government after the February Revolution, once told Brusilov, “You, general, believe in the soldiers, like Suvorov.”31 Brusilov felt that all officers should be sensitive to the needs of their men.32 To fight well, he believed a soldier must be well-fed and well-armed. This concern for the common soldier became well known among them, and as a result, those he commanded would fight like tigers for “the iron general.” His wartime biographer, V. V. Marodin, wrote, taking it from Brusilov’s own words, that he more than loved his soldiers. “I looked on them as my own family.”33 He was likewise a hands-on commander who felt an officer’s place was forward, “not in the central telephone station,” and he felt that commanders of all ranks should “see the battle first hand, not only listen to it.”34 The first wartime Minister of War, General S. A. Sukhomlinov, with whom Brusilov served as his adjutant and who placed him in the role of instructor at the cavalry school, recognized that in Brusilov “before me was a completely different type, a different style officer” from the usual Russian military man.35 Sukhomlinov felt, however, that he was too strict with the men under him, but he came to realize that “his sense of duty made him so and that he sincerely loved military affairs ‘in his soul and heart.’”36 Brusilov, however, graded the officers under him, and Sukhomlinov remembered that he treated different types differently. He could sense which officers “worked from the soul” and which “threw dust in one’s eyes,” i.e., were goldbricking. The first type had Brusilov’s “official appreciation, support, and encouragement,” but to the other type, he was “inordinately strict and even merciless.”37 So, it was not without good reason that he was well known as “the Iron General,”38 and his contemporaries’ praise, to say nothing of that of the historian, could not have been so resounding and universal had been less demanding. Although Brusilov did not fight in the Russo-Japanese War in the Far East, he shared the mentality of the reforming “Young Turks” of the Russian army, who hoped to learn from the debacle with Japan.39 He understood, as many Russian officers did not, the importance of technical superiority in military matters, and he would always strive to obtain for his men as much of the latest equipment in as great an abundance as necessary. To an interviewer after the Revolution, Brusilov stressed that technical means was 50 percent of success,

6

Chapter 1

the other half being dependent on the command, personal bravery, and training of the soldiers.40 He likewise realized that materiel was not enough. Unlike so many Russian officers, he realized the importance of organization in the tiniest detail, and he saw to it that his orders were carried out, on frequent occasions even entering the trenches himself and micro-managing the defenses.41 War to Brusilov was the “sacred activity (sviashchennodeistvie) of the state,”42 and success, always the objective, was not possible without careful preparation. With proper preparedness also went tactical vigor. To him the best form of defense was “to go over on the offensive,” not simply “to defend passively,” but deliver to the enemy a strong blow.”43 He outlined this philosophy to Hamilton Fife, the correspondent of the Daily Mail. “The very best strategy and the very best tactic is to attack,” he insisted. Don’t give the enemy a choice of where you will have to strike. Beat him first. Continue to carry the blows to him. Don’t give him a break.” Later he added, “Always attack. Even when he is strong, go at him. Force him to lose himself in confusion. . . . Force him to be puzzled about your intentions.”44 Where Brusilov attained these traits is unknown, but they reflect almost exactly the military views of Russia’s great general Suvorov. Whether he imitated him consciously or not is impossible to say. If he did, he certainly did not idolize him, for he never once mentions Suvorov in his memoirs. Yet, like the eighteenth-century general, Brusilov believed that an army which remains passive is an army which will be beaten.45 Like Suvorov, Brusilov was a devoté of military preparedness and dedication to the fulfillment of one’s duty, and like Suvorov, he was a great stickler for discipline. In his order of the day to the 14th army corps in March 1911, he told his officers that with the proper help, their men “would struggle honorably during the attack, the defense, demonstrations, and also in retreat.”46 Brusilov’s views were certainly reinforced by his association with General Sukhomlinov, a man Brusilov admired but who sadly does not hold a happy place in Russian history.47 Sukhomlinov tried to ween the Russian army away from the “fortress mentality” by withdrawing from the fortresses in western Poland and forming a line in the east on the Bug and Narew Rivers in the event of war. This plan would give the army great maneuverability and would not trap large numbers of men in the forts of the Polish salient. Wellmanned forts do not win victories. The French saw Sukhomlinov’s tactic as retreat, for they wanted quick action on the Eastern Front in the event of war. Their vigorous protests, along with those of Russian military figures who saw this stance as the abandonment of Poland, led to Sukhomlinov’s being over-ridden, with the result that large numbers of men were trapped in the Polish fortresses. The fortress generals, however, won out. Enormous sums of money were spent refurbishing fortresses in the Polish salient, which were ultimately abandoned in the Great War or which fell quickly to the enemy,

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

7

and the money spent on these forts could have gone a long way to giving Russia something like artillery parity with Germany and Austria.48 Sukhomlinov, however, was untroubled that the military reflected and even amplified Russian social inequalities. This attitude made the average Russian officer never come really to know their men. The high command only saw their troops at reviews, and to most of them a successful parade meant that the army was well-trained.49 Brusilov, on the other hand, believed in the warrior quality of the Russian soldier, and he had great faith in his courage and his patriotism.50 Moreover, Brusilov stressed to the officers under him that they should come to know their men. Brusilov himself was frequently in the trenches among them, talked with them, about their food, and their needs, wading in the same mud where they slogged. Even on the eve of his great 1916 offensive, he saw to it that his men received hot food when cold rations were justifiable. Typical of one of his visit into the lines was a surprise appearance to the first company of the 136th Taganrov Infantry Regiment on the eve of his 1916 offensive. He noticed two soldiers in the company that had torn boots. On his orders, within an hour, they had new ones.51 This action supports Brusilov’s comment above that he looked on his soldiers as “on my very own family.”52 When he was stationed in Lublin, he visited a park near his barracks, where he noticed a sign on the gate, which read “Soldiers and dogs forbidden to enter.” Brusilov was indignant. He returned to his office and issued an order that all officers through the rank of general were forbidden to enter the park, if common soldiers could not enter. “I would not permit the insulting of a soldier. It’s acceptable to forbid littering, or picking flowers, or walking on the grass, but to treat as one soldiers and dogs—this was not only tactless (bestaktno) but indecent.53 Even given the fact that this memoir was written during the Soviet era, it has a true ring. There are too many accounts of Brusilov’s showing great empathy for the common soldier from other sources than his memoirs for this attitude not to have been genuine. His respect for the bottom ranks may have had its basis in his strong pan-Slavism, the idea that all of the various Slavic peoples (Russian, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, etc.) should be unified under one nation and liberated from the domination of the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns. Russia was the natural leader of all of the Slavic peoples, and the Slavic soldier personified this greatness.54 He shared the pan-Slavic sympathies of Grand Duke Nicholas, Nicholaevich, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army in 1914, and he felt that pan-Slavic propaganda would provide a morale boost for the average Russian soldier and that the tsars would have used this tool as a propaganda casus belli. “If the tsar had appealed to all his subjects to combine to save their country from its present period and deliver all their

8

Chapter 1

brother Slavs from the German yoke,” he wrote, “public enthusiasm would have been boundless.”55 The Russian Pan-Slavic nationalism manifested itself in a strong antiGerman attitude, which time and again drove Brusilov’s thought. Germany was to Brusilov the natural enemy of Russia, and all Russian military attention should be focused on Germany. When Carl von Mannerheim expressed the desire to volunteer to fight in the Russo-Japanese War, Brusilov expressed his disapproval. “He urged me,” Mannerheim remembered,” to change my mind and keep myself for a bigger war, which would soon come and might develop into a world war.”56 His greatest emphasis as a military leader was, as noted above, “preparedness.” One of the first component parts of preparedness was the creation of an operational structure and an operational reserve.57 In an order of the day to one of his prewar units, he reminded the men, “It is always necessary to remember that what we are doing in peacetime, we will also be doing in war, when the price of a blood experience does not have to teach us to act correctly.”58 Sukhomlinov noticed that Brusilov “was especially persistent in ‘tactical preparations of the corps,” and this feature of his beliefs made Sukhomlinov more and more to see his outstanding qualities.59 The best way to develop prewar preparedness was in the exercise of military games, which Brusilov would direct with almost fanatical attention. He led the games all day long, stopping only for lunch, and his planning of events typically lasted well into the night, but that next day at 7:00 a.m., he would be on horseback directing that day’s maneuvers. These military training games continued for weeks, after which Brusilov took his staff back to Lublin, where they analyzed the exercises, looking for weak points and errors, and discussing ways to correct them. Then after a few days, they were back in the field again, moving troops about, trying to improve on the previous performance. When the other officers were tired and ready to rest, Brusilov still possessed the energy to keep going, “that very wish also to work on.”60 This almost obsessive focus was also manifested in battle. Early in the Great War, when his VIII Army was advancing into Galicia, he apologized to his sister-in-law for not responding promptly to her letter. “Please do forgive me for not answering you sooner[,]” he pled, “but in the time of battle, I am totally disposed not to think of something else besides my business.61 Moreover, this stern disciplinarian differed from other officers, in that he avoided the backstabbing and intrigue that was endemic in the officer corps of all armies of the pre-war era. In his memoirs, he wrote, “I have always despised scandal, and on principle have never retaliated on back-biters and mischief makers.”62 One might tend to place less value on this statement, coming as it does in a memoir, but most of his life proves it right. Even in

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

9

his recollections, he is gentle to those who have caused him trouble. When discussing his superior officer at the Cavalry School, one Major-General Avsharov, who made difficulties for him, he still described him as “kindhearted” (dobrodushnyi).63 When at ease, he joked and chatted amiably with visitors. N. N. Figner, a member of the Duma, visited him there, Brusilov told him this joke: A Russian priest was out in a cart and happened to wander into a group of armed Austrian soldiers. The priest stopped the horse and began to pray in expectation of being captured, but the Austrians one after another began to throw their rifles into the cart, and when they were all disarmed, one of them said to the priest in Russian, “Now indeed, Father, we are your prisoners.” They then dutifully followed the priest back to the Russian camp.64 This casual informality also produced a headquarters without pomp and pretension that abounded at other generals’ offices. The Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, the nearest thing the Imperial family had to a democrat, noticed with delight on visiting Brusilov’s headquarters in 1914 that his office was guarded only by a lone sentry, while other generals would have had a platoon.65In this relaxed mode that typified him, Brusilov took frequent walks, accompanied by any visitors at headquarters. One soldier remembered seeing him once. “I saw from afar,” he wrote, describing Brusilov, “a lean figure, slowly moving along the path. His head hanging down. General Brusilov, apparently, was deeply thinking about something.”66 One cannot discuss Brusilov’s personality without examining his religious faith. He was a profound Believer to whom the Orthodox Church was very important. His letters to his wife demonstrate this repeatedly. His words bear witness to an almost childlike faith that “all is in God’s hands,” that there is some grand plan which mankind had not the power to control or change. He, nevertheless, contradictorily believed in the power of prayer to alter that plan. Revealing this belief, he once wrote, “My soul in any given moment strives to worship relentlessly. With all my strength, I call to the Almighty . . . [to give me] the strength of reason and the power of will to fulfill my difficult obligations.”67 Bismarck once noted that one can but hear the footsteps of God passing through history and only reach up and grab onto his coattails. In what Brusilov said about his faith reflects Bismarck’s attitude, but one is hard-pressed to imagine Brusilov’s awaiting on the footsteps of God any more than Bismarck would. His actions on the battlefield were never passive ones, and for all of his faith, the readers of all these pages will very rarely see him passively await God’s intervention. Only in 1917 when all Russian officers were powerless to stem the disintegration of the Russian army, he seemed for the first time genuinely to put his confidence in God to save a situation which man himself was plainly incapable of saving.

10

Chapter 1

All in all, Brusilov typified the few but dedicated “new officers” in the Russian army. They argued for the modernization of the army, for the implementation of new technologies, and placed emphasis on artillery, aviation, and motorized vehicles that were becoming such an important part of the Western armies. Typifying this new breed of officer, Brusilov looked at the army as a whole unit encompassing infantry, cavalry, air force, and new weapons such as artillery and the machine gun. As one historian has said, he was the father of combined arms.68 He even came to realize early that the day of his branch of the service, the cavalry, was quickly passing, and that the armed horseman was vastly inferior in reconnaissance to the air plane, and that he stood no chance in a fight with men armed with rapid-firing rifles and machine guns.69 The army’s chief focus should be on modernization, and he departed sharply from the notion that well-executed parade ground maneuvers meant a great army, a view that had been shown false as early as the Crimean War. He saw that a major flaw in the army was that it was “too well supplied with cavalry” at a time when trench warfare had taken the place of warfare in the open field.70 First-rate officers, with Brusilov’s being a rare exception, could not rise in the tsar’s hidebound military,71 and this built-in frustration is possibly why so many of them so easily transferred into the Red Army. Given how different Brusilov was from the average officers of his class, his rise in a system so hostile to reform is puzzling. His social class seems to have been of much assistance, as was his steady hard work. Brusilov also seems to have had a political common sense that enabled him to survive, and his strong sense of military discipline led him not to ruffle needlessly the feathers of those above him, although he seems to have done that on several occasions. Eschewing the “to get along, go along” mentality, he managed nevertheless to rise in time to the most powerful position in the Russian army, possibly due in part to the respect he garnered from Sukhomlinov and his successors. Whatever the political alchemy that brought him to the pinnacle of Russian military power, he became an important factor in the defeat of the Central Powers in the Great War. Aleksei Alekseevich Brusilov was born in the Georgian capital Tiflis (modern Tblisi) on August 19 (some accounts say August 20), 1853, into a family with a long military heritage. His birth certificate, registered for the sum of ninety kopeks, states only that he was the child of Marie Louisa Antonovna and Aleksei Nikolaevich Brusilov.72 But the family into which he was born was an old Russian gentry family, so even if young Aleksei had not developed early an interest in military matters, he would probably have pursued a military career anyway.73 His great-great-great grandfather had participated in maneuvers of both the Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii regiments and was once wounded in action. His grandfather Nikolai Ivanovich had a career in the Sukhoputnyi Shliakhetskii Corps. One ancestor N. P. Brusilov

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

11

was an active historian and a member of the Moscow Society of History of Old Russia, as well as the Russian Academy of Sciences.74 The family origins come from a Polish-Ukrainian voevoda and diplomat Adam Kisel, an opponent of Russo-Ukranian unification, who was somehow linked to the village of Brusilovo, from which apparently came the family name. The village was located in the Zhitomir Oblast in Ukraine on the banks of the small River Zdvizh.75 For their service in war for Ukraine with the Poles, the Brusilovs had been given their land in Ukraine in the eighteenth century.76 It is unclear exactly when his father Aleksei Nikolaevich was born, but it was either in 1789 or 1790. He descended from the gentry of Orlovskaia guberniia. Like many members of the aristocracy in Russia, he was registered early with a military unit, but he did not begin his service until 1807, when he was seventeen or eighteen. As a major, he fought and was wounded at the battle of Borodino in 1812, and later with the rank of colonel, his duties carried him as far as Paris in the pursuit of Napoleon. By the late 1830s, he was stationed in the Caucasus in Chechnia and Dagestan chasing the local hero Shamil,77 and in 1847, he was appointed regimental Auditoriat (the military judicial organ, a post that was abolished in army reforms in the 1860s) of the Caucasian Corps with the rank of Major General. Three years after Aleksei’s birth, he attained the rank of Lieutenant General.78 Brusilov’s father married twice, but little is known of his first wife, although a child, Nikolai, was born from the marriage. He was married a second time in his early sixties to a Polish (some accounts say Estonian) woman, Maria Louiza Nestoenska, the daughter of Collegiate Assessor Anton Nestoenski. She was of the Lutheran by faith and forty-five years his junior.79 At the time of Aleksei’s birth, she was 27 or 28 years old and his father was about 63. Three sons followed in rapid succession: Boris, Alexander, who died young, and Lev.80 Given the age of his father at his time of birth, Aleksei felt “old from childhood,”81 he later remembered. The year after his birth, he and his family moved to Starye Kuki near Tiflis into the home of a Prince Tumanov, where they lived among beautiful mountains and in fresh healthful air until 1859. In the evenings during his Caucasian childhood, Aleksei sat with his relatives and neighbors around a large table on which was placed a lamp, and the conversation consisted of exotic stories and historical accounts of their Caucasian mountain home.82 As was customary among the aristocracy, Aleksei Nikolaevich had his son named “Page to the Imperial Court,” a position confirmed by Tsar Alexander II on July 29, 1855.83 Brusilov’s father died, however, when Aleksei was only six, of some sort of lung problem, and his wife’s death only a few months later. The now-orphaned boys had as their only Brusilov relative their half-brother, with whom they seem to have had little contact.

12

Chapter 1

Fortunately, Maria Louiza had a sister in Tiflis, Henrietta Antonovna Gagenmeister, who was married to Karl Maksimovich Gagenmeister, a captain in the engineers, who worked in the Tiflis Guberniia Construction Commission.84 The couple had no children of their own and easily accepted into their home in the town of Kutais near Tiflis; the three nephews, raising them as their own children. A parent-child relationship between them, and they were in every sense a close-knit family. Their home in Kutais at 85 Balakhanovsky Street was a modest two-storey stone house with a veranda and a large orchard in the yard. It bordered on the River Rion. To the south of the house was a dense forest called “Kuban Pig Forest,” inhabited by many wild pigs. Speaking of his uncle, Brusilov later wrote, “He loved us very much,” adding “they both became father and mother to us in the full sense of the word.”85 Henrietta played the piano, and as in the Russian manner of such things, there were many musical evenings with numerous guests. Much literature and folklore was also heard, and one of the best remembered parts of his childhood were the tales of Caucasian war heroes.86 The only remaining account of this time in his life is his memoir, but given his honesty, had it not been happy, he would never have been as effusive as he was in its praise.87 Given the family’s cultural fulfillment, it is not surprising that the Gagenmeisters “did not begrudge the means of our upbringing,” especially stressing the study of foreign languages. Kutais had no grammar school, so the students studied at home. In time, young Brusilov came to speak French and German proficiently, and at one point even English, although in time he lost that talent because he used it so rarely. Given Aunt Henrietta’s musical abilities, it is not surprising that music was also part of their education, but none of the boys had much musical talent, and “music lessons came to nothing for them.”88 Little Aleksei had first a governess, but when he was older, he had a series of tutors, the last being one Ivan Ivanovich Bekman, who was well-educated and a university graduate. He himself was fluent in English, French, and German and was an excellent pianist. Brusilov later remembered Bekman as having been “a great influence over us,” and he was the major figure to prepare young Aleksei for the examinations into the Corps des Pages.89 Possibly because of their early orphaning, Brusilov seems to have had a paternalistic attitude toward his younger brothers, and the general seems to have been especially close to his brother Boris. They corresponded frequently when apart, and their letters increased in number during the Great War. None of Brusilov’s letters to Boris seem to have survived, but Boris’s letters to Brusilov show a deep warmth and closeness, addressing him as “My dear, kind Alyosha.” They also exchanged presents with some regularity. In 1913, long after both brothers were middle aged, Boris wrote a note thanking Brusilov “from my soul . . . for the wonderful present,” enclosing in the envelope

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

13

another note thanking his older brother for the “dear postcard,” which must have arrived shortly after the present.90 Boris followed his brother into the Corps des Pages but unlike Brusilov, he never finished the difficult school. He left and entered the army as a corporal, leaving the service entirely in 1889.91 Along the way he married a woman, Nina, who came with a large dowry, and they become large landowners outside Moscow. He was easily the wealthiest of the brothers. Probably annoyed with his brother’s lack of devotion to the military life, Brusilov considered him “a slovernly baron,”92 but this attitude does not seem to have in any way damaged their relationship.93 His youngest brother Lev entered the military but joined the navy. Mainly serving in the Black and Baltic seas, Lev Brusilov saw action, however, in the Pacific Ocean, where he commanded a cruiser during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. After the war, from 1906 to 1908, he became one of the organizers of the Russian naval general staff and briefly served as its first administrator. When illness forced him to leave the navy in 1908, he was a Vice-Admiral. He died in St. Petersburg the following year.94 At the age of fourteen, young Brusilov left the Caucasus in June 1867 for St. Petersburg to enter the prestigious Corps des Pages. The Corps, one historian states, was “the most prestigious school in the country.”95 He entered his studies in November of that year after passing the entrance exams for which Bekman had so well prepared him, and he was placed in the 3rd class.96 He had done especially well on the foreign language portions of the exams, but only “satisfactory” on the other subjects.97 The institution’s military curriculum consisted of five general tracts and two specialist courses, but the overall curriculum stressed study in religion; Russian, French, and German; geography; history; natural science; physics; penmanship; and drawing. The specialist core was military, with training in, of course, military discipline, tactics, artillery, fortifications, military topography drawing, administration, military law and history, as well as infantry and horseback training. Aleksei was not a good across the board student, excelling more in his favorites, which were the humanities and foreign languages.98 Brusilov later remembered that he “studied strangely.” In those sciences that he liked, “I assimilated quickly and well,” but those subjects which he described as “alien,” he studied indifferently and only worked enough to “get me into the next class.”99 He widened his education by reading what he wanted to read,100 becoming the voracious reader that he would be all of his life. He especially distinguished himself in cavalry studies. On Sundays and holidays, he spent the time in the home of the Gagenmeister’s cousin, Count Yuri (Junlis) I. Stembok. Stembok held the important government position of Director of the Department of Appanages, and many of the bright lights of St. Petersburg society passed through his drawing rooms.

14

Chapter 1

The count was a great friend of learning, and his home was apparently an open house for the capital’s literati, and here Brusilov met many prominent figures in literature, science, and art, such as the novelist Fedor Dostoevsky. After passing his exams with a “satisfactory” grade, he was promoted on August 20, 1868, to the 4th class. His tutor, what we would today call his advisor, Major N. S. Pokrovsky, wrote on his certificate, “Good developmental ability[,] but he scarcely passed satisfactorily because he doesn’t want to work. He is bored without reason—it’s pitiful. In behavior he is straight and certain, prudent and therefore compliant. When one speaks with him about his mistakes, it is difficult to force him but easy to convince him. Kind—he dismissed insults and he helps. There are few false notions in the relations with his friends.”101 This latter observation probably is what made him popular with his peers, and he made close ties with many of them that he was to keep his entire life.102 In the late summer of 1869, Aleksei was promoted to the 5th class, and one gets the idea that he was promoted summa cum dificultate, for in his third year, his performance and behavior took a sharp turn for the worse. In the beginning of the school year, Major Pokrovsky wrote, “His attentiveness is very weak.”103As the year progressed, his performance worsened, and his report shows a general sorriness and even insubordination. He also seems to have been sick a great deal, and his report gives the impression that he was probably going through some sort of personal crisis, perhaps a mental collapse: “Very often in the hospital and therefore he has fallen behind considerably, indeed he also continues to be lazy. He smokes and goes out into his circle of rowdy friends, has become blunt and rude.”104 Apparently for this lax behavior, he was not even permitted to take his exams and was expelled, or at least suspended. The Corps’ action would mean that he would be held back a year and would have to study independently to pass his exams to the 6th form. He decided to take a year off and return to the Caucasus home of his aunt and uncle. They were most supportive of the young man, and probably gave him many a good talking-to as well, but they decided that he would spend the school year of 1869–1870 studying for his exams. He returned in the spring of 1870 and successfully passed them and was promoted to the 6th form. The year off seems to have calmed him, and he never seemed to have had any trouble with his courses in the years that followed. By this time, he had begun collecting books and began building what was his enormous personal library, largely on history and military strategy.105 He was also now enrolled in the specialist courses, which were largely military science, something he loved, which probably helped to improve his performance. From then on, a military career became more than just the vague destiny that it had previously been. In these special classes, the pages wore a standard red uniform

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

15

consisting of the near-comical kepi and sabre. He went to the summer camp for the cavalry at Krasnoe Selo outside St. Petersburg, participating in the cavalry maneuvers there because the Corps did not have extensive cavalry training.106 Following his father’s career in the cavalry, he always participated in the games of the Nikolaevsky Cavalry School and spent his time there.107 Brusilov graduated from the Corps in 1872 at the age of nineteen with the rank of ensign (roughly 2nd lieutenant). Tradition gave the graduates a choice of service in the privileged guards regiments, as the reader will remember, but ensign’s salaries did not support the expected lifestyle of a member of one of the guards’ formations, and one had to have independent means to serve in one of them. Brusilov was not a wealthy aristocrat, so becoming an officer of the guard was out of the question.108 He chose instead, and at the suggestion of the Gegenmeisters, the 15th dragoons of the Tver regiment stationed at that time in Tsarskie Kolodtsy in Zakavkazskii (Trans-Caucasian) Krae near Tiflis in his beloved Caucasus, and he served there four years.109 His final manoeuver, when he graduated from the Corps and became an officer, was attended by Tsar Alexander II. The summer camp ended unusually early, and on this memorable day, all these newly officered pages assembled in a village between Krasnoe Selo and Tsarskoe Selo. Tsar Alexander II unexpectedly honored the young men by appearing to congratulate them on their becoming officers.110 He received a period of summer leave before joining his unit, and he returned to Kutais to spend it with his relatives.111 His regiment was not far away, a fact that helped Brusilov, since money was scarce, and he was near friends from whom he could take loans.112 On August 15, after a long visit with his aunt and uncle, he presented himself at his regiment, which had gone into summer camp not far from Tiflis. The unit was under the command of Col. Bogdan Egorovich Meiendorf, who appointed him commander of a platoon in the 1st squadron of the regiment.113 The first squadron was led by a forty-year old career officer, Major Mikhail A. Popov, a small man who loved the military, and also loved to drink. They lived in tents and in general endured the rough army life outside in the elements. Still, in the evening, he and the other officers often went into Tiflis, where there were always musical performances. This opportunity gave Brusilov a chance to indulge in his love of music, and they enjoyed all types of it, from solo performances to opera. After the recitals, they would repair to the restaurant in the Hotel Europa and party until morning.114 Brusilov remembered that on many occasions after a night of such revelry, the young men would return to camp and immediately without sleep mount their horses for a day of military activity.115 Often, however, the men engaged in less dignified activities such as card playing and carousing, which often led to duels, “since the hot blood of youth infected us Russians.”116 Brusilov’s early years in the regiment were marred

16

Chapter 1

by an involvement in a duel in 1874. One Minkvits, a friend of Brusilov’s, had a conflict with another member of the regiment, a fon Vakom, and the dispute was to be settled with a duel. As Brusilov’s biographer Rostunov notes, “This was still the Caucasus of the great writer Mikhail Lermontov, and disputes was settled with duels. Brusilov was the second for Minkvits, while I. M Tarkhan-Muravov was the second for fon Vakom. Minkvits killed fon Vakom, and he was tried in a military court which decided on August 22, 1874, to sentence Minkvits to two years in the fortress, and Brusilov and Tarkhan-Muravov were given four months each in the guard house for their roles in the affair.117 They were both released after only two months,118 and the incident does not seem to have hindered his military advancement.119 It was in the Caucasus that Brusilov came really to know the Russian soldier. One devoté of the general later wrote, “He opened to them his heart, appreciated their service and loved them.”120 The above-mentioned intellectual Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich Romanov was considered, along with his brothers, one of the “liberals” in the Romanov family. Their openmindedness, he always attributed to their having been reared in the Caucasus, far from St. Petersburg. If indeed the frontier does breed democracy, it might have infected Brusilov as well, and his care for the men under him was a trait that was well-known by the common soldier. It would be a major contributing factor to his later greatness. His time in the Tver regiment saw regular promotions in rank. On April 2, 1874, he was promoted to the rank of 1st. lieutenant. He was de facto regimental adjutant from February 1873 and was confirmed formally in the position on July 14, 1875.121 Two years later, he was promoted to the rank of Staff Captain in the 15th Tver Dragoons of Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich. In 1875, his aunt Henrietta died in October of that year at the age of 48,122 but he remained close to his uncle, the man that had been in effect his father.123 His uncle continued to work in the guberniia, reaching the rank of colonel in the engineers, but he died during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. With his death, the door closed forever on Brusilov’s life in the house in Kutais on Balakhanovsky Street124 and on his happy childhood there. Brusilov’s stable life in the Caucasus ended with a Russian declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Russia and Turkey had fought numerous wars since Peter the Great first tried to establish an outlet on the Black Sea in the seventeenth century, and it generally required little effort since that time to start one. Russia was still smarting from the defeat in the Crimean struggle in the 1850s. The proverbial war clouds began to gather in 1876, and Brusilov’s regiment was moved through Tiflis to Alexandropol near the Turkish border in preparation for any conflict. Departing Tiflis on September 6, 1876, by the Delizhansky road toward Alexandropol, he arrived there and remained until September 26. Great excitement roused the young officers, who had glorified

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

17

notions of war and impatiently awaited their baptism of fire. At Alexandropol they were joined by the 154th Derbentsky regiment, and the officers were treated to a party which apparently lasted all night, during which any toasts were raised to the coming war.125 Being regimental adjutant, Brusilov had a great deal of work to do to obtain the necessities for their winter quartering, and thanks to his hard work, the men were well-provisioned in Akhakalaksky uezd,126 where they finally wintered. On leaving Tiflis, Brusilov, with the help of Prince E. G. Chavchavadsky, was able to acquire for the men not only items of necessity but of comfort (pillows, for example).127 Positioned on the Turkish border at Alexandropol, Brusilov’s forces remained there under the leadership of Adjutant General I. E. Loris-Melikov, who assembled all of the officers shortly after bivouac and spoke to them, telling them to their delight that the war was imminent.128 They wintered in anticipation of war in the spring, and on March 30, 1877, they heard rumors that on the next day, war would be declared and that on the night of March 31, they would cross the border and invade Turkey.129 Indeed, it was shortly announced that all leaves were canceled, and an order went out that the cavalry would cross the border at midnight.130 About an hour before midnight, Brusilov was called to headquarters along with other officers and was shown a manifesto announcing war and the order to cross the Turkish border an hour later. Brusilov returned to his troops and shortly after midnight on April 1, the Russian army crossed the Arpachi River into the Ottoman Empire. Brusilov advanced with the first wave, and his men surprised and overran a Turkish garrison on the right bank of the river, taking the entire sleeping garrison prisoner. They advanced sixty versts without stopping, and the next day they pursued the Turkish army into the fortress of Kars. At this point, he learned that Mukhtar Pasha, the commandant of the Turkish Anatolian forces, had evacuated in the direction of Erzerum, and the Russians vigorously pursued him. He evaded capture, but many of his men were.131 Brusilov received his real baptism of fire in an attack on the fortress of Ardagan on the Kura River. It had been designed by English engineers and was supposed to withstand any standard artillery bombardment. Reaching it on May 1, the Russians made preparations to storm it, which they did on May 4 after Russian artillery had shelled it for three hours. That attack did not succeed, but on May 5, the Turkish garrison surrendered. The Russians then moved on the city of Agadan, and the Turkish forces defending it fled across the Kura River. By the evening of May 6, the entire city was in Russian hands.132 In this operation, Lt. Brusilov witnessed battle for the first time “in all its beauty and terror,” one of his admirers wrote. Here he learned much and gained his first experience and learned to work with self-confidence.133 The siege of Kars lasted for some months and was not pleasant duty. Brusilov was in the adjacent village of Igdyria, where he stayed a month and

18

Chapter 1

a half. He had only one shirt, and he would have to undress totally, wrapping himself in his great coat, while his only shirt and his underwear were being boiled in a clothing pot and dried on the line. Food was also limited and officers and soldiers alike had to cook what little they had to eat. By April 19, Brusilov was fighting with units investing Kars. On April 26, while leading a reconnaissance mission northwest of Kars, an enemy shell landed very near Brusilov, and his horse threw him and then fled in fright. Brusilov was able to acquire immediately another horse and rejoin the fray.134 The capture of Agadan in the May 4–6 siege earned Brusilov the Order of St. Stanislaus of the 3rd class with swords and bows, although he did not actually receive it until January 1878.135 In the investment of Kars, the 15th Dragoons were in the thick of the fighting.136 The 15th was given the assignment of driving beyond Kars toward Zivinu, a town in the direction of Erzerum, to prevent the besieging Russian forces from being blindsided by a Turkish attack from the West, but when an attack proved unsuccessful, Brusilov’s unit retired toward Kars, and the Turks under Mukhtar Pasha went on the offensive. The Turkish attack proved successful, and the Russians raised the siege of Kars and withdrew. The Turks then entrenched themselves to the east of Kars on the Aladzhinsky Heights to defend the fortress.137 By late July, Brusilov was in the region of Erevan attacking the forces of the Turkish General Izmail Pasha. They were at first unsuccessful and the Turks counterattacked. In the inconclusive actions, Brusilov distinguished himself especially on the 23rd and 24th of August and was awarded his second medal, the Cross of St. Ann of the 3rd class with swords and bows.138 When Kars finally fell in November 1877, Brusilov received the Order of St. Stanislaus of the 2nd Class with swords. The Russians renewed the attack on the Aladzhinsky Heights on September 20, and after a struggle, the Turks were driven back on Kars. Brusilov was again in the thick of the fighting and at one point was within two hundred feet of the Turkish lines. He had another horse shot out from under him, but he drove his men onward. The Turks finally broke and fell back on Kars, which the Russians reinvested.139 The second Russian siege of the fortress of Kars began on November 5, with the first assault beginning at night. One by one the strong points of the fortress fell, and then finally the citadel itself was taken by the Russians. The Turks retreated westward, where they were attacked by cavalry units, one of which was led by Brusilov on the Erzerum road. In this assault, Brusilov forced a Turkish commander to surrender his entire force. He led his troops through the winter until the Turks asked for an armistice in February 1878. The bitter winter weather caused the fighting to stop in the Caucasus anyway, and Brusilov and his men went into winter quarters. The papers told them

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

19

of Russian victories in the Balkans at Plevna and Shipka Pass and that the Russian army arrived at San Stephano, a town on the European outskirts of Constantinople. In the armistice terms, the Russians gained the right to invest Erzerum, and Brusilov arrived there in April with the forces that were to occupy the city. Among the Turkish units was a wagon full of women, which Brusilov assumed were the wives of the commander.140 The city was handed over to the Turks on September 7, and the Russians returned home. The 15th dragoons crossed the Russian border on September 12 at Kara Urgana, and it wintered at Dzhalal-Ogly, remaining there for much of the summer of 1879. In September of that year, they transferred to Tsarskie Kolodtsy.141 Brusilov finally went for treatment in Esenturki and Kislovodsk not mentioned in his memoirs. One biographer blamed the war of 1877–1878 on his poor health,142 but it is unlikely that it took two years for his health to decline if it had been caused in the war. Another of his biographers stated, without giving a source, that military life seemed to trouble him more and more and that he had a crisis similar to the one that nearly bounced him out of the Corps des Pages.143 There does indeed seem to have been a crisis of some kind, physical or mental, and he apparently considered leaving the army altogether. Here the young lieutenant returned to his old military life, which he found very dull and uninspiring. In the summer of 1880, he developed a health problem, which he mysteriously does not discuss in any detail in his memoirs, writing only that he did not feel “totally healthy,” and went to spas in EssenTuki and Kislovodsk. What his problem was is impossible to say, but his failure to discuss it is puzzling. It was possibly embarrassing, so one wonders if it was a mental collapse or possibly a treatment for a venereal disease. He stayed at Kislovodsk into the fall of 1880, and in his memoirs, continually vague on this point, he writes that he was still not in good health and spent the time not on military matters but in hunting in the wild, mountainous regions. He entered an irregular cavalry regiment, but the commander of the Tverskaia regiment suggested that he join the Officers’ Cavalry School as a faculty member. He was apparently at least offered a position there, and he left the wild Caucasus of his youth and reluctantly returned to St. Petersburg, the city in which he had himself been a student. He accepted the position only under the condition that when his duty was completed there, he would return to his regiment.144 If Brusilov indeed saw his posting in St. Petersburg as a temporary change in his life, he was mistaken. He remained there for almost a quarter of a century until 1906. Here he would earn a reputation of being a leading authority on cavalry matters, influencing a whole generation of young cavalry officers, who carried his knowledge into units all over the Russian Empire. His texts and pamphlets on the art of cavalry were to be standard instructional guides

20

Chapter 1

until the cavalry became somewhat useless as a military arm of the Russian army. Brusilov did not first marry until he was thirty-one, rather late for men of that time. When he did marry, he chose the niece of his Uncle Karl, Anna N. Gegenmeister. She was the daughter of Lt. Col. Nikolai Gegenmeister and was well connected since she was a relative of Peter Stolypin, later to be prime minister under Nicholas II, and Alexander Izvolsky, who would one day be Nicholas II’s foreign minister and Russian ambassador to Paris. She was a Lutheran by religion, but later documents list the two as being Orthodox,145 so she had converted. His marriage license signifies that the wedding took place on May 5, 1884, although the license is dated March 6 of that year.146 Given Brusilov’s age at the time of his marriage, and given that his bride was Gegenmeister’s niece, one gets the impression that Brusilov was strongly encouraged into the marriage. He essentially admits it in his memoirs: “This marriage was put together in accordance with the wives of my uncle, in view of the general family interests.”147 There seems to have been some problem with her family when he insisted that she convert to Orthodoxy from her native Lutheranism, but he later wrote he always had good relations with his wife’s family, although he made the curious addition, “but being wholly Russian, I never went around with them,”148 The problem seems to have been the religious question. Yet, every year after summer camp, Anna and Brusilov went to the country with her family, except when they went abroad on trips to western Europe. Brusilov claims that “in spite of this [the arranged nature of his marriage], I was very happy, loved my wife passionately”; the only “minus” in his married life being his wife’s chronic ill health. Moreover, Anna had several still-born children, “which shook us deeply,”149 before having their one and only child, Alexei, born on June 20, 1887. Their married life seems to have been pleasant enough. The couple lived in St. Petersburg, where their home was always open to guests. Almost every fall, they spent some time at the estate of Gegenmeister relatives in Estlianskaia guberniia. If they were not relaxing there, they made a trip abroad to either Germany or France, frequently to find medical help for his wife’s illnesses, which Brusilov never defines.150 Toward the end of her short life, she was a bed-ridden invalid. Alexei’s birth certificate, issued in St. Petersburg, designates that “to adjutant of the officers’ Cavalry School, Capt. A. A. Brusilov and his lawful wife Anna Nicholaevna, both of the Orthodox faith, was born [on September 18, 1887] a son Aleksei (underscored in the original).151 From his pictures, Aleksei does not resemble his father as all. He is a very handsome youth with a pretty face and must have resembled his mother’s side of the family. He did, however, direct a career that imitated that of his father: He entered the military, was a cadet in the Corps des Pages, like his father, he was a

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

21

cavalryman, and he commanded cavalry units in the Great War.152 Son Aleksei’s relationship with his father seems to have been a warm one. He began his letters to him with “Kind and dear Popochka!” Yet, Brusilov himself states that although he “loved him deeply,” he was “a mediocre father.” Being wrapped up in his family life, “I did not draw him close to me,” and then adds that “I was not able to guide him.”153 One wonders if it was really a lack of interest as a parent that led to his seemed indifference. After Aleksei had died in the Civil War and Brusilov was writing his memoirs, he confessed that he considered his neglect “a great sin on my soul.”154 Alyosha’s letters to his father, however, and those that are extant are rather numerous, show a great devotion.155 It is obvious that Brusilov wrote often as there are frequent appearances of “Got your letter.” Alyosha’s are always lengthy and chatty, referring to the family he has seen. He was clearly devoted to his famous father and constantly wished to seek his approval. When in February 1915, he received the St. Anna of the 4th class,” he hastened to write Brusilov.156 When he apparently did not received an immediate answer, he wrote again four days later, asking, “Did you receive my letter telling you that I received the Anna 4th class?”157 In 1908, Anna Brusilova died. In a 1929 edition of his memoirs, Brusilov described her death agony: “In the last instant before death, her face, distorted from suffering, suddenly was transfigured. A joyful happy smile appeared on her face. She simply sat up and stretched herself forward, sticking out her arms as if she saw someone toward whom she was striving, and she then died.” Afterwards Brusilov always felt that this death scene proved that death did not exist, but only an “altercation of a mode of life.”158 He seems to have grieved, but given his wife’s long-term illness, he must not have known a full married life and began searching for another wife very soon after his wife’s passing. Very quickly his attention was drawn to a younger woman he had met some years before in Tiflis in the home of her great uncle, Brusilov’s friend Andrei A. Fadeev, the maternal grandfather of Sergei Witte, the famous minister of finance in the 1890s and who became tsarist Russia’s first prime minister in 1905. Witte’s mother’s oldest sister Helen had two daughters, his first cousins Helen and Vera. They were both taken into the Fadeev home when their parents died, and both married well. When Vera’s first husband died, she returned to live in the Fadeev home, where she fell in love with a local school teacher, one Zhelikovsky. The Fadeevs would not permit the marriage to a low-born school teacher, but love triumphed, because they eloped and did not return to the Fadeev’s house for years. She became a famous writer of children’s stories. The union must have been a happy one for she had two sons and three daughters, and all three of the daughters moved for some reason to Odessa.

22

Chapter 1

Here Witte adds a strange note in his memoirs: “They [the daughters] are the kind of women my sister would not receive, nor would I. My sister calls them disgraceful types. Even though I am not especially censorious about morals, I regarded them contemptible.”159 What exactly he meant by this is unknown, since that is all that he wrote on the matter, but his wording plainly suggests a sense of sexual immorality. About one of the daughters, he wrote in 1911, “one of them married a seventy-year-old corps commander a few weeks ago.” That daughter was obviously Nadia and the “corps commander” was clearly Brusilov, who was not yet seventy in 1911 but fifty-eight.160 Vera Zhelikhovsky must have patched things up with the Fadeevs, for it was in the Fadeev household that Brusilov had first seen Nadia around 1880, when Vera was visiting with her daughter Nadezhda, then still a young girl of probably thirteen or fourteen years of age. Fadeev’s home was, like the Brusilov’s, a gathering place for friends and family. Sergei Witte remembered it as “one of the largest and guest friendly [hospitable] homes in Tiflis.”161 By the time Brusilov first saw Nadezhda there sometime around 1880, she was thirteen or fourteen years old. Andrei had died, but the open-house tradition he had fostered was continued by his son Rostislav Andreevich Fadeev, a military historian, who presided over a salon. Brusilov was an assidu de la maison, and he admired the charm and intelligence of the young Nadia. Although he was married at the time and the father of a family, he discretely paid attention to the charm so evident from her laughter (si prenant de la rieuse Nadia). Over several years, he was thrown into her company in Tiflis and St. Petersburg. It is unlikely that at the time that Brusilov found the young girl sexually attractive, but he never forgot her. Some short time after he met her, her mother died, and although her family was well to do, Nadia began to support herself by writing, following in the footsteps of her author mother. Brusilov had never forgotten her, and she had never married and was in her forties when Brusilov’s wife died in 1908. She wrote Brusilov a sympathy note at the time, but he did not then reply.162 Brusilov had seen her work, however, since she was the production editor of a military journal Brotherly Help, and she had been actively working with the wounded in the RussoJapanese War.163 Lonely, he decided to get in touch with this interesting younger woman whom he had last seen as a young teenage girl, remembering how impressed with her he had been when he saw her in both Tiflis and St. Petersburg. He had become friends with her brother Rostislav, from whom he learned that she was living in Odessa. Her brother gave him her address, and he sent her a postcard. He then went abroad on a trip to Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Greece, and on returning, he reentered Russia through Odessa. On arriving, Brusilov remembered that the Zhelikhovsky sisters lived there, but he decided not to stop to see Nadezhda because he had already overstayed

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

23

his leave. Yet, his thoughts continued to return to the young woman he had last seen when she was twenty, and as he wrote, “a strange struggle took place at this time in my soul.” He convinced himself that since he had a son to rear, and since he had not been around her in many years, he might not like her now. Moreover, she was a “spinster” in her forties and might not fulfill the role of a mother for Aleksei. He therefore did not try to contact her, but his vacillation bothered him for a year.164 He served in the army during this time in Lublin, and he remembered being “tormented by my loneliness” as he rambled about in an enormous apartment of nine or ten rooms with a balcony that overlooked the magnificent city garden. Everything was fine except “a wife was missing.”165 An epistolary relationship began. Although his letters are chatty and full of news of his family and friends, from the beginning, he addresses her with the formal “Much respected Nadezhda Vladimirovna,” In one he even includes a note for his would-be sister-in-law, Vera, who was soon to marry an American Charles Johnson, a linguist, writer, and publicist.166 Of their extant letters, however, one written by her in Odessa as late as several months before marriage remains rather formal in tone, signing one on September 16, 1910, with “A. Brusilov, Commander 14th Army Corps.”167 He must not have declared his love in any of these, because he wrote in his memoirs that “Many times I wrote her letters and tore them into pieces.”168 Bold on the battlefield, he was cautious in romance. His next letter was written four days later after he had just received one from her, and it still had his usual formal tone (“I just returned and find your [word illegible] letter . . . I thank you for it.”),169 and he signed it again “A. Brusilov.” He must have overcome his qualms for the tone of his third extant letter, dated October 3, 1910, is totally different, indicating that there must have been several lost ones in between. It is eight pages long and positively effusive. It begins “Sweetest and dearest Nadezhda Vladimirovna!” but it is obvious that it is not at this point settled that they would marry. In his inimitable penmanship, he makes what is a desperate plea for her love: “Do not be too surprised at reading this letter, but I ask you to read it to the end.” At the end, he begs her, “If you yourself are able to see it spiritually, then say yes, . . . but if you say no and all will be ended.”170 Several letters followed, one on October 27 (he later writes October 28) and one on October 29, but before either could arrive, he wired her of their coming, asking her, “Destroy without reading the letters of October 28 and 29. I beg you to give up everything. Don’t be angry. Brusilov.”171 A telegram of hers must not have survived, because on October 31, it is certain that they are going to be married. “Agreed,” he wired, “only come not on November 7 but on November 9 in the morning. I will meet you. Kovel earlier. Brusilov.”172 On November 3, he wired, “Everything perfectly arranged. Ten in

24

Chapter 1

the morning. I will meet you in Kovel. Be calm. Brusilov.”173 He asked her in a later, undated telegram to wire her consent for the marriage license,174 which she must have done, because the marriage took place on November 10, 1910.175 This time Brusilov was indisputably in love, Nadia was a bride totally of his choosing. Friends and family had suggested that he “go into a profitable marriage,”176 but he angrily rejected the notion. This middle-aged spinster had become the love of his life, and he adored her until the end of his days. She was a large-boned woman, not pretty, but with an air of power and elegance about her. The marriage was not perfect, as none of them are, but their voluminous correspondence in their lifetime together is a monument to the devotion each held for the other, and the hundreds of pages of “memoirs” Nadezhda wrote on him in exile after his death testify to her devotion to him. With him the fire remained strong, as is indicated in his correspondence. As late as 1916, on the eve of his great offensive, when he must have had a thousand things on his mind, Brusilov wrote her in one of his long letters, “You very well know that I love you, and very strongly, from the bottom of my soul.”177 The scraps of evidence, and there are only scraps, suggests that he never felt that way about his first wife. Perhaps the fact that Nadia was much younger made him feel younger. Five years after the marriage, when she complained that she had turned fifty, he told her that he could not understand her being sad because to him she was “a young teenage girl,” for being with her, when he looked into a mirror, he did not see himself as “an old man” but felt like “I’m twenty-five years old.”178 Nadia was a very intelligent person, and while less well known as a writer than her mother, she had established a modest reputation in her work in military journalism, and it was one of her articles, the reader will recall, caught Brusilov’s attention. Her writing had a very descriptive, somewhat florid quality that brought the world alive. For example, in an article entitled “In Great Russia,” written after the Revolution that appeared in the West in The Constructive Quarterly, she penned, “It was so windless that the slightest stir of the winter birds and of the red squirrels of whom there were great numbers in the trees above, swayed the branches very perceptibly, showering at times dry sand-like crystals of snow over our furs.”179 Nadia was a caring, giving person as is evidenced by the number of thank you notes she has among her papers, letters thanking her for gifts and money sent to people, especially after the Revolution.180 An article on her in Le Gaulois shortly after her husband assumed command of the Russian forces in 1917 describes her as being “an enemy of all social airs [panache], of all ostentation,” adding that she “accepts the great and the small with the same allure and tone.” This characteristic led her to be “the mother of the regiments of her husband” and devoting “all of her time to charity.”181 She also did not

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

25

seem to mind using her position to obtain things for her husband’s soldiers. One major businessman in Odessa she once importuned for 100 pairs of pants, 100 jackets, 100 shirts, 100 bedroom slippers, for which despite the wartime inflation he charged her only 557rs. 40 kopeks, which included delivery.182 The reader will learn that she could be sometime small and selfish, especially where money and attention were concerned. Flaubert noted once in Madame Bovary that of all the winds that blow on love, those dealing with financial matters are the coldest and most destructive, and the Brusilovs seemed to have had their share of friction over money. Nadia was some sort of a spendthrift who was careless about managing the family economy. In their wartime correspondence, the general is often admonishing her to spend less and save. When she defended herself by saying that she spent much of their money for charity, he admonished her to save something for themselves, because “I trust that in the time of war we can build ourselves a reserve, with which, if God grants that again we will be united, we will be supported comfortable, to have enough.” Then he added, “Spend what is necessary, but it is possible [to spend] less.”183 Several times in their correspondence, he asks if she has received the money that he has sent her,184 since it obviously did not seem important enough to her to mention it to him in her letters. One time he specifically tells her he is sending her 2,500 rs., “to be put into the bank,”185 not to be spent on anything. She replied once to his admonitions about spending that “someone” had intimated to her “that you were stingy and did not give me enough money,” using this view as an excuse for her extravagances, “Now everything is so expensive so that what was once 1 r., now is 5 rs.”186 Another problem seems to have been a lack of interest in her husband’s career, in the early years of their marriage. Then as we shall see, she later took too much interest in it. In his memoirs, Brusilov laments this attitude of his wife in the early years of their marriage. Once he angrily wrote her, “You do not understand me, since you don’t care—it’s all the same to you—commandant of forces or a company commander. You would be happy to be the wife of a mayor or a governor . . . I am not able to change—the military service is all my life and thought.”187 When he was promoted to deputy commander of the Warsaw district, Nadia was living in Lublin and “was little interested in my career.”188 She made it abundantly plain that she did not wish to move to Warsaw. This lack of support (Brusilov calls it “interest”) grieved him very much, and she seems to have moved only with some urging.189 In later years, this attitude changed and not always for the better. At times during the war, she seems more ambitious for her husband that he was for himself. Her war letters praise him roundly, rejecting any criticism of him, especially by those who would stab him in the back. (E.g., “Alekseev hates Ivanov. He strongly embraces you.”)190 We will see in future chapters how she even meddled imprudently for his interest behind his back with governmental officials. She

26

Chapter 1

clearly loved him, however, and early in 1915 she had a portrait made of him painted largely from a photograph.191 Nevertheless, many times she behaved like a whiny child. Her letters from the war years are full of complaints about everything and everybody. She is very tired, Moscow is dirty, she recounts all of her aches and pains.192 He does not write her enough, she once wrote, complaining of this annoyance on the eve of his takeover of the Southwest Front, a time that must have been very hectic for him, or that he had not sent her a telegram on Easter.193 Whereas she did not at first involve herself in his career, however, she loved the prestige his rank gave her, and she frequently threw his weight around. During the war, she visited hospitals as “Mrs. Brusilov” and took it upon herself to correct the staff on what she perceived were their wrongdoings and behaving like she herself was the head of the hospital.194 Once, when she felt that a doctor had not shown her due respect, Brusilov defended the doctor, noting, somewhat sarcastically, that apparently the unfortunate man did not know that she was his wife. “I know him well,” he wrote her in the physician’s defense, “He is kind, polite, and a well-brought-up man. . . . When you are having dealings with people, and not with paper, it is inevitable.”195 There were the inevitable in-laws, but Brusilov seems to have liked them very much. He was especially fond of Nadia’s sister Elena (Lena), “Lenushechka,” as he sometimes endearingly called her. She corresponded with him often during the war, and when she and Nadia were living together during the war, as was frequently the case, he would express delight at that fact and tells Nadia to “kiss Lena for me.196 Her step-brother, Rostislav (Rostia) Nikolaevich Yakhontov was to Brusilov, after his brothers and his son, “to me the closest man.”197 They served together during the war, and Nadia frequently sent goodies to both of them. Nadia, on the other hand, does not seem to have been as taken with her husband’s family. Whereas she does refer to Boris as “a marvelous man,”198 she refers at other times to “this stupid Boris,”199 and in a letter in which she blasts everyone, she says, “And Boris and Nina [Boris’s wife] always are [there] with pretenses and insults.”200 Nadia does seem to have gotten on well with Brusilov’s son Aleksei, known in the family by the name “Liuk,” as well as with the diminutive Alyosha. He curiously called her “Aunt Nadia.” Once, when Brusilov stated in a letter that he fiercely loved her, he added “and you and [my] son are the two beings which tie me to this earth,” thanking her for her “care for Liuk.” Indeed, Liuk seems to have written Nadia when he did not write his father. Once she forwarded one of Liuk’s letters to him, and it was lost in the mail. Brusilov was very sorry that it did not arrive and asked his wife, “Write me what he said, what he’s doing and about what he wrote.”201 Liuk/Alyosha was also the frequent recipient of her present giving. In 1915, Alyosha wrote to

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

27

his father, “Today I received from Aunt Nadia a package . . . an important event for me, especially the cigarettes because I am about down to my last one. I wrote her a thank-you note.”202 He felt close enough to her to ask her for money, possibly feeling that she was more free than his tightfisted father. He wired her that he was coming through Moscow, and when he did, she gave him 150 rubles for each of the months of February, March, and April. He returned from Moscow to Petrograd, where he seems to have hit on his Aunt Nina for money as well, but was less successful with her (by way of answer she feigned sickness and went to bed). She later said that she would send him money by mail, but nothing ever came of it.203 His life seems to have been a constant drain on both of them, both financially and emotionally, for in a letter sent in May 1916, she wrote on the top of the page, “Sent money to Alyosha by post,”204 since all of that given to him in February was exhausted. Brusilov always continued to think of his son’s welfare and trusted Nadia to look after him. Late in the summer of 1915, as the Great Retreat continued and probably made Brusilov consider his mortality, he sent Nadia 3600 rubles, instructing her, “In case of my death, divide the money one part for yourself, the other for Liuk. For things for Liuk, give him [the contents of (?)] my cabinet entirely and the photograph of his mother and part of my cards from the military shoot which you do not want.”205 Apparently at this time Alyosha was seriously seeing some woman in Petrograd of whom the Brusilovs disapproved. “Thank God he hasn’t married . . .” Nadia wrote her husband, but in noting that he would finally leave Moscow the next day, she added with exasperation, “but again through Petrograd!!!” The next day she wrote, “Well, God be willing he will come back, and we can marry him well to a good girl, but not a courtesan.”206 If Nadia was not fully in love with Brusilov when they married, she came to love him later, and her wartime correspondence is strong testimony to the deep affection she held for him. Her direct greetings in her letters run from the affectionately formal, “My kind dear Aleksei Alekseevich” to the positively syrupy. “My dear little pigeon [goluiuchik] Alyosha.”207 “I don’t need anything, not rank, not medals, only that you would return to me alive and healthy,” she wrote at the war’s beginning, adding as an afterthought, “[and of course] only a victory for Russia!”208 By 1916 she wrote, “In future winters, if the war is still on, I will leave all things in the warehouse and come closer to you with my work. I cannot live far from you.”209 She worried about his health constantly, and when he noted in a letter that he smoked too much, she drew a pencil line in the margin blocking the paragraph as if to say “yes.”210 She frequently sent him parcels of goodies, always with cigarettes, and usually candy. His voluminous correspondence with her certainly manifests his great love for her, and he addressed her by numerous affectionate pet names: “Joy

28

Chapter 1

of my life,” “My dear sweet Nadiushenka,” “my Dushenka,” “My dear, my little girl [devochka],” or “My own priceless incomparable [bezmennaia] little wife.” Three years after their marriage, he wrote, “From all my soul I press you to my heart. God protect you. Your loving husband, Aleksei.”211 During the early years of the war, he wrote frequently, almost daily, usually late at night, frequently after midnight, when all his work was done. There are constant references in them to his love for her. “My dear adorable wify [zheniushenka] Nadiushenka!. It was terribly difficult to leave you, my dear little sun.”212 Another time, “It’s been only two months since I have seen you, but it seems like years.”213 When he heard from her, he was delighted. “I received your letter, dear, and I want to thank you. They bring me such joy since my soul [dusha] is with you.”214 With his armies in the midst of crucial maneuvers in Galicia in 1914, he still remembered their anniversary and sent her a telegram: “Anniversary of our wedding. Strongly hug you from all my heart. Thank you for giving me happiness. Your health, Aleksei.”215 In many ways, he never seemed to think of her as an adult, probably because he had first begun to notice her as a young girl, and he was so much older than she. Once, during the war he wrote, “What poor little girl I saw when you were eleven or 12 years old, and I am not able to get out of my head this image of a child, although I know that you are fifty.”216 He also always thought of her future after he was gone. What happened at this point in Brusilov’s life before his marriages is somewhat cloudy. His desire to leave the army and settle in Kutais had not been received well by his friends. Some of them suggested that he enter the Officers Cavalry School in St. Petersburg in order to take some courses of improvement in squadron and company command. He took the suggestion, leaving for St. Petersburg in the fall of 1881, arriving on October 17. He lived in St. Petersburg in the Arakcheev barracks on Spalernaia Street near the Smolny Monastery and the Tauride Palace and lived quite a different lifestyle from what he had known in the Caucasus. The Officer Cavalry School combined the training of both theory and practice for the officers in leadership training as well as simple horsemanship, which even included instruction on blacksmithery. The course for a cadet was one year and seven months. The cadets tackled tactical military assignments, engaged in military games, and applied the theories they had learned in classes. The training stressed two types of cavalry leadership, that of the formal dragoons and the less formal cossacks.217 He was promoted to captain on December 15 of that year, and he graduated from the cavalry school with a grade of “Excellent” in August 1883, returning to the Caucasus in September.218 Surprisingly, he was soon after offered a permanent teaching post in the cavalry school he had just left, as Adjutant Officer of the School, and he moved back to St. Petersburg, leaving the Caucasus forever. Another biographer states that he left for the

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

29

Cavalry School on October 7, 1881, leaving for good the 15th Dragoons and the Caucasus, never returning to the Caucasus.219 Whatever happened, his life and service there was to influence him forever. Like anyone who had ever lived in this exotic mysterious mountainous region, it molded his character and remained a great influence forever in his life.220 He was to remain at the Cavalry School until 1898, where his duties would be largely academic. He also served as the assistant to the captain of the instructional department and commander of the squadron and unit command department and the administrator of the dragoon department. Brusilov’s years in the Cavalry School were probably the happiest in his life to date, and he fanatically threw himself into his work. His scholarly duties consisted of giving lectures to officers on theories of riding and care of horses, and he remembered that “all of the cavalry interest devoured me totally. I read military journals, many books by military specialists, Russian and foreign.”221 One of his outstanding traits as a leader, preparedness, seems to have taken root here and would be for the rest of his life one of the cardinal points in his successful, outstanding military leadership. “I enthusiastically worked, dreaming of a definite goal and achieving an excellent result,” he wrote years later. These years were clearly a beacon for the remainder of his life. Moreover, he came to love the Russian capital. “Petersburg was everything to me,” he remembered years later, “because I became educated there and considered it dear to me.”222 The chief of the school was the above-mentioned V. A. Sukhomlinov, who would later be the rather infamous minister of war. Brusilov states in his memoirs that he served under Sukhomlinov for twelve years, but in this case, his memory is a little faulty.223 At any rate, one of his biographers expressed the opinion that Sukhomlinov used him to do much of his work, writing reports and orders, and even articles for military journals.224 To some degree, this situation might be true, but Brusilov does not say anything to that effect in his memoirs, written in Soviet times when anything that besmirched a member of the Old Regime was fair game. Indeed, he often praised him,225 Sukhomlinov was indeed later imprisoned but probably more so as a scapegoat for the military disasters of 1915 that on any real evidence.226 If anyone wants to learn something fully, they should first teach it. Brusilov used these years of teaching to learn much himself. He continued to devour books on military training, both Russian and foreign, and in these years he sharpened one of his most salient leadership traits, that of preparedness. He believed that an army must always be ready for any eventuality, and it would be one of the guiding forces in his brand of leadership. This attitude meant that an army must be trained in basic knowledge, it must be prepared not only in theory but in practice.227 The two must go together, but physical training in the field was more valuable that training in the classroom, an important factor

30

Chapter 1

recognized by most military experts. Brusilov, nevertheless, was a strong devoté of both classroom training and practical experience, and it was the great factor in the superior performance of the troops he commanded. In his training of cavalry, Brusilov was an innovative and “hands-on” teacher. Stressing to his students that “He who can’t ride a horse well cannot teach the lower ranks,” he once in one class made an example of a student, who was sitting badly in his saddle. “Candidate, come to me!” Brusilov ordered. When the student reached him, Brusilov took the reins and led the unfortunate student’s horse to the podium, where Brusilov made him dismount, and he assumed his position in the student’s saddle. “Well, now you lead,” he said to the student. “You will take my place and I will be in yours.” The junker gave the order to gallop, and Brusilov rode around the podium mimicking the sloppy horsemanship of the student. The student laughed at the imitation. Brusilov stopped and said, “What, it’s funny, eh?” “Yes, your excellency,” the student replied. “Exactly! Look here, I need to ride well [in order for you to take it seriously]. “Otherwise I will send you back to school.”228 One curious aspect of physical training that he felt was essential for the cavalryman, for both cavalry and physical training, was the military hunt. Pursuing wolves and other large wild beasts required quick maneuvering, sudden dashes, expert horsemanship, roughly the sort of training that simple scales are for the musician. He himself led the hunts and conducted them in a military manner. They began with a traditional pass in review at sunrise with the usual military fanfare with even the hunting dogs playing a role. Then General Brusilov would give the signal to begin the hunt and all instantly fell in line behind his chestnut red horse.229 Careerwise, these years were likewise very good to Brusilov. Not only did he become recognized as an expert on cavalry matters, he became chairman of the Official Court of Honor. While in the school as a student, he had been promoted to the rank of captain in 1882, and in 1890, he was made a lt. colonel and a full colonel in August two years later. In January 1893, he was appointed chief of the Dragoon Division of the Officers Cavalry School. In 1900, he became a major general.230 Also during these years, and perhaps his promotions reflect it, he became well-known to Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich, the famous leader of Russia’s armies in the first year of the Great War, and he was frequently in his home.231 Brusilov also came to know the two sons of the historian S. M. Soloviev, Vsevolod and his younger brother Vladimir, who was a well-known poet, philosopher, and publicist. He had first met them in Tiflis years before, and when they became reacquainted in

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

31

St. Petersburg, they were both heavily into the “occult sciences.” Brusilov eventually had a falling out with the two, probably because at the time he did not take to spiritualism with the required seriousness,232 but treated it as little more than a parlor game. Interestingly enough, however, at a seance at the home of Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich, whose wife was indeed a serious spiritualist, the spirit wrote on a paper with a pencil, “Brusilov will save Russia.”233 Brusilov continued his growth and study during these games, giving lectures and writing articles. In 1897, he published one titled, “On the Individual Preparation of the Horseman and Studs in the Cavalry.” The work reflects the military philosophy of Brusilov in his employment of words: “sensible,” “preparedness,” “reasonable,” “conscientious horseman,” etc.234 Many writings followed, enhancing his reputation as an authority on the cavalry. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, he published in the journal Vestnik russkoi konnitsy an article entitled “The Role of the Cavalry in Future Wars,” in which he stressed the mass use of horsemen but in integration in corps or even armies.235 Brusilov, ever open-minded to new ideas, had come to realize that with the advent of some modern weapons such as heavy artillery and the machine gun, the role of cavalry had to change, if not be abandoned altogether. At the outbreak of the Great War, the cavalry still played some role in warfare, and his work in training and development left a permanent mark on its organization.236 Even with that great change, Brusilov did not wish to be the narrow specialist and continued to read widely in areas other than his special field: military periodical literature, military history, and military technology. To him, an officer could not know too much or be too well-informed. In March 1898, Brusilov made his first of many study trips abroad. Accompanied by a Lt. Col. V. A. Khimets, he went to France, Austria, and Germany to study cavalry regiments, schools, and to acquire horses. In France, Baron de Fredericks, the military agent of Russia in Paris, asked Gabriel Hanotaux, the famous historian, who was at that time French minister of foreign affairs, for permission for “Colonel Brusilov of the Cavalry of the Imperial Russian Guard and Lt. Col. Himetz [French transliteration] of the regiment of grenadiers of the Horseguard, for the authorization to visit at the military academy St. Cyr, the Ecole d’application de Cavalaire, and the quarters of the regiments of the Paris garrison cavalry.” Hanotaux readily agreed and enclosed in his letter of permission to the Russian ambassador the proper passes for each place.237 From Paris he proceeded to Vienna into “the camp of the enemy,” where he reviewed the Viennese Riding School, the School of Higher Horsemanship, and the 15th Hussar regiment. He went next to Berlin and toured the Hanoverian School of horseback riding, but he seems to have spent more time with non-cavalry units, including the Potsdam Guards.238 His Soviet-era

32

Chapter 1

biographer Sokolov wrote that the visit made him aware of the “militarism that was prevalent in Germans and that Kaiser William II could not hide his aggressive tendencies.” This information strikes one as a bit of Soviet antiGerman editing, but there is no doubt that in the early part of the twentieth century, Brusilov became convinced that Russia would eventually go to war with Germany, and at every turn, he prophetically stressed the necessity of preparedness for this war. General A. A. Ignatiev, a student in the school, and an officer, who like Brusilov served the Soviets after the Revolution, wrote in his well-known memoir Piat’desiat let v stroiu (Fifty Years in Service) that the school became “a fundamental vehicle for [military] reform” and “a rigorous [malopriatnyi] institute,”239 and under Brusilov’s leadership, the school became the foremost military institution in the Russian Empire.240 Sukhomlinov put it more succinctly: “With his ability and knowledge of technics of cavalry affairs, along with his knowledge of foreign languages, he carried invaluable contributions . . . [to create for the Russian army] a nursery school of cavalry culture.”241 Brusilov’s theories on cavalry training revolutionized the entire Russian cavalry system. It was not enough to train the horseman well, as was the general theory of the cavalry school when Brusilov arrived on the scene, but to train well the cavalry regiment as a whole. Brusilov wrote in 1906, “A cavalry man is not a horse breaker, not a narrow riding school specialist, but a mounted warrior, at one with the horse.”242 This perfect fighting machine would then become an integral part of an even greater fighting unit, the regiment. Brusilov believed that the training of the individual horseman must be thorough and complete. He must be trained to function well in any set of conditions. “No weather and no soil, however difficult and inhospitable, must not serve as a pretext for the cancellation of a training trip in the open since the mounted warrior must learn to work under all conditions, that is, in all terrains, on icy ground, in deep snow, in frost, in slushy thawing conditions, by day, by night, etc.”243 The cavalry man must, therefore be completely flexible, he wrote at another time, “cornering and defeating the enemy in all situations (since the enemy may not always be motionless . . . ).”244 Whereas the major weapon of the cavalryman for centuries had been the sabre, Brusilov insisted that the horseman be an expert in marksmanship. With the advent of modern weaponry, the sabre did little good, so he stressed that the officers of a division should never undervalue this problem. In giving instructions on the question, Brusilov wrote, “I draw all officers attention . . . to marksmanship training. The present conditions of the military situation demand from the cavalryman the ability to master single fire weapons, with no less ability than with swords, and not less than with the horse.”245 With Brusilov, a less basic element of instruction was physical training. Brusilov himself remained physically fit all of his life and never acquired

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

33

the proverbial “middle age spread” so he probably made the assumption that others should not as well. His size made him stand out in any picture with his fellow officers, all of whom are rather well upholstered. Whereas sometimes he felt that gymnastics were useless for some elements of the cavalry, for the Life Guard, it was “extraordinarily important and useful occupation,”246 so he ordered for the Life Guard the creation of a command to prepare instructions for gymnastics. Under Brusilov’s leadership, the cavalry school excelled and came to be regarded as the eminent place in the system for the preparation of cavalry cadres. Under Brusilov, the discipline of the school tightened considerably, and those who had regarded it as a social club came to call it “an unpleasant [malopriiatnyi] institution,” and derogatorily referred to it as “the Horse Academy.” In time, however, class after class of officers gave Brusilov the credit for the strength of that institution, and its great reputation dates from his tenure there. In the heady days of 1916, when his armies were bulldozing over the Austrians in Galicia, the praise of these officers became ecstatic. One described him to western journalists as being “as near perfect as a mortal can be,” and another said that “No one could grasp the hidden strategy of the present as he had done.247 Whereas this praise may be a bit overstated, there is no doubt that he was one of the more outstanding officers of the Russian army long before his great successes in the Great War.248 Brusilov’s talents indeed were recognized by the higher-up. In May 1901, he was promoted to major general, and in April 1902, he received the large officers cross of the Bulgar Order “for military merit.” Although still second in command of the school, by this time, Brusilov had become known internationally as a cavalry expert, as an authority on horses, and as a teacher of horsemanship.249 Brusilov’s ideas of a cavalry army, that is, the mass use of cavalry, were used in the early stages of the Great War by General Aleksei Evert, a man who was to become in time his nemesis, by combining three cavalry corps and the 17th artillery battery in the fluid days of the early Great War. The approach was abandoned when stalemate came in on the Eastern Front after the Great Retreat of 1915, but in the Civil War, where the lines were less definite and more vacillating, this type of cavalry formation became once again quite effective for both sides.250 Because of his troubles with Avsharov, Brusilov asked General F. F. Palitsyn, the commandant of the staff of the Inspector General of Cavalry, to be relieved of his post and asked to command a cavalry brigade, but Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich ordered Palitsyn to do something to prevent losing this man of talent. The result was that Avsharov was kicked upstairs on February 2, 1902, to the position of one of the Commissioners in the General Inspectorate of Cavalry, and on February 10, Brusilov was again made de facto commander of the cavalry school. Brusilov recognized his debt to the grand duke, and even referred to himself as “a spoiled child” of Nicholas

34

Chapter 1

Nicholaevich.251 He now held one of the most prestigious posts in the Russian army, a career achievement that would be a crowning success for any military officer’s career. By 1905, a year before his service at the school would end, Grand Duke Nicholas wrote a highly laudatory report on Brusilov’s influence on the academy: “[Brusilov] has succeeded in establishing a school that is compatible with the interests of the cavalry on the way out of a narrow technical, one dimensional institution but as a military education school, following in the manner of strengths and means satisfying the daily demands of line.”252 His superior work was likewise reflected in his awards and medals that continued to flow in. On November 11, 1903, he was awarded the Persian Order of “l’ba i solntsa” of the First Class, and the next month he received the Order of St. Stanislav of the 1st class. Within months, the French government conferred upon him the Order of the Commander’s Cross, and in January 1906, just before leaving the cavalry school, he was awarded the Bulgarian Order of Alexander with the large cross. His work was likewise reflected in his salary and compensation for food and housing, which by 1907 had exceeded 9,000 roubles per month.253 The Great War historian C. R. M. F. Cruttwell made the observation that his advancement was due to merit, “for he was not liked at court,”254 but at this time, Brusilov had not made the enemies in high places that he would later have, and his close association with the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich had certainly not hurt him. The appreciation for his worth was further underscored by the fact that Brusilov was not sent to the Far East in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 because he was included in the select group of highly competent men who were kept at home, where they were more needed to guard against a feared attack by Germany.255 He was sorely stung by Russia’s defeat, nevertheless, and in his mode of stressing preparation, he blamed it on the poor training of officers, which had resulted in poor relations with their men. As the war was winding to a close, he wrote, “The present war with one’s own eyes shows us that we, like always, are able to die brilliantly but unfortunately not always carrying to our death a tangible use because throughout and side by side they did not grasp the knowledge and skills to employ the practice and knowledge that existed.”256 After four years of service as the commandant of the cavalry school, he left to command a cavalry regiment in April 1906.257 It is unclear why. He had probably done all that he could, since usually deans and presidents accomplish their best innovations in academic institutions in this first five years, and as a cavalry commander, he could have gone no further. Perhaps he wanted some practical experience.258 At any rate, the year saw another promotion, to that of lt. general. At his farewell ceremony, the school gave him a very thick album with a dark green cover and a large silver buckle. Inside was a

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

35

silver replica of the school adorned with the Romanov two-headed eagle. Its inscription read: “The standing structure of the officers’ cavalry school–to dear Alexei Alkeseevich Brusilov, 19 April 1906.”259 The work included head photos of all instructors of the school, with one blank frame, which was to include the picture of the school priest Ioann Taranets. Brusilov’s second wife had written in the margin that the priest had refused to give his picture because of his dislike for Brusilov. “Brusilov strictly demanded the filling of all duties of everyone, not excluding the priest,” she had written later.260 Brusilov’s strictness had probably ruffled a lot of feathers in his tenure at the academy as he turned the cavalry country club he had discovered into a first-rate military institution, and what Father Ioann had thought would be a sinecure when he entered probably but had turned into a real job. Brusilov’s new position was commander of the 2nd Guard Cavalry division, which was considered one of the better units of the guards. He took command of a force of four regiments: horse-grenadiers, life guard uhlans, life guard hussars, and the life guard dragoons. Besides these groups, there was also a guard reserve regiment and the 2nd division guard artillery brigade. Again we see the fine hand of Grand Duke Nicholas. The division was under the patronage of the imperial family, and the officers were members of the family or the favorites of the tsar and tsarina. Since these men relied on their connections, they were usually ruined in a year or two. The officers fought badly and were not very knowledgeable about military tactics, but they performed well in military reviews at Tsarskoe Selo. As one historian put it, “They were most spoiled kids,” but “they danced well at balls.” Perhaps the higher-ups felt that a dose of Brusilov was what this unit needed. The problems with this “elite” unit were vast. Bad discipline abounded, and even the officers wore their uniforms in a sloppy manner. Few of them were good marksmen, and they all took bad care of their horses. Moreover, they were abysmally ignorant of military regulations. As if these shortcomings were not enough, Brusilov found the unit rife with scandals, squabbling, conflict, and backstabbing. He immediately cracked down on all of these problems, stressing, as was usual with him, military preparedness in their daily work. Men now had to know not only their weapons but their horses as well. To what must have been their great displeasure, he, too, added physical training, with preparedness was the ultimate goal. In a basic instruction to the men, he wrote, “Contemporary fighting demands from every officer a wide scope and talent, and for decision-making and the development of reasonable initiatives in peacetime it is necessary to devote one’s full attention.” Another theme that he stressed with his officers was the necessity at all times of getting to know their men. He urged the contact with the lower ranks. “These conversations [with the men under you] must not go on forever, but it is necessary in the short term, in clear and educated language, to instill in them

36

Chapter 1

all of our service obligations in both peace and wartime, and favorably report and elucidate the current events from Russian life and foreign countries.”261 Brusilov remained in command of this unit for two and a half years, and by the time he was transferred from St. Petersburg in December 1908, he had remedied most of the problems he had found in the force when he arrived. He was probably not the most popular officer in the Russian army, but he had clearly earned the respect of the men under him (and it was respect, not fear), a condition in which he left any military unit that he commanded until the Revolution of 1917, after which no unit of the Russian army revered its officers. This esteem extended outside Russia as he continued to receive foreign decorations from such states as Bulgaria and Italy.262 Russian medals continued to flow in as well. His good works resulted in another advancement; when in December 1908, he received notification that he was being given command of the 14th Army Corps located in Lublin near the Austrian border in the Warsaw Military District, and early in January 5, 1909, Brusilov left St. Petersburg for the last time that he would be stationed there.263 He passed through Warsaw on his way to Lublin to present himself to General Georgii Antonovich Skalon, the commandant of the Warsaw district. One thing that disturbed him in Warsaw that would at a later time affect his career was the fact that Skalon, a Russian of German descent, was himself surrounded with many other Russians of German heritage and that the language they used among themselves was German. Here Brusilov become a very strong Russophile and Teutonophobe, and he feared the German influence in the military there. Skalon received him well, and he went on to Lublin, a city to which he had never been, but one he liked immediately.264 What he found in the 14th Army Corps horrified this preparedness fanatic. First of all, two units, the 2nd Infantry Division and one of the Cossacks were on long service on the Volga, hundreds of miles away. The corps’ transport was in terrible shape, and in the event of the outbreak of war, these forces would have taken weeks to rejoin their corps. Moreover, equipment was at peacetime levels. There was only one pair of boots per soldier, and these were not of good quality. There were no uniforms or boots at all for reservists who would be called up in the event of a declaration of war. As for armaments, there were only eight machine guns per regiment, and there were no carriages for them. Mobilized, they would have had to be transported in farm wagons. Their artillery contained no howitzers, and there was a serious shortage of ammunition for weapons of all types. He was further troubled the next year when he learned at a meeting of the corps commanders of the XIV Army that these problems were universal in the whole sector.265 These poorly armed and disorganized forces would be the first to encounter an enemy in case of war, and Brusilov felt that they would be unable to hold defensively, much less go on the attack.

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

37

Aside from these problems, Brusilov was dismissed on first arriving by the non-cavalry portion of the 14th as a “mere horseman,” and the infantry and artillery leadership expected nothing much good to come from his command. To make matters worse, the cavalry, on the other hand, felt that his takeover meant as easy service for them. Everyone was either pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised.266 With his customary thoroughness, he tackled these problems and cracked down on discipline, first whipping the officers into shape. Brusilov intoned them that if the officers were poor, then one could not expect the soldiers to be any better. In an order of the day, Brusilov wrote shortly after taking over the 14th, “For the preparation of the teaching of the young soldiers, it is necessary . . . to do everything in order for the teachers to be for the young soldiers an example by their moral qualities, dedication to duty, smartness, and their ability to give instruction.”267 In time, the men under him came to realize that his strictness was based on a deep devotion to duty, a love of the military, and his devotion to the Russian soldier. Let us remember that Brusilov was a great believer in “war games” as a means of training, but he also used them as a means of winnowing officers who were not up to his standards. He sought and promoted talent where he found it, and this policy was one of the many reasons that the forces under him always performed so well.268 For Brusilov, training did not end with the officers. He realized that the enlisted men were poorly trained as well, and in a report of November 1, 1909, he outlined a training program for the winter whereby the lower ranks would obtain additional instruction in marksmanship, reconnaissance work, forest as well as city fighting tactics, and all contact with the enemy by both day and night. Brusilov especially liked night maneuvers to prepare soldiers for that type of fighting. Those troops under Brusilov’s command before the war would have a definite advantage in those grim months of 1915, and as usual Brusilov was in the thick of the movement. He was always to be found at crucial points as divisions crossed each other, and his ubiquitousness in war games kept the officers on their toes. One never knew when he would appear and make his presence felt in the training, and failure was never tolerated. One Cossack officer once lost his way at night and was as a result late in making his report. Brusilov ordered him to tender his resignation.269 Brusilov found that one of the flaws in the 14th corps was a certain timidity, the lack of “a drive to go forward.”270 With the war games, he worked hard to remedy this shortcoming. Wars are not won by a passivity but by attack, a policy he would demonstrate again and again in the Great War. As he drove his men, he could see their improvement as the training advanced. By 1911, he wrote after some exercises conducted in February that “the works in the times of the games were carried out by all participants’ very carefully.” He added, “It was comforting to notice in the time of the games the tangible

38

Chapter 1

results of that fruit bearing labor, which were put by each [soldier] . . . into our general military endeavors.”271 He would be further rewarded when a few years after the 14th corps performed very well on the Galician and Carpathian fronts, especially in the forests and at night. In his work with the 14th corps, however, Brusilov learned of his own shortcomings and his lack of expertise in certain areas. Having always served in the cavalry, his knowledge of infantry and artillery were lacking, so he in his customary fashion, attacked his own ignorant shortcomings. He read extensively to learn of the workings of these sectors of the army,272 and the reader will not be surprised that he became quite skillful in these areas. Brusilov was at this time approaching 60, the age at which many officers retired from the army, but Brusilov did not want to quit. He felt that he still had contributions to make to the Russian military, and he summed up his feelings in a letter to his wife in June 1911 when he wrote, “I want not only to continue to serve but also further do great deeds in the service.” He was almost fanatical in his love for the army, and two years more service in 1911 did not seem to be enough. The year 1912 saw another promotion: He was made second-in command of the Warsaw Military District, and there followed a flow of congratulatory telegrams from friends and former units he had commanded: The Don Cossack Regiment, the famous Kutuzov family, the Kuban divisions, and Prince George L’vov, who would later cross the stage of history at a prominent time in the future.273 Officers’ from the Cavalry School wired, stating that they were “warmly believing that the Warsaw Army with the help of your military heart will become yet more threatening to the enemies of the Fatherland.”274 One Cossack unit toasted him by telegram (our regiment . . . drinks to the health of your excellency our teacher,”275 while one from a Baron Klodt sent congratulation and added “I kiss Nadezhda Vladimirovna.”276 Although it is unclear why, Nadia was apparently not living with him in Lublin, but because one of the perks was a dacha outside of Warsaw, she “joyously went there.”277 When they arrived in the former Polish capital, they stayed in the Hotel Bristol. Most officers lived in the barracks apartments, but one was not immediately available for the Brusilovs, so they had to find one somewhere in the city. They located a delightful one on Uyazdovskii Alley, near a park.278 The dacha which was put at their disposal was thirty versts from the city in the administrative fortress of Zegrzh on the banks of the Bugo-Narev River. The house, which was large, had a big yard, and included a marvelous orchard and a wonderful flower garden. The house was suited for both summer and winter living, and the garden supplied the Brusilovs with fresh fruit and vegetables. They even had the use of an automobile, and a telephone line connected them to Warsaw. Friends and neighbors frequently visited, and they used the automobile to visit friends. In his memoirs Brusilov

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

39

wrote, “This [duty] wasn’t a life but a total holiday.”279 His neighbor I. A. Gurko had placed on his dacha a sign which read, “Here I. A. Gurko loves to rest,”280 and Brusilov, who rarely rested, seems to have done so here himself, indulging himself in long walks of which he was so fond, and he spent most of the summer of 1912 in residence here. Nadia seems particularly to have loved Zegrzh, and since it was winterized, the couple often went there even in cold weather. She was always active in any community in which she lived, and Zegrzh was no different. Here she organized a school for Russian children to which both Polish and Jewish children were admitted, and at Christmas, which the Brusilovs seem to have spent there, she brought the children Christmas trees and children’s books.281 Their life in Warsaw was, nevertheless, much more socially active that the one they led in Zegrzh, and his position moved them into the top echelon of Warsaw society. There were numerous dinners, receptions, balls, and the theater, where they had their own loge. Extrovert that she was, Nadia liked it more than he did, for he found it “a bright and empty life of gossip and intrigue.”282 As was often the case, Brusilov was horrified by the incompetence of the officers he commanded in the Warsaw District. They were often unable to read maps or correctly place their troops or even locate the positions of the enemy. Moreover, some of them could not understand their assignment. Given the proximity of Germans, on all three side of the Polish salient, this sort of inability was certainly unacceptable. What is more, the units in this district should always be in a high degree of readiness. Brusilov saw their inadequacies first-hand in the first winter exercises which he observed. In a report, Brusilov noted, “I with sadness was convinced many of the staff and superior officers were in tactical relations utterly insufficiently prepared. Obviously at this most important branch of military affairs there had not been sufficient attention payed.”283 Suspecting that these Russian troops would one day be opposing German soldiers who would “fight like a lion against all the world,”284 he became greatly alarmed at the inferiority of the Russian forces that might have to face them. As was the case everywhere he was ever stationed, he launched a program of training, even in the winter, and we can be certain that here, as everywhere, he left the Russian army in better shape than he found it. What diminished his feeling about his duty in Warsaw was the prevailing degree of “Germaness” that he had observed as he passed through the city on his way to Lublin. Now he was actually stationed among these Teutonophiles. Skalon, the commandant of the Warsaw District and Brusilov’s immediate superior, was “a kind and relatively [sic] man,” Brusilov wrote in his memoirs, but added “a German to the marrow of his bones.” In any Russo-German war, the Warsaw district would be a major battlefield, and Brusilov, whose Slavic nationalism was increasingly a dominant force in his

40

Chapter 1

life, felt that the district should not be commanded by a man who favored Russo-German friendship. What was more, all the people around him were Germans: Skalon’s wife, the assistant governor general Essen, Captain of the Gendarmes Uthof, Baron Tuzengausen, the head of the state bank, and many others. Brusilov himself had replaced a General Hesshelmann. Someone who has a German name can of course be a very loyal Russian, but Skalon spent too much time with local, non-military Germans, especially a Baron Bruk, whom Brusilov knew to be a great German nationalist. Brusilov had by now decided that there would be war with Germany sooner rather than later, and that fraternization with these local Germans and the infestation of German elements in the army was not a good thing.285 In 1913, he learned the seriousness of this danger, he felt, when Prime Minister Vladimir N. Kokovtsev visited Warsaw and was the guest of honor at a breakfast in Skalon’s apartment, which was in the palace of the former Polish kings. Brusilov returned home early from the meal to the surprise of his wife. The conversation had turned to Russia’s desire for Constantinople, a geographic goal of the Russian tsars for several hundred years. Whoever controlled the Turkish Straits had a stranglehold on Russia’s exit and entrance into and out of the Black Sea, and it had always been in the hands of hostile Turkey. When the mention of Russian acquisition of Constantinople had come into the conversation, Skalon had laughed at it, but to Brusilov’s further horror, Kokovtsov agreed that acquisition of the straits would be a problem for Russia. Rather than argue, Brusilov simply left the breakfast. He told his wife, “You understand the terribleness of this, indeed Skalon and his associated Germans. But V. N. Kokovtsev is Russian and I value him as a Russian ... [and for him to have talked that way is a disgrace].”286 After the Revolution, Brusilov implied strongly to an interviewer from Kievskaia mysl’ that Skalon had let the Germans know too much. “Skalon did not get from the German consul any [German] state or military secrets: The Germans [on the other hand] knew everything, decidedly everything [about the Russians].”287 Brusilov probably did not think that Skalon had consciously been disloyal to Russia, but he certainly felt that in his association with these Germans, he had leaked information. His Soviet biographer Sokolov wrote that he became so certain that Skalon was harming Russia that he wrote a letter to Sukhomlinov. In the letter he included that he could not serve among these Germans and asked to be transferred to the Kiev Military district, if possible.288 The letter was intercepted by the Warsaw Gendarme Administrator Utgof, who passed it on to Skalon. Exactly what transpired here, we do not know, because our only source for it is Sokolov, and he gives scant detail. Although the letter was intercepted, it did reach Sukhomlinov, who agreed to Brusilov’s transfer to the command of the 12th Army Corps in the Kievan Military District. Brusilov claimed that he heard that his comments even reached the tsar, but nothing was done.289

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

41

Sokolov’s account of the whole imbroglio has a false ring to it. In the first place, lodging a formal complaint was not Brusilov’s style. Furthermore, how did the letter reach Sukhomlinov if it had been intercepted by the local secret police? Moreover, going over his superior’s head in this manner would have most likely terminated his career, but Brusilov was given another equivalent command. The manner in which this behavior does not compute leads one to believe that the letter, if it was written, was probably not intercepted and that the tsar probably never heard his complaints. Moreover, Brusilov seems to have had trouble with his superior officers in many places, and this problem with Skalon might have merely been one more of them. What we do know is that for whatever reason, Brusilov was not sacked for his criticism, and it does not seem to have hindered his career. In his memoirs, however, Brusilov tells a different story. Here he states that he went to St. Petersburg in the winter of 1912 to deliver a report about the necessity of delaying the release of reserve soldiers from the service, and while there, he told Sukhomlinov of the situation in Warsaw (no mention of a letter), and the latter suggested that he report his concerns directly to the tsar. Brusilov did so reluctantly, but Nicholas II, in this first encounter with Brusilov, did not react to this news in any surprising way, only telling the general to give his regards to Skalon on his return. At this point, he asked to be transferred to the Kiev Military district. He returned to Warsaw with the orders to relocate. The transfer could be technically regarded as a deportment for Brusilov since the high command had already decided that in case of war, Brusilov would be placed in the command of the II Russian Army facing East Prussia, the army crushed at Tannenberg in 1914.290 It is, of course, tempting to speculate how different the battle might have been had Brusilov been commanding the II army. Whatever, his request for a transfer eventually placed him in command of an army facing the less powerful Austrians against whom he would be much more successful than he would probably have been against the Germans. On his new appointment, he wrote to his wife, “I do not doubt that among the forces of the Warsaw Circle, my exit had created a sensation, and many will pity me, considering me a good general, but there are also those who will be delighted [at my departure], finding me too demanding.” He felt that he had done everything he could for his duty, adding, “I am happy to be removed from this Skalon-dominated, cesspool-like atmosphere. The tsar’s court–I understand, but the court of Skalon doesn’t equal this station. Disgusting!”291 For some reason, Brusilov did not leave Warsaw until the summer of 1913, going first to Kiev. On August 2, 1913, he participated in maneuvers in the Poltava Guberniia under the leadership of his first immediate Great War commander, General N. I. Ivanov. In his words, both he and Nadia “grieved” in

42

Chapter 1

the small provincial city of Vinnitsa, the headquarters of the staff of the 12th army corps, which was such a sharp social contrast to “brilliant Warsaw,” but they both were relieved to be leaving the intrigue and conflict of the capital of Russian Poland. In the train station on their departure, they received a host of congratulatory and farewell telegrams, which touched the couple.292 Whereas Vinnitsa was indeed outside of the main circle of the Moscow– Warsaw–Kiev–St. Petersburg social circuit, it was not the total backwater they had feared. Brusilov described it as a “pretty little city” on the hills above the Southern Bug River. The town sported a six-storey hotel with an elevator, electricity, as well as trams, and even taxis, and there were many orchards and gardens throughout the city. In the surrounding countryside were many old Ukrainian and Polish estates. Vinnitsa was the Brusilovs “last stop of a peaceful, quiet existence” for the rest of their lives. They lived in what Brusilov called a “modest home” in which they were surrounded by their personal effects, including Brusilov’s military books and journals, and the house was in the middle of a large garden. Brusilov could take long walks in the adjacent fields, and for Nadia, she was happy to be nearer to Odessa. In time, they both fell in love with this city, and Nadia lived there sometimes during the war. Family visited them often. Brusilov’s son Aleksei was a frequent guest, and he and his father often went horseback riding in the surrounding countryside. Also Nadia’s sister and brother were often there. The Brusilovs attended and gave parties and were frequent attendees at concerts and the theater.293 Here at least the Brusilovs had the peace of mind that eluded them in gossipy Warsaw. Brusilov found commanding the 12th Army Corps quite pleasing. It was one of the largest in Russia and was composed of two infantry divisions, one of which, the 19th, had been close to Brusilov during the Turkish War, one rifle (strelkovaia) brigade, two cavalry divisions, and a prancing show unit. It was stationed in the Podolian Guberniia immediately adjacent to the Austrian border. Its previous commander, an unwell General Korganov, had neglected. His command and Brusilov found the usual problems: Poorly prepared officers, bad discipline among the soldiers, and no anticipation of a war with Germany—a major shortcoming in Brusilov’s mind. As was typical of him, Brusilov attacked these problems with great vigor and created a greater state of preparedness. Many officers of the 12th were displeased at his appointment at first, for they knew his reputation for strictness and had heard that he was haughty, unapproachable, and sharp. That opinion of him quickly changed as they began to work with him and saw his warm, caring side under that of the stern disciplinarian. He was quickly perceived as a man of intelligence and education and as one willing to listen to different opinions.294 In time, even the soldiers of the 12th came to attach the adjective “dear” [rodnoi] when they said his name.

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

43

One of Brusilov’s first actions in Vinnitsa was to scatter the various units of the 12th corps all over the guberniia so that he could familiarize himself with each part in a detailed fashion of the degree of military preparedness. As was typical, Brusilov personally supervised the instruction and thereby learned firsthand how inadequate their training had been. He was disturbed that reconnaissance and military intelligence were also sorely lacking among the officers, who seemed willing to await the artillery fire of the enemy to learn of its whereabouts. In a rebuke to his staff, Brusilov wrote, “It is always necessary to remember that what we are doing in peacetime, we will be doing also in war, when the price of blood experience does not have to teach us to act correctly.”295 Brusilov also noted that the soldiers under him were adequate in defense but totally lacking in the mentality of offense. Defense might save a nation from invasion, but it will not bring ultimate victory. There must be a sense of the need to attack. Active defense can be “suffocating in the majority of cases,” he wrote in an instruction. “I demand activity always and everywhere . . . [with commanders always being prepared] to seize the moment to go over on the offensive. I forbid [passivity] not only in one’s actions, but even in one’s thoughts.”296 To have his men prepared for anything, he drilled them in all times of the year and in all types of weather, day and night. With such diverse conditional training, his men would be ready for any type of conditions in which they would be required to fight. In such directives, Brusilov wrote, “I want you strongly to remember the basic truth that the company in a fight must only then [with all conditional training] fulfill all its assignments with great success and with minimum loss of personnel . . . [as they] work in difficult localities and conditions.”297 In spring maneuvers in March 1914, his officers had performed their duties well, but Brusilov found that army intelligence was inadequate resulting in the poor placement of ordnance and machine guns. He stressed that officers in leading must be part of a whole plan that is dependent on the locality in which they are fighting, and that locality must be known to them in advance.298 Up until the outbreak of the war, he moved his men around, marching and countermarching in their military games, and in this action doubtlessly lies the success of his armies in the early months of the Great War. On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, was assassinated. This event ignited a fuse that led to the first declaration of war exactly a month later, which precipitated other declarations of war in subsequent days until finally almost all of the major nations of Europe were dragged into what was really the Great War of the Twentieth Century, 1914–1945, often called World Wars I and II. Russia entered the Great War in 1914 the least prepared of any of the Great Powers, a shortfall against which Brusilov had constantly warned. From 1881

44

Chapter 1

to 1902, the military’s share of the state budget fell from 30 percent to 18 percent, and while that partly reflects a growth in the total budget in other areas, not a decline in real roubles, the Russian military was in 1904 spending only 57 percent of the amount spent on each German draftee and 63 percent of what was spent on each Austrian inductee.299 We have seen the poor training that Brusilov always found in each unit he took over, and it is well-known that the Russian soldier was less well-armed. Also, the army was still relying too much on cavalry, which was increasingly becoming obsolete in modern warfare and almost totally useless in the static campaigns that came to be commonplace on both fronts. Yet, Russia’s greatest area of inferiority, Brusilov knew, was in the realm of technical equipment, and this inadequacy could only be equalized by the enormous sacrifice of Russian manhood,300 resulting, as we shall see, in disastrous consequences. The greatest area of inferiority was in the area of field artillery. What artillery Russian armies had consisted of eight-gun batteries, which Brusilov felt were too cumbersome to move, and a six gun battery due to its versatility could fire the same number of shells as the cumbersome eight-gun ones. These were, of course, only three-inch guns. Apart from these three-inch weapons, a Russian army would have only one mortar division of twelve howitzers, and in Brusilov’s VIII Army only one of heavy artillery. Therefore, in the thirty-two batteries that existed in each Russian army corps, there would be only ninety-six light and twelve heavy guns, a total of one-hundred and eight pieces in all. A German corps had onehundred and sixty-six guns, thirty-six of which were howitzers, and twelve heavy guns. Generally speaking, Russian artillery could not match those machines of death produced by the Krupp and Skoda works of their enemies. Russian armies likewise did not have the massive concentrations of artillery for invasion tactics, especially against well-placed trenches.301 Moreover, Brusilov had noted in his corps, and then later in the VIII Army, there was inadequate practice in “group-firing,” that is, practice of eight to twelve batteries training together and collectively shifting their fire from one target to another. His superiors would not allow “practice shoots” because they found them wasteful of shells.302 In reality, the Russian army probably did indeed not have adequate shell reserves for such practice, but whatever the cause, training suffered. Another area in which Russia was lacking was in airplanes, a weapon which Brusilov utilized at every opportunity. Brusilov felt that they were essential to direct long-range artillery, and he complained that too little attention had been given to creating an air force. By this omission, Russia was “badly handicapped,” and Sikorsky’s famous bomber the Ilia Moromets never lived up to Russian hopes and could never have been produced in the necessary numbers had it been more useful. Dirigibles and observation

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

45

balloons were so antiquated as to be virtually useless.303 Sources vary, but at the beginning of the war, Russia had between 190 and 260 planes, sixty of which were on Brusilov’s southwest front.304 Finally, a detriment that plagued the Russian army as Brusilov had seen it was a characteristic that many saw as its strength: Its enormous size. The much vaunted “Russian steamroller” had on occasion bulldozed the smaller, more outstanding armies of Frederick the Great in the Seven Years’ War just by numbers alone, when it took almost a minute to reload and fire a musket, and human waves could take advantage of the delay. Thus, a myth was created and had endured since that day of the invincibility of the Russian hordes, despite much evidence since that time to the contrary. Enter high explosive shells and the machine gun, and the Russian steamroller was even less potentially effective. The myth, nevertheless, persisted. Since numbers were perceived as the Russian army’s greatest asset, Russian officers used those hapless pawns recklessly, caring little for losses. Until the end of effectiveness of the Russian army in the Great War, human flesh was the major asset in the eyes of the commanders. Such, then, was the state of the Russian army in 1914, with its strengths and weaknesses, that Brusilov was destined to lead. With his personal decisions, Lt. General Brusilov would overcome many of these shortcomings to guide his forces to victory after victory, himself always in the thick of the fighting, among the soldiers that he was to lead, showing a great disdain for death, earning himself the appropriate nickname, “the Iron General.”305

NOTES 1. Leon Trotsky, A History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Plato Press, 1977), 3 vols. in one, 268. 2. Holger Herwig H., The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1997), 208. 3. Peter Kenez, “A Profile of the Pre-revolutionary Officer Corps,” California Slavonic Studies 7 (1973), 143. 4. Voenno-statesticheskii ezhegodnik armii 1911, 176–77, cited in Kenez, “Profile,” 135. 5. Kenez, “Profile,” 124 and 135. 6. Lt. General A. A. Ignatiev, A Subaltern in Old Russia (London, 1944), 50–51, cited in Oliver Ray, “The Imperial Russian Army Officer,” Political Science Quarterly, 76, no. 4 (1961), 584–85. 7. Anton Denikin, 2: 23–41, cited in Kenez, “Profile,” 128. 8. General A. A. Brusilov, A Soldier’s Notebook (hereafter cited as SN) (New Haven, CT: Greenwood, 1971), 21–22; Moi vospominaniia (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001) [hereafter cited as 2001 ed.], 61–62.

46

Chapter 1

9. Ibid., 22. 10. Ibid. 11. See how this helped drive Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich Romanov, the only intellectual in the Imperial family, from the army in Jamie Cockfield, White Crow (New York: Praeger, 2005). 12. Matitiahu Mayzel, Generals and Revolutionaries (Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1979), 41–42. 13. Brusilov, SN, 24–25; Vospominaniia (Moscow: Beche, 2014), 64, hereafter cited as “2014 Rus. Ed.” 14. Ibid., 27; 2014 Rus. Ed. 15. Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 1: 33–35; John Bushnell, Mutiny Amid Repression; Russian Soldiers in the Revolution of 1905–06 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 10–11. 16. Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy (New York: Penguin, 1998), 59; see also Herwig, 208. There has never been a biography of General Brusilov in English. The best Russian biography is Ivan I. Rostunov’s General Brusilov (Moscow: Voen. Izdvo, 1964), which appears in French translation as Le Général Broussilov (Moscow: Ed. Militaires, 1964). A novel based very closely on his life by S. Semanov, Brusilov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1980) is not without historical value. A historical work by the same author is General Brusilov: Dokumental’noe povestovova nie (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1986). More recently is IU. V. Sokolov’s Krasnaia zvezda ili krest? Zhizn’ I sud’ba generala Brusilova (Moscow: Rossiia molodaia, 1994). M. Mavrodin’s Brusilov (Moscow, 1944) was a wartime piece of propaganda but good none the less. 17. John Mosier, The Myth of the Great War (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 250. 18. Winston Churchill, The Unknown War: The Eastern Front (New York: Scribner’s, 1931), 360. 19. Trotsky, History, 268. 20. “Vysezka,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 12, passim, GARF. 21. Brusilov, SN, 24; 2014 Rus. Ed., 64. 22. Stanley Washburn, On the Russian Front (New York: Speller, 1982), 119; picture of Brusilov in RGVIA, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12; Rutherford, 57. 23. Ward Rutherford, The Russian Army in World War I (London: Gordon Cremonesi, 1975), 57, or is it Ward Rutherford, The Tsar’s War, 1914–1917 (Cambridge: Ian Faulkner, 1992), 57. 24. Emile Vandervelde, Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution (London: Allen & Unwin, 1918), 118; Washburn, On the Russian Front, 119. 25. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 119. 26. Figes, 59. 27. Unidentified newspaper clipping “Zheleznyiu General Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 11, l. 2; Someone corresponding with his wife used the same name. Mikhail (name unclear), to Nadia V. Brusilova (hereafter “N”), January 17, 1917, f. 162, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 101, Russkii Gosudarstvenyi Voennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (hereafter cited as RGVIA), Moscow.

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

47

28. Baron C. G. Mannerheim, Memoirs (London: Cassell, 1953), 13. 29. “Brusiloff and Korniloff,” Literary Digest, 55 (August 18, 1917), 44. 30. Ibid. 31. Nadia’s rambling notes, February 19, 1936, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22-A, l. 129, GARF. 32. Brief memoir of Lt. Plotnik, September 1943, Otkliki, p. 17, Brusilov Archive, f. 162, op. 1, aa, RGVIA. 33. V. V. Marodin, Brusilov (Moscow: Pravda, 1943), 3 in Karen Patrone’s, 225. 34. Clipping from Krasnaia gazeta, no. 66, 19 March 1926, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l. 85, RGVIA. 35. From Nadia’s memoir notes, n. d. f. 5972, op. 1, 21-A, l. 294, 299, GARF. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 299. 38. Mikhail (last name unclear) to N, January 17, 1917, f. 162, op. 1, d. 8, l. 101 (backside), RGVIA; “Zheleznyi General Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 11, l. 2, GARF. 39. B. Menning, “Mukden to Tannenberg: Defeat to Defeat, 1905–1914,” in Frederick W. Kogan and Robert Higham, eds., The Military History of Tsarist Russia (New York: St. Martin’s/Palgrave, 2002), 207–8. 40. Unidentified newspaper clipping, probably in Vlast’ naroda, March 19, 1918, “Gen. Brusilov on the Army,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 415, GARF. 41. C. R. M. F. Cruttwell, A History of the Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Clarendon Press, 1936), 285. 42. Adrianov, “Gen. Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, l. 20, GARF. 43. Brusilov, Vospominaniia (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1963), 6. 44. “O Generale Brusilove,” n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-a, p. 395, GARF. 45. Lyon Blease, Suvarov (London: Constable, 1920), 357. 46. Prikaz otdel, d. 34287, l. 48, in G. Below, “Russkii polkovodets A. A. Brusilov,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 10 (1962), 42. I could not find the information given. 47. Sukhomlinov’s place in history is undergoing a modest positive remake. See William C. Fuller, Jr.’s The Foe Within: Fantasies of Treason and the End of Imperial Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 48. For Sukhomlinov’s reforms, see Menning, “Mukden to Tannenberg,” 216 ff. Sukhomlinov also promoted the Russian air force, the result being that when the war began, Russia had the third largest air force in the world. See, p. 218. 49. Brusilov, SN, 22. 50. “Brusilov na Kavkaze, 1853–1883,” Otkliki, p. 37, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 51. Brief memoir of Lt. Alexander Plotnik, September 1943 (?), p. 17, Otkliki, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 52. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), p. 3, in the introduction. 53. Ibid., 47–48. 54. Nadia’s untitled notes, no. D, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 587, GARF. 55. Brusilov, SN, 38. 56. Mannerheim, 13–14; for his teutonophobia, see Wildman, The End, 134. 57. “Brusilov na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, p. 37, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA.

48

Chapter 1

58. Rostunov, Gen. B, 55, citing f. 800, op. 3, d. 260, l. 59, RGVIA. 59. A. A. Brusilov, n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 300, GARF. 60. A. A. Brusilov, notes by S. A. Sukhomlin (sic), n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 301, GARF. 61. B to Lena, October 13, 1914, p. 33, f. Corres. 1–139, Bakhmetev Archive, Columbia University, New York, hereafter cited as “Bakhmetev Archive.” 62. Brusilov, SN, 278; Russian 1963 ed., 254. 63. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 42. 64. Clipping entitled “Razdacha . . . v armii Gen. Brusilova,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 11, GARF. 65. Jamie Cockfield, White Crow (New York: Praeger, 2002). 66. “Odin iz stoi slavnykh,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21–A, l. 352, GARF. 67. Adrianov, “General Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, l. 22 (12), GARF. 68. Timothy Dowling, The Brusilov Offensive (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008) develops this theme. 69. In an article in War in History, historian Gervase Phillips argues that in 1914, the cavalry arm of armies were at “peak efficiency,” which it probably was, and he cites a number of times where it performed well, especially in Brusilov’s 1916 offensive, but he does not explain why the cavalry was never extensively used after 1918, except for situations in the highly fluid Russo-Polish War of 1920 and the even more fluid Russian civil war. It would be intellectually dishonest to write that cavalry was not being quickly eclipsed by the airplane, modern rifle, machine guns, and rapidfairing artillery. We shall see that Brusilov himself admitted as much in his career. 70. Brusilov, SN, 17; 2014 Rus. Ed., 58–59. 71. Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (New York: Scribner’s, 1975), 233. 72. Svidetel’stvo, no clear date, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 36, GARF; see also f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22A, l. 124, GARF; and Shliapnikov to M. P. Olenin, September 7, 1943, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, l. 7, RGVIA. 73. P. M. Adrianov, “General Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, l. 4, GARF. 74. Sokolov, 6–7. 75. Ibid., 6. 76. Figes, 59. 77. Sokolov, 9. 78. Ibid.; Rostunov, GB, 15–16. 79. Prof. E. Messner, Lutskii proryv (New York: Vseslavianskoe izdatelstvo, 1968), 78; Sokolov, 9; Rostunov, GB, 16. 80. Sokolov, 9. 81. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 17. 82. Semanov, B: DP, 17. 83. “Brusilov na Kavkaze,” p. 38, Otkliki, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 84. Ibid. 85. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 17. 86. Ibid., 18. 87. “Brusilov na Kavkaze,” p. 38, Otkliki, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA.

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

49

88. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 17–18. 89. Ibid.; “Brusilov na Kavkaze,” p. 41, Otkliki, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 90. Boris to B, April 22, 1913, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 57, GARF; see a number of letters in f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 381 ff. East greeting in 1915, RGVIA. 91. Rostunov, GB, 21 n. 92. Sokolov, 9. 93. Rostunov, GB, 1 n. 94. Sokolov, 9; Rostunov, GB, 21 n. 95. Mayzel, 135. 96. Rostunov, GB, 17. 97. Rostunov, GB, 17 cites TsGVIA, f. 318, op. 1, d. 5617, l. 1. 98. Sokolov, 12. 99. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, p. 42, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA; Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 19. 100. Adrianov, “Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, p. 14, GARF. 101. Rostunov, GB, 20, cites f. 318, op. 1, d. 5617, p. 5, RGVIA. 102. Adrianov, “Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, l. 14, GARF. 103. Rostunov, GB, 20, cites f. 318, op. 1, d. 5617, p. 5, RGVIA. 104. Ibid. 105. “Brusilov and Korniloff,” 44. 106. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 20. 107. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, p. 42, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 108. “Brusilov and Korniloff,” 44. 109. Sokolov, 13; Rostunov, GB, 20–21. 110. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 19. 111. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, 42–43, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 112. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 19. 113. Rostunov, GB, 21. 114. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 20. 115. Ibid. 116. Ibid. 117. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, 43, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 118. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 21. 119. TsGVIA, f. 162, op. 1, d. 2, l.l, cited in Rostunov, GB, 22. 120. Adrianov, “General Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, p. 5–6, GARF. 121. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, p. 43, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 122. Death certificate written in Latin with letterhead dated March 5, 1874, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 37, GARF. 123. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, p. 43, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 124. Ibid. 125. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, p. 25, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid., 24. 128. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 25–26. 129. Ibid., 27–28.

50

Chapter 1

130. Rostunov, GB, 24. 131. There are several recent histories of the Russo-Turkist War of 1977–78. Probably the best is Quintin Barry’s War in the East: A Military History of the RussoTurkist War 1877–78 (Havertown, PA: Helion, 2012). There are also Charles Ryan’s Conflict at Plevna: Two Accounts of the Russo-Turkish War of 1977–78 (Place of Pub. not identified: Leonaur Ltd., 2013); and Rupert Furneaux’s The Breakfast War (New York: Crowell, 1958). The most recent work in Russian is N. N. Vorob’eva’s Russko-turetskaia voina 1877–78 zabytaia I neizvestnaia (Khar’kov: “Folio,” 2013). 132. Rostinov, GB, 26–27. 133. Adrianov, “General Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, l. 6, GARF. 134. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, p. 45, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA; Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 29; For Brusilov’s account of the Russo-Turkish War, see his account, no title, f. 5972, op. 1, d.4-A, GARF. 135. For his decorations, see Podlynii polnyi posluzhnoi spisok, f. 162, op. 1, d. 2, l. 2–10. 136. See Brusilov’s account, Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 30 ff; Rostunov, Gen. Brusilov, 27. 137. Rostunov, GB, 27–28. 138. Bodlynii polnii . . . spisok B, f. 162, op. 1, d. 2, l. 2–10, RGVIA. 139. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, 46–47, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA; Rostunov, Gen. Brusilov, 29. 140. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 37. 141. Rostunov, GB, 30–31. 142. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 40. 143. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, 47, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 144. Rostunov, GB, 31. 145. Podynyi polnyi posluzhnoi spisok Brusilova, f. 162, op. 1, d. 2, l. 9; W. B. Lincoln, Red Victory (New York: Touchstone Books, 1989), 83. 146. Svidetel’stvo, 6 March 1884, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 37, GARF. 147. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 40–41. 148. Ibid., 41. 149. Ibid., 42. 150. Sokolov, 25–26. 151. Copy of the birth certificate, signed by Brusilov, September 30, 1887, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 38, GARF; his birth was also registered in the family registry in Orlov Guberniia as well. Zakuchenie A. A. Brusilova, November 7, 1887, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 39, GARF. 152. Rostunov, GB, 40, cites Voennaia pravda, December 20, 1919, n. p. 153. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 42. 154. Ibid. 155. Alyosha to Brusilov, February 17 and February 21, f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, p. 352 ff. RGVIA. 156. Ibid., 361. 157. Ibid., 364. 158. Brusilov, Vosp. (1929 ed.), in Karen Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 66.

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

51

159. Sergei Witte, The Memoirs of Count Witte. Trans. and ed. by Sidney Harcave (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 7–8. 160. Ibid., 8. 161. Ibid. 162. Sokolov, 29. 163. “Le General Brusilov,” Le Galois, June 9, 1917, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 11, l. 9, GARF. 164. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 49. 165. Ibid. 166. Perepiska V. P. and N. V. Zelikhovskaia with A. A. Brusilov, n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 27, GARF; on Johnson, see Ibid., 50. 167. B to N, September 16, 1910, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 68, l. 15, GARF. 168. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 49. 169. B to N, September 20, 1910, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 68, l. 18, GARF. 170. B to N, October 3, 1910, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 68, l. 21, GARF. 171. Telegram of B to N, date unclear, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 68, l. 28, GARF. 172. Ibid (telegram), October 31, 1910, l. 151. 173. Ibid., November 3, 1910, f. 5972, op. 3, l. 150. 174. Ibid., n. d., l. 179. 175. Lichnyi dokumentay, f. 162, op. 3, d. 4, l. 1, RGVIA. 176. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 49. 177. B to N, 17 May 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, GARF. 178. B to N, September 15, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 132, Brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive, Columbia University, New York. 179. Nadezhda Brusilova, “In Great Russia,” The Constructive Quarterly, 5 (June 1917), 385. 180. See Perepiska K. N. V. Brusilovoi, 1910–1926, f. 162, op. 1, d. 8, RGVIA. 181. Clipping from Le Galois, June 9, 1917, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 11, l. 9–10, GARF. 182. Signature illegible to N, October 7, 1914, f. 162, op. 1, d. 7, l. 45, RGVIA. 183. B to N, November 25, 1914, p. 39, Corres. 1–139, Bakhmetev Archive. 184. Ibid., 68, 112, 39. 185. Ibid., 39. 186. N to B, March 7, 1917, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 28, GARF. 187. Rostunov, GB, 51, cites GARF. f. 5972, op. 3, d. 68, but gives no page number. 188. Ibid. 189. N to B, January 8, 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 1, GARF. 190. B to N, April 24, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 96, Bakhmetev Archive. 191. N to B, March 28, 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 35, GARF. 192. N to B, April 26, 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 41, GARF. 193. B to N, April 2, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 87, Brusilov Papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 194. For example, September 20, 1914, p. 19, Corres. 1–139, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archiv. 195. Brusilov, Ukaz. Soch, p. 24, cited in Sokolov, 26. 196. N to B? September 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 83, GARF.

52

Chapter 1

197. Ibid., 18 June 1916, l. 58, GARF. 198. Ibid., 28 March 1916, l. 35. 199. N to B, 20 and 27 September 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 1, Bakhmetev Archive. 200. B to N, 20 and 21 February 1916, f. 5972. 201. Alyosha to B, 26 April/9 May 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 88, RGVIA. op. 3, d. 60, ll. 19–20, GARF. 202. N to B, 6 May 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 44, GARF. 203. See f. 162, op. 1, d. 16, RGVIA. 204. N to B, 20 and 21 February 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, ll. 19–20, GARF. 205. B to N, 30 August, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 126–27, Bakhmetev Archive. 206. N to B? August 1914, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 59, l. 14, GARF. 207. B to N, n. d., f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 295, GARF. 208. B to N, 31 August 1913, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 68, GARF. 209. N to B, 11 January 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 16, l. 1, RGVIA. 210. B to N, 28 July 1914, p. 2, Corres. 1–139, Brusilov collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 211. B to N, 27 September 1914, Brusilov papers, Corres. 10139, p. 20, Bakhmetev Archive. 212. B to N, 4 September 1913, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 68, l. 61, GARF. 213. B to N? November 1914, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 463, GARF. 214. B to N, 1 August 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 122, Brusilov collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 215. Rostunov, GB, 33. 216. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, p. 48, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 217. Rostunov, GB, 32. 218. Ibid. 219. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 41. 220. Ibid., 40. 221. Ibid. 222. Sokolov, 40. 223. C. Johnson, “Leaders of the Russian Invasion,” Colliers, 54 (October 3, 1914), 21. 224. Brusilov, Vosp. 225. “B na Kavkaze,” Okliki, p. 49, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 226. Ibid. 227. Sokolov. 228. Ibid. 229. Ibid., 141. 230. Ibid., 25. 231. Ibid., 25–26. 232. Memoir of Nadia, l. 21, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 21, GARF. 233. Sokolov, 25; Brusilov, Vosp. (1929 ed.), 31, and footnote 114, p. 311; Sokolov, 15. 234. Sokolov, 15. 235. The Times History of the Great War (London: The Times, 1914–1918), 9: 9–10.

The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914

53

236. Hanotaux to Urusov, 14 April 1898, p. 87–88, Russkoe Posol’stvo v arizhe, op. 524, d. 2205, ll. 87–88, Arkhiv vneshnei Politiki Russii, Moscow. 237. Rostunov, GB, 35–36. 238. Sokolov, 16. 239. Ibid. 240. F. 5972, op. 3, d. 21-A, l. 294, cited in Sokolov, 16. 241. Vestnik russkoi konnitsy, no. 20 (1960), p. 881, cited in Rostunov, GB, 43. 242. Ibid. 243. F. 3509, op. 1, d. 63, l. 170, RGVIA, cited in Rostunov, Gen. Brusilov, 43. 244. Ibid., 44. 245. Ibid., 209. 246. “A Certain Mr. Brusiloff,” Literary Digest, 53 (1 July 1916), 38. 247. Untitled clipping from Krasnaia gazetta, no. 66, 19 March 1926, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l.85, RGVIA. 248. Ibid. 249. Sokolov, 15; Rostunov, GB, 41, 254. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 43. 250. Prikazy po kavalerii za 1899–1905, f. 800, op. 3, d. 230, l. 37, cited in Rostunov, GB, 40 and in Sokolov, 17. I was denied access by the archive to f. 800 when I tried to verify this citation. Each author cited it somewhat differently. 251. Podlynyi polnyi posluzhnoi spisok Brusilova, f. 162, op. 1, d. 2, l. 1, RGVIA. 252. Cruttwell, 285. 253. C. Johnson, “Leadership of the Russian Invasion,” 22. Rutherford incorrectly states that he had fought in the Russo-Japanese War and there earned a reputation for caring for his men. Rutherford, 57. 254. RGVIA, f. 3509, op. 1, d. 63, l. 141, cited in Rostunov, GB, 42. 255. F. 5972, op. 1, d. 116, l. 17ob, cited in Sokolov, 17. 256. Sokolov, 19. 257. Ibid., 20. 258. F. 153, d. 65, 1.4 RGVIA. 259. Ibid., 20. 260. Podlyini polyni po sluzhnoi Brusilova. 261. Brusilov, Vosp. 262. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 46; Adrianov, “General Brusilov,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, ll. 8–9, GARF. 263. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 46. 264. Brusilov, SN, 10; A. A. Brusilov, Moi vospominaniia (Moscow: Beche, 2014), 53 (hereafter cited as “2014 ed.”). 265. Sokolov, 21. 266. Prikaznoi otdel, d. 324, l 59, cited in Sokolov, 23. 267. Sokolov, 21. 268. Ibid. 269. F. 2206, op. 1, d. 6, l. 56, RGVIA, cited in Rostunov, GB, 50. 270. Ibid., l. 8. 271. F. 5972, op. 3, d. 68, GARF, cited in Rostunov, GB, 58. 272. Ibid.

54

Chapter 1

273. See f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, passim. 274. Bagration to Brusilov, 20? 1912, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 7, RGVIA. 275. Telegram to Brusilov in Warsaw, 5 October 1912, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 5, RGVIA. 276. Klodt to B, 20 May 1912, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 1, RGVIA. 277. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 50. 278. Ibid. 279. Ibid., 51. 280. Ibid. 281. Ibid. 282. Ibid. 283. F. 2206, op. 1, d. 6, l. 7, RGVIA, cited in Rostunov, GB, 46. 284. Brusilov, Ukaz. Soch., p. 13, cited in Sokolov, 36. 285. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 4 and 53. 286. Nadia’s memoir notes, n. d. f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, ll. 287–88, GARF. 287. Kievskaia mysl’, 11 June 1917, n. p., cited in Sokolov, 31. Rostunov wrote, with no direct source given, that he openly said that German should one day rule Russia. Even if he were sympathetic to German, he would hardly have made such a statement. Rostunov, GB, 52. 288. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 52. 289. Sokolov, 32. 290. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 53. 291. F. 5972, op. 3, d. 68, cited in Rostunov, GB, 54. 292. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 54. 293. Ibid., 54–56. 294. “Iz vospominanii o General-ad”iutante Brusilove,” Razvedchik, no. 1338 (1916), p. 411, cited in Rostunov, GB, 54. 295. F. 800, op. 3, d. 260, l.59, RGVIA, cited in Rostunov, GB, 55. 296. Ibid., l. 62. 297. F. 2202, op. 1, d. 307, l. 3, RGVIA, cited in Rostunov, GB, 56. 298. Ibid., ll. 38–39. 299. Figes, 56. 300. Brusilov, SN, 18; 2014 Rus. Ed., 59–60. 301. Brusilov, SN, 16. 302. Ibid., 16–17; 2014 Rus. Ed., 58. 303. Ibid., 18; Ibid., 59. 304. Sokolov, 34. 305. Ibid., 14; 2014 Rus. Ed., 56–57.

Chapter 2

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

Late in June 1914, Brusilov and Nadia were visiting Kissingen, a spa town in Germany. Brusilov noticed the anti-Russian feeling among the Germans there, and he and his wife witnessed a tawdry spectacle of a cardboard Kremlin, while the orchestra played “God Save the Tsar.” The orchestra then shifted to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture as the crowd cheered. When the last Kremlin church replica fell into the flames, the orchestra then began playing “Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles.” “So that’s what that means. That’s what they want” Nadia cried out, and they angrily left the fête with the disgusting image of “noise, burning acrid smoke, and German insolence.”1 Shortly afterward, in the obscure Balkan capital of Serajevo, a South Slavic nationalist Gavrillo Princip shot and killed Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne. This assassination proved to be the spark that ignited the mountain of political tinder that exploded into the greatest war that mankind had ever witnessed to that time. Everyone expected that war would one day come, but few at the time thought that this incident would ignite it. Neither did Brusilov until word came of the Austrian ultimatum, which had been delivered to Serbia on July 23. Brusilov knew that Russia would stand by Serbia, which would make a general war a certainty. He immediately made plans to depart Germany, since he was the commander of the 12th Army Corps. He encountered Prince Felix Youssoupov, who later orchestrated the conspiracy to murder Rasputin, on the street. The latter expressed surprise that Brusilov was leaving, adding that there was plenty of time. “That is your business,” Brusilov remembered saying. “I am leaving today.”2 Brusilov and his wife reached Berlin with no trouble, but in passing from the Anhalt Station to the Central Station, their car was stopped by a German mob singing patriotic songs before the Russian embassy on the Unter den 55

56

Chapter 2

Linden. They left the German capital on a night express train and reached the Polish border at 5:00 a.m. on July 29, the day the tsar ordered partial mobilization only against Austria, hoping vainly to avoid provoking Germany. Brusilov noticed at the border a man in the crowd whom he had seen in Kissingen and also Berlin. He was obviously a German shadow. The general tipped his hat to him. Had he stayed in Germany any longer, he would have been detained.3 That day he and Nadia passed through a rather quiet Warsaw, where he learned of the partial mobilization. Then he realized that his tail in Kissingen to the German-Polish border was to arrest him, and he had gotten out of Germany with no time to spare.4 Nadia returned to Moscow, and he went to his army’s headquarters. As he recorded in his memoirs, “then, suddenly the hurricane of war flew in . . . and there was no longer a large personal life.”5 Brusilov joined his 12th army corps, which was headquartered in Vinnitsa.6 On arriving he wrote his will, leaving all of his money to Nadia, but part of his estate at Sukhom, which he had inherited from his father, to his son Aleksei. His will concluded with a note to his son, “I beg my son with all my heart to serve honorably the tsar and the Fatherland, according to the example of the service in the ranks of your ancestors, the name of which he carries. Honor is your life.”7 Shortly afterward, he learned that he had been made commander-in-chief of the VIII Army on the Southwest Front, which was under the command of General Nicholas Ivanov. The VIII Army was at that point the southernmost Russian army facing the Austrians. The man made commandant of all the fronts in August 1914 was the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich, a cousin of the tsar. Brusilov remembered that his appointment “gave universal pleasure” to the army and that “no better man at the moment could have been found for the job.” He was completely trusted and loved by the men under him, but also, Brusilov adds, they “feared him.”8 In his supreme commander, the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich, however, he had complete confidence. Brusilov considered him “an outstanding supreme commander” and a “deeply high-minded honest man,” who was “highly competent in military affairs.”9 He had known him when he had been inspector general of Cavalry and as commandant of the Imperial Guard and the military region of St. Petersburg, and he had seen him as a man “quite absorbed in his profession” and who knew it well “in both theory and in practice.”10 The Russian plans for an Austro-German war were the rather unoriginally named Plan 19A and Plan 19G. If the Germans were to throw their greatest weight against France, then Russia would implement Plan A, expending their greatest effort against Austria.11 If the Germans made their major effort against Russia, the most concerted drive would be against the common German-Russian border, with only a minimum effort being made against Austria.12 Brusilov wrote in his memoirs that in the autumn of 1912, there

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

57

had been a meeting of the War Council, which decided that in the event of a major German attack in force against the Russians, Russian forces would in effect abandon the Polish salient to form a defensive line on Brest-LitovskBielostok. Brusilov was at that time, the reader will remember, the assistant to the officer commanding the Warsaw Military District, and he expressed disapproval of this plan. Incredibly, the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich had not been made privy to the decisions of the 1912 council, learning of them only in the hectic days of August 1914. The grand duke blatantly ignored the 1912 decision and proceeded with various elements of Mobilization Schedule 19, and General Sukhomlinov never interfered with his decision.13 We have seen how Brusilov was a tremendous advocate of preparedness, and he was alarmed at how generally unready Russia was for the impending struggle. The Russo-Japanese War had been both a burden and a boon. It had resulted in a number of army reforms under General Sukhomlinov, but Russia was expecting the “inevitable” war to come in 1917, giving them over a decade to improve their army. The way events unfolded in 1914, however, left them flatfooted. For example, the Russians had in 1914 only 950 rounds for each piece of light artillery and almost none for the heavy.14 The Germans, on the other hand, had expected the struggle to commence in 1915, so they had greater artillery and infinitely more shells than the Russians.15 Yet, a serious problem which did not become apparent until then occurred—the staggering losses of well-trained soldiers in the first months of the war led to surprising shortage of trained soldiers. There was no problem with the soldier himself, and one would be hard-pressed to find better human material for soldiers than the average Russian male in 1914. One English observer with the Russian army wrote in 1915, “the Russian physique is far ahead of any other in Europe. . . . Perhaps he has shot less well than his enemy, but [he] has certainly been his physical superior.”16 Training, however, was another matter. Brusilov later recorded in his memoirs that the last time he had well-trained soldiers was at the siege of Przemysl at the end of 1914. After three months of war, he said, “Our regular professional officers and trained men had vanished.” This loss had left only a “skeleton” army, which had to be fitted with men “wretchedly instructed.” After this point, the army was little more than a “badly trained militia.” Men who arrived at the front after this point in the war knew no military moves except marching. Many could not even load a rifle, so Russian soldiers had to be given training at the front, or worse, sent into battle without any additional instruction at all. Not surprisingly, they did not have “the necessary steadiness in fighting, and they had no proper discipline.” Having them at the front caused a great waste of time and brought disorder and delays.17 Moreover, these men were not indoctrinated in “Why We Fight.” When Brusilov would ask his soldiers the cause of the war, none could answer.18 These men

58

Chapter 2

were sent into the line without “any elevation of spirit whatsoever” because they had no idea why they were fighting.19 General Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, General Ruzskii’s quartermaster general who later, like Brusilov, stayed with the Soviets after the Revolution, expressed the same theme. “We were great at marching,” he wrote in his memoir, “but when it came to fighting the . . . enemy, it became clear that Russia was still the colossus with feet of clay that it had been during the war in the Crimea.”20 Many were so ignorant of warfare that they fired at their own army’s planes, assuming that any device as cunning as that could only have been created by the Germans.21 A British military observer speaks a little more kindly of the Russian soldier and blames the problem on the leadership, especially with the reservists sent to the front. “The Russian [reservist] regiments are very unreliable. One day they fight, the next they run—it all depends on the leadership.” He then relates a situation of soldiers who were retreating in disarray when a superior officer turned them around, and they retook their lost position.22 This soldier was the one Russia sent into battle in 1914. These problems produced a shortage of personnel. The Russians began the war with a deficit of trained leadership. In 1914, the Russian army had a deficit of 3,000 officers.23 A bill was before the Duma, the lower house of the tsarist legislature, in March 1914 to increase the army in general by 450,000 men,24 but any good that would come from this legislation had not taken effect by the end of July when the armies had started marching. Moreover, the bureaucratic bungling of the army added to the agony that often accompanied a Russian soldier. There was no leave for the common infantryman because to have done so for the millions of men would have clogged the already overworked railroad system.25 Moreover, when they were taken from the line of fire in the trenches to be given a rest, there was rarely any place for the soldiers to be billeted from the elements “in the miserable little Jewish towns and villages” in the rear, as Colonel Alfred Knox, a British military attaché to the Russian army, reported,26 and half of the first winter of the war had passed before some of the units got their winter clothing. Under these conditions, one might wonder why the Russian army fought as well as it did. What is more, the first beginning engagement with the enemy resulted in the most disastrous defeat the Russian army had ever sustained. As a result of French pleading, the Russians launched in August 1914 their infamous, ill-fated two pronged27 attack into East Prussia, where the improperly supplied II Army was annihilated at Tannenberg, and the clumsily led I Army was smashed and driven into the dismal Masurian swamps to perish.28 The early offensive, however, did cause the German High Command to transfer two corps from the offensive in France to the East, where they did not arrive in time to be of any help and where they were sorely missed on the Marne. Whether their absence cause the flawed Schlieffen Plan to fail will always be

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

59

debated by historians, but had these corps been between Von Kluck’s and von Bulow’s armies on the Marne on September 5, a French victory would have been much more difficult to achieve. The Russians have been severely criticized by military historians ever since for the East Prussian disaster, but Brusilov, always favoring an aggressive position, thought otherwise. Brusilov believed that a general should never let his enemy choose the point and time of battle. The Grand Duke Nicholas’s rushed invasion of East Prussia before full mobilization of the Russian army completely prevented the Germans from crushing their opponents individually and at a time of their choosing.29 It unquestionably upset the German grand strategy, which based their actions in the West on a slow Russian mobilization in the East, and whatever effect the East Prussian offensive may have had on the Marne, it clearly derailed the German war strategy. Given the order of peacetime promotions, Brusilov was to have been given command of the ill-fated II Army of the Tannenberg defeat. One cannot help but wonder if Brusilov’s leadership in the East Prussian forests would have avoided such a total disaster. Yet, his long association with the Kiev and Warsaw Military Districts made better sense, and so he was given command of the VIII Army. Brusilov was “pleasantly surprised,” he later wrote, since he had pushed his preparedness doctrine in this area, and he was eager to see how these forces he had trained would perform.30 Brusilov’s immediate superior, the commander of the Southwest Front, General Nicholas Ivanov, who resembled “Father Frost with a white beard,” was also the commandant of the Kiev Military district. Brusilov remembered him as being absolutely “dedicated to his work” but found him narrowminded, indecisive, and a micro-manager—a curious criticism—since Brusilov himself was one. He had had some bad experiences in the Russo-Japanese War, which had left him “nervous and pessimistic” and always apprehensive about the success of the armies under his command.31 He was ably assisted by a general of non-noble origins, M. V. Alekseev, his chief of staff, who would later serve in that capacity for the tsar himself when the emperor assumed overall command of the Russian armies in 1915. Brusilov remembered that Alekseev was a “very intelligent man who could rapidly take stock of the situation and a fine strategist.” He was, however, like Ivanov, somewhat indecisive and lacking in moral courage. With an aggressive commander, these qualities would not have mattered, but combined with Ivanov’s propensity to hesitate, it proved very harmful.32 Ivanov orchestrated all the Southwest Front’s activities. Brusilov, who could also be quite critical of his fellow officers, wrote that Ivanov was wellversed in military matters (he had been a teacher at the Nicholas Academy), but he was “narrow-minded” and “lacking in decision” and “deficient in

60

Chapter 2

intelligence.” Fortunately for Brusilov, Ivanov’s chief of staff was the abovementioned Alekseev, who Brusilov felt was “highly intelligent” but (and Brusilov often placed a “but” after his compliments) was deficient in “moral courage” and was “indecisive.”33 Brusilov’s chief-of-staff of his VIII Army was a fine officer, a General Lamnovsky, who was very competent, enthusiastic, and well trained with a penchant for hard work. Brusilov had heard that he had a reputation for coming unnerved in a crisis, but Brusilov never found him that way. In fact, to the contrary, he was always quick to understand a situation and to fulfill orders. He was always straightforward with Brusilov, and his boss always regarded him as a “notable chief of staff.”34 Brusilov’s quartermaster general, Anton Denikin, was a man who would, like Brusilov, later play a major role on the stage of Russian history. A most competent general, he served Brusilov well. In fact, Bonch-Bruevich wrote that the quartermaster general is an army commander’s “alter ego,”35 and the two indeed worked well together. Denikin, however, wanted a field command and was eventually transferred at his request to lead the 4th infantry brigade,36 which performed so well, as we shall see, that it acquired the sobriquet the “Iron Brigade.” Denikin turned on his superior viciously when Brusilov would not side with the Whites in the Civil War. General P. A. Nikitin, whom Brusilov described as “an officer of moderate ability,” replaced him as quartermaster general.37 Russian general mobilization went surprisingly well, much more smoothly than the Germans, at least, expected. Ninety-six percent of those called showed up at their assembly point,38 and thousands of troop trains arrived at their appointed destination “with perfect regularity,” the French military attaché reported to Paris.39 In the first fifteen days after mobilization was ordered, the size of the Russian army leapt from 1.4 to 4.7 million men.40 It was an enormous army, 80 percent of which was illiterate,41 but its soldiers were eager to serve. Before the war was over, the Russian Empire would summon over fourteen million men to its banners, not all of whom showed that early enthusiasm. Brusilov’s army consisted of the 12th corps (his old corps) under General A. M. Kaledin, a man who would likewise become famous later in the war and the civil war. Also under his command was a soldier who would become equally as well known as Brusilov, General L. G. Kornilov, who commanded the 48th infantry division. There was also the 7th and 8th corps from Odessa, the 24th corps from Kazan, and the 4th Caucasian division.42 The Russian III Army under General Nicholas Ruzskii, like Brusilov’s, faced westward. Beyond Ruzskii, as the Austrian border veered westward, was the V Army under P. A. Pleve, and to his right, the IV Army under A. E. Evert. Due to the curvature of the frontier, these two armies faced southwest as the border of the Polish salient turned. Brusilov’s and Ruzskii’s

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

61

assignment was to drive westward, pinning the Austrians down, while Pleve and Evert were to drive into their flank, cutting them off.43 When the actual fighting began, Brusilov’s army had not fully assembled, the 24th corps having only begun to reach his other units from Kazan, so he had at first only a three-corps army. He also had three “second line” Caucasian Cossack divisions. Brusilov, therefore, had to begin his advance into Galicia with an incomplete army when he received the order to attack. Moreover, Brusilov’s military intelligence was poor. Planes performing reconnaissance had provided little useful information, and the reports from spies were unreliable.44 Moreover, as the Russian army’s extreme left flank, he feared that as his army advanced, his own left flank would be exposed to the Carpathians and Hungarian Transylvania, from which the Austrian forces could debauch.45 In the first week of the war, he was indeed attacked by an Austro-Hungarian cavalry division advancing from Gorodok, but he routed it;46 yet from that point until May of the next year, his army remained on the offensive. Over them all was the minister of war Sukhomlinov. Most historians tend to blame him for Russia’s military problems in the war and dismiss him as a sybaritic incompetent, and he was indeed later convicted of treason. Golovin, among others, called him “a man without principles.”47 While accepting that Sukhomlinov could sometimes be “superficial” and “flippant,” Brusilov praised him for his attempt at army reform. He felt that he was intelligent and well-versed in military affairs, and in the four years he had been minister of war before the outbreak in 1914, he had done a creditable job of rebuilding the army. Brusilov blamed others, not Sukhomlinov, for the shell shortages that were so crucial,48 and he flatly refused to believe that Sukhomlinov was a traitor to Russia.49 Underneath all of this leadership, of course, was Brusilov himself, who by the beginning of the war had begun to have a good reputation himself. A reporter of the London Times described him early in the war as “Of medium height and square build, with finely molded features, steady sharp grey eyes, and elegant easy movement, General Brusilov had preserved to the full his bodily vigor.” Cruttwell, in his classic history of the war, called Brusilov “an unsurpassed fighting leader.”50 Those who visited his headquarters often spoke of the simple nature of the place, totally lacking in the pomp of other generals’ places. N. N. Figner, a journalist who visited his headquarters, described it as a place “in perfect order, quiet and unadorned,”51 adding that “all was a total spartan manner of life.” He found the general very warm and vivacious.52 The super-critical Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich also visited Brusilov on the Austrian border in the first days of the war. He had met the general earlier in the Caucasus, and he gave visitors to his HQ “an encouraging

62

Chapter 2

impression.” The grand duke, like Figner, admired “the small makeup of his headquarters” and the absence of any posturing.53 Sir Bernard Pares, a young British expert on Russia, who was often with the Russian army in these years, recognized Brusilov for “understanding the psychology of the Russian soldier” far deeper than any of his Russian army colleagues.54 Brusilov’s reputation for preparedness was also extremely well known by the beginning of the Great War. One journalist wrote that he had “almost extreme ideals of soldiers’ effectiveness . . . dragging his command out for exercise maneuvers in the worst imaginable weather, storm or snow or both, preferably at night.” When some officers complained about the practice, Brusilov told them he would discontinue the practice “if they would guarantee that the enemy would only fight in the fine weather and by daylight.” Yet as usual, Brusilov demanded no more of his men than he did of himself. Brusilov, however, often in conversations with others, and in his memoirs written years later, modestly disclaimed any personal ambitions, but Bernard Pares, who was with Brusilov often, wrote “that was not the impression he left on those who met him.”55 Brusilov was, outwardly at any rate, a modest unassuming person, but he could never have reached the place he held in history if he had been without some ambition. What is more, ambition is not necessarily an evil thing, and he would not have become “the Iron General” if he had had none.56 Yet, the quality that made his men respect and indeed love him to the degree to which they did was their certain knowledge that he, unlike most Russian generals, personally cared for his men. One obituary written for him at the time of his death summed it up perfectly: “He conquered the hearts of his soldiers, demanding and receiving from them the greatest performance.” His correspondence with his wife constantly dwells on the horror of war, with frequent use of the word “cruel” and references to “the blood spilt.”57 Brusilov daily demanded casualty reports,58 the type of information most Russian generals worried little over. The wounded in the war moved this general from the beginning. In a letter to Nadia written early in September 1914, he shows this sensitivity. “I visited a hospital with places for 200 wounded . . . [which had] 3,000 . . . I passed a chamber . . . where the sick were lying on the floor, . . . unwashed, in blood, to thank them in the name of the tsar and Russia, and to give out money and St. George crosses, but I am helpless to do much more.”59 Brusilov’s life at the front was rather regular and mundane when the war began. He lived in a railroad car, which he shared with two other officers. He retired most nights between ten and eleven o’clock and rose at six in the morning.60 He regularly ate lunch at one and dinner at seven, and his meals were served in a dining hall far enough away to have to go there by carriage. As the war progressed and the front became more fluid, little changed, except for daily walks and his usual retiring after midnight.61

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

63

One thing that was of greatest help to the general during the war was the contact with his family by mail. Hearing that Austria had declared war on Russia, his brother Boris wrote immediately to tell his older brother that he had prayed for God’s protection for him wherever his duties might carry him.62 On her separation from her husband, Nadia went to Church to pray for him and his armies. “Our tearful prayers, warm, bountiful for you, for your army, every minute going to heaven,” she wrote, adding that the nights were “terrible, difficult [without you].” There followed a constant flow of correspondence between them. Nadia moved constantly from Moscow to Vinnitsa to Odessa and back, which must have been difficult even for her with her high connections in the clogged railroads in wartime. When he wrote her in Moscow and Odessa, he put a street address on the envelope. When he wrote her in Vinnitsa, the address “G. [city] Vinnitsa” was sufficient. Her sister Lena lived with her part of the time which pleased Brusilov that Nadia had someone with her.63 Nevertheless, the delays in the mail were very frustrating for both of them. One of Nadia’s letters sent on October 26 reached him on November 25, 1914. Nadia was equally annoyed, and she apparently even suspected that he was not writing. “It’s terrible how seldom I get a letter from you . . . only 2–3 pieces. Probably you wrote more often?” she added.64 Brusilov frequently used his letters to vent his frustrations, sometime telling her military business that he probably should have left untold. He would despair at his troops’ failures, when they occurred, giving her great details of unsatisfactory events at the front. After informing her of some of the military problems, he added, “But my soul is sick and it’s very, very difficult on my soul, in this case, to write you—for me lightening of a burden.”65As the war continued, he became less and less discrete in what he wrote. In August 1914, he told her, “Now important events are taking place of which I will not tell you. We do have many killed and wounded, but rather fewer than the Austrians.”66 By October his frustrations boiled over. He realized his indiscretion and repeatedly implored Nadia not to repeat what he had said. “Please do not tell anyone [his italics] what I have written you. You understand that I don’t have the right [to tell you] this.”67 In January 1915, he is even more emphatic. “All that I write you about our military situation [his italics], I beg you never to . . . speak about it.”68 Much of their correspondence, however, especially in the early years, consisted of news of the family and general chatting. He wrote once on what must have been a pet named Gregory’s “slipping toward death” or calming his wife’s fears about her Aunt Nadia’s chances of being killed by a Turkish shell’s falling on Odessa. “There is no danger,” he wrote. “The Turks are not up to that. . . . She will quickly die from dragging around her old bones from place to place. At her age, it is senseless to fear death.69” Nadia’s stepbrother Rostia (Rostislava Nikolaevich Yakhontov) was with Brusilov, and in addition to corresponding, she frequently sent both of them what modern lingo calls “care packages.” In one despatch, she sent 500

64

Chapter 2

cigarettes to both, felt boots for Rostia, pouches of tobacco with paper, caramels, two pounds of tea, and some lace-up boots, presumably for Brusilov.70 As commander of the VIII Army, Brusilov got almost everything he wanted, so he did not seem to think much of Nadia’s parcels. Early in the war he wrote that he and Rostia did not need the things she was sending “as we have a good amount to eat.” If you will from time to time send sweets and cigarettes, then that will be all that we need.71 Although he usually wrote her often, he frequently for some reason did not mention having received these packages, which led to Nadia’s asking about them. “Did you receive the apples?” she wrote in April 1917, when her husband had failed to mention them.72 One present he did note was a packet of photographs of her she sent in the early days of the war. “Thank you for your photographs. Although, as you say, you do not resemble them. . . . But it very much consoles me and each evening I have a conversation with them and kiss them.”73 While her husband was at the front, Nadia threw herself into war work. Her correspondence was replete with her efforts to obtain major equipment like books and socks for the troops, as well as caring things like presents at Easter. She also used her husband’s position to obtain needed material for hospitals. Among her letters is a receipt which reads, “Gotten from N. V. Brusilov: 80 sheets, 150 pillowcases, 84 skirts, 88 boxer shorts, etc.”74 Articles of how active she had been began appearing in the Russian press as early as 1915, and privately the administration of the local Red Cross in Vinnitsa praised her in a letter after she had worked with them only two weeks, stating, “You . . . have given all of us hope for a bright future for Russia.” So famous had she become that some used her to expedite things to the front.75 Nadia was of course most concerned personally about Brusilov’s army, which she erroneously often felt faced “the biggest [enemy] strength.”76 In raising items for his men, her fame did not hurt. One bishop asked her to be allowed to send 1,000 pouches of tobacco along with 200 pairs of boots. During his big successful offensive in 1916, one Moscow committee used her to funnel 125 poods (a pood is about 36 pounds) of tobacco (makhorka) to be distributed among his four armies. “All this I write you with pleasure,” she enthused.77 Their wartime correspondence not surprisingly reveals a great deal about both of them and about their relationship. Brusilov was clearly the more frugal of the two, usually thinking about their future. He often sent her money to be banked for his retirement, which she frequently spent on other things, often for his soldiers. In October 1914, he sent her 3,500 roubles to add to their bank account total of 12,000 roubles. “I am trying to save up for peacetime,” he tried to explain to her, myself taking almost nothings . . . in the hope that we will be able to live after the war. If I am not here, then it will come in handy for you.” Very clearly, Nadia was somewhat careless about money

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

65

because Brusilov added, “I know that you don’t like to speak of money, but without it in this land, it is impossible to live, and our business has been very bad, as you know.”78 In September 1914, he sent her the bonus he received of 5,500 roubles. Admonishing her like one would a child, he wrote, “Do not think that this is the monthly salary. They merely gave this to me as a one-time bonus for expenses of war.” Obviously fearing that she would be frivolous with it, he added, “It is necessary to guard this money and spend it only in case I run out.”79 There also occurred the usual conflicts that can occur between man and wife. For example, he forgot her birthday in the early fall of 1914. His aptness to forget is understandable, given what he was doing, but she did not seem to understand,80 a selfish character trait she too frequently showed. He did remember to send her “congratulations” at New Year’s, however. Nadia also often gave him much gratuitous military advice, which she was not qualified to give, and chastised him about his ideas on politics and war. They clearly loved each other, however, and Brusilov, while not always able to answer her correspondence immediately, grew impatient when he did not hear from her.81 The general also had an active correspondence during the war with his son. On stationary of the Hotel Samson in Novyi Peterhof, Alyosha wrote to his father in the first days of the war to tell him of the war enthusiasm around the capitol. Brusilov was always delighted to receive his letters, but delay of delivery made their information stale. Like in the letters to his wife, in his filial correspondence, he often expressed his fatalism and reliance on God’s will. “I do not know what is with him [Alyosha] now,” he wrote Nadia. “He’s in the hands of God. I am putting both my and his life on the altar of the Fatherland.”82 Brusilov’s VIII Army and Ruzsky’s III Army were to attack at once to try to outflank the Austrian armies, which the Russian command correctly thought would be advancing into the Polish Salient.83 The commander-inchief of the Austrian armies, Franz Freiherr Conrad von Hötzendorf, was, judging from his voluminous memoirs, most concerned about his place in history. Winston Churchill described him as a “diplomat and a politician,” which to him represented “that most dangerous combination, a chief of staff absorbed in foreign policy.”84 His plan against the Russians was to drive between the Vistula and Bug Rivers, with the Germans invading the northern end of the Polish salient from East Prussia, encircling whatever Russian forces trapped therein. Apparently there was not much coordination between the two, because the German deployment in the West was somewhat of a surprise to him and required Conrad to transplant his second army from the Serbian front to the Galician one, which contributed to the Austrian initial defeat in the Balkans. Moreover, it had a paralytic effect on the Austrian rail system, further confusing mobilization.85 He likewise bungled his operations

66

Chapter 2

by driving for Lublin with only seventeen divisions, a force far inferior to the one he was attacking, creating for the Russians the rare situations in the war when their artillery was superior in numbers to that of the enemy.86 The Austrians were hurled back in confusion, followed by fumbling and hesitation, as if, Bonch-Bruevich wrote, “to give us time to concentrate our own forces at leisure.”87 These earlier mistakes were simply typical of Austrian bungling throughout the war and were the major reasons for Russian success against the Dual Empire. Within six weeks of the war’s outbreak, the Austrians could already count 100,000 dead, 220,000 wounded, and 100,000 captured by the Russians. There had also been a loss of 216 artillery pieces.88 By the winter of 1914–1915, the Austrians had lost a half million men, and Cracow would have fallen if the Russians had been able to attack more quickly.89 In his advance, Brusilov’s VIII Army was to drive forward covering the left flank of the III Army on his right, with the general task of pushing toward the Austrian fortress of Przemysl. Yet, French pleading for Russian help led to the ill-fated Tannenberg offensive in East Prussia.90 Most observers and historians have been critical of the August 1914 East Prussian offensive, but Brusilov was not. It followed his philosophy of not permitting the enemy to choose the place of battle. Russia’s poorly prepared attack prevented the Germans from dealing with their opponents individually, thus putting the pressure on the enemy a number of places at once.91 As things developed, the French reinforced Brusilov’s beliefs by encouraging the Russians to attack the Austrians, too. General Nikolai Yanushkevich, Grand Duke Nicholas’s chief of staff, wired Ivanov that the French supported Russian actions there as well. A few months later, he stressed to his wife for one of many times his philosophy of attack. “I do not like to sit on my hands and wait the attack of the enemy. I only like it when we ourselves attack. . . . All crave falling on Hungary. . . . About this we dream.”92 Brusilov received his orders to advance on August 15 with the general instructions to “slow up as much as possible” any Austrian invasion and prevent their entering Russian territory,93 despite the fact that Brusilov’s troops were not all in place. Moreover, Brusilov had received word that an Austrian force was moving on KamenetsPodolsk, which it occupied on August 17. Beyond that information, he was denied knowledge of any overall plan.94 Typical of the “Iron General,” Brusilov left his headquarters at Proskurov to be with his advancing fragmented army. His forces quickly reached the Zbruch River, which was the Austro-Russian border, and crossed the frontier. The next day, the III Army on his right invaded Austria as well.95 On August 23, Brusilov’s army reached the Sereth River, a line which the Austrians had decided not to defend and from which had already retreated to the Strypa River to the west. They then quickly abandoned the Strypa to

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

67

make a stand on the Koropets River. Only here Brusilov’s 8th and 12th corps finally encountered serious opposition from the Austrians. His forces fought “superbly,” he informed Stavka, the overall Russian general headquarters, and the Austrians were thrown back in disorder so that the Austrians had to try to stand in the area west of the Koropets. The Russians in the process had taken many Austrian arms and prisoners.96 By August 26, the III Army was locked in a bitter encounter with the 3rd Austrian Army under General Adolph Brudermann on the banks of the Zolotaia Lipa River, and Brusilov received a telegram to come to Ruzskii’s aid. Leaving the 24th corps at Galich, he ordered the 7th, 8th, and 12th corps to drive toward L’vov.97 On August 28, they departed at 3:00 a.m., marching all day until 10:00 p.m. that night, having covered fifty kilometers. They resumed their march the next morning and about noon, they encountered the Austrians on the Gnilia Lipa River.98 Although the Austrians fought well, making repeated counterattacks, the encounter resulted in a Russian victory when the Austrians retreated, their 12th corps having been almost totally annihilated.99 This fight had been the first serious encounter that Brusilov had had, and he praised his troops to the central command: “I consider it my duty to note the self-sacrificing courage, the aura and the responsible impulse . . . of the corps commanders [and other ranks].” To his troops, he wrote, “Accept, glorious forces of the army, my greetings and deep respect to your unflinching preparedness and the certain fulfillment of your military duty.” His forces had left the battlefield strewn with Austrian detritus of war, but despite these victories, Brusilov did not have adequate reserves to press the enemy as vigorously as he wished, resulting in the Austrians’ evacuation with much of their artillery and machine guns.100 Since the Austrians were hastily retreating, he met little resistance as he drove into Galicia, although he was delayed by an Austrian scorched earth policy. Everywhere he encountered burning villages, and he did not meet with serious resistance until nearing Tarnopol and Chortkov, but even from here, the Austrians soon retreated.101 The Russians had also driven a wedge between the Austrian 3rd and 4th Armies, but the Russian III Army was in danger of being outflanked.102 Brusilov himself was preparing an attack on the Galician city of Halicz (Galich) when Grand Duke Nicholas wired Brusilov of the impending difficulties on his right and ordered him to come to the aid of the III Army. Leaving his 24th corps to face Halicz and to protect his rear, Brusilov swung the rest of his army to the right, linking up with Ruzskii’s III Army and then driving into the flank of the Austrian 3rd Army. The Austrians retreated in confusion and due to other Russian attacks to the north, the Austrian front disintegrated. Brusilov and Ruzskii now advanced toward L’vov (Lemberg), the capital of Galicia. A panicked

68

Chapter 2

Conrad dramatically described this Russian breakthrough as facing “the storm of Half of Asia.”103 As his forces penetrated Galicia, Brusilov became incensed at what the retreating Austrians had done. Not only had they burned Galician villages, which might have been justified as a “scorched earth” policy, but they seem to have hung and shot a large number of people, probably many of them Jews. “What a debauched rabble,” he wrote Nadia in great indignation. “It is possible to say that they are real barbarians, savages, and pigs.”104 Brusilov, on the other hand, had ordered his soldiers to be kind to the Galician population, much of which was Russian. Calling their invasion a war of liberation of their fellow countrymen, he stated that “The Russian army does not wage war with the inhabitants,” a policy that had certainly been lost on Russian armies both past and future. He added the certainty that the men in the ranks, “possessing honor belonging to the army does not condone some sort of violence over peaceful people.”105 Brusilov also ordered that local Austrian laws stay in effect and be administrated by the local Austrian bureaucracy. They were to be monitored by “energetic staff officers,” who would see that local property of peaceful inhabitants should be respected, if the locals did not engage in anti-Russian activities.106 Brusilov likewise stressed the adherence to a strategy of religious toleration for the Christian but non-Orthodox peoples of Galicia. He even at first allowed the Russian-hostile Uniate (Orthodox believers who recognized the pope in Rome as their religious leader) Metropolitan Andrei Sheptitsky to continue to work until he discovered that he was preaching anti-Russian sermons and had him deported to Kiev.107 In the wake of Brusilov’s army, however, came large numbers of Orthodox priests who forced the Uniate populations to abandon their denomination for simple Orthodoxy, often withholding food until they did so.108 On this policy, Brusilov complained to someone, “I’m expecting trainloads of ammunition, [but] they send me trainloads of priests.”109 Brusilov likewise ordered the large Catholic population to be treated well, and they seem to have responded with gratitude. They did not engage in acts of sabotage, and as a reward in December 1914, he allowed them to hold Christmas mass and even ring church bells.110 Other Christian groups like Catholic Poles and Ukrainians tried to stave off violence by placing icons in their windows so they would not be mistaken for Jews.111 Although the Galician Jews were very pro-Austrian because of Russia’s record on their rights, Brusilov ordered that they be treated well and permitted them to continue their religious practices, “which very much pleased them.”112 Whereas Brusilov had issued his order on religious and ethnic toleration, the lower ranks did not always obey, and officers generally turned a blind eye toward their disobedience. There were widespread pogroms against the Jews and even ethnic Germans by the army in what historian Peter Holquist calls

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

69

“a maelstrom of military violence.”113 The Russians generally regarded them universally as being Austrian spies,114 and of fifty-four recorded pogroms unleashed in Galicia into 1915, there were only three that were not instigated by the military, with even Jewish soldiers taking part.115 Given that his toleration orders had gone largely ignored, Brusilov issued his restrictive again on August 23, although he generally dismissed the abuses as “Cossack excesses,”116 although the evidence shows otherwise. While some Russian officials were finally tried for extorting money from Jews, pogromic looting continued in many places, and even Brusilov came to agree that some deportation of Jews was necessary.117 In 1916, even Brusilov ordered the deportation of German settlers as he advanced into Galicia, and many were sent as far away as eastern Siberia.118 Unlike most Russian generals, Brusilov visited the wounded, and he genuinely felt their pain and suffering. Speaking of seeing wounded on the field of battle for a hundred versts, he lamented that these men were now “arms not available for the harvest.” It was the inadequacy of the hospitals that affected him most. He knew that he must accept losses, but he hated to see the men suffer. He did not, however, blame the medical staff, knowing the inadequacies with which they had to work. “What can only four doctors do?” he asked his wife rhetorically. “They work day and night [and] eat standing on their feet.”119 This sympathy for his soldiers did not pass unnoticed by them, and it would contribute in time to his legend. On September 16, 1914, the great Austrian fortress Przemysl was invested by the Russian III Army, thanks in large measure to Brusilov’s “fierce assaults,” journalist Stanley Washburn later wrote. It was relieved by the Austrians about a month later but was reinvested on November 12, where it remained under siege until it finally fell in March 1915. As Washburn wrote, however, “Brusilov was no man to cool his heels in siege operations” and “his corps” (Washburn is frequently wrong about small facts) “swept on past and began driving the Austrians back toward the Carpathians.”120 His successes that fall resulted in the resumption of the flow of commendations and praise from all quarters. He received his first medal before the end of August, the Cross of St. George, “this one decoration which every soldier values,” he noted. It was for taking L’vov.121 With his usual modesty, he wrote his wife, “I did not seek this honor, [sic] I never thought about it, but strove [only] in order to do my duty for the Tsar and Russia.”122 He received another St. George in the second half of September, and Sukhomlinov wired him that the Tsar had “deigned” to give him the award of the Third Class “for military excellence.”123 This medal, his third, was received with a little more enthusiasm. His letter to Nadia bubbled with excitement. Reminding her that he had already received two St. George crosses, he added a sexist comment, “You as a woman are not able to grasp what a soldier feels like, receiving

70

Chapter 2

an official cross for bravery.”124 His wife must have understood some of his emotions, but she supportively sent her praise and congratulations on the news. “We [she and Lena?] congratulate you, strongly kiss you,” she wrote in return.125 On November 5, Brusilov again resumed his advance, and it proved very successful. He took many prisoners and trophies, and the Austrians were pushed beyond the San River.126 As Brusilov advanced into Galicia, he had a problem with the Austrian railroads because their gauge was wider than that of the Russians, so as they advanced, Russian crews followed closely and broadened the rail gauges to facilitate supply for his army.127 Changing the railroads, however, did not greatly improve the supply to the Russian armies. Shortages of materiel existed at every level.128 By December 1914, his troops were “liberally unclad,” he remembered in his memoirs. They were still wearing summer clothing, which had largely worn out. Brusilov had raised the question of supply as early as September but was told that the troops of the Northwest Front would be supplied first, and by the time his men resumed advancing in November, they still had received nothing. Bypassing the “criminal negligence” of the commissariat, he ordered warm clothing to be purchased wherever it could be found and brought immediately to his troops.129 Moreover, his personnel loses had been large, and by winter, some of his units were at less than half strength.130 Ruzskii reported losses of, in some cases, 70 percent of his effectives,131 but although Laguiche’s reports tend to emphasize the front in the north, he reported that among the Russian troops in the south “there is [still] a good deal of spirit.” He added that when the men are in bivouac, they gather in groups and sing. “I have seen them dance to the mandolins of which several are in each unit,” he informed Paris. “The men are of good mind, [are] not exhausted, there is little sickness,” and on the whole he described their morale as “excellent.”132 Paléologue, the French ambassador and a careful observer of the Russian scene, likewise praised the courage and sacrifices of the Russians, but added that due to their losses up to December 1914, which he put at 1,200,000, “I have arrived again at the conviction that from here up to two or three months, the Russian army will be incapable of any aggressive effort.” Then with frightful foresight, he opined that since the British and the French were incapable of any offensive action, the Germans “will hasten to dispatch a part of their forces toward the Eastern Front.”133 This shortcoming of the Russian army would hardly be lost on the Central Powers. Before the first half of 1915, the Germans exploited this flaw with deadly effect. By November 1914, nevertheless, the Austrians were retreating all along the line, offering little resistance when they stopped and making no effort to form a line of defense. Taking advantage of their disorganization, Brusilov continued to harass their rear guards, taking many prisoners and trophies.134

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

71

By the end of the month, the Austrians were finding themselves with their backs against the Carpathian mountains, running generally on the ancient border of Hungary. At this point, Brusilov was ordered to divide his army and take the Carpathian passes, thus slamming the door on any Austrian retreat into Hungary, and to proceed in person with the other half supporting the new III Army’s assault toward Cracow. He was to support III Army commander Radko Dmitrievich Radko-Dmitriev’s left wing to facilitate the taking of the city, which he had almost reached. There were, however, on Brusilov’s left four Austrian corps, which could attack his rear or at least sever his supply lines. Moreover, to participate in both of these maneuvers would stretch his army out along a hundred-verst front, which the Austrians could easily pierce. Brusilov reported to Ivanov that he could not do as ordered for the reason given above. He had to defeat the four Austrian corps before he could assist the III Army before Cracow. The high command agreed with his logic and gave him permission to defeat the four Austrians corps first but told him he must do so quickly.135 The Austrians, however, struck first. An Austrian attack from the south, striking his weakened left (12th) corps, forced it into retreat with heavy losses. The flanking attack cut his supply lines, and he had to move his headquarters from Krosno to Rjeshov, where he tried frantically to make telegraphic communication with the rear. Unaware of his dire circumstances, the Austrians did not attack in full force, and when they finally did, Brusilov was ready. After a telephone conversation with General Alekseev, the Chief of Staff of the Southwest Front, he ordered the 12th cavalry to position itself on the line between the 12th and the 24th corps, which he had ordered to turn south from west. He then ordered the 8th corps to fall back in reserve. On his immediate right, the III Army pulled away from Crakow, and its 10th corps wheeled south and to the west of the 24th corps. Brusilov then was positioned for his usual mode of defense: An attack.136 Writing later, Denikin remembered that Brusilov lost his composure.137 One has to take cum grano salis what both Brusilov and Denikin later wrote about each other. Their mutual dislike for one another and the fact that one was writing in the Soviet Union while the other was writing in the émigré community in Paris certainly must have flavored what each remembered about events. If Brusilov did indeed lose his composure, he certainly never lost his head. His December attack regained the offensive for the Russians, and shortly they were once again forcing the Austrians against the Carpathian Mountains. The Austrian 3rd Army and Karl von Pflanze-Baltin’s army corps in Bukovina were driven westward, by which time Austrian losses to Brusilov alone, by their own figures, had reached 70–80,000 men,138 and the Russians were now threatening the Uzok, Dukla, Lupkov, and Tylicz Carpathian passes. They might have at this point invaded Hungary had not the

72

Chapter 2

German 47th reserve division arrived and stopped the Russian III Army at Limanowa-Lapanow.139 By any measure, Austrian losses were staggering. In February 1915, the Russian press reported that they had taken as POWs 1,900 officers and 186,000 troops.140 Surprisingly, Russian estimates were light. Herwig, in his study of the Russian army, states that by January 1915, the Austrians had lost 189,000 men, 26,500 of whom had been officers, with 490,000 wounded, and 278,000 taken prisoner. By January 1915, the Germans had had 800,000 killed, wounded, or captured, including 18,000 officers on all fronts. About 116,000 had been killed, compared to a total of 45,000 in the Franco-Prussian War of 1970.141 The Austrians were, however, falling back on their supply lines and onto the natural defense perimeter of the Carpathians, which Bernard Pares described, and the Russians would discover, was “a natural fortress.” “They [the Carpathians] are nearly everywhere being capable of being held by a continuous infantry line,” he reported to London, adding that the area in general is “exceedingly difficult country with steep, wooded hills, of which in an advance each has to be taken separately.”142 The weather added to the problem. Describing the Carpathian climate as late as April 1915, Brusilov speaks of “snow higher than a man,” adding that “roads are impassable.”143 Moreover, on the Russian left flank, Brusilov faced an additional problem. As he pressed westward, he was threatened ever increasingly as he passed the northern hump of Romania, by a possible flanking attack on his left from Hungarian Transylvania. An additional impediment for Brusilov was that many of the troops facing him were Hungarians, who were fighting for their homeland. Yet, the Austrians had retreated so hastily that they had left the passes largely unguarded, but for Brusilov’s troops, the shortage of ammunition made the fighting very bloody, and his losses limited his ability to take advantage of this Austrian lapse.144 Moreover, the Russians were outnumbered facing the Austrian 3rd Army under Field Marshal Svetozar Boroevic von Bojna, but the reader is already aware that to wait idly was not Brusilov’s nature. Against these odds he attacked anyway, and by December 14, Boroevic’s forces were driven into the Carpathians. General Danilov in his history of the Russian army paints a more positive, and less realistic, picture of the Russian situation. He described the Austrian army as being “ready for the coup de grace like a roast cooked medium well and ready to serve.”145 Brusilov’s offensive began on November 20, with Denikin’s Iron Brigade’s driving eastward toward the Lupkov Pass, while Kornilov’s 24th division of the 24th corps was already pushing in the adjacent Rostovskii Pass. Kornilov’s 49th division was between the two. Brusilov later remembered that he had ordered Kornilov to take the crest at the Dukhla pass and

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

73

await reinforcements and supplies, which were at best trickling to his front. Kornilov was ordered to take the ridge of the Carpathians at the Dukla Pass, as it seemed that this crumbling Austrian army could be expelled. During the night, reports began arriving that the Austrians were attacking his flanking columns, and that the Russian lines were falling back. By morning, Kornilov was surrounded in what became a dress rehearsal for events shortly to come, with a different denouement. He repelled that day attacks and was able to break through the ring surrounding him.146 The Austrian offensive stopped and Brusilov, as was his custom, ordered an attack, and according to Brusilov, he told Kornilov to take the crest of the Carpathian range but go no farther. Yet when he reached the top of the ridge, Kornilov continued down the other side to the Hungarian village of Gumennoe, where he was surrounded and captured, losing his artillery and about 2,000 of his effectives as prisoners.147 Although wounded, he escaped his captors and fled into the forests, and he succeeded with the aid of a Czech soldier and appeared at Stavka as a hero, receiving the order of St. George of the Third Class for his adventure. He was also received by the tsar. Denikin, writing from the same political side as Kornilov, reported that Brusilov “detested” Kornilov, noting that he said that his recklessness was catalyzed by his thirst for fame. Denikin added, “That is how Brusilov wrote history for the Bolsheviks.”148 Kornilov almost lost his command for this disobedience in 1914.149 Brusilov had wanted him court marshaled, but his corps commander, a General Tsurikov, intervened, and he was allowed to retain his command.150 Given the stalemate that had developed in the West by December 1914, Russian advances into Galicia had a special significance for the French. Paléologue wired the French foreign office that he still attached “the greatest importance to the Russian advance into the Carpathians.” The Russians had not been able to dent permanently the German frontier in the north, which would have helped the French more, but the advance into the Carpathians would have to some lesser degree the same effect, albeit a delayed one. After capturing the passes, the Russians could debouch into the Hungarian Plain, where its much vaunted cavalry and Cossack forces could “wreak havoc.” He reasoned that “the penetration of Silesia would follow.”151 The invasion of Germany proper could only result in the transfer of German forces from the France. Russian successes were not always so sweet, however. Their advance had caused enormous Russian losses, and the men replacing them were of inferior training. All units were understrength, and most of the professional officers were dead. “In fact, the original army no longer existed [by December 1914],” Brusilov remembered, “and we had to carry on with what was left.” By this time, the army resembled only a “badly trained militia” composed of men some of whom arrived at the front never having fired a rifle. Brusilov contended that these replacements could not be considered soldiers at all.”152

74

Chapter 2

In fact, the Russians had by December 1914, 800,000 soldiers in their army that had never been given a rifle. The shortages of winter clothing and boots, as well as food, meant that there would be some time before an offensive could be renewed.153 To make matters worse, diseases were erupting among the Russian troops, deadly diseases such as cholera, typhus, typhoid, dysentery, and even scurvy, and the Russian army health services could not begin to cope with the numbers of sick soldiers. All of these problems were not unknown to the nation’s military leadership. Sukhomlinov wrote to Yanushkevich in December 1914, “There is a lack of warm clothing, boots, rifles, and ammunition. Indeed it is a tragic situation.”154 The problem was that Sukhomlinov was powerless to do anything about it quickly. The reader knows that the Russian industry adapted more slowly to a war footing than the other powers, and the early loss of the major textile city Lodz in Poland hurt the production of uniforms. Brusilov, as we have seen, took this matter into his own hands, but were the troops under other generals as fortunate? The other area, of course, that we have seen in which the Russians were most crucially deficient in 1914 was in the field of heavy artillery. Knox, rarely complimentary of the Russian military hierarchy, describes the Russian artillery department as “oriental—the sort of atmosphere that one would expect to find in a Bengali artillery department if the English were to evacuate India.” There are numerous mind-numbing statistics, all at great variance as to Russian needs and Russian production. One historian wrote that in 1914, the Russian production was 35,000 shells per month, while the daily usage was running at 45,000.155 The situation, another historian has written, was made worse by the fact that so many munitions workers had been mobilized.156 Norman Stone, author of the first general work in English on the Eastern Front of the Great War feels that there was not really a shell shortage,157 but one of delivering the shells that they had. The position is somewhat borne out by a recent work showing that the Russians were second among the entente Powers before the war, and by 1916, the Russians were producing more pieces of heavy artillery than any entente power producing by 1916, 33 million shells in a year.158 Whatever the shell situation, the Germans had more firepower on the Eastern Front than the Russians at any point in the war and a much greater ability to transport shells where they were needed. It was widely believed at the time that there was one, and clearly Russia, for whatever reason, never had the firepower at any time that the Central Powers had. If the Russians were producing more shells than others by 1916, it was because they had had a lot of catching up to do.159 Brusilov complained bitterly to his wife and his superiors about the conditions with which his army had to function by December 1914. “Our affairs are not going well,” he wrote to Nadia in mid-December, when his hungry,

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

75

frostbitten troops were still in summer clothing. “In the past it was bad, but never was it so bad as now.”160 In the rear behind all Russian armies, disorganization reigned in provisioning and transport. There was bad sanitation and bad care of the wounded. All of this mismanagement led to greater casualties, because soldiers were poorly armed and clothed. In late December, he wrote, “Such blood spilling and it wasn’t necessary.”161 In addition, Brusilov lamented that for all the sacrifices and the advance into the Carpathians, there had been no knockout blow. He had taken a staggering numbers of prisoners, by one account 4,000 officers alone, and 300 pieces of artillery and 600 machine guns,162 but the Austrians were still in the war. By early December, he lamented this fact to his wife: “Today is exactly four months since mobilization and not one of the sides has gotten a decisive blow.”163 Capt. G. H. MacCaw of the British army attached to the Russian Stavka in 1915 and 1916, took an even dimmer view and criticized the War Office’s praise of the Russian Galician offensive despite what he called little evidence, and even Kitchener personally considered the Russian invasion of Austria as no more than “a raid.” MacCaw had also informed him that due to a lack of ammunition, the Russians would not be able to make their promised invasion of Hungary in the spring.164 This appraisal of the Russian situation seems ludicrous especially when the Russian army had advanced hundreds of miles into enemy territory while the British were measuring any gains achieved literally in yards. This Western attitude toward their Russian ally would continue throughout the war and be carried into the pages of Western history long after Russian sacrifices had saved the West from defeat. Despite his pessimism, Brusilov conducted his duties with his usual vigor and dedication. He was always out among the troops in the front lines, visiting overcrowded hospitals, tending to many minor details, and micromanaging his duties—a practice he carried to the end of his career. He also praised his soldiers. Political indoctrination was to Brusilov as important as military training. He felt that a soldier must have some cause for which to fight, and the Russian soldier was not receiving this sort of education. The Slav-Teutonic rivalry was a force that had carried Brusilov, and it disturbed him that his soldiers were not receiving indoctrination in it. It alarmed him that soldiers had not only not been properly trained but that they had not been properly told why they should fight and make the sacrifices that they were making. Draftees from internal Russia “had not the slightest notion of what the war had to do with them.” Frequently, Brusilov would ask in his visits to the troops why they were at war. Those who were most knowledgeable answered that a certain archduke and his wife had been killed. Few knew who the Serbs were, and Brusilov was disturbed that they did not know even what a Slav was. Many did not know of Germany’s ambitions or that there even existed a country called Germany.165

76

Chapter 2

Brusilov continued to give his troops positive reinforcement. When Denikin’s “Iron Brigade” arbitrarily traversed the pass into Hungary and presumably pulled back, unlike Kornilov, Brusilov wired Denikin a very congratulatory telegram telling him that he “bowed to them and praised them,” adding that the “traditions of the Iron Brigade live on in these heroic regiments and will go on inspiring them to victory and glory.”166 He even wrote local zemstva (locally elected government) committees which had sent his army boots and tobacco, telling them that their help “is so close and understood to the soldier,” emphasizing the need for ties between the soldier and the country.167 One wonders when he found the time to do all that he did, but underlying all of this trauma was deep empathy for the Russian soldier. In January, when his troops were freezing in the Carpathians and the battle was raging, his wife, understanding the truth in his words, wrote him, “So they [the soldiers] are writing history. . . . It’s terribly difficult to obscure all that by telegrams. O God, at least quickly put an end to this terrible history.”168 By mid-January, Brusilov perceived that the Austrians were planning some sort of attack. They had begun moving their front line troops forward and reinforcing them, and he reported this activity to Ivanov, who proved to be slow to act on this intelligence. Brusilov’s answer was always to attack first, as the reader knows. This time Ivanov’s slow reaction to this information enabled the Austrians to attack first. It was essentially an effort to relieve Przemysl, and this time the Austrians were reinforced by some German units. Brusilov was caught at a disadvantage being strung out along a front of 400 versts.169 Yet, Ivanov received a directive from Stavka that he was to force the Carpathians and that General Brusilov was to lead the attack. For reinforcements, the 22nd Corps was to be transferred from the East Prussian front. The main thrust was to come through the Dukla pass into the Plain of Hungary. Brusilov claimed that he had suggested the same attack two or three months before, when it would have been easy to invade Hungary but now Brusilov felt that he was “scarcely in a position to fulfill it.”170 Not awaiting the 22nd crops, however, Brusilov attacked just as the Austrians under General Alexander von Linsingen began his own offensive, but the Russians got the better of the encounter and blunted the Austrian demarche at Munkachsk, and Brusilov’s VIII Army was able to establish a line at Svinik-Meso-Laborch-Balingrad. At this point, the 22nd corps arrived. It was dispersed, with the 41st Finnish Strelkovaia Brigade on the heights near the village of Sukhoi Potok-Tisovets. The second brigade went to Belekhov at the Vyshkovskii Pass, where they encountered171; a German unit also transferred from East Prussia, to whom they sent “Greetings from East Prussia.” Even though successful, Brusilov expressed his frequent pessimism to his wife. “They attack us all along the line with huge forces,” he wrote to Nadia, “but I myself have counterattacked. In general the172 situation is very difficult and serious. We do what

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

77

we can and rely on the grace of God.” It was indeed hard going in the Carpathians with the mountains of snow and the below-freezing temperatures. Brusilov “suffered for his poor forces—all the time in the open air,” but he took some solace in the fact that both the Austrians and the Germans were dressed worse and “therefore more perish from cold.”173 All along the line, however, the Austrian front crumbled with the loss of 100,000 casualties, 30,000 of which were POWs, and the Russians took more than 30 pieces of artillery and many machine guns.174 For all of this activity, Brusilov received the Order of the White Eagle with swords, the award of which he was negligent about telling Nadia since he was rather indifferent to such things. There then followed the inevitable Austro-German counterattack, which the Russians blunted with a counterattack of their own. To buttress this new assault, Brusilov sent in the 4th division of Sharpshooters, a division that had always “saved the situation even in a crisis.” The Central Powers’ counteroffensive was stopped, and the Russians advanced, only to be stopped by another Austrian counteroffensive. The effort to relieve of Przemysl had failed.175 The Austrians were up against the wall. If the Russians broke freely into the Panonian Plain, their exquisite cavalry and the Cossack forces could wreak havoc in territory tailor-made for cavalry. Yet, Brusilov knew of the limits of his resources, and the German advance from East Prussia in the north to Avgustovo in a surprise winter offensive, resulting in a major Russian debacle, insured that he could get no additional reinforcements or more shells. Although he loudly in public expressed176 his belief in total victory, in private he had doubts. “In my heart I doubt and pray,” he wrote Nadia, He continued to attack whenever possible, as was his wont, but he remained pessimistic in letters to his wife. “I have done everything that I could and as my ability and reason permit, but who is going to say on the eve of battle how it is going to end.177 Pray have pity on our Holy Orthodox Russia. . . . We have been fighting for seven months, but the end is nowhere in sight.”178 By early March, the situation was becoming desperate in Brusilov’s mind. He was facing the entire Austrian army, he felt, not totally truthfully, and one German corps, and in the eight months of war, his army had not had thirty days without fighting. “Why HQ thinks that my army must hold out at all costs, I don’t know. I receive either thanks or lectures (praise from the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich, lectures from Ivanov). . . . My army hangs on a thread . . . I don’t know how my mind and my nerves hold out.”179 Nevertheless, if Brusilov was pessimistic, others were not. General Nikolai Sakharov, who would later be under Brusilov’s command, wired him a congratulatory telegram praising his “heroic efforts and unexampled deeds” in the face of “our obstinate and cruel enemy.”180 By the end of 1914, however, the Russians had sustained terrible casualties as well, but they had conquests to show for them. Most of Poland still lay in

78

Chapter 2

Russian hands, and the Russians had conquered essentially all of Galicia. Yet by the onset of winter, the reader is aware that the Russians were also feeling the shortages of all ammunition, a problem that would plague them in varying degrees to the end of the war. As Brusilov was investing himself in the Carpathians, the shortage hit his army. When asked for additional materiel, he was told that the shortages were serious, and that it would probably be the autumn of 1915 before the situation would improve. Brusilov remembered in his memoirs that he “even in the promises I had no confidence,”181 Brusilov did make a limited attack in January 1915 with its objective being the Carpathian town of Gumennoe, but the Austrians had observed the preparations and defended the position, as Brusilov would have, with an attack of their own from Mazoliaborch-Turks, led by Linzingen’s army. Particularly vulnerable was Brusilov’s left wing, which was little more than a screen in Bukovina. This weakened line was struck hard by over thirteen Austrians divisions and hurled back on the Dnestr and the Pruth Rivers. General Platon V. Lechitsky’s newly created IX Army was thrown in, and the retreat was stopped. The threat to Brusilov’s center was over, and after some bloody battles, the Russians regained the Carpathian passes.182 All the same, without adequate artillery, the terrain had to be conquered hill by hill “with enormous sacrifices,” Sir Bernard Pares reported to the War.183 Still, everywhere in Galicia where the Russians now attacked, the Austrians fell back, and the Russians took Stanislavov and drove the Austrians into the Lupkov and Uszok passes.184 There was, however, disagreement among the Russian leadership on what should be the 1915 objectives. Stavka wanted to hold on the Carpathian front and push instead toward Berlin. Ivanov and Brusilov, however, advocated attacking through the Carpathian passes which they already held and driving toward Budapest.185 The Grand Duke Nikolai Nicholaevich tended to some degree to support Ivanov’s and Brusilov’s views. Colonel Jacques Langlois, a French representative on the Eastern Front, reported to an unenthusiastic Paris that the Grand Duke’s plans for 1915 were to smash the Austrian armies, rendering them useless, and then to break into the Panonian Plain of Hungary. Once there, they could employ the superb Russian cavalry and outflank the forces of the Central Powers to the north. If they were successful in this maneuver, the Germans would have to withdraw from Poland. He placed most of the action on the III and IX Armies north and south of Brusilov, respectively, but Brusilov was to drive for Stanislovo into the valley of the Pruth, isolating Hungarian and Austrian troops operating before Czernovitz.186 Given the leadership’s indecision, Brusilov and Ivanov decided to plan their own offensive.187 Despite the Russian temporizing, Austrians became so frightened that they formed a plan to make a defense line at Budapest-Vienna and move the government to Salzburg. They also kept an automobile at the ready to carry the

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

79

old Emperor Franz Joseph to safety, if need be. Brusilov was once again in the passes, but they were as usual hindered seriously by shell shortages,188 though Austrian counterattacks were always broken. A British Observer Capt. J. F. Neilsen reported to London, “On this [Brusilov’s] front [all] is very good. . . . Information is easily obtained. The inhabitants are friendly. . . . Deserters arrive daily in large numbers, only too eager to tell them [the Russians] all they can.”189 For once Brusilov shed his pessimism, telling his wife that the Austrian offensives had been broken and that the Russians were again going over on the offensive, which she had already learned from the newspapers. “I trust in the mercy of God that he will grant us success, and we will finally break into the Hungarian valley [Plain],” he wrote his wife, adding that to do so “will be easy and a step forward toward the end of things.”190 Brusilov’s correspondence remained positively radiant in the days of March 1915. He outlined how the task was to win where he was, to take Constantinople (no casual accomplishment), and for the English and the French to drive the Germans out of France. “So you see there is much to do,” he said in a masterpiece of understatement, but added optimistically, “To all this is possible.” He then began grandly to suggest that Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria would join them, cutting the enemy totally off from the sea and bringing famine “in the land of our enemies,” obviously unaware that the Central Powers were not receiving food by sea. He then added ironically that hunger would bring revolution in Berlin and Vienna—the exact problem that would bring down the Russian empire two years later. He predicted that then the war could not go beyond June 1916. All of this optimism came despite the fact that he was plagued by a bad cold.191 March brought the Russians a piece of good news that could not have helped but further buoy Brusilov’s unaccustomed optimism: The fortress of Przemysl, which had been under siege since the fall of 1914, fell to the Russians, who captured nine generals, 2,500 officers, 20,000 soldiers, and 900 guns in the passes.192 Other accounts tell of destroyed provisions and spiked guns, but 30–35,000 rifles and their ammunition were salvageable.193 When they entered the fortress, they found Hungarian soldiers gorging themselves on freshly killed saddle horses “with hands and faces dripping with blood.”194 Not only was this victory a major blow to the Austrian armies, it was a tremendous morale boost to the Russians. In faraway Petrograd, a spontaneous festival erupted and crowds marched to the Winter Palace singing the national anthem.195 Brusilov felt that with better leadership instead of the “old deaf fellow [Radko-Dmitriev?] commanding the besieging armies,” the fortress would have fallen sooner.196 He also viewed the large bag of Austrian troops as his success. “History, in the not too distant future, will recognize this [accomplishment] as a big success and joy for all of us,” he wrote Nadia.197 In his memoirs, he was more explicit, stating that without the “self-sacrifice

80

Chapter 2

of the men of the VIII Army, especially the 8th corps, the fortress would not have fallen.198 Brusilov’s confidence was running high at this point, for good reason. Despite the privations, his armies had done well in the fall and winter of 1914–1915, and although they were stopped by the shortages, they had always bloodied the Austrian nose when they had tried to counterattack. Langlois visited both Brusilov and the III Army’s General Radko-Dmitriev, who had assumed command of the III Army later in March or early April and reported to Paris that “both appear full of confidence in the final success” and were “imbued with an extreme offensive ardor.”199 April also saw the arrival of the tsar on a tour of the conquered areas since he had not had the opportunity of being near troops which had been victorious.”200 Nicholas II had especially wanted to visit the VIII Army, which he enthusiastically praised, and he wished to visit “the great fellow [molodets] General Brusilov!”201 Brusilov felt the meeting “untimely” given the military activity that would be halted for the visit by the necessary speeches and ceremony.202 The tsar, of course, could not be denied, and his rather large entourage began arriving about 11:00 AM with the Tsar himself appearing at about 1:00 p.m.203 Brusilov met the court train at the station of his headquarters at Sambor in the foothills of the Carpathians, and he lunched there with the emperor before he moved on to Stare Mesto to review the 3rd Caucasian Corps.204 The tsar took the visit as an opportunity to promote Brusilov personally to the rank of Adjutant General, which he did rather casually over lunch, which Brusilov found somewhat insulting.205 Typically, Brusilov shared the promotion with his men in a very warm, caring Order of the Day. “I accept this kind award with deep awareness that it is received by me for the heroic work of all parts of [our] army,” he told his men, praising them for their bravery.206 While he had the tsar’s ear, he persuaded him to decorate especially Denikin’s Iron Brigade and the 16th rifle regiment for “having performed with special valor.” All were given St. George’s crosses.207 In his memoirs, written during Soviet times, Brusilov called “a kindly man.”208 Yet, his memoirs show what was probably editing for Soviet censors: He frequently called the tsar’s and Nicholas Nicholaevich’s actions “stupid” and claimed that the tsar regarded him “with a certain lack of favor.”209 General Ivanov had finally convinced Nicholas Nicholaevich that the best general plan for 1915 would be to maintain a holding action in the North and to concentrate Russian efforts against the Austrian Empire, with an all-out drive for Budapest. Nicholas II approved the idea,210 but there were usual serious problems caused by the shortages of munitions. The Russians had only 155 heavy guns on the entire Southwest Front in the spring of 1915, where the French, preparing for the offensive in Champagne, had twelve times that many on a twenty-five kilometer front. Each Russian gun had a reserve of only 200 shells, and they were told that

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

81

there would essentially be no more until the fall. Langlois reported to Paris that Radko-Dmitriev had enough shells for two months only,211 which means that Radko-Dmitriev had misled him as to his strength. Brusilov did advance in April for what would be the last time until the fall. His armies passed through the Carpathian passes before him on a line Smolnik-Komarnik where they were stopped not by Austrians troops but by Germans brought in from the North.212 Whereas this offensive had frightened the Hungarians and sent thousands of refugees fleeing toward Budapest,213 it had also brought in the Germans. The Russians had to stop, and despairing of further successes, Ivanov gave up the attack and went on the defensive by late April. With no shells and no reserves, Brusilov abandoned his plans to invade Hungary. He could, however, hold his own and did so until calamity struck to his north the next month. By April, the Russians began to notice a strong German-Austrian buildup to the east of Cracow. “Disturbing reports,’ as Brusilov called them, had been coming in as early as February of German artillery and German shock troops gathering before Radko-Dmitriev’s III Army, but Ivanov did not trust Radko-Dmitriev’s reporting at first, although anyone could see that a strong enemy push was coming. With no reserves and few shells, the Russians could only sullenly await the blow to fall. NOTES 1. Brusilov, SN, 2–3; 2014 Rus. Ed., 47. 2. Ibid. Youssoupov was indeed later arrested, and it was only due to the strenuous efforts of the Spanish ambassador that he was allowed to board the sealed train of the Empress Maria Feodorovna on her return from Denmark to Russia. 3. Ibid., 6. 4. Ibid., 6; 2014 Rus. Ed., 50. 5. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 56. 6. F. 5972, op. 3, d. 59, l. 1, GARF. 7. His last will, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 9, l. l ob, cited in Sokolnikov, 47. 8. Brusilov, SN, 26; 2014 Rus. Ed., 66. 9. Nadia memoir notes, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 292, GARF. 10. Brusilov, SN, 26–27; 2014 Rus. Ed., 66–67. 11. Menning, “Mukden to Tannenberg: Defeat to Defeat, 1905–1914,” 221. 12. Bruce Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861– 1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 243. 13. Brusilov, SN, 28; 2014 Rus. Ed., 67. 14. Ibid., 34; Ibid., 72. 15. For Russian preparedness, see Brusce Menning’s Bayonets before Bullets. 19. R. R. McCormick, With the Russian army, cited in Joe H. Kirchberger, The First World War: An Eyewitness History (New York: Facts on File, 1992), 115. 16. Brusilov, SN, 93–95; 2014 Rus. Ed., 117–19.

82

Chapter 2

17. Ibid., 77; 2014 Rus. Ed., 104. 18. Petrone, 170. 19. M. Bonch-Bruevich, From Tsarist General to Red Army Commander (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 23. 20. John H. Morrow, The Great War in the Air (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1993), 82; Bernard Pares, The Fall of the Russian Monarchy (New York: Vintage Press, 1961). 21. Notes and Impressions of Capt. J. F. Neilson, March 1915, The Russian Advance into the Carpathians, War Office, hereafter “WO” 106/1121, The British National Archives, Kew Gardens, London. 22. Richard Luckett, The White Guards (London: Longman, 1971), 12. 23. Col. Knox to Buchanan enclosure, 19 March 1914, WO 104/1037, p. 7, BA. 24. Rapport Ternay, January 1917, Mission Militaire, I, Etat Major de l’Armée, 7N761, Chateau Vincennes, Paris. 25. Knox, 1 March 1915, WO 106/1055, BA. 26. Ibid. 27. The best work on the Battle of Tannenberg is Dennis Showalter’s Tannenberg: The Clash of Empires (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1991). 28. Brusilov, SN, 27; 2014 Rus. Ed., 67. 29. Ibid., 12–14; Rus. Ed., 57. 30. Ibid., 29; Rus. Ed., 68. 31. Ibid., 30; Rus. Ed., 68. 32. Brusilov, SN, 29–30; 2014 Rus. Ed., 68. 33. Brusilov, SN, 30. 34. Bonch-Bruevich, 33. 35. Ibid., 22. 36. Brusilov, SN, 30–31. 37. Pares, The Fall, 189. 38. La Guiche to Min. War, 3 August 1914, Paléologue papers, 1: 4, Ministère des affaires étrangères, Paris. 39. Kevin D. Stubbs, Race to the Front; The Material Foundations of Coalition Strategy in the Great War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 29. 40. Pares, The Fall, 193. 41. Semanov, B: DV, 111. 42. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 33–34. 43. Brusilov, SN, 43; 2014 Rus. Ed., 78. 44. Pares, The Fall, 208–209. 45. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 5. 46. Gen. Nicholas Golovin, The Russian Army in the World War (New Haven: Yale, 1931), 12. 47. Brusilov, SN, 11; 2014 Rus. Ed., 54–56; on his rehabilitation, see Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern’s Jews in the Russian Army (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 242, text and notes. 48. Nadia’s memoir notes, n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 291–292, GARF. 49. The Times History of the Great War, 9: 9.

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

83

50. Razdacha teplikh veshchei . . . f. 5972, op. 1, d. 11, l. 3, GARF. 51. “Zapiski,” KA, 47–48 (1931), 145. 52. Ibid., 20. 53. Pares, The Fall, 21. 54. Johnson, “Leaders,” 22. 55. Pares, The Fall, 359. 56. Krasnaia gazeta, 19 March 1926, “Gazeta Dni,” box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 57. B to N, Corres. 1–139, passim and esp. p. 84, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 58. Golovin, RA, 121. 59. B to N, 30 July 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 4, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev, Archive. 60. Ibid. 61. Boris Brusilov to B, 26 July 1914, f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 383, RGVIA. 62. B to N, 5/18 August 1914, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 81, GARF. 63. Ibid. 64. B to N, 15 October 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 127, Box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archiv. 65. Ibid., 13 August 1914, p. 10. 66. B to N, 15 October 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 2, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 67. B to N, 19 January 1915, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 364, GARF. 68. B to N, 21 October 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 31, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 69. N to B, 29 October 1914, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, ll. 30–31, RGVIA. 70. B to N, 19 October 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 28, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 71. N to B, 19 April 1917, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 126, GARF. 72. B to N, 1 August 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 5, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive; also in F. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 76, GARF. 73. Perepiska N. V. Brusilova, f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 41, RGVIA. 74. See her untitled memoir notes, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, ll., 399 ff., GARF. 75. Pravlenie Vinnitskago Krasnago Kresta, 17 September 1914, f. 162, op. 1, d. 8, 1. 262, RGVIA. 76. N to B, 18 June 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 57, GARF. 77. B to N, 31 October 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 32, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 78. B to N, 6 September 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 16, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev archive. 79. Ibid., 19 October 1914, p. 28. 80. Ibid., 30 July 1914, p. 3. 81. Alyosha to B, 19 July 1914, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 56, GARF. 82. Major General Alfred W. F. Knox, With the Russian Army, 1914–1917 (New York: Arno Press, 1971), 47.

84

Chapter 2

83. Churchill, 14. 84. Stubbs, 37. 85. Herwig, 89. 86. Bonch-Bruevich, 18. 87. Osterreich-Ungarns Letzter Krieg, 1914–1918 (Vienna: Verlag Militärwissenschaftlichen Mitterlungen, 1930). 88. Mitterlungen, 1930, 1: 319–20 in Herwig, 94. 89. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 78. 90. Paléologue to MFA, September 27, 1914, no. 624, 1. 134–35; See especially 29 October 1914, no. 810, Paléologue papers. 91. Brusilov, SN, 27; 2014 Rus. Ed., 66. 92. B to N, 9 January 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 57, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 93. Bonch-Bruevich, 18. 94. Brusilov, SN, 98–99; 2014 Rus. Ed., 121. 95. Russian armies will be designated by Roman numerals, with Austrian and German by arabic. All units small than an army for both sides will be delineated by arabic numerals. 96. RGVIA, f. 2134, op. 1, d. 47, l. 169 cited in Rostunov, GB, 70. 97. Ibid., op. 2, d. 805, l. 41. 98. Ibid. 99. Ibid.; M. K. Lemke, 250 Dnei v starskoi stavke (Leningrad: Gos. Izdat., 1920), 1: 82–83. 100. Brusilov, SN, 44–45; 2014 Rus. Ed., 79. 101. Ibid. 102. Alan Clark, The Suicide of Empires (London: American Heritage Press, 1971), 53 ff. 103. Conrad, Der Weltkrieg, 1914–1916, 6:247–48, cited in Herwig, 110. 104. B to N, 9 January 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 57, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 105. RGVIA, f. 2184, op. 2, d. 2, l. 2020 ob, cited in Sokolnikov, 53. 106. Lemke, 250 Dnei v starskoi stavke, 202. 107. Brusilov, SN, 58–59; 2014 Rus. Ed., 90. 108. Knox to the War Office, 14 July 1915, WO 106/1065, British National Archives. 109. Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs (New York: Octagon, 1972), 1: 214. 110. Brusilov, SN, 108; 2014 Rus. Ed., 100. 111. Alexander V. Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland: Ethnicity and Anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 30. 112. Ibid., 109. 113. Peter Holquist’s chapter in Johnathan Dekel-Chen, ed., Anti-Jewish Violence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 54. 114. Bonch-Bruevich, 21–22.

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

85

115. Eric Lohr, “1915 and the War Pogrom Paradigm in the Russian Empire,” in Johathan Dekel-Chen, ed., Anti-Jewish Violence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 28–32. 116. Prusin, 30. 117. Ibid., 58. 118. Peter Gatrell, Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900–1914: The Last Argument of Tsarism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 179. 119. GARF, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 10, cited in Rostunov, GB, 72. 120. Stanley Washburn, The Russian Campaign, April to August 1915 (New York: Scribner’s, 1915), 290. 121. Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich to Nicholas II. August 21, 1914, f. 601, d. 592, l. 28, in Paul Robinson’s bio Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholaevich: Supreme Commander of the Russian Army (Dekalb, IL: NIU Press, 2014), 165. 122. B to N, August 20, 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 12, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 123. Telegram, September 18, (?), 1914, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 23, RGVIA. 124. B to N, September 20, 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 18, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 125. N to B? October? 1914, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 59, l. 32, GARF. 126. Semanov, Brusilov, 130. 127. Cruttwell, 52. 128. Général Yuri Danilov, La Russie dans la guerre mondiale (Paris: Payot, 1927), 317. 129. Brusilov, SN, 97. 130. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 139; Wildman, The End, 85. 131. Danilov, La Russie, 319. 132. Laguiche to War, 1/14 November 1914, p. 2, 7N757, Vincennes. 133. Paléologue to MFA, 19 December 1914, no. 1115, in Telegrams, November 1914-September 1914, 7N1545, Vincennes. 134. Brusilov, SN, 92–95; 2014 Rus. Ed., 116–19. 135. Ibid.; Semanov, Brusilov, 131–32. 136. Brusilov, SN, 107–111. 137. Anton Denikin, The Career of a Tsarist Officer: Memoirs, 1872–1916 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975), 249–50. 138. Osterreich-Ungars Letzter Krieg, 1: 554. 139. Herwig, 110. 140. Neadacha germantsov, February 14, [1915?], f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 394, GARF. 141. Ibid., 119; Herwig, 120. 142. Pares’ report, June 5, 1916, p. 6, WO 106/1136, British National Archives. 143. B to N, April 2, 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 89, Brusilov collection Bakhmetev Archive. 144. B, SN, 99. 145. “The Forgotten Army” by A. S. Lukomsky, ms, p. 14, Lukomsky Papers, Hoover Institution, Palo Alto, California.

86

Chapter 2

146. Brusilov, SN, 322; Rus. 1963 ed., 283. 147. Brusilov, SN, 322; Rus. 1963 ed.; for his escape, see “Brusilov and Kornilov,” 49. 148. Bonch-Bruevich, 151. 149. Brusilov, SN, 322; Russian 1963 ed., 283. 150. Paléologue to MFA, 18 March 1915, f. November 1914–Sept. 1915 telegrams, 7N1545, Vincennes. 151. Brusilov, SN, 104. 152. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 83. 153. “Perepiska Sukhomlinov c N. N. Yanushkevichom,” KA, 2 (1922), 142–43. 154. Knox, n. p., 4 July 1915, WO 106/1064, British National Archives. 155. Stubbs, 51. 156. Stone, The Eastern Front, 144. 157. See Stubbs’s table on page 123 and 125. 158. The tsar told Paléologue in February 1915, “I can assure you that the Russian army has exhausted her munitions.” P to MFA, 2 February 1915, no. 170, Paléologue papers, 2: 7. 159. B to N, December 2, 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 40, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archiv. 160. Ibid., 41. 161. Gazeta dni, p. 5, Brusilov papers, box 1, Bakhmetev Archive. 162. B to N, November 18, 1914, Corres. 1–139, p. 37, box 1, Bakhmetev Archive. 163. Capt. G. H. MacCaw to Sir George Arthur, July 21, 1919, Capt. G. H. MacCaw Papers, one folder, Imperial War Museum, London. 164. Brusilov, SN, 27, 39; 2014 Rus. Ed., 67. 165. Denikin, Career, 249. 166. “Pis’mo Generala Brusilova,” unidentified clipping, n. d., F. 5972, op. 1, l. 383, GARF. 167. N to B, January 24, 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 64, RGVIA. 168. B to N, January 13, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 59, box 1, Brusilov Papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 169. B to N, January 18, 1915, box 1, Corres. 1–139, p. 62, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 170. Typed memoir of Col Mikhail Archipov of the 22nd corps, chapter 6 (?), p. 6, pages are unnumbered, Archipov papers, Bakhmetev archive, Columbia University, New York. 171. B to N, January 18, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 62, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 172. Ibid. 173. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 107; on the 100,000, see B to Nadia, January 25, 1915, Corres.1–139, p. 64–65, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 174. Brusilov, SN, 122. 175. B to N, February 13, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 67–68, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 176. Ibid.

The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915

87

177. Ibid. 178. Ibid., February 22, 1915, p. 69–70. 179. Telegram of Sakharov to B, March 21, 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 34, RGVIA. 180. Figes, 262, citing some edition of Brusilov’s memoirs, unclear which. 181. Denikin, The Career, 251. 182. Pares’ report, June 5, 1915, p. 6, WO 106/1136, British National Archives. 183. The Nicky-Sunny Letters: Correspondence of the Tsar and the Tsaritsa, 1914–1916 (Hattiesburg, MS: Academic International Press, 1970), 32; Joseph T. Fuhrmann, ed., The Complete Wartime Correspondence of Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra, April 1914–March 1917 (hereafter cited Fuhrman ed.) (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 88. 184. Denkin, The Career, 250. 185. “Les Plans de Grand Duc Nicholas in Rapports Langlois,” p. 195, 7N1547, Vincennes. See also Laguiche’s report on Brusilov’s army, 4/17 March 1915, folder “Telegrams, November 1914–September 1915,” 7N1545, Vincennes. French reports, not surprisingly devote more attention to action on the Northern Front because action here more directly affected France. 186. Denikin, The Career, 250. 187. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 113. 188. Notes and Impressions by Capt. J. F. Neilson, March 1915, WO 106/1121, British National Archives. 189. B to N, March 6, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 77, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive, His advice to his wife on her pessimism was to pray. “Physical death is not terrible, but spiritual death is the extinction of the immortal soul that God gave us,” he wrote on March 1, 1915. 190. B to N, March 12, Corres. 1–139, p. 31–32, box 1, Brusilov papers, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 191. Denikin, The Career, 251. 192. Military attaché Laguiche to MW, April 21/May 4, 1915, no. 281, 7N757, Vincennes; see also Danilov, La Russie, 385. 193. Washburn, The Russian Campaign, 31. 194. Leonid Andreev, The Confessions of a Little Man during Great Days (London: Duckworth, 1917), 103–4. 195. B to N, March 12, 1915, box 1, Corres. 1–139, p. 80, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 196. Ibid., March 15, 1915, p. 83. 197. Brusilov, SN, 122–23. 198. Rapport Langlois, April 10, 1915, in Rapports Langlois 1915, 7N1547, Vincennes. 199. S-N Correspondence, 43; Fuhrmann, ed., CWC, 107. 200. Breseler to B, March 15, 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, l. 64–65, RGVIA. 201. Brusilov, SN, 130–31. 202. S-N Correspondence, 47; Fuhrmann, ed., CWC, 114. 203. Brusilov, SN, 131; Rutherford, The End, 119; S-N Correspondence, 43; Fuhrmann, ed., CWC, 114.

88

Chapter 2

204. Brusilov, SN, 133–34; Iurii Got’e, Time of Troubles: Moscow, July 8, 1917, to July 23, 1922, ed., Terrence Emmons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 355. 205. Prikaz armii, April 10, 1915, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 8, l. 19, GARF; also in d. 21-A, p. 137, GARF. 206. Denikin, The Career, 257. 207. Brusilov, SN, 133. 208. Ibid., 132. 209. Denikin, The Career, 252. 210. Etat Materiel de l’Armée Russe, 2nd rapport, p. 8, n. d., Rapports Langlois, 7N1547, Vincennes. 211. Danilov, La Russie, 389. 212. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 100–101. 213. Mikhail Arkhipov, untitled typed memoir, chap. 6, “Karpaty,” p. 5, Arkhipov papers, Bakhmetev Archive.

Chapter 3

Between Metal and Men Near Disaster and Revitalization, May 1915–April 1916

By the spring of 1915, Brusilov’s fame was increasing based on his military successes. He received strong praise from General Pierre, Marquis de LaGuiche, the military attaché of the French embassy in Russia,1 and he was receiving wide press coverage in Western newspapers, as well as in the press throughout the British Empire and America.2 This notoriety was all the more amazing because Brusilov was usually cold toward the press. When Stanley Washburn, a British-American journalist assigned to the Russian armies, met Brusilov at a luncheon, he found the Russian general very unfriendly. In a conversation over lunch with Washburn, Brusilov noted that it was curious how journalists seemed to know more about his profession than he did. “I am delighted that a reporter is going to look over my armies,” Washburn remembered Brusilov saying sarcastically. “I have no doubt that a layman will give me most important military advice as, of course, journalists know much more about my profession than I ever hope to know myself.” Then he added, “I shall await with eagerness your return and your report on conditions in my army.”3 Brusilov and Washburn did later become friends, however, and Washburn called him “one of the most brilliant [generals] in the war.”4 By April 1915, the line had stabilized on both the Austrian and German fronts.5 Normally this state would require “digging in” to hold at least the ground one held, and Brusilov had indeed ordered trenching in the winter of 1914, but when he later inspected his lines, he discovered that his orders had been largely ignored. Those trenches that had been dug were full of snow. When Brusilov asked the commanders how they could use snow-filled trenches when attacked, they replied, “Oh, we’ll clean them out when that happens,” as though the Austrians would avail them a warning and time, to do so before they attacked. Brusilov forced the men to dig the trenches, which they finished “half-heartedly and with an ill grace.”6 Moreover, the Russian 89

90

Chapter 3

armaments on the Eastern Front of 1,500 kilometers had only one-sixth of the heavy artillery and only one-fifth of the field artillery that was on the Western Front that was less than half its length.7 Roughly the Russians faced the same number of infantry as those facing the Western Allies,8 but nearly all of the cavalry of the Central Powers were in the east, where it would be potentially of more value.9 This enemy superiority was made all the worse by the terrible shortages that had begun to manifest themselves in the fall. Roughly a third of all Russian soldiers were without rifles,10 and some of these men were armed only with clubs until an abandoned rifle could be acquired on the battlefield. Often soldiers were sent into an attack unarmed and told, “When the man in front of you is shot down, pick up his rifle and keep going.” Even greater importance was, as always, the artillery and shell shortages. One corps commander reported that he had only two guns facing forty-two of the enemy.11 This situation was most certainly an exception, but according to Brusilov, the real problem was the shell shortage. In his armies, batteries were reduced from eight to six guns, because there were no shells for the full component of rounds for the guns, and whole battery parks had been dispatched far back behind the front lines, because without shells, they were useless.12 Relying largely on their French allies for help, the Russians would then often receive inferior equipment, outdated guns, or 105 mm guns bored out to fit the Russian 4.2" shells.13 The Germans were certainly aware of these deficiencies and decided in 1915 to take advantage of them. Both generals Paul von Hindenburg and Eric von Ludendorff were “easterners,” that is, they felt that Germany’s main effort should be directed against the Russians, who were clearly the weak sister in the enemy alliance. They believed that after knocking Russia out of the war, they could turn their total forces against the British and the French in the West and have victory. They had to fight for their views against General Eric von Falkenhayn, the minister of war and simultaneously the Chief of the General Staff, and a “westerner.” Every inch a Prussian, with a tall, slender frame and a cold countenance, Falkenhayn, who led from isolation, was known as “the lonely general.”14 He even wrote his post-war memoirs in the third person.15 Brusilov’s successes against the Austrians in 1914 also necessitated the Germans’ giving succor to their hard-pressed ally, and a major assault in the East would achieve this aim. Since April found Brusilov attacking again through the Dukhla pass, and Budapest was already full of refugees, the Hungarians were demanding help to eliminate Brusilov or else they would negotiate a separate peace.16 Winning their struggle with Falkenhayn, Hindenburg and Ludendorff planned in 1915 a major offensive against the Russians. They decided not to strike their main blow against Brusilov but to the north of his army on the weaker Russian III Army between the Carpathians and the Vistula River17 on a twenty-eight mile front between the towns

Between Metal and Men

91

of Gorlice and Tarnow.18 Here General Radko-Dmitriev held a line of 115 miles with only around 300,000 men. He had asked for reinforcements but had been denied them.19 The leading Central Power force in the planned campaign was to be the German 11th Army commanded by Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen, one of the ablest German commanders in the Great War. His troops were experienced troops, the “elite of the German army” with additional enhancement by the Prussian Guard Corps.”20 He would be joined by several Austrian units scattered within the 11th Army and on its flanks, and his 11th army consisted of 130,000 officers and men, totaling 180,000 with the Austrian units under his command. By April, the Germans had also transferred about eleven infantry and three or four cavalry divisions to the 11th21 which along with the Austrian 4th Army would make the attack. In its entirety, there would be two German and three Austrian armies under the command of von Mackensen,22 and the amalgamation of Austro-German troops would be the first of numerous examples of how the Germans would put backbone into the flaccid Austrian units.23 The combined force had a thousand guns including the famous Austrian 305 mm heavy mortars.24 Ten German and Austrian divisions would be falling on five Russian ones, and their artillery would be six times more numerous than those of the Russians they opposed.25 Breaking through the III Army, the Austro-German forces planned to wheel south and outflank Brusilov, whom they hoped would be advancing, thus offering them his unprotected flank.26 In the East, there were often whole inhabited villages in the large gap called “no-man’s land,” with the inhabitants going about their business of farming. At the end of April, however, the Russians in the III Army noticed that there were not the usual sheep or cattle grazing between them and the Austrians in no-man’s land, but at first made no thought of it.27 The French had nevertheless alerted the Russians that German troops had been transferred eastward, but due to circuitous routing of these troops and the wearing of Austrian uniforms by the German soldiers, it was April 25 before the Russians recognized the creation of the sizable German force before the III Army.28 Moreover, the Austro-German forces had been conducting artillery practice twice a day for some weeks so they had a perfect range on every important position in the Russian lines,29 and these forces began a serious harassing fire on May 1, but at 6:00 a.m. on May 2, 700 guns opened a murderous bombardment on the hapless Russian trenches.30 It was probably the most furious artillery attack up until that point of the war on any front.31 The Russian artillery had been in place since the early winter, so the Germans knew exactly where the Russian batteries were, and they were obliterated in the initial bombardment. There was an especially murderous outpouring on a ten-mile section that reduced one Russian division from 16,000 men to 500. The front completely collapsed within two days with a total Russian loss of

92

Chapter 3

69,000 men,32 and the Germans had created a serious twelve-mile rupture in the Russian line.33 The major factor that created the disaster was, of course, the Russian inferiority in artillery, whereby the III army had only four heavy guns to the Germans’ 200. The Germans fired more shells in a minute than the Russians fired in a day.34 Russian soldiers asked, “What has become of our artillery? At the beginning of a day we no longer heard the firing, and we never saw one of our cannons.”35 After an intense four-hour bombardment, AustroGerman troops advanced, and by nightfall, Gorlice had fallen and the Central Powers had advanced all along the line from one-and-a-half to four miles, taking thousands of Russian prisoners in the process. The Russians did make vigorous counterattacks, which were often disrupted by German artillery.36 By nightfall on May 2, the Austro-German forces were operating in open country. On May 3rd and 4th, the advance continued but the Russian resistance stiffened, and there was eventually some Russian return artillery fire.37 The Russian troops often fought extremely well, especially considering the conditions, and sometimes inflicted serious casualties on the Austro-Germans, but with the superiority of German artillery and their total mastery of the air, the Russians generally took a drubbing.38 By May 5, the Germans had smashed the Russian 10th corps of the III army, reducing it from 34,000 effectives to 4–5,000. The Germans claimed that half of it had surrendered. Also the 3rd Caucasian corps, which had been loaned from Brusilov’s army and initially placed in reserve by Ivanov, was thrown into the furnace before Gorlice and had been badly mauled. It had, nevertheless, Brusilov told Washburn, thrown the German attack “into complete confusion,” a doubtful claim.39 Yet in nineteen days, the III Army lost, by its own admission, 100,000 men.40 Radko-Dmitriev asked to retreat, but Ivanov would not permit him to do so, ordering him, “not to give up an inch [sic] of ground,”41 and only when it was too late did he send him any reserves. It was to no avail. In many cases when the German and Austrian shock troops advanced, they did so into demolished trenches filled only with Russian corpses. The III army had been reduced from twenty divisions to five. One authority states that between May 2 and June 2, the Russians had 412,000 casualties, 170,000 of which were POWs.42 Stanley Washburn, who always spouted statistics, wrote about Russian casualties, “I do know this, however, that when the fragments of the three center corps [of the III Army] which had numbered 200,000 at the beginning were finally pulled together . . . in the rear two weeks later, the total strength . . . did not exceed 12,000.”43 On May 7, the Germans had rolled their guns forward to whatever opposition was left. Radko-Dmitriev’s forces were in such a state that he could only retreat. In so doing, he exposed Brusilov’s VIII Army on his left flank to an

Between Metal and Men

93

Austro-German flank attack. The Russians had, nevertheless, fought valiantly. Again to quote a biased Washburn, “The Russians were not routed, as the Germans asserted. . . . They simply remained and died.”44 The victory of the Central Powers did come at a price. General Hermann von Francois’s 41 corps on May 2 alone lost about 10 percent of its strength, while from May 1–7, the Austrian 6th corps lost a third of its men. The Germans from May 2 to 5 had 20,000 killed or wounded.45 Even in retreat, the Russians by June 26 had captured 53,000 enemy soldiers.46 Brusilov wrote to Nadia on May 7, some military information that should not have been divulged. “Our affairs have become very bad,” he told her. “Radko-Dmitriev, the army of whom is on my right, lost a battle and the Austro-Germans quickly went through him, and he was unable to stop them.” “The army of the enemy made a great advance. If I stay where I am, they will [soon] be in my rear. Before me [now] is a second army which I have been facing for two months in the Carpathians,” adding that he had “fallen between two fires.” which was not exactly the case. “Therefore I have decided to retreat[,]” he told her, giving more information that would have been useful to the enemy had it gotten it, “and today at 9 p.m. my corps began to disengage. Very bad.” He complained of the “blood and the suffering” of his army, and with a hint of blame to his neighbor, he concluded, “The catastrophe of my neighbor has ruined everything. . . . What is to be done? Another advance [by my army] cannot be.”47 At first, he more or less blamed Radko-Dmitriev. “Of course, Radko is guilty, not having been able to concentrate his forces appropriately,” but then he eased up by adding a masterpiece of understatement, “but it was not easy [for him].” With a last timid hint of optimism he would not show again for weeks, he told Nadia, “Thank God that this catastrophe can be corrected,” but more realistically, he concluded, “It could all end very sadly. I’m afraid even to write that it could be [corrected].”48 Brusilov began preparing skillfully for retreat by sending much of his stores and baggage to the rear along roads left open solely for that purpose, avoiding clogging escape routes in an unplanned withdrawal.49 Had he not organized his shift of material, much of it would have had to been burned.50 The remainder of Brusilov’s army also retreated in good order. He ordered his front ranks not to show any idea of withdrawing, and when they did retreat, to do so after nightfall, leaving only a skeleton force in the lines. Only his left remained in the trenches to liaise with the newly formed XI Army on his left under General Dmitri Shcherbachev, which had been recently sent into the lines, to protect his flank. When the XI Army did retreat, it burned its oil depots, and the army was showered with “oil rain.”51 Brusilov claimed in his memoirs that his steadfastness caused great losses, but no heavy guns were abandoned to the enemy.52 In general, all units, even those pulverized by enemy artillery retreated in good order, making spirited counterattacks and

94

Chapter 3

bagging POWs. One counter strike in mid-May captured 5,000 enemy troops and twenty machine guns, but the retreat did continue.53 In the bitterness of exile, General Anton Denikin, who served under Brusilov at the time and who never forgave him for remaining neutral in the civil war after the Revolution, wrote that Brusilov had suffered “a curious psychological breakdown” and had “retreated recklessly akin to a panicky flight.”54 Brusilov was disconsolate, to be sure, for we have seen that from his letters to his wife, but there is no evidence that he had had a mental breakdown. In another example of Denikin’s post-Revolutionary historical editing, he states that Kornilov and his 48th division were “covering Brusilov’s retreat from the Carpathians,” which we also clearly see could not have happened since he had been captured. Even accepting the fact that journalist Stanley Washburn had become one of Brusilov’s greatest cheerleaders, he correctly presented the situation when he told his readers that “but for the skill and brilliancy with which Brusilov pulled his men out of the passes,” his army would have been encircled.55 On May 10, though, not just the III and VIII Armies but the entire Southwest Front of several hundred miles was ordered to retire to the San and Dnestr Rivers. The Great Retreat of 1915 had begun. On May 17, the enemy attacked Brusilov’s 8th Odessa corps and breeched the line, but Brusilov rushed in reserves, and after terribly bloody fighting, the enemy was driven from its newly taken positions. He then received a telegram from Radko-Dmitriev informing him that his forces again had broken, and that if his reserves are not sufficient, the enemy would soon outflank Brusilov. The tension caused Brusilov severe chest pains, and he may have had a heart attack, although with his usual sang froid he remained “outwardly calm.”56 Brusilov continued to retreat skillfully, fighting a rear-guard action, parrying and thrusting, counterattacking and struggling to fill openings between his units, since gaps had developed between the 5th Kiev and the 21st corps. “I have already thrown everything into the fight,” he wired the commander of the III army and warned him of the danger of a rupture in the front.57 Yet even in retreat, Brusilov took prisoners,58 but obviously not fully understanding the plight of the III Army, he at one point asked Radko-Dmitriev if he could render him some help.59 When he was ordered to form a new line south of Przemysl to Stary Mesto, he complained to Ivanov that this position would leave his left flank “completely in the air,” so he was given permission to anchor on Przemysl on his right and the marshes of the Dnestr near the Vereshchitsa River on his left.60 In the change, however, he was given the additional task of holding Przemysl—an action which he felt was pointless. In Brusilov’s own words, he had “been handed a mess he had not made and told to fix it.”61 Exasperated, he complained to Nadia, “They are giving me the most difficult section, but they are sending the reinforcements to Radko,

Between Metal and Men

95

since he is not holding out.” He then added one of his usual “trust in God” statements and “all this depends on Him,”62 when he rarely waited on God to intervene in anything. Brusilov knew that the fortress would have to be eventually abandoned, and he felt he would be blamed for its loss, but he also realized that to surrender it at this point, although it had no tactical or strategic importance, would have a great psychological impact on the Russian soldiers, and its fall would send a “painful reaction throughout Russia” and “would put new heart into our enemy.”63 In this retreat, he had in his army the outstanding Third Caucasus corps of about 40,000 men, and the lunging and counterattacking of this specific unit threw the German advance against his forces into confusion for almost a week.64 There was a lull in the fighting between May 19 and the 23, while the Central Powers were regrouping for a drive on Przemysl. Radko-Dmitriev himself wanted the III Army to retreat as far as possible to replace losses, but Ivanov wanted him to counterattack, and by scraping the bottom of the barrel, he was able to acquire some units from other places for the III Army. In many cases, however, these forces themselves had been mauled badly earlier in the fighting, so they were of little use.65 The III Army, therefore, continued to retreat. Yet early in June, a British observer described it as “a harmless mob.”66 It did attempt some counterattacks on May 18 and 19, but the Russian troops were armed in many cases with only grenades and clubs and were easily dispatched.67 Brusilov was quite despondent about the retreat. “Not much time has passed since my last letter [ten days], but how many events and how much sadness [have occurred].” He pointed out that “we must also retire to the positions, for which we struggled in the course of October of last year.”68 Since it now fell to him to hold Przemysl, he garrisoned it with the Russian 12th and the 21st corps, and the Grand Duke Nicholas wired begging him to hold it as its loss would be a terrible blow to Russian morale. “My forces [to do what the Grand Duke asks] are insufficient . . . [but I will fulfill my duty] “to the tsar and the Motherland. I will give it all that I can.”69 The Austrians naturally wanted to retake Przemysl for the same morale reasons, and at their meeting at Pless on May 12, Conrad and Falkenhayn had tapped the Austrian 3rd army under General Svetozar Boroevic von Bojna to be the force to liberate Przemysl, but he had the misfortune to face Brusilov and had made relatively little progress against him. Falkenhayn suggested that Mackensen attack with his 11th army toward the Austrian fortress, not with the idea of taking it but to pressure Brusilov to retreat, allowing the Austrian 3rd and 2nd Armies to be the relieving force.70 Mackensen agreed but needed time to regroup, for despite the damage he had inflicted on the Russians, he had sustained major losses himself. One regiment had lost half its effectives.71

96

Chapter 3

The German 11th Army did resume its advance with artillery fire on the afternoon of May 23 and continued through the night to harass the Russians, but at 6:00 AM, it unleashed all the artillery that they had until 8:00 a.m., using a third of their reserve shells in the last forty-five minutes of their barrage. Then, the Germans went over the top, and by 10:00 p.m., some units had advanced two-and-a-half miles, taking many prisoners. The 41st corps under von François smashed the Russian 21st and 12th corps, which had been transferred to Brusilov’s command, taking 9,000 POWs, 52 guns, and 42 machine guns. Von François had relatively few casualties.72 The Russians, however, continued to offer stiff resistance, and the 3rd and 2nd Austrian armies south of the German 11th made only limited gains. These armies faced the bulk of Brusilov’s VIII Army, which had not at this point endured the intense punishment inflicted on the Russian III Army. Even Conrad intervened to try to get more out of his forces here, but to little avail.73 With the German 11th attacking southeast into his flank, Brusilov now had his back on Przemysl. He was ordered to hold it. Grand Duke Nicholas wired him, “Being accustomed to, and always confident of, your energetic actions, I am convinced that you . . . will not only hold Przemysl . . . [but] will consolidate your position.”74 He felt that he could with his resources hold the fortress for at least a month before having to evacuate it,75 but with the front to his right disintegrating daily, Brusilov could see no reason to make a stand there, only to abandon the fortress eventually and to lose pointlessly men who could be used elsewhere. It was, of course, sound military logic. Sugarcoating his army’s eventual retreat, Brusilov told Washburn at some point that “It takes moral courage to retreat,” and stressed the foolishness of trying to hold temporarily a position which one cannot hold permanently. “To fight at the enemy’s time at a poor position is apt to ruin an army and inflict a severe blow to the morale of the fighting troops,” Moreover, he added, “Had I remained at all, it would have been said, ‘Here Brusilov stands and here he dies.’” He added, “I have always believed that one must never hold temporarily a position which one cannot hold permanently,”76 Brusilov wired Ivanov on May 26 that his troops were “physically and morally exhausted,” and that it “is not possible to believe that they are able to hold out.”77 The next day, he again wired Ivanov his view that the fortress was not worth holding as it was only “part of the defense of the front of the army for which the preservation of this part is especially costly.”78 Ivanov must have informed Stavka of Brusilov’s “lack of resolve” for the tsar himself demanded in a wire that he hold at the worthless ruined Austrian fortress. To his majesty, Brusilov promised to do so. “The demand . . . to defend Przemysl will be fulfilled,” he wired the tsar with more resolution than he expressed to Ivanov that same day, adding “The telegram of Your August Highness unites all our energies and self-sacrifice. The terrible enemy will

Between Metal and Men

97

not win.” Speaking of the superior artillery he faced, Brusilov added, with optimism he did not feel, “This will not prevent our forces from fulfilling their duty to the end.”79 Still, neither Ivanov nor the III Army had little with which to help him, and with the enemy’s frequently receiving fresh reserves, his position was becoming more and more parlous. Despite the desperate position, his army went on the attack on May 26 against a weakening enemy drive, and by the following day, it had bagged a thousand Austrian POWs.80 In these testy days, Brusilov made frequent use of General Denikin’s Iron Brigade. It rarely occupied defensive positions, and Brusilov threw it into breeches in the line or used it to bolster retreating units. After it had been in what Denikin called “the scorching hell of battle,” Brusilov transferred it into the reserve command for what brief respite it would gain in a retreat. “We frequently took great losses.” Denikin remembered after the war, and he took great pride in the laudatory nickname it received from his fellow soldiers: “The fire brigade of the VIII Army,” and Brusilov praised it mightily in his memoirs for “always executing honorably the most difficult tasks.” Recognizing this praise, Denikin added, “Always [his italics] but at what a cost! My heart aches when I remember those brave men who died.”81 The German final assault on the fortress city began on May 30 with the usual artillery attack, with the infantry advancing the next day. The Germans met with surprisingly stiff artillery counterfire. This Russian resistance did a great deal of damage to the forces of the German 11th Army, so much so that it delayed the infantry advance until June 1. For days now, Brusilov’s army had taken some of the brutal punishment before Przemysl that the III Army had been receiving since May 1. The Austrians stormed and occupied some of the outer strong points that made part of the larger fort, but in the night of May 30–31, the Russian Podolsky regiment arrived, and in the morning it was thrown into the fight between the San River and one of the fortresses, taking prisoner twenty-three enemy officers and 600 men in the day’s fighting.82 Brusilov was still holding his position on June 2 when he informed the Supreme Commander what it would cost to defend it. “The losses are great,” he told Ivanov, “The reserves are not adequate for an attack.”83 In the struggle, Ivanov had deprived him of some of his men, and at the same time had ordered him to attack. The reader will remember that Brusilov was always eager to advance, but he did not believe in it if it warranted a pointless waste of his men. Brusilov desperately wired Chief of Staff S. S. Savich that what troops he had been left “will be totally insufficient for the holding of the line” much less go on the offensive, which he wished to do, but he added, “I consider it absolutely necessary [to have back] these four corps [you have removed.].”84 He did not get them.

98

Chapter 3

Although short of men, Brusilov obeyed orders and attacked anyway the next day on June 2, although he simultaneously made preparations to withdraw. It was not very successful. In the South, his men did push to the Dnestr River, but for the most part, everywhere his offensive encountered “tenacious resistance,” and he achieved no real success.85 That same day, Brusilov abandoned Przemysl, apparently without orders to do so, and the Austrians and Germans occupied it on June 3.86 In evacuating, he did so under strong enemy fire, which even in retreat resulted in “especially bad” losses.87 “To hold Przemysl longer was not possible,” he informed the Supreme Command, adding that “all artillery supplies were destroyed” and even “bread was burnt.”88 Brusilov simply did not have the forces to maintain this position, and as usual, he had withdrawn the garrison in the night to cover his retreat, leaving only a poor quality militia to occupy the deserted position. He had, as usual, evacuated in good order: He had left only four guns in the fortress, and these had been spiked. On a positive note, the evacuation shortened his line by thirty versts, thus giving him enough men to create a reserve for his army.89 Surprisingly, the fortress fell to Mackensen on June 3, not to the Austrians. Still the recapture of the Austrian fort was a bitter pill for the Iron General to swallow, especially since he knew he would be blamed for the failure that no one could have avoided. In correspondence with his wife, he contradicted himself on the orders he was given. He told Nadia that the instructions were to “hold it without effort or risk while this was possible,” which is not what he had stated that the Grand Duke and Ivanov had told him. He later claimed that when he asked his superiors what should be done about the defense of the fortress, they had replied, “Do as you think best.” Whatever he might have thought were his directions, he complained rightly, “They passed Przemysl to me when its defense was factually impossible.”90 To Brusilov, it had become a choice of losing Przemysl or losing both the fortress and his army. His men were nevertheless badly shaken. With a strongly reinforced enemy before him and his inadequate heavy artillery, his usual defense, that is, an attack, was not possible. There was a serious shortage of officers, and many of the replacements were poorly trained and undisciplined. Many who were forced to fight, surrendered easily, and the 20th division under him had refused to stand and had scattered under fire. One of his units, the 5th Kavkaz corps, did go on the attack but was only 5,000 strong. To Brusilov, this unit was no longer a corps but a regiment.91 To worsen matters, in June, Stavka began to cannibalize what was left of his army, moving one corps to the newly formed XI Army under Shcherbachev and threatening to take two more.92 These were frightening times. Iron Brigade Commander General Denikin wrote, “The spring of 1915 will remain in my memory forever. Grievously

Between Metal and Men

99

bloody battles. Neither cartridges nor shells.” He had been part of Brusilov’s forces that had to defend Przemysl, which he remembered were “eleven days of cruel fighting for the Iron Brigade. Eleven days of the dreadful boom of German heavy artillery, literally razing whole rows of trenches along with their defenders. And the silence of my batteries.”93 Referring to the enemy’s fierce artillery, he wrote, “We were unable to answer. There was nothing with which to reply. Although exhausted, [some] regiments repulsed one attack after another with bayonets.” Then he added pathetically, “When after three days silence, our six-gun batteries received fifty shells, it was reported . . . to the regiments. All companies sadly breathed more easily.”94 On June 10, Brusilov painted to Nadia a bitter picture at the front. “The III Army is destroyed,” he told her, “and my army is staggering under blows, given the losing position at Przemysl and defending the important position from Przemysl to L’vov. From May, my army has carried such losses, defending the impossible.” Then in a desperation not usually found in his correspondence, he cried out, “How could this happen, to have to hold on and carry this cross,” but then seeming to gain control, he added that “deep down” he felt that the Russians would win the war.95 To add to his troubles, the Germans also began in June to make gas attacks. They had employed it against the Russians in December 1914 but to so little effect that the Russians did not even mention its application to their allies. The Russian soldiers did not even have steel helmets, so they certainly did not have gas masks. Their anti-gas defense was no more than bandages (poviazki), but the gas attacks must not have done much damage, because Brusilov did not take seriously the use of them. “Bandages often help,” he told his wife, “but in general it’s impossible to win a campaign with gas.” Then he mentioned God’s help again stating that “God punishes for meanness,” but added that “to fight against gas is impossible.”96 In the following days, Brusilov continued his orderly retreat with the intention of making a stand on the San River. As he continued to fall back, however, Ivanov continued to cannibalize Brusilov’s army to reinforce the armies to his right and left. He ordered the 5th Caucasian corps to transfer to the III Army and obsessed with his left wing, Ivanov moved the 2nd Caucasus and the 23rd corps to the XI Army. There was very little connecting Brusilov with the remnants of the III Army except for several cavalry divisions. Since the Central Powers were driving into a thin Russian defense, Brusilov warned Ivanov that his flank might be turned, and without these troops, he could not effectively stop the enemy. L’vov would have to fall. Getting nowhere by telegraph, Brusilov sent his chief of staff to Ivanov’s headquarters to argue his case, only to find total despondency there and no definite plan of action. He learned from his chief of staff that at Stavka there was the disturbing belief that the war was lost. He also learned that there would be no additional

100

Chapter 3

munitions and other materiel anytime soon,97 and the loss of these units made a stand on the San River an impossibility. Brusilov, though, continued to harass the enemy with night counter attacks, and the 3rd Caucasian corps in a one-night bayonet attack captured 7,000 prisoners. This grisly fighting was obviously effective.98 Meanwhile, the III army, which in the words of Radko-Dmitriev, “had lost all of its blood,”99 lost its commander as well. Radko-Dmitriev had asked again for permission to retreat far enough to rebuild his army and was sacked on June 20 for asking. General Leonid Lesh, who had a good reputation from the Russo-Japanese War and who was regarded as a great authority on infantry tactics, replaced him. Lesh had ironically succeeded Brusilov as commandant of the 12th corps when Brusilov was made commandant of the VIII Army at the beginning of the war.100 These III Army losses were all the more serious, because there were no trained recruits to replace them nor guns to arm them if there had been. When an army is advancing, rifles are to be obtained from the dead and wounded of both one’s own troops and those of the enemy, but in retreat, the rifles of the dead are usually left behind. The army became so desperate that it began rewarding lightly wounded soldiers for even bringing their weapons with them to the dressing stations. Because of this problem alone, the fighting ability of the army declined, and Brusilov, ever the preparationist, began to establish, even in retreat, boot camps for the untrained soldiers at the front. By June 11, however, Brusilov was to some degree more optimistic. Nadia had written that the Russians would lose Galicia, but he disagreed. “Why do you think that Galicia is lost?” Brusilov responded, defensively. “Nothing of the kind. We retreated, following the losses of the III Army battles from the Carpathians . . . but nothing more. There are few shells—this is true and this is very bad, but all are surviving and again we will advance.”101 The Germans had chosen L’vov as their next objective and employed their usual precise preparations and aerial reconnaissance, and on June 16, the Austro-German juggernaut began to advance again. The Germans inflicted their usual murderous bombardment on the III Army that day, and the Russians fell back in a somewhat northerly direction toward Rava-Russka by June 19. Brusilov had to retreat eastward toward L’vov, and like Przemysl, it had fallen his lot to defend the city that Stavka had already decided to abandon. Moreover, a united front with the III Army was broken.102 Brusilov was again despondent. “Here I am [back] again in L’vov, after ten months of war. I’m just sick. My army conquered both L’vov and Przemysl,” he wrote bitterly and not completely truthfully, and as “if in a [bad] joke, my army had given them back to the enemy. What is to be done? Without guns. Without cartridges. Without shells [and] heavy artillery[,] success is not possible. Masses of people lost but success was not possible because to advance

Between Metal and Men

101

was not possible.” Then he intoned the pity of it all: “This is terrible not for me . . . but . . . for the tsar and Russia, and of course the army . . . lacking the things necessary without which they have no hope of success. . . . How can Sukhomlinov be so careless?”103 On June 22, the Austrian 6th corps occupied the L’vov, and only due to Brusilov’s skillful withdrawal did his army escape encirclement.104 Still neither Ivanov nor the III Army had little with which to help him, and with the enemy’s receiving fresh reserves, his position was becoming more and more parlous. Desperate as the position of the III Army was, though, his army went on the attack on May 26 against a weakening enemy drive, and by the following day, it had bagged a thousand Austrian POWs.105 These attacks met with success for several days, and the 3rd Kavkaz and 29th Corps even crossed the Liubachurka River until they were stopped by firmly entrenched enemy positions and had to withdraw.106 These losses were indeed brutal on the morale of the men. Observing that “our artillery is almost silent, . . . we are being sacrificed for nothing. We cannot hope to beat him [the enemy]. We cannot fight with bare hands,” he heard those under him say repeatedly. To this he made the observation that “from this [state] to a complete moral collapse is obviously no great distance.”107 Even without the superior firepower of the enemy, to retreat endlessly could only damage the will of an army. To advance was impossible and even to stand and defend was difficult; the men knew that they would lose.108 The abandonment of L’vov was certainly a staggering blow, because its fall the year before had symbolized the liberation of the Slavic peoples under the rule of the Austrians. Now it was back in Austrian hands.109 The Russians were not seriously affected. Knox reported that the Russian III, XIII (sic. There was not a XIII Army), and VIII Armies “have probably lost for the time being all power to do serious resistance. The men have lost heart, and it is no wonder, for they have had bitter experience of the hopelessness of fighting without sufficient gun and rifle ammunition against an enemy with an abundance of both.”110 The remarkable efforts of the Russian armies on the Southwest Front did draw acclaim, however, from Western observers. Bernard Pares praised them highly in his reports to the British foreign office,111 as did the French supreme commander General Joseph Joffre, not a man easily impressed. In a letter to the Russian command, Joffre referred to “the magnificent effect of the Russian armies of the South” in the Gorlice-Tarnow offensive, extolling their “bravery and tenacity,” which had “rendered also the greatest service to the general cause” of the Allies. He described it as “a beautiful page to the glory of the Russian army.”112 Indeed it was, and a page often overlooked by Great War historians. The stiff resistance of the Russian army was indeed taking a toll on the victorious attackers. By the late summer of the offensive, the Russian front was

102

Chapter 3

absorbing most of the troops of the Central Powers. Germany alone, which had in 1914 only seventeen divisions in the East, now had sixty-five. In the West, it had only ninety. Even the German Baltic Fleet, which dominated the waters east of Denmark, was acting with what Col. Knox called “strange indecision.”113 The Mackensen’s juggernaut had also slowed down by late July because his supply lines were stretched, and captured Germans were telling the Russians of their forces’ exhaustion.114 By the end of June, Austrian 7th Army under General Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin was also complaining of how the Russians had renewed “surprise attacks” against his army, and that these attacks were having a “tiresome effect on the morale of our troops.” From his accounts, it is obvious that his men were fighting very unenthusiastically, and when they did blunt a Russian advance, they were never willing to counterattack.115 With the fall of L’vov and Halicz soon after, Brusilov’s army retired eastward to the Western Bug and the Gnila Lipa Rivers, where defensive positions had been prepared. Mackensen’s advance on Jolkov and RavaRusska had turned his right flank and forced the remnants of the III and Brusilov’s army to retreat in different directions. A motley group of units was thrown into the gap and eventually, and apparently briefly, called the XIII Army under General Vladimir Gabotovsky. Mackensen’s main blow now fell on this new unit, which had to continue retreating to prevent being overwhelmed, and its impact was felt all the way to the Romanian border as the whole line had to withdraw.116 By the time L’vov fell, the Austro-German armies had advanced 186 miles, essentially recapturing all of Galicia. Russian losses had been a staggering quarter of a million POWs alone, many of whom had surrendered to end their punishment from enemy artillery. There were countless dead and wounded.117 The figures vary but several authorities place the Russian losses for 1915 at 1,410,000 killed, wounded and missing, with 976,000 taken as POWs.118 Despondent, Brusilov, telling his wife that the enemy strength is “satanic,” reported what she must already have known that “Przemysl has fallen and L’vov surrendered. To what degree this hurts, you yourself well understand.” In a tactic, he would use often after the Revolution, he tried to give to those around him a sense of optimism that he personally did not feel: “That to me this is like a goose in water,” but inside, “it’s terribly hard, my heart is heavy and my soul aches.”119 Yet in what must have been the same letter, he noted that the VIII Army had begun to recover somewhat, adding that “I am not weak. . . . I am completely at peace.”120 To non-army personnel, Brusilov remained upbeat. The ubiquitous Stanley Washburn had lunch with him in these times and recorded, “I think it would be impossible for anyone to be a pessimist after an hour with this officer.” Washburn asked him if he was tired, to which Brusilov enthusiastically

Between Metal and Men

103

replied, “Tired! I should say not. It is my profession. I shall never be tired.” Washburn left the Iron General with the “certainty” that he was neither discouraged nor depressed.121 He had hidden his true feelings well. Meanwhile, the German high command began to debate what to do next. Adolph Wild von Hohenbom, who had taken Falkenhayn’s place as minister of war, wanted to keep pushing eastward while they had the Russians “by the throat.”122 Others wanted to pinch off the Polish Salient, which proved to be the direction that the Germans eventually took. With this change in direction, the pressure on the Southwest Front was relieved, and the Russian army could have time to lick its wounds and prepare for a better day. The retreat, nevertheless, at its worse had its bright moments. On July 6, General Alexei Evert, commander of the IV Army, attacked at night the 4th Austrian army at Krasnik, giving the Austrians a good thrashing and pushing them back a mile or so.123 As we have seen, Brusilov to the south of the III army had had his moments as well, and he was not by any means finished. Even after the loss of much of Galicia, Brusilov was still thinking of the offensive, but he lamented that he did not have everything needed to advance and told Nadia that it was “hard to say at which time we will go on the attack.” He seemed annoyed of talk in the army of making only preparations to evacuate. He turned, as always, into his faux-fatalism, an attitude always voiced but never witnessed in his actions. “I am completely at peace, [sic] you indeed know my refuge. I do not doubt that what will be, will be. History, of course, will expose the guilty.”124 He had come by now to realize that it would be a long war, that indeed it had just begun.125 In the North, the Germans were closing in on Warsaw, and on July 1, the German air force dropped leaflets over the Polish city boasting that the Germans would occupy the city within a month. General Mikhail Beliaev, the Russian minister of war, told Knox that indeed a stand at Warsaw might lead to the entrapment of a large Russian force.126 By mid-July 200,000 to 300,000 civilians had evacuated the city, and the Russians had forced all males between eighteen and forty to leave as well. The first week of August saw the fall or Warsaw, where Mikhail Rodzianko told Sir George Buchanan that the Germans would find “only bare walls.”127 Yet farther south, the Germans were advancing at the rate of four miles a day and the enemy did occupy both Kholm and Lublin by July 31, cutting major railroad lines into the Polish salient.128 Furthermore, quickly the fortresses of Kovno, Grodno, Osowiec, Novogregorievsk, and Ivangorod fell easily to the Germans, vindicating Sukhomlinov’s theory on fortresses. The commander of Kovno fled before the Germans even arrived and was arrested by the military police in the bar of the Bristol Hotel in Vilno (Vilnius).129 By mid-July, Brusilov’s army’s front stretched from Sokal to Latske, with his headquarters at Brodi.130 He was holding on the Bug River. The III

104

Chapter 3

army on his right had been reinforced and given twenty-eight 8" howitzers from Japan, and it was engaged in serious fighting. Both the VIII and the XI Armies had defensive positions behind the ones on the Bug and the Zlota Lipa Rivers, so they could retreat thirty or forty versts without endangering the Southwest Front’s strategic position.131 The Russians were beginning, nonetheless, to be plagued by a shortage of officers, a problem that would exist until Russia left the war in 1917, but they were beginning to receive more shells.132 There were other signs of trouble, however, by the end of July. At a cabinet meeting, General Aleksei Polivanov, the new minister of war, reported that general demoralization, easy surrender, and outright desertion “are assuming huge proportions.”133 August found Brusilov still planning an offensive and brooding over the fact that he could not have one. For a period early in the month, the enemy did not attack, and Brusilov lamented that this would have been an excellent opportunity to counterattack. The army, however, lacked what was necessary, and he had been told that these things would come only in the fall of the year. “Again it seems that we are not ready,” he wrote, “and this is the chronic illness of Russia, never to be ready.” This problem, he feared, would make the war run another year.134 He should have been so lucky. The Central Powers continued to advance throughout August on all fronts, with the Russians falling back with varying degrees of ease.135 The morning of August 27 an enemy attack swung around Brusilov’s right flank at the Galician city of Lutsk. Denikin remembered after the war that Brusilov had ordered him to go to the small town of Klevan between Lutsk and Rovno, where the VIII Army staff was located. Denikin found complete chaos there. The attacking Austrians had broken the front before Lutsk, and already there were no organized Russian lines. The road to Rovno and the important railroads there were open. A new corps was forming, the 39th, comprised of militia guards, which Brusilov said, “fell first in battle and did not represent any real military strength.” Brusilov once again threw in Denikin’s Iron Brigade astride the railroad, thinking its presence would give the line some stability. It did and it stopped the Austrians for a time.136 Brusilov now asked to retreat at his discretion to make it orderly, but he was denied this request and was kept in position another three days on the Bug. He was permitted to retreat only when the enemy had outflanked his right, but with some feinting action, he gave the Austrians the impression that he was about to make a stand there, and they halted.137 Brusilov attacked and the line stabilized briefly around Sokolovka and the Styrpa River, but with an attack the next day, the enemy pushed to Lutsk, where the Russian line strengthened. Whereas the XI and IX armies to his south retreated, Brusilov staged what the telegram called “a big action,” probably a small counter thrust.138 Then he continued to retreat in the direction of Rovno, adding and

Between Metal and Men

105

rearranging his units, throwing in new troops and moving others in hopes of checking the Austrians on the Stubel River.139 The retreat all along the line had been so precipitous that there was talk of moving Stavka from Mogilev140 and even evacuating Petrograd.141 By early fall, however, the Austro-German offensive was beginning to falter. As had been the case with other invaders of the Russian lands, the armies of the Central Powers became bogged down in the vast land mass, since the Russians have always had the luxury of being able to trade space for time. The farther the Central Powers drove into Russia, the greater became their problems of supply as they went farther and farther from their railheads onto the inadequate Russian ones, with their different gauge. The country’s vastness had defeated more than one invader, and often Russian commanders relied on this unusual but valuable ally. As Tsar Alexander I told Count de Narbonne as Napoleon’s armies were crossing the Russian frontier in 1812, “If Napoleon attacks and if fortune smiles on him, . . . he will have to sign the peace [treaty] on the Behring Strait.”142 As the September rains fell, the primitive Russian roads became morasses of mud which further impeded the invader. The Russians, meanwhile, continued to fight like tigers. Hoffman wrote in his diary for September 24, 1915: “Heavy fighting last night. The Russians are attacking desperately where they are being outflanked. Alas, we are always just an army corps short.” Recording that they had not captured as many prisoners as they had hoped in recent weeks, he added, “Our men are exhausted” and that “complete chaos [reigns], no telephone lines.”143 Two days later, he lamented that “our offensive is slowly coming to a standstill. The Russians are defending themselves desperately.”144 Interestingly enough, Nadia, who was in Vinnitsa, came to visit Brusilov early in September, accompanied by her sister Lena. It is not clear how long she stayed, but it was painful for the Iron General when she finally left. In his first letter after her departure, he wrote her that it had been wonderful “to hug you from the soul and speak with you . . . after so long a separation.” He apologized that her visit was marred with his official duties and pressures [his fall offensive] “brought on by my army’s need to fight.” He worried about what gossips would say about how at a time of serious fighting, “I had my wife with me when I must forget about myself and think only of my use to the tsar and to Russia.”145 At a cost, the Russians had held. Figures at this point vary, and possibly none of them completely accurate, but all are enormous and mind-numbing. By the end of 1915, General Alexander Lukomsky, who will wander in and out of our narrative later, told Bernard Pares that the Russians had sustained 3,800,000 casualties since the beginning of the war, three million in the first ten months of 1915 alone.146 Maurice Paléologue reported to the French Foreign Office that the Russians had lost an average of 350,000 men each month

106

Chapter 3

for May, June, and July, rising to 450,000 in August.147 Several historians have noted that the Russian army by the end of the Great Retreat was only a third of the strength that it had been in August 1914.148 Sir Bernard Pares wrote in his memoirs that Brusilov’s VIII Army “had been pounded almost as badly” as the III Army,149 a statement that is clearly incorrect. Had Brusilov’s force received such punishment, he could never have been able to have mounted his September offensive. What is so tragic are the numbers killed and maimed. Those that were wounded got little help. An observer noted that in the Vilno train station “wounded lay everywhere; in the waiting rooms, on the platform, in the ambulances, every corner was crowded with them.150 Those that were lucky enough to receive some medical attention were not much better off because doctors had little equipment with which to treat patients and were generally referred to by the soldiers as “helpers of death.”151 Perhaps the lucky ones were those wounded who had been captured by the Germans and had received some good treatment. Russian archival reports, however, show that German and Austrian losses in the attack were far from insignificant. Reports record that local German attacks and offensives were beaten back with prisoners taken, sometimes in large numbers.152 By the end of 1915, reports show that 1,737,000 Austrians and 159,000 Germans had been captured.153 Brusilov himself, according to a Russian newspaper, had taken 312,000 POWs and 4,000 officers POW, along with 350 guns and 600 machine guns.154 Moreover, reports show that most of the aggressive fighting toward the end was being done by Brusilov’s VIII Army. In action in the last three days of August around Mt. Kremenetsky, his army took 40,000 POWs, which were the first captives reported in some time.155 Moreover, Langlois found that the Russian army, when the Austro-German offensive had ceased, was neither demoralized nor disorganized. Brusilov told him that until this time, Russia’s war effort was “only an army that made war as it had been able with the means it had.” Now, however, “it is the entire country that [enthusiastically] makes it.”156 The ending of the Great Retreat saw a major change in Russia that proved detrimental to Russian internal politics: Tsar Nicholas II, against the advice of almost everyone except his wife, removed his cousin Nicholas Nicholaevich and assumed command of the Russian armies himself early in September 1915. He had been with the tsarina since the second week of July, and it is probably safe to assume that his action was encouraged if not instigated by her. Sadly, his military training had been little more than the “spit and polish” of parades and troop reviews,157 and Brusilov remembered that “this change produced in the ranks was almost painful and even a depressing mood,” because the entire army had such confidence in Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich.158

Between Metal and Men

107

Actually, in a military sense, that change was an improvement. Nicholas II probably realized his inadequacies. At any rate, he made no pretense of leading the army, leaving most of the decisions to General Mikhail Vasilevich Alekseev, his chief of staff, whom the reader of these pages has met.159 Alekseev generally gets high marks from most observers, but not all. Trotsky labeled him “a gray mediocrity, the oldest military clerk in the army,”160 an opinion that is manifestly unfair. Of nonnoble origin and a man whose appearance is almost anti-charismatic (he was cross-eyed), Alekseev had clawed his way to the top of the Russian army, and he could never have succeeded had he been that “gray mediocrity.” He had been a professor in the Nikolaevsky Academy of the General Staff and a former commander of the 13th corps in Smolensk.161 Yet he also probably had never rocked the boat. Most who rise never do. La Guiche also did not personally like him,162 and the Belgian Socialist Emile Vandevelde described him as being “more like a professor than a soldier.”163 Alexander Kerensky, one of the premiers of the Provisional Government after the February Revolution, remembered him as “the best strategist in Europe.”164 Contemporary historian Peter Kenez wrote that he was “perhaps the most widely respected soldier in Russia.”165 Brusilov, who must have worked with him a great deal as they both rose together through the ranks, felt that Alekseev was “capable, an expert in military matters, quick of understanding and undeniably a good strategist,” and had he been the Chief of Staff of a genuine commander-in-chief, not a figurehead like Nicholas II, he would have been “beyond criticism,” but (and Brusilov’s praise of people, we have seen, frequently ends with “buts”) given the weaknesses of the tsar, “Alekseev was not the right man . . . insufficiently firm . . . and lacked the strength of mind to stick with his own opinion.”166 Nevertheless, whatever good qualities Alekseev possessed, Brusilov opined, “No matter how good a chief of staff, he cannot take the commander’s place in everything.”167 The problems that arose by the tsar’s move to the front were, however, political, for it left governmental matters in Petrograd to the greater influence of his wife and Rasputin. Very prophetically, the tsar wrote his domineering wife on taking over the army, “A new clean page begins, and only God Almighty knows what will be written on it.”168 Another casualty of the Great Retreat was the minister of war Sukhomlinov. He was removed in July 1915 as a result of the disasters at the front, tried for treason, and put under house arrest, although he was eventually released. He eventually made his way to Germany, where he wrote his memoirs and dedicated them to the Kaiser. Brusilov, nevertheless, remained loyal to him during his pariah days, writing his wife, “I’m very satisfied with Sukhomlinov—this man, a big worker and true and sympathetic.”169 Sukhomlinov having fulfilled the role of scapegoat for the disasters, assistant minister of war General Aleksei A. Polivanov replaced him. Col.

108

Chapter 3

Knox called Polivanov “a man of energy and ability,” and he had been recommended as minister of war by Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, the tsar’s cousin who was a historian and a political liberal.170 Polivanov also worked closely with the Duma and even spoke before the body shortly after his appointment. M. Verstraete, a French consul general in Russia, wrote that “All the entire country received his nomination with joy.” He had lost a son in Galicia the previous year and “only victory would be capable of alleviating his grief,” but the task he faced was “the cleansing of the Augean Stables.”171 Polivanov’s magic in the months that followed helped restore the Russian army, making possible Brusilov’s great successes the following year. As the retreat diminished, the Russian Front backed up on the province of Polessie, the capital city of which was Pinsk. Polessie was essentially the area of the Pripet Marshes, a large area that was intersected by many creeks and rivers, the Pripet being the largest. Since it was thought to be impassible, the Russians had done nothing in the prewar years to fortify it, thinking that the land itself would supply its own defense. Brusilov’s VIII was the extreme right wing of the Southwest Front, and as the armies had retreated, the seam of the VIII with what was the reconstituted III to its right rested with this impassable terrain at its back. The III Army, therefore, retreated northeast to back around it, leaving Brusilov’s right flank exposed, and this manoeuver necessitated his evacuation of his place on the Bug. Ivanov, meanwhile, ordered Brusilov to extend his lines to Lutsk, with the marshes to the north protecting his flank. Brusilov asked for reinforcements to execute this stratagem, and Ivanov sent him General S. F. Stelnitsky’s 39th corps, a collection of militias comprised of recalled retirees and old men. This component of the 39th believed that they had been recalled only to perform rear-guard duty, and Brusilov himself felt that they were useless.172 The Austrians also continued to press his right flank, where this weak unit had been placed, driving from the rail junction of Kovel, attempting to turn his flank.173 The XI and IX armies to his left were able to hold on the Sereth River because most of the pressure fell on his army, but in time, Brusilov was able to consolidate his position and stop the Austrian advance at the Kremenetsky Mountain in typical Brusilov fashion: He launched his own counteroffensive.174 In preparation for it, he asked Ivanov to give him reinforcements, and after several refusals, Ivanov sent the 30th Army Corps under General A. M. Zaionchkovsky, a general whom Brusilov held in high regard. Zaionchkovsky was not popular with his peers because he could be unsparingly sharp-tongued, but Brusilov regarded him as one of Russia’s best generals whose “good qualities outbalanced his weaknesses.”175 The result of Brusilov’s actions was the battle of Klevan, and it was to have an important impact on his future.176 Denikin’s Iron Brigade was placed in the center of Brusilov’s attacking force to the left of Zaionchkovsky, with the third corps on his right.

Between Metal and Men

109

Brusilov’s plan was for Stelnitsky’s rather unreliable 39th corps, in conjunction with Denikin’s Iron Brigade, to attack in the center to pin down the enemy by a frontal assault, while the 30th Army Corps and the 7th cavalry would encircle the enemy’s left and force it to retreat. Brusilov then phoned General S. S. Savvich at Stavka and told him to report to Ivanov that he planned to take the offensive, driving the enemy across the Styr and reoccupy Rojishche and Lutsk. Savvich replied that he did not think that Ivanov would approve of an all-out attack, but Brusilov bent the truth by telling him that he was not suggesting a major attack, only a limited one to correct the line. Savvich then agreed and Brusilov then positioned the 30th and the 7th for the assault.177 All went very well. The brilliant thrusts on September 16 and 17 smashed the Austrian lines inflicting heavy losses, and Stelnitsky actually reached the outskirts of Lutsk. Denikin attacked the Lutsk fortifications on September 19 in a frontal assault, taking two lines of their defenses and inflicting heavy losses, but he was stopped by the stronger than expected enemy defenses to his left. Brusilov then ordered Zaionchkovsky, whom he reinforced with one of Denikin’s regiments, to attack the city from the north to help Denikin, and Zaionchkovsky did so, after a long artillery bombardment. In his order of the day, Zaionchkovsky stated that Denikin’s 4th brigade would not be likely to take the city and that the honor would be that of his “gallant troops of the 30th corps.” Yet, Denikin took the city in his first attempt the next day, riding into the town in his open field car and wiring Brusilov that the city was now again in Russian hands. The Iron Division had captured 158 officers and 9,773 men, a number nearly equal to their own personnel. The assault had been costly to Denikin, however. He had lost 40 percent of his effectives.178 Reaching the city simultaneously from the north, Zionchkovsky claimed the credit, entering the city from the other side. He, too, wired Brusilov that he had taken the city, to which Denikin remembered Brusilov wired back, “And no doubt you took Denikin prisoner there.”179 It is unlikely that Brusilov made such a comment. It was not his style, but in his memoirs Brusilov does record that he had to mediate the conflict between the two, giving credit to both, adding that “sometimes the success of an operation depends on the competition between two generals.”180 Three days later, Brusilov essentially duplicated the same maneuver, employing all of the army’s cavalry in the sweep. Joining with them was again Zaionchkovsky’s 30th corps and the 8th corps. This time Brusilov gave Denikin a battery of artillery to cover his flank, and additional support also came from units from Evert’s Western Front. With all of this aid, Brusilov was easily able to maintain contact with General D. G. Shcherbachev’s XI Army to his left.181 The next day Brusilov attacked on all fronts and the enemy retreated to the north, falling back to the Styr River.182 In these few

110

Chapter 3

days of fighting, Brusilov had captured 720 officers, 44,250 men, nine pieces of artillery and 108 machine guns.183 Brusilov had indeed secured a great tactical victory, and Denikin received a field promotion to Lieutenant General, and Zionchkovsky was awarded one of the St. George’s crosses.184 The Iron General had also had some help. He had in retreat created some partisan units left behind the enemy lines who were commanded and provisioned by his VIII Army with the assignment to disrupt and harass the enemy rear.185 A second source of assistance came from an attack of the XI Army on the Sereth at Tarnopol as early as September 7. Shcherbachev had himself attacked two German divisions capturing 150 officers, 7,000 men, thirty pieces of artillery, and many machine guns.186 His section of the front reoccupied Czernowitz, and the Russians were again advancing on Przemysl.187 As usual, the Austrians began calling for German help. Brusilov began to notice enemy air patrols and learned that the foe was bringing up an army corps to attack Brusilov’s right near the city of Kolki. He immediately dispatched toward the city two divisions of the 30th corps, reinforcing them with the 4th division sharpshooters and the 7th cavalry division. Brusilov now felt that he was ready for any enemy counteroffensive.188 On what Brusilov called “one wretched evening,” however, he received at 7:00 p.m. a coded telegram. It contained orders for his right wing, which had been so successful in the recent offensive, to abandon Lutsk and retreat to their old positions on the Stubel River and for the 30th to conceal itself in the forest east of Kolki. When the Germans (Brusilov very often refers to the enemy—Austrian or German—as simply “the Germans,” no matter whom he was facing) advanced along the Kolki-Klevan road, these troops were to debouch and attack the Germans in their left flank. Having thus shaken the Germans, then the entire front was to launch an offensive.189 Brusilov called the entire plan “lunacy.” The delays in deciphering the order, and the time it would take to transmit it to the company level would in itself consume twelve hours. Furthermore, the distance from the Styr to the Stubel was fifty versts, and any evacuation would have to be done at night to be effective. Given the slowness of night marches, however, the evacuation would have to take place by day, thus giving the enemy air reconnaissance ample opportunity to observe the movements and the hiding of the troops. There was no chance of surprise. Moreover, it would damage the men’s morale to surrender without a fight the enemy territory they had only just taken.190 Brusilov reported his objections to headquarters but could not move them, and he performed as ordered. They had foolishly abandoned strong positions that they had won to retreat to less defensible ones.191 The Germans, of course, observed all these machinations from the air, and did not fall for any such trap by conveniently offering their flank to the enforested Russians. They merely occupied the surrendered territory and came no farther. Yet his

Between Metal and Men

111

jockeying with the enemy gave Brusilov yet another medal, a St. George’s Gold Cross, awarded on October 12,192 and the tsar sent Grand Duke Kiril Vladimir with the award, along with 4,200 crosses and officer decorations to the forces in the successful units.193 In exile, Denikin made a reference to this foolish move, but he blamed it on Brusilov, not the higher-ups, for that is from whom he got the order. The origin of the scheme apparently never reached Denikin or else the two men remembered the event differently after the Revolution. Denikin recalled that his men became tangled up in the woods and the Austrians had, with no losses, recovered what they had lost.194 There was one final coda to the “First Brusilov Offensive” and that was an event catalyzed by the Germans themselves. Opposite Brusilov, the Germans advanced on October 16 to the north and took Czartoryski, threatening to encircle Brusilov’s right flank. Brusilov directed a quick blow with his right wing (30th, 40th, and Horse corps) to straighten out the front and force the enemy back to the Styr River. The Iron Division then turned on Czartoryskii and Novoselok, and on the night of October 17, crossed the Styr. Within two days, it had overrun Czartoryskii with its left wing advancing rapidly to the south and west. By October 20, it had produced a breakthrough eighteen kilometers wide and twenty kilometers deep. It had been such a blow to the Austro-German forces that the Russians confiscated much materiel and enemy baggage, including even army mail. Denikin claimed that he called for reserves to be thrown into the breech, but that Brusilov, “usually so energetic,” hesitated for reasons of which he did not know. He finally got the 105th division in time to face the Austrian counterattack that came on three sides of the salient, which was so deep that Denikin claimed that the Russians were almost fighting on four sides. The Austrian attacks, however, were always repulsed, and Denikin counterattacked for the last time on November 9 on his whole front taking 8,500 POWs.195 With this move, his front, except for a few incidents, largely became quiet for the winter. In the year of 1915, the Russians had sustained in the year 1915 enormous casualties, and it is no wonder that the Austrians and the Germans felt that Russia was permanently crippled. By September, there were clearly over a million casualties. Rutherford states 1,410,000—235,000 a month—the highest of the war in which Russia had a monthly average of 140,000.196 Nevertheless, the retreats had been orderly and were no great encirclements as the Russians would see in another war two-and-a-half decades later. Moreover, with the counterattacks, usually by the army of General Brusilov, they had cost the Austrians hundreds of thousands of casualties; General Denikin was to remember later.197 They had also inflicted heavy losses on the Germans as well. Still, there was no denying it: Russia had sustained a heavy blow. Early on Brusilov had marked the dearth of artillery compared to what Skoda

112

Chapter 3

and Krupp had arrayed against the Russians. We have seen the inferiority in numbers of Russian field pieces, but Brusilov stressed the inferiority in numbers of shells. One historian states that the shell shortage was not the main reason for the Great Retreat,198 and maybe shells were truly being produced in greater numbers in the factories of Petrograd and Tula, but there was the serious question of logistics. If there were indeed sufficient numbers of shells, they did not always get to the guns, and the Russian guns were undeniably lacking in number to those of their enemy. In October, Nicholas II visited Brusilov’s front. He stopped at Ivanov’s headquarters at Berdichev, and from there, he and Ivanov rode to Rovno, where Brusilov’s headquarters was located after the retreat. On his arrival, Brusilov joined the tsar’s train and was with him when he visited a dressing station. The wounded soldiers were stunned at the sight of the tsar, and many tried to touch his coat as he passed among them.199 On this occasion, the tsar promoted Brusilov to be one of his Generals-Adjutant, but the promotion was never announced. According to General A. A. Polivanov, since Brusilov had been critical of some of the top brass, any promotion might seem like a reward for criticizing them, so Brusilov might therefore become some sort of rallying figure for opposition to the army leadership.200 The Russians had taken a beating mainly because in almost all aspects, they were inferior to the Austro-Germans: Inferior in trenching, in aviation, in railways, in artillery,201 in everything but numbers. Artillery and shell shortages are always mentioned as a problem, but as we have seen, and Norman Stone has shown, the argument is debatable.202 It is, however, undeniable that inadequate artillery, for whatever reason, was a major factor. The Germans had captured in Poland alone 5,200 older guns, 3,148 modern ones, 880 heavy guns and almost 4,000,000 shells, many of which came to be used on the Western Front.203 It had not been a good year in general for the Allied armies on any front. For the Russians, it was easily the worst of the war, and it is not surprising that the Austrians felt that the Russians were finished. Even one contemporary historian, employing the time-honored tactic of predicting the Russian Revolution by looking backwards, blamed the Great Retreat for snapping the loyalty to the monarchy,204 ignoring the fact that the army continued to fight extremely well for over a year without showing serious signs of disintegration. It might be said, however, that Brusilov was the only major figure involved in the 1915 disaster who emerged from it with his reputation still intact. He was continuing to probe the lines of the enemy with jabs well into October, so much so that his wife told him that both she and son Alyosha wanted him to call his actions off. “Let them [your soldiers] rest a little. In the end of November, again attack. . . . You should pity their young lives.”205

Between Metal and Men

113

Brusilov received comfort from Alyosha in several letters. His son stressed that things were improving and that Brusilov was excelling in the war effort. The son often showed, however, a deep affection for his father in these times. He signed this letter, “With deeply expressed heartfelt love to you.”206 It must have been for his father a great consolation. Such could not be said about the whiny correspondence from his wife, and these words could hardly have helped the Iron General to maintain his own morale. Lamenting the evacuation of Poland, she wrote, “It isn’t possible without shells to resist the terrible strength of the Germans with their suffocating gas and their all-powerful meanness.”207 Later she told him that he was foolish to still believe in victory, adding that “we in the rear” know better than you at the front and that “we” are already convinced that “the Germans will win the war. They will be in Moscow by 1916. This is . . . the collapse of Russia.”208 Nadia also warned Brusilov that there was a conspiracy afoot to deny him the accolades he deserved. She claimed that knowledgeable individuals had written her to the effect that his achievements were intentionally being kept quiet,209 again more information that could hardly have bolstered his spirits. Even Brusilov himself came to believe that this view was indeed true,210 and it may have been to some extent. When it was largely Brusilov who had gone on the offensive in September, Ivanov received the credit with the tsar,211 although when Brusilov was awarded the medal for his September offensive, Nadia received a letter of congratulations as well.212 These alleged slights of her husband infuriated her. Writing Brusilov that there is such intrigue against truth in Russia, she noted that he was only interested in the military success of Russia and not personal popularity. “But I your wife cannot and do not want to be silent in this matter, [sic] this is obvious intrigue against you.”213 She became so exercised about it that she broke a very important rule of military etiquette: She wrote Polivanov over her husband’s head to complain about how her husband was not getting his dues. Admitting that when he received a St. George’s cross, even she had gotten a telegram of congratulations, she added that in Russkoe slovo, where all the other generals were mentioned, her husband’s name was omitted. “I know that to my husband his work is important and not personal popularity,” she told the probably bemused minister of war, “but to me this is a heartfelt blow. And I strongly beg you to explain to me what probably happened.”214 Polivanov never seems to have answered the letter, if indeed he ever received it, and we do not know the reaction of Aleksei Alekseevich when he learned what his wife had done. We can be certain that he did not like it. Brusilov continued to gain a great deal of notoriety in foreign capitals, however. A Baroness Bistrom visited Nadia in February 1916 and brought an English language book praising Brusilov’s Carpathian campaign. For Nadia,

114

Chapter 3

she translated one sentence: “Strength and a tower of courage of [his] leadership shows in all the masses of his forces, and the Russian soldiers therefore . . . will always follow General Brusilov.215 Even in passing on people’s praise, however, she spoke of the alleged envy. When several figures lauded him to her, she said that they also told her that “they envy you and want to harm you and want to blame all the mistakes on you at Stavka.”216 These exchanges told by Nadia seem highly unlikely to have occurred. Could Nadia have misunderstood their words or was it simple paranoia? Brusilov tried to lighten her dark mood. Two of her letters had reached him by late September, and he accused her of having the “mood of the public,” adding that “we here in the army don’t quite think that we have lost the campaign. Remember we Russians were ready [for the war] . . . and we have always won after difficult suffering. So it will be now.”217 Later that same month, he again attacked her pessimism. “I am so convinced in the successful end of the war that no one and nothing can change my mind. Even if in the future we still have misfortunes, for God will indeed send us challenges, we nevertheless can turn upward since our work is right and God is for us.”218 Brusilov could not have had the enemies that Nadia (and sometime he) thought he had, or he would not have risen to the heights he did in the tsarist army. It probably did not go beyond the general envy that would exist anywhere. Envy is indeed a strong emotion, and it is not limited to military politics. Perhaps his success everywhere he turned was a factor that kept him in the high circles of the Russian military. We shall see, however, that envy would one day assist in his removal. Meanwhile in August 1915, Nadia had found for them an apartment in Moscow on Mansurevsky Street in the Ostrolenka neighborhood, which is not far from the Kremlin. Brusilov asked her in September, “How do you like the apartment? Are you comfortable in it?” Then he gave her a warning which she hardly needed: “You will find in Moscow a climate worse than in Kiev[,] but it will be more peaceful.” He then gave her suggestions for hiring servants.219 Nadia resumed her peregrinations in the fall of 1915. She traveled to Odessa, then to Vinnitsa, where she seems to have maintained a residence, then back to Moscow, then back to her family in Odessa, travel that would have been difficult for most people on the fragile railroads of the wartime Russian Empire. She could hardly have done it without her husband’s influence. Spring found her again in Vinnitsa, where her attitude seems to have improved. Her home had a view of the river, some gardens, and cupolas of a church, still covered in snow in March 1915.220 “In Vinnitsa . . . [all] was good and joyous. In all hospitals the people greeted us warmly, [and] there was sun and masses of flowers.”221 In these trips, she received the adulation that she felt that her husband was being denied, and one therefore wonders at the validity of the complaints. In

Between Metal and Men

115

the fall of 1915, after his successful offensive, she was feted in Vinnitsa at a dinner given in her honor. “Everything was in order and energetically carried out,” she wrote her husband, adding, “They brought me beautiful [fresh] flowers,” which must have proved quite expensive in Vinnitsa in November. Mayors of local cities were present, as were members of the teaching and medical world, and “many Poles and Jews,” she added. Brusilov in absentia had received his share of the praise, which delighted Nadia. She was especially prideful when they quoted Brusilov’s proclamation at the time of the declaration of war: “The army will fulfill its duty to the end, and you love us and do not forget us in your prayers.”222 As always, Nadia became childishly impatient when she did not hear from her husband, as though he had nothing to do but write her. The greater problem was most certainly the war-time congestion of mail. Brusilov often noted that he would receive several of her letters at once, and so apparently even his mail moved slowly. On March 6, 1916, a letter of his arrived dated February 24, eleven days in transit (1916 was a leap year).223 Given wartime conditions and the sluggish movement of railroads, that would seem to be record time, even for an important general, but for Nadia, it was not fast enough, and she childishly blamed him. In August 1915, as the Great Retreat was at a most crucial stage and Warsaw was being evacuated, she wrote annoyingly, “Your last letter was a month ago. That you are still alive, I know because in the papers there would have been a notice if it were not so. I have not received an answer to one of my letters.”224 In September, when his small 1915 offensive was coming to a close, she impetuously wrote him, “I’m pleading with you, Dear, to wire me at least twice a month, if not every week. Otherwise I will feel that you have completely forgotten me that between us is at least a collection of telegrams while we are still living.”225 As for the Iron General, Brusilov ignored this devotion and chided her with the flirtatious accusation that she loved Murzki their dog more than she loved him. Knowing that he was joking, she threatened him that if he continued to write “such stupidities,” she would not make a planned visit to him at Christmas.226 Nadia’s letters continued to be full of her usual excuses and complaints, which could hardly have comforted him. They frequently argued about money. He frequently sent her funds to bank, but one thinks that she did not always do it, although she claimed to do so.227 She complained about the high cost of rent in Moscow vis-a-vis the rent in Kiev.228 She once wrote that his brother Boris and Nina were having trouble receiving the income from Nina’s estate,229 so it is possible that she was helping support them. Early in 1916, she acknowledged the 1,000 rs. he had sent her for a carriage (ekipazh, this probably means local travel money, not a carriage), but she had spent it on other things. “I was sick and that costs money,” she said by way of defense, adding, “Besides that, I now have debts. Indeed I for two years have not

116

Chapter 3

sewed myself anything. And furthermore I gave Alyosha 450 rs.” This information seems to be a forewarning that if she is permitted to visit him in March 1916, “there will be little money.”230 At one point, she even told him that she was considering subletting their apartment on Mansurevsky. This threat quickly brought Brusilov out of his thriftiness. “Do not sublet the apartment,” he wrote back, “and I will pay for it.”231 Yet, she might indeed have moved temporarily, because there are different return addresses on the envelopes, but by the time of the Revolution, she still had the Ostrolenka apartment. As early as the fall of 1915, her letters were full of despair about ever seeing him again, complaining that “bright times in Russia were very far off,” and complaining about her great “aches and pains.”232 He tried to comfort her with promises that the war would not last forever, but it did no good as she continued to whine. “Doubtlessly in such a case I do not wait for you, since 2–3 years [I have lived] under such a pressured, nervous life [sic], I will scarcely live it out.”233 She also did not spare him the bad news about conditions on the home front. “In Moscow, the people are not calm,” she wrote him late in October 1915. “There is no firewood, no sugar, everything is extremely expensive, [and] every evidence of courage is lost. . . . The one hope is the Mercy of God.”234 Her husband’s interests, however, were never far from her thoughts. Once she was angry that he had not had a vacation whereas “[General] Von [sic] Evert again went for a three-week vacation, they say!”235 In his case, it is more likely that he would never take one. If his men could not take a vacation, then it was typical of Brusilov to say that he would not give himself one. Nadia was his only regular link to family, except for her brother Rostia Yakhontov, who was with Brusilov at his headquarters and with whom he shared Nadia’s letters. Alyosha seems to have stayed in touch with Nadia more often than with his father, if for no other reason than she seems to have been an easier source of money than his kopeck-pinching father. “About Alyosha, I don’t know much,” she wrote in June 1915. “I got a telegram in Odessa saying only, ‘Send 200 rs.’ I sent them.”236 Sometimes his movements prevented his getting the dispatched funds, but when he did receive them, he often did not bother to inform her. “Sent [Alyosha] a parcel of candy and cigarettes,” she wrote his father that same month. “No reply.”237 Stating that she did not know “if he was dead or in a hospital,” she seems to have been somewhat annoyed with him. In August, he again requested money, claiming that he had written her “several months back,” but he had not received anything. Once he had asked her to send money care of some bar, but she refused, since she had not received confirmation that the last she had sent had been received.238 Someone who had seen him wrote her that he had lost a lot of weight and was suntanned, but she heard nothing more from him except a continuous request for money.239 Apparently, he had gotten involved with

Between Metal and Men

117

some Petrograd woman of whom Nadia did not approve. She mentioned how she had sent him 600 rs. for February through April 1916, and added, “Thank God he did not marry [the Petrograd girlfriend]. . . . Now he has gone to Glebovo and tomorrow he leaves but again through Petrograd!!!. I don’t understand this.”240 In December 1915, Nadia was able to visit Brusilov at his headquarters at Rovno for the first time since the beginning of the war. It was Christmas time. Brusilov records in his memoirs how they were invited by a General Nikulin, a friend of Nadia’s from Odessa, to an Epiphany party. It was a typical Russian winter festival affair with the men in costumes, some of them dressed as animals, with a choir, a balalaika orchestra, and circus booths, held in zemlianki, huts half in the ground to stave off the cold. During the party, one could hear the distant rumble of enemy guns, but no one seemed to mind. There was much gaiety and laughter, but soon after the party, many of the guests were killed in battle, including the host Nikulin.241 Nadia’s first letter to Brusilov on her return from the visit was ecstatic. “My dear little Pigeon [Goliubchik],”she wrote enthusiastically, adding that parting had been painful, so much so that she wrote, certainly tongue in cheek, that “it would be better for me not to see you until the end of the war–such soul-felt difficulty overwhelms me when again I leave you!. Passionately, passionately I kiss you.”242 On her return to Moscow, she once again threw herself into war work. She seems to have used the connection to her husband as a conduit for others who wanted to send items like tobacco or boots to the soldiers.243 After her husband was made the commander-in-chief of the Southwest front in 1916, she seems to have returned for a time to Odessa to be closer to his work. Here she lived “on the boulevard” in a “palace” and played a big role in support services for her husband’s front. She even had three secretaries to assist her, but even then she had to toil into the night sometimes.244 Her activities carried her to their old home in Vinnitsa, where she continued to be well received in the churches and convents, and the “soldiers and the people were awfully happy to see us.”245 A week later in Moscow she attended an event given for a visiting French delegation headed by the French Minister of Justice René Viviani. Usually finding something about which to complain, she took to task the Muscovite women in their bright-colored dresses and their array of jewelry, while she and her sister Lena were dressed in black, as was Mrs. Viviani, who was in mourning for a son.246 She also threw her weight around as a famous general’s wife. While in Vinnitsa, she found the conditions in the hospitals “terrible,” with one ward having had all the windows broken out, and she apparently leveled on some officer for the conditions. To her husband she said that she was annoyed to learn “what kind of stupidity exists in Russia.”247 By the fall, her letters were more than just pessimistic.

118

Chapter 3

An order went out in January 1916 that wives of officers could visit their husbands for a fortnight, and Nadia planned to visit him again in February. Nadia was ecstatic and apparently decided to bring her sister with her. “Endlessly I speak and dream of our trip to visit you,” she wrote her husband early in February, but she feared that if there was an offensive, she would not be able to make the trip.248 as if suggesting to her husband not to begin one for personal reasons. She did go, however, and charmed everyone at Stavka, so much so that several suggested that she stay longer than two weeks. After all, Conrad’s beloved wife Gina lived with him at Austrian headquarters. Brusilov, naturally, would not hear of it. “Not another day,” he told his wife. “When once there is an order that wives can visit their husbands only for a fortnight, this rule must be binding for all.” The commander of the armies must show an example to the younger officers. Nadia left that very day for Moscow.249 Their correspondence around this time consisted largely of mundane family and personal matters, such as some eye problems that Brusilov was having,250 or his rejoicing that Nadia did not smoke as he did. “It’s true that it prevents diseases . . . but I forbid my wife [to smoke]. I don’t like a woman who smokes.”251 She expressed concerns about her stepson Alyosha’s spending so much time away from the front and wanting to write his divisional commander to ask why. Knowing well that her husband would not approve of her stirring in army business, she quickly added, “I won’t write more about this.”252 About this time Alyosha wrote Brusilov a two sentence letter asking for money. Calling him a “charlatan,” Brusilov told his wife of the request and added, “He only has money on the brain and all for trifles. Well! What is to be done? God help him.”253 Brusilov’s concern with money continued unabated. He had recently sent Nadia a thousand roubles but then learned that a General Ushakov of his army was traveling to Moscow and could have taken it along with the letter he was writing. For him to do so would have been “less expensive, but the money is already sent,” he lamented.254 Then, however, he criticized her about her having bought some new clothes. “Can it be that you are infected in time of war [his italics] with a style disease, now when blood is flowing. . . . I don’t understand you.”255 Curiously at this time Nadia had a nightmare about Rasputin. She had been ill with flu, and the “holy man” came to her in a dream “with his wedge-shaped [klinobraznoi] eyes,” and said, “You don’t know me [sexually], but you will.”256 Freudian wish fulfillment perhaps? As usual she continued to send Brusilov carepackages. He expressed his delight that she had included some kefaldola (a cold and flu medicine) in the most recent one. “I go out into the corps, I go into the trenches, and . . . I get a cold. I have a cold all the time, more or less, and only kefaldola helps.”257 It is strange that he could not, being commander-in-chief of the army, get this common cold remedy, but Nadia as a civilian could.

Between Metal and Men

119

Brusilov suggested a minor probing in January 1916 with a general drive toward Kovel, a major north-south railroad junction which enabled the Germans to move troops quickly from their sector to assist their beleaguered Austrian allies. Ivanov, after months of retreat notwithstanding, could only think of a holding action and ordered the erection of defensive positions, curiously, in the interior, where they were of little good. Brusilov was able to overcome Ivanov’s siege mentality to wring from him more troops, although the general had ceased to think that Russian troops were always reliable. Ivanov transferred to him the 2nd division of sharpshooters to reinforce his right flank, as well as the 40th army “Iron Corps,” composed of the 2nd and 4th division of sharpshooters, which Brusilov felt was one of the best in the Russian army.258 He must have convinced Ivanov that he could make a limited action because with these new forces he did, with his right wing in January driving into the German 14th infantry division. Corps on either side were to advance as well, drawing support that might have gone to the 14th. The attack was a total surprise, and the Germans were overwhelmed on the left bank of the Styr from Rapolovka to Chartorysk. Many prisoners were taken along with a battery of howitzers. The attackers did not take Kolki, also an objective, because the flanking corps could not cooperate and the commander of the 40th showed “indecision.” As a result, the opportunity was lost because the enemy’s strong reinforcements appeared, thus stopping the move. Brusilov added sadly in his memoirs, “We had to rest content with the success we had already won.”259 Brusilov’s action had been more successful than that of the VII Army on his left. This force had been sent to Odessa for the purpose of attacking Bulgaria, but its commander, General Dmitri Shcherbachev, transferred from the XI Army, had convinced the powers that his army would be better placed on the Southwest Front. He delivered an attack several days after Christmas 1915, and it had been a complete failure because of a shortage of reserves and no assistance on his flanks. Shcherbachev did break the enemy line, but he had no reserves with which to exploit the breakthrough. Very quickly the enemy transferred reserves to seal the breech. Brusilov asked to be allowed to attack to pin down the enemy’s reserves but was given a “curt refusal.” He was not surprised when air patrols reported that units were moved from before him to the other sector of the front.260 So ineffectual were these encounters that Allied intelligence reported that the Germans were moving sixteen divisions to the West,283 most probably in preparation for Verdun or to counter any 1916 offensives in Flanders. A minor unsuccessful offensive in December on the Southwest Front added additional evidence for the Central Powers of Russian weakness and probably encouraged Bulgaria’s entry into the war on October 11, 1915, on the side of the Central Powers, joining Austria in an attack on Serbia. The

120

Chapter 3

usual pleading brought a Russian attack to give the Serbs some relief. On December 23, after Serbia had been overrun, a half million men from Brusilov’s VIII, Lechitsky’s IX, and Sakharov’s XI were belatedly hurled at the Austro-German Südarmee and the Austrian Seventh Army. The offensive failed miserably. Austrian air reconnaissance had alerted the ground troops about Russian movements, and there was abundant bad weather which hindered troop movements and the positioning of artillery. The French attaché added to the reasons of failure “insufficient preparation of artillery, absences of agreement to act, [and] insufficient or late preparations for a counterattack.” The Russian report to the French ministry of defense added, “It is equally incontestable that we have not appreciated the strength of the enemy, fortified with all the modern techniques, [and] possessing even a network of electrical barbed wire.” The advance in any place was no more than a few versts. Even Brusilov’s army gained only a few villages. For these modest gains, the Russians sustained 50,000 casualties.261 The one positive (and rather curious) rationalization that the Russian command could make was that the attack “did draw attention of the enemy to Galicia and had made them realize that they cannot place on other fronts the troops freed by the collapse of Serbia.”262 When campaigns permitted, Brusilov’s chief recreation seems to have been his usual walks in the woods. Around 4:00 p.m., he would drive by automobile to a forested area nine miles from his headquarters. He would then leave his vehicle and walk briskly for two hours “at top speed without turning his head.” It was difficult for the officers who accompanied him, “especially one who is fat and short of breath and whose struggles the general takes a mischievous delight in watching.”263 Entering the year 1916, Brusilov was very optimistic, militarily at any rate. He had been successful in both 1914 and 1915, whereas the generals on his right flank had not been,264 but Brusilov was too astute a general not to know that much of his success was largely due to the fact that he faced a weaker opponent than the generals to the north. Moreover, he knew that the Austrian armies had been savaged badly in the first year-and-a-half of war265 and were in much worse shape than the Russian army. The year 1916 might even result in Austria’s being knocked out of the war, which could only result in the ultimate defeat of Germany. He felt that if his army could stand firm, as it had in the Great Retreat, the other Russian armies would follow, and the Russians would win the war. He felt correctly that the enemy was on the verge of cracking, “since our enemy is badly clothed, badly fed, and for their people the war has gone on too long[,] and they can only pray for peace.” He compared the enemy’s morale to that of the Russians, who were “becoming tired[,] but there is not one who would agree to peace while we are not beating the enemy.”266

Between Metal and Men

121

Also, his army was becoming better supplied in the area of the most serious deficiency in 1915, that is, artillery, and although Russia had not caught completely up, Russia in January 1916 had 968 heavy cannons, not counting the naval guns and some Japanese pieces. Also, Russian monthly production of heavy artillery was more than 60 cannon, and these would be augmented by the addition of 130 additional Japanese guns of all sizes. The Russian command hoped that by May 1, the Russians would have 1,300 pieces. Added to that, when the White Sea thawed, there would be an additional 450 pieces that would arrive from France. To service these guns, the Russian domestic artillery production was 7,500 shells a day.267 As for his own forces, he wrote his wife, “My army is in good shape. . . . The people—the mass, they are well trained, warmly dressed, superbly fed, the officers are well trained, experienced officers.” The one area in which he felt that his army was chronic lack of parity with the enemy of heavy artillery, although “shells and cartridges in abundance.” In a word, he said, “it is good.”268 Brusilov also felt at one with his army. “My army knows me and I know it,” he wrote, “and I am certain that the divisions in the trenches will now fight like tigers.” He reiterated his creed that he was to say so often: “I need nothing and I seek nothing but I [will] fulfill my duty to the end [his italics].” He felt that his most enthusiastic efforts would go into commanding his army, “which I love and which loves me.”269 His description of the relationship with his army was not braggadocio. Florence Farmborough, a British nurse with the Russian army, wrote essentially the same words in January 1916. Noting that they had often heard of Brusilov’s great exploits since the beginning of the war, she wrote in her diary that being transferred to Brusilov’s army “has done much to boost our morale. His soldiers will be all afire to advance—we will be with them; we, too, will advance!”270 Therefore, by the beginning of the spring of 1916, his men were well-fed, well-armed, and in “excellent spirits.” He remembered in his memoirs that “We had every reason to think that we were able to defeat the enemy and drive him across our frontier”271 in any actions taken on the Southwest front. His army’s performance in the summer of 1916 would prove him essentially correct. The spring brought a major military change: The removal of the competent minister of war Polivanov. His hard work had brought the Russian army from the brink of an abyss, and the military improvements Brusilov described above were largely made possible by the man’s enormous talents and energy. Yet in consulting the Duma, he incurred the wrath of the empress, Rasputin, and the mediocre ultraconservative cabinet members who were made to feel inferior by his talent.272 His address to the Duma on February 17 was especially his undoing. He spoke on provisioning the army, and his address was largely a report that he was to give the next day to the emperor.273 In

122

Chapter 3

the process, he committed an unpardonable sin in giving his information in inverse order. Calling him a “revolutionist under the wing of [Aleksander] Guchkov [a moderate member of the Duma who specialized in military matters],” she hammered the tsar until he removed him. Nicholas “at last” found a replacement for Polivanov, General Dmitri Shuvaev, a man so old and senile, according to one source, he could not follow the reports or lead discussions. He had organized the mobilization in 1914 and had “particularly distinguished himself” in that duty, but he could not begin to fulfill the shoes of the man he replaced in 1916. With Polivanov’s removal, Nicholas II felt that now “I shall sleep in peace.”274 Polivanov would, like Brusilov, remain in Russia after the October Revolution and work for the Soviet Government. The early spring saw a second a major change take place in the Russian army and, of course, in Brusilov’s life: He was promoted on April 4 to Commandant of the Southwest Front, thereby leading not just the VIII Army but four armies consisting of over 600,000 men. The man whom he replaced, General Ivanov, was a kindly and thoughtful man and had not been a bad general at times. He was popular with those under him (Colonel Knox used the word “worshiped”).275 He had lived simply, sleeping in a simple barracks room with no carpet on the floor or curtains on the windows. He usually dined alone needing a special diet. He always began work at 6:00 a.m., rested from 2–5:00 p.m. in the afternoon, and retired for the night at 10:30 p.m. His removal is all the more amazing because he was the godfather to the Tsarevich Aleksei.276 With his dismissal, he was appointed to the Council of the Empire, obviously as a sop to his injured pride.277 Trotsky, never at a loss to disparage anything tsarist, quoted Denikin’s description of Ivanov as “a flabby, old man, meagerly grasping the political situation, possessing neither strength, nor energy, nor will, nor austerity.”278 Even if Denikin made such a statement, it is unfair and largely untrue. Ivanov “wept like a child” when he learned of his removal.279 Whether or not these failures on the Southwestern Front had anything to do with Brusilov’s next promotion is difficult to say. Ivanov had been a politicians’ general, someone observed, with a foot in all powerful camps—“a diplomat pretending to be a peasant.”280 Perhaps because the Great Retreat, LaGuiche thought that he was being removed “without apparent cause.”281 His dismissal is somewhat surprising in that he was no worse than most of the Russian generals. At any rate, Ivanov’s career effectively came to a terminus in March 1916 for whatever reason, and Brusilov, who had performed perhaps better than could be expected in the trials of 1915, was elevated into his place as commander-in-chief of the Southwest Front. In the rumor mill that was war-time tsarist Russia, Nadia learned before her husband that Ivanov would be replaced, but she heard it would be by the VII Army’s General Shcherbachev. Since Nadia became indignant at any

Between Metal and Men

123

real or imagined slight to her husband, she was furious. “On hearing this I felt simply indignation,” she wrote her husband. “Indeed, he already messed things up in December. . . . He’s a greenhorn [Mal’chishka]! . . . With all my soul, I hope that these are only rumors.”282 As we now know, they were. Given the level of generals on the Southwest Front, Brusilov was by far the most logical choice.283 His promotion came in a terse-coded telegram, which arrived on April 2 from the new Minister of War General Shuvaev: “You are appointed Supreme Commander of the armies of the Southwest Front [but] remaining as Adjutant General-Gen. Shuvaev.”284 There followed many telegrams of congratulation from Duma members all the way to the Japanese representative to the General Staff Khasemoto.285 Brusilov was encouraged to rush necessary preparations as the tsar was to visit Kamenets-Podolsk in April286 for an inspection of the IX Army. Brusilov suggested that General Vladislav Klembovsky, his chief of staff, be elevated to commander of the VIII, but the tsar suggested General Aleksei Kaledin instead, and Brusilov chose not to buck him287 He later regretted his timidity.288 Brusilov quickly left for Berdichev, the headquarters of the Southwest Front, arriving on April 6, the day before the tsar’s appearance.289 Reaching Berdichev, Brusilov was met by Klembovsky, and he immediately asked when he could present himself to Ivanov. Klembovsky told him that he could do so at 8:00 p.m. that evening. Brusilov ordered that his railroad car be placed next to Ivanov’s and, at the appointed time, walked over. He found the old general in complete despair, unable to understand why he had been sacked. In a tearful conversation, Ivanov told his successor that he doubted whether the Russian army could launch an offensive in 1916.290 He gave Brusilov a general synopsis of conditions on the front he was to command.291 He then made the rounds visiting his subordinate officers, and he even, as was his wont, spent time in the trenches examining units, especially the 74th division of the III army, which had performed badly but was now reconstituted to his satisfaction.292 The next day at Kamenets-Podol’skoe, Brusilov met the tsar for what was the second time in his life. In an audience in his salon car, the tsar asked Brusilov what had been the problem between him and Ivanov, because apparently the aged Count Vladimir Fredericks, the minister of the court, who frequently confused instructions, had somehow informed him that they had had problems. Brusilov replied that there had been no difficulties. As for a spring offensive, he told the tsar that after a few months’ rest and preparatory work, the front would be in “excellent condition” to launch an attack by midMay and asked to be allowed to do so.293 Nicholas II asked him to repeat this statement at a council of war to be held on April 29.294 The tsar then reviewed some troops and stayed in the area for several days despite harassing enemy aircraft activity.295

124

Chapter 3

With Brusilov’s takeover, there was soon evidence of his energetic command. The reports from his front, although signed by the same Colonel Volkov, almost doubled in size. There was greater attention paid to sanitation, medical supplies, and food. For example, Russian army regulations required that soldiers be given at least one bath a month, but Brusilov discovered that there were some units that had not bathed in six months. These were the types of neglect that Brusilov attacked with vigor. Not only did food improve, Brusilov stressed the serving of hot food with greater regularity. On one inspection after he instituted his reforms, he found the soldiers now getting for lunch borscht, buckwheat kasha with pork fat, and meat servings that were “sufficiently weighty.” He also demanded a greater variety and better care in preserving and transporting of simple bread to the men, and he took greater concern in the distribution of sugar and tea, and even underwear.296 The next day after the tsar’s train had departed, Brusilov left at 2:00 p.m. for Mogilev, where Stavka was located, for a meeting of army commanders to plan the 1916 offensive. According to Maurice Marsengo, who does not seem to have been there at the time, Brusilov came to the war council “perfectly tooled and prepared and brimming with his usual enthusiasm and eagerness to do his duty.” His contributions to the council radiated “the flame of his enthusiasm and the confidence that he has in himself and the armies placed under his orders.”297 Brusilov had no way of knowing it, but his career, already distinguished, would reach new heights from his new position and earn him the reputation of being not only the most successful Russian general of the Great War but arguably the greatest general the Russian army ever produced. Brusilov was now truly becoming famous. Shortly after his installation, The Illustrated English Press requested pictures of him, because the British public was very interested in his activities.306 Presumably he must have sent some to them, but one of his first actions was to banish the newspaper correspondents that infested headquarters, telling them that no one in Petrograd would know what he was doing until he wanted them to know.298 In March 1916, as Brusilov was changing to his command of the Southwest Front, an attack by the armies of General A. E. Evert, commandant of the Western Front to the north of Brusilov, was to have a major effect on Brusilov’s actions that summer. Late February saw the commencement of the Battle of Verdun in the West, and the fierceness of the attack catalyzed the usual French cry for Russian diversionary action in the East. Playing their usual sacrificial role, the Russians launched a hastily organized attack between lakes Narocz and Vishnev. The choice of locales was certainly a shrewd one, because attacking between two lakes would mean that there could be no enfilading fire as the Russians advanced. A similar attack went forward between Postavy and Lake Drisviaty.299 The Russians unleashed probably their greatest artillery barrage to date, something like a thousand guns, and on March 16,

Between Metal and Men

125

Col. Hoffmann noted in his diary that “Such an expenditure of ammunition as we had not yet seen in the East.”300 The Germans had learned from POWs that the attack was coming, and the day before the troops advanced, March 18, Germans called out to the Russians, “We know you’re going to attack us tomorrow.”301 To make matters worse, the attack was to proceed over what was normally marshy ground, now frozen, but the day before the offensive began a thaw set it, forcing Russian soldiers to attack across either knee-deep muck or through wet weather lakes that were sometimes waist deep.302 The wounded often fell into the mud and water and suffocated. Then there followed a snap freeze, and some wounded Russians were frozen in the muck in which they had fallen and had to be chopped out the next day. Furthermore, the inability of delivering supplies across the sodden terrain, fog that hindered artillery ranging, and the thaw-freeze situation made the conditions catastrophic. Men had been sent to attack in impossible conditions, an offensive Col. Knox called “criminal folly.”303 The Russians had attacked with their usual bravery, Hoffmann recorded, adding, “with complete disregard for loss of life.”304 Although the Russians amazingly made some limited gains, it was on the whole one of the usual Eastern Front slaughters. The attack did give the Germans some sticky moments, and they had to transfer all their general reserves between the Baltic Sea and the Prypet marshes to help stop the attack,305 but the Russians were “beaten off everywhere with heavy losses,”306 and the Germans retook the few positions they had earlier lost to the Russians. The Russians sustained another hundred thousand casualties. A French observer reported to the French ministry of war that had weather been favorable and had the offensive been preceded by a proper bombardment, it would have resulted in a general German retreat.307 Its failure was also blamed on the usual problem of shell shortages, despite the fact that in some cases twelve shells had been fired on every square yard of front.308 What was best remembered by the Russian generals was not the impossible conditions under which the Russian army had been called to fight, but the fact that with a thousand pieces of artillery on their side, 300,000 Russians had failed to breakthrough 50,000 Germans.309 Moreover, the famous Lt. Col. Georg “Durchbruch” Bruchmüller, whose work with artillery is legendary, first used his feuerwalz, that is, his “creeping barrage,” coordinated by aerial photography.310 One soldier who fought in the attack wrote to a nurse, “This is not an attack but a slaughter. . . . To tell the truth, this attack has made me lose all desire to push forward.” This failure had, understandably, a crippling mental effect on the Russian leadership for the remainder of the war, Norman Stone believed,311 If with such odds in their favor, the Russians could not prove victorious against the Germans, they could not possibly win anytime. Evert certainly felt so, and this mind-set would later paralyze him into inaction. It mattered not that

126

Chapter 3

Russians were successful elsewhere. In Turkey, for example, the Russians took the Turkish fortress Ezerum in February and in a masterful land and amphibious operation in April, they occupied the Black Sea port of Trebizon. The Narocz defeat, nevertheless, would linger in the minds of the generals, especially Evert, and would do great damage later.

NOTES 1. LaGuiche to Cmdt. French armies, 6/19 April 1916, dossier 4, Fonds particulaires, 16N2953, Chateau Vincennes, Paris, France. 2. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 126. 3. Ibid., 119. 4. Ibid. 5. The best work on this campaign is Graydon A. Tunstall’s Blood on the Snow; The Carpathian Winter War of 1915 (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 2010). 6. Brusilov, SN, 144; 2014 Rus. Ed., 156. 7. A. M. Zionchkovsky, Mirovaia voina 1914–1918 gg. (Moscow, 1924), 32, cited in L. C. Heenan, Democracy’s Fatal Blunder: The Summer Offensive of 1917 (New York: Praeger, 1987), 4. 8. Yet not held so densely. General Aleksei Evert conducted a study that showed that five German divisions in France occupied the same among of front as one and a half division in Russia. Chapter IV, Operations, Rapport Langlois, June 12, 1916, 7N1547, Vincennes. 9. Heenan, 4. 10. Ibid., 2. 11. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London: Odhams, 1936), 1: 389–90. 12. Brusilov, SN, 147; 2014 Rus. Ed., 158. 13. Heenan, 6. 14. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 123. 15. Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory (New York: Penguin, 1962), 33. 16. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 100–101. 17. Max von Hoffmann, War Diaries and Other Papers (London: Martin Secker, 1929), 1: 60. 18. Ibid. The best work on the Gorlice-Tarnow offensive Richard L. DiNardo’s Breakthrough: The Gorlice-Tarnow Campaign, 1915 (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), which relies heavily on German and Austrian archives. 19. Sir Bernard Pares, Day by Day with the Russian Army (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915), 201–7. 20. DiNardo, 43. 21. Le Prince Koudacheff, 1/14 May 1915, folder: Telegrams, November 1914– September 1915, 7N1545, Vincennes. 22. Pares’ report, June 5, 1915, p. 9, WO106/1136, British National Archives.

Between Metal and Men

127

23. Capt. J. F. Neilson already had reported to London that only promise of German help held the Austrian army together. Capt. J. F. Neilson, “Notes and Impressions,” March 1915, WO106/1121. 24. DiNardo, 48–49. 25. “Golitsii proryv,” p. 2, Mikhail Arkhipov types memoir, Bakhmetev Archive, Columbia University, New York. 26. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 126 ff. For an overview of Brusilov’s activity in the Great Retreat, see Jamie H. Cockfield’s, “General Aleksei Brusilov and the Great Retreat, May–November 1915,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 26 (2013), 653–72. 27. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 121. 28. DiNardo, 48. 29. Standley Washburn, Victory in Defeat: The Agony of Warsaw and the Russian Retreat (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Page, 1916), 14–15. 30. Hermann von François, Der Karpathendurchbruch und die Befreiung von Galizien (Leipzig: Verlag von K. F. Koehler, 1922), 47; David Jones in his chapter, “The Imperial Army in World War I,” in Frederick W. Kagan and robin Higham, eds., The Military History of Tsarist Russia (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 235, states that it was more than twice that many. 31. Sir Bernard Pares, My Russian Memoirs (London: J. Cape, 1931), 335. 32. Sergeyev-Tsensky, 91. 33. Jones, “The Imperial Army,” 235. 34. Geoffrey Jukes, Carpathian Disaster: The Death of an Army (New York: Ballantine, 1971), 51. 35. Lambert, 32. One source has the Germans having 300 batteries on a five mile front to the Russian’s fifteen. Sophie Botcharsky and Florida Pier, They Knew How to Die (London: Davies, 1931), 42. 36. Revers en Galicie, p. 2, in Rapports Langlois, 20 June 1915, 7N1545, Vincennes. 37. DiNardo, 55–61. 38. Ibid., 63. 39. Florence Farmborough, With the Armies of the Tsar (New York: Stein and Day, 1975), 56–57. 40. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 102; Osterrich-Ungarns Letzter Krieg, 1914–1918 (Vienna: Verlag Militärwissenschaftlichen Mitterlungen, 1930), 2: 328 and Stone, The Eastern Front, 137. 41. Knox, With the Russian Army, 1914–1917, 1: 284. 42. Denikin, Career, 258. 43. DiNardo, 83. 44. Washburn, Victory, 18. 45. Ibid., 17. 46. DiNardo, 67. 47. Washburn, The Russian Campaign, 215. Washburn could only have gotten these figures from the Russians, which were most likely exaggerated, but none the less, they are significant.

128

Chapter 3

48. B to N, April 24, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 97, Bakhmetev Archive. 49. Ibid., 97–98. After this point, his letters to Nadia became, not surprisingly, markedly less frequent. 50. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 132. 51. Brusilov, SN, 140; 2014 Rus. Ed., 152–53. 52. Mikhail Arkhipov memoir, Arkhipov collection, chapt. 8, p. 2, Bakhmetev archive. 53. Brusilov, SN, 141–42; 2014 Russ. Ed., 154. 54. Tele. May 15, 1915, reel 11, p. 98, Shtab glavnokommandushchego armiiami iugo-zapadnogo fronta, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 145, RGVIA; see also pp. 102 ff. 55. Denikin, Turmoil, 25. 56. Washburn, Victory, 19–20. 57. DiNardo, 71. 58. Washburn, Victory, 19–20. 59. B to N, May 4, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 103, Bakhmetev Archive. 60. Brusilov and III Army, May 12, 1915, reel 1, p. 7, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 310, RGVIA. 61. Below, 42. 62. Brusilov to III Army, May 12, 1915, reel 1, p. 1, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 310, RGVIA. 63. Brusilov, SN, 138; 2014 Russ. Ed., 151. 64. Ibid. 65. B to N, May 4, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 104, Bakhmetev Archive. 66. Brusilov, SN, 147; 2014 Russ. Ed., 158. 67. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 102. Washburn states that only 3,300 of this corps survived, but it had saved the rest of the army. These losses might have been accurate for a corps of the III army but not one in the VIII. Moreover, Brusilov would hardly have shared this information with a journalist. 68. DiNardo, 77. 69. Martin Gilbert, The First World War (New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 167. 70. François, 120–21. 71. B to N, May 4, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 102, Bakhmetev Archive. 72. Ibid. 73. DiNardo, 77. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., 78. 76. Ibid., 80. 77. General’nyi Shtab Krasnoi Armii, Gorlitskaia operatsiia, cited in Robinson, 235. 78. Washburn, With the Russian Army, 102. 79. Ibid., 63–65; 102. 80. Tele. B to Ivanov, 13 May 1915, reel 1, p. 20–21, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 310, RGVIA. 81. B to Savich, 11 (or 14) May, 1915, 43, Ibid. 82. Lublin to Gen. (Name illegible), n. d., but probably May 13 or 14, 1915, Ibid., p. 17, d. 145, RGVIA. 83. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 63–65; 102.

Between Metal and Men

129

84. Tele. B to Ivanov, 13 May 1915, reel 1, p. 20–21, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 310, RGVIA. 85. B to Savich 11 (or 14?) May 1915, Ibid. 86. B to tsar, 14 May 1915, p. 43 (?), Ibid. 87. Lublin to Gen. (Name illegible, n. d., but probably May 13 or 14, 1915, Ibid., d. 145. 88. Denikin, Career, 239–40. 89. No title, 17 (?) May, 1915, reel 2, p. 161, f. 2067, lop. 1, d. 145, RGVIA. 90. B to Supreme Commander, 20 May 1915, reel 1, p. 96, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 310, RGVIA. 91. B to Gen. Savich, 20 May 1915, reel 2, p. 194, Ibid., d. 145. 92. B to Supreme Commander, 21 May/3 June 1915, reel 1, p. 105, Ibid. 93. Robinson, 239. 94. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 102. 95. Brusilov, SN, 149–50; 2014 Russ. Ed., 159–62; DiNardo, 82. 96. B to N, 28 May, 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 106, Bakhmetev, Archive. 97. B to Savich, 23 May 1916, reel 3, p. 292, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 145, RGVIA. 98. Savich to VIII Army, n. d., probably early June 1915, Ibid. 99. Denikin, Career, 253. 100. Ibid. 101. B to N, 28 May 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 107, Bakhmetev Archive. 102. Ibid., 29 May 1915, p. 108. Five days later, he lamented, “This is terrible not for me. . . . It is terrible for the tsar and Russia.” B to N, 2 June 1915, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, p. 423, GARF. 103. Brusilov, SN, 152–53; 2014 Russ. Ed., 162. 104. Pares, The Fall, 231. 105. Knox, 287; B, SN, 146; Rutherford, The Russian Army, 132. 106. Ibid. 107. B to units, 12 May 1915, reel 1, p. 2, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 310, RGVIA. 108. B to Ivanov, Ibid. 109. B to III Army, 13 May 1915, reel 1, p. 13, Ibid. 110. B to Ivanov, Ibid. 111. B to N, 29 May 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 108, Bakhmetev Archive. 112. DiNardo, 98–99. 113. B to N, 2 June 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 110, Bakhmetev, Archive. 114. Jukes, 54; Washburn, Russian Campaign, 292. 115. Lublin to Gen. (Name illegible), n. d. but probably May 13 or 14, 1915, f. 2067, op. 1, reel 1, p. 17, d. 145, RGVIA. 116. B to N, 11 June 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 112, Bakhmetev Archive. 117. Brusilov, SN, 146–147; 2014 Russ. Ed., 158–59. 118. B 162, d. 17, l. 88–89, RGVIA, cited in Sokolov, 57–58. 119. Danilov, La Russie, 431. 120. Knox, n. d., p., 4 July 1915, WO 106/1064, British National Museum. 121. Pares, Fall, 351. 122. Letter of Joffre attached to Telegram chiffre, 24 May 1915, in Nov 1914-Sept 1914 telegrams, 7N1545, Vincennes.

130

Chapter 3

123. Knox, n. p., 4 July 1915, WO 106/1064, British National Archives. 124. Ibid., 4 August 1915, WO 106/1067. 125. Extrait du Order du Commandant de la 7 Armée autricienne, 25 June 1915, f. 15, grand Quartier Général, 16N12N, Chateau Vincennes, Paris. 126. Knox report, 4 July 1915, WO 106/1064, British National Archives. 127. DiNardo, 99. 128. General Nikolai Golovin, The Russian Army in the World War (Stanford, CA: The Carnegie Foundation, 1931), 98; Herwig, 172. 129. B to N, 11 June 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 112, Bakhmetev Archive. 130. B to NB, 11 June 1915, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, p. 423. I read both Brusilov’s handwritten manuscripts and the ones that were typed. I must not have found this statement in the typed. 131. Washburn, The Russian Campaign, 293. 132. Wild, Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeuchnungen, 76, in Dinardo, 105. 133. Osterreich-Ungarns Letzter Krieg 1914–1918, 2: 602–05. 134. B to N, 13 June 1915, Corres. 10139, p. 113, Brusilov Papers. Bakhmetev Archive. 135. Ibid., 114. 136. Knox report, 4 July 1915, n. p., WO 106/1064, British National Archives. 137. Ibid. 138. Ibid. 139. Knox, 1: 342–48. 140. His force at this time consisted of the 12th corps, 21st corps, 8th corps, 17 corps, 28th corps, the 7th corps, and a cavalry corps. Dispatch B.2, 14 July 1915, WO 106/1065, British National Archives. 141. Knox, p. 4, 14 July 1915, WO 106/1065, British National Archives. 142. B to N, 6 July 1915, Corres. 10–139, p. 118, Bakhmetev Archives. 143. Gilbert, 176. 144. B to N, 28 July 1915, p. 120, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 145. Telegram 14 August 1915, reel 1, p. 1–2, f. 2003, op. 79, General-kvartirmeister stavki, RGVIA, Moscow. 146. Denikin, Career, 263–64; Brusilov, SB, 174. 147. Brusilov, SB, 174–75; 2014 Rus. Ed., 176–77. 148. Telegram, 15 August 915, reel 1, p. 5–8, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, RGVIA. 149. Brusilov, SN, 176–77; 2014 Rus. Ed., 178. 150. N to Alexnadra, 17/30 September 1915, N-S Correspondence, 91. 151. Sokolov, 58. 152. Alexis S. Trubetskoy, Imperial Legend (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2002), 96–97. 153. Hoffmann, 1: 85. 154. Ibid. 155. B to N, 30 August 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 124, Bakhmetev Archive. 156. Pares, Russian Memoirs, 332. Herwig places the losses at a lower 1,700,000. Herwig, 179. 157. Paléologue to MFA, 31 August 1915, in Le Gén. Maj. à Monsieur c inc, 5(?) September 1915, 7N1545, Etat-major de l’armée, Vincennes, Paris.

Between Metal and Men

131

158. It is impossible to know any exact numbers, but clearly the losses were staggering. See Golovin, The Russian Army, 106 ff; p. 121–22; W. Bruce Lincoln, Passage Through Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 146–47. 159. Pares, My Russian Memoirs, 335. 160. Bocharsky and Pier, 189. 161. Ibid., 60. 162. Andreev, 196–97. 163. Alexander S. Lukomsky, Memoirs of the Russian Revolution (London: Unwin, 1922), 22–23. 164. Herwig, 179. 165. E. G., Report on III Army, 20 May 1915, reel 3, p. 247, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 145, RGVIA. 166. Messner, Lutskii prorvy, 23. French figures, which could only have been based on what the Russians chose to tell them, are higher. Resumé de resign., 27 March 1916, Russie 17, 16N1211, Vincennes. Stanley Washburn places German losses in the Gorlice-Tarnow offensive at an unlikely one half to one million men. Washburn, At the Russian Front, 315. 167. Vosp. NB manuscrip, p. 245, copy of Red Star, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, GARF. 168. Telegram, 31 August 1915, p. 39, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, RGVIA. 169. Etat Matériel et moral des Armées russes, Rapports Langlois, 16 September 1915, 7N1547, Vincennes. 170. John L. H. Keep, “The Military Style of the Romanov Rulers,” War and Society, 1, no. 2 (September 1983), 67. 171. Brusilov, SN, 170–71; 2014 Russ. Ed., 173–74. 172. Vladimir Sukhomlinov, Vospominaniia Sukhomlinova (Moscow: Gosudar. Izdat., 1926), 238. 173. Robinson, 130–245. 174. Ibid., See Chaps. 24–26. 175. La Guiche to Ambassador and Min. War, 6/19 April 1916, p. 11, 7N757, Vincennes. 176. Trotsky, History, 1: 252. 177. KA, 47–48 (1931), 145. 178. Laguiche to Ambassador and Min. War, 6/19 April 1916, p. 12, 7N757, Vincennes; see also Nicholas II’s comments, which are praiseworthy. N-S Correspondence, editor’s comment, p. 41. 179. Vandevelde, 117. 180. Alexander Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs: Russia and History’s Turning Point (New York: Duel, Sloan and Pearce, 1965), 139. 181. Peter Kenez, “The Relations between the Volunteer Army and Georgia, 1918–1920,” Slavonic and East European Review, 48 (1970), 403. 182. Brusilov, SN, 171; 2014 Russ. Ed., 174–75. 183. Ibid., 170–17; Ibid., 174. 184. N-S Correspondence, 71; Fuhrmann, ed., CWC, 182. 185. B to N, 28 July 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 121, Bakhmetev Archive. 186. N-S Correspondence, 57; on the grand duke, see Cockfield, White Crow.

132

Chapter 3

187. Knox, n. p., 4 July 1915, WO 106/1064, British National Archives. Sukhomlinov’s reputation is currently undergoing a modest historical resurrection. See William C. Fuller, Jr.’s The Foe Within. 188. Maurice Verstraete papers, memoir ms., box 1, chap. 39, pages not numbered, The Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. 189. Brusilov, SN, 172–75; 2014 Russ. Ed., 176–77. 190. In the dispatches on the action on the Southwest Front, Brusilov’s army was always active, counter-attacking, maneuvering, retreating, only to advance the next day. See. F. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, reel 1, for late August-early September 1915, RGVIA. 191. Tel., 28 August 1915, reel 1, p. 34–36, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, RGVIA. 192. Brusilov, SN, 177. 193. The Times History, 9: 10. 194. Brusilov, SN, 178; 2014 Russ. Ed., 179–80. 195. Denikin, Career, xii. 196. Ibid., 264. 197. Brusilov, SN, 180. For an account of events without the personalities, see Telegram, 27 August, 1915, reel 1, p. 25, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, p. 25, RGVIA. 198. Ibid., 29–30. 199. B to Gen. Quartermaster, 31 August/13 September 1915, reel 1, p. 16, f. 2007, op. 1, d. 314, RGVIA. 200. “B na Kavkaze, in Otkliki, p. 49, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 201. Denikin, Career, 264–66. 202. Tel. 28 August 1915, reel 1, p. 26–28, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, RGVIA. 203. N-S Correspondence, 72; Fuhrmann, ed. CWC, 182. 204. N-S Correspondence, 79. 205. Brusilov, SN, 180; 2014 Rus. Ed., 181–82. 206. Ibid., 182; P. V. Cherkassov, ed., Moirovaia voina, 1914–1918, “Lutskii proryv” (Moscow: Vizschii voennii redaktsionii Soviet, 1924), 19. 207. Brusilov, SN, 182. 208. Ibid., 183; See also Tel. 11 September 1915, reel 1, p. 58, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, RGVIA. 209. Alekseev to Ivanov, 29 September 1915, reel 1, p. 41, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 151, RGVIA. 210. N-S Correspondence, 83. 211. Denikin, Career, 267. 212. Ibid., 269–70. 213. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 167. 214. Denikin, Career, 261. 215. Brian D. Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 77. 216. N-S Correspondence, 100. A note cites Pierre Gullard’s reference as well, p. 274–75. 217. Brusilov, SN, 133, 330. 218. Minute sheet, fighting in Galicia, June–July 1915, WO 106/1136, British National Archives.

Between Metal and Men

133

219. Stone, The Eastern Front, 144 ff. See his chapter “The Shell Shortage.” 220. Stubbs, 125. 221. Figes, 268. 222. N to B, October 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 139, RGVIA. 223. Aleksei (Alyosha) to B, 22, 22 December 1915, f. 5970, op. 3, d. 56, GARF. 224. N to B, 26 May 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 94–95, GARF. 225. This quote is cited in Figes, 268, f. 162, op. 1, d. 18, l. 4, RGVIA. I was not for some reason permitted to obtain this file. 226. N. V. Letters and Notes, f. 5972, op 1, d. 8, ll. 8–10, GARF. 227. Brusilov, SN, 139. See the appendix. 228. N-S. Correspondence, 83. 229. Baidak to N, 12 October 1915, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 98, l. 7, GARF. 230. N to B, 16 October 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 147, RGVIA. 231. N to B, 14 August 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 123, RGVIA. 232. B to N, 7 September 1915, Corres. 1–139, p. 128, Bakhmetev Archive. 233. Ibid., 22 September 1914, p. 135. 234. Ibid., 30 August 1915, p. 126. 235. Associated press report, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 74, l. 31, GARF. 236. N to B, 24 April, 1915, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 39, GARF. 237. N to B, 6 November 1915, 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 154. 238. N to B, 6 March 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 27, GARF. 239. N to B, 27 July 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 113, RGVIA. 240. Ibid., 5 September, 1915, l. 128. 241. Ibid., 18 November 1915, l. 160. 242. Ibid., 8/21 August 1915, l. 120. 243. Ibid., 27 July 1915, l. 113. 244. N to B, 18 August 1916, f. 5962, op. 3, d. 60, l. 78, GARF. 245. Ibid., 25 February 1916, ll. 23–24. 246. Ibid., 21 June 1916, d. 69, l. 454. 247. N to B, 15 September 1915, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 133, RGVIA. 248. Ibid., 10 October 1915, l. 141. 249. Ibid. 250. Ibid., 23 November 1915, l. 163. 251. Ibid., 8 June 1915, ll. 98–99. 252. Ibid. 253. Ibid., 27 July/9 August 1915, l. 114. 254. Ibid. 255. N to B, 20 February 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 16, l. 19(190), RGVIA. 256. Brusilov, SN, 190–91; 2014 Rus. Ed., 189. 257. N to B, date unclear, f. 162, op. 1, d. 15, l. 151, RGVIA. 258. N to B, 8 January 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 16. 259. Vosp. of N. V. B., p. 53, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, GARF. 260. Ibid., April 30 (?), 1916, ll. 215/44, RGVIA. 261. N to B, 26 April 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 40, GARF. 262. Ibid., 28 January 1916, l. 10, GARF.

134

Chapter 3

263. “Brusilov and Kornilov,” 44. 264. N to B, 22 February 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 22, GARF. 265. B to N, 11 February, Corres. 140–280, p. 79, Bakhmetev Archive. 266. Ibid., January or February 1916, p. 178. 267. Ibid., 24 February 1916, p. 184. 268. Ibid., 2 March 1916, p. 185. 269. Ibid., 185. 270. N to B, 28 January 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, p. 10, GARF. 271. B to N, 24 February 1916, Corres. 140–280, p. 182, Bakhmetev Archive. 272. Copie d’un télégram chiffre, 16 March 1916, dos. 2, Grand Quartier Général, 16N2954, Vincennes. 273. Jozsef Galantai, Hungary in the First World War (Budapest: Adademiai Kudo, 1989), 180, quotes the diary, Item 84, 1915. 274. Ibid. 275. Churchill, 361. 276. Brusilov, SN, 193–94; 2014 Rus. Ed., 191. 277. Ibid. 278. Ibid., 202–3; 2014 Rus. Ed., 197–98. 279. Conditions d’une offensive austro-allemande, 22 January 1916, p. 2, dos. 3, no. 5, 16N2954, Vincennes. 280. Note du Grand-Etat-Major Russe au sujet des operations en Galicie, 14/27 December–26 December/8 January 1916, pp. 5–6, 7N757, Vincennes. 281. Ibid., 7. 282. “Brusilov and Korniloff,” 44. 283. B to N, 11 February 1916, Corres. 140–280, p. 180–81, Bakhmetev Archive. 284. “A Certain Mr. Brusilov,” 38. 285. General Nikolai N. Golovin, “The Great Battle of Galicia (1914),” Slavonic and East European Review, 5 (June 1926), 574. 286. Tunstall, esp. the “Introduction.” 287. B to N, 11 February 1916, Corres. 140–280, p. 180, Bakhmetev Archive. 288. Armaments des Forces russes, 25 January 1916, dos. 4, 16N2953, Vincennes. 289. B to N, 11 February 1916, Corres. 140–280, p. 170–80, Bakhmetev Archive. 290. Ibid., 24 February 1916, p. 184. 291. Farmborough, 173. 292. Brusilov, SN, 200. 293. A. A. Polivanov, Iz dnivnikov i vospominanii po dolzhnoisti voennogo ministva i ego pomoshchnika, 1907–1916 (Moscow: Vysshii voennii redaktsionnyi sovet, 1924), 150, 155, 189 ff. 294. N-S Correspondence, 297, March 12, 1916. 295. Ibid., 155. 296. Knox report, 3 April 1916, WO 106/1074, n. p., British National Archives. 297. Sergeyev-Tsensky, 19. 298. Knox report, 3 Apriil 1916, WO 106/1074, British National Archives. 299. Trotsky, 1: 79. 300. Général Maurice Marsengo, Heros sans Gloire. Trans. Fernand Hayward (Paris: Plon, 1935), 88.

Between Metal and Men

135

301. Stone, The Eastern Front, 233. 302. Laguiche to Am. to MW, 6–19 April 1916, p. 17, 7N757, Vincennes. 303. N to B, 7 March 1916, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 60, l. 29, GARF. 304. For an overview of the competence of many of the generals on the Southwest front, see LaGuiche’s memo to the Ambassador and Min. of Foreign Affairs, 6/19 April 1916, p. 18, 7N757, Vincennes. 305. Ibid., 17. Curiously I do not recall one single reference in Laguiche’s reports to this point that make any reference to Brusilov. 306. Shuvaev to B, 19 March 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 98, l. 5, GARF; for a copy, see Kopiia telegram, f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, RGVIA. 307. Telegrams, March–April 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 43 ff, RGVIA. 308. Some question of dates and calendars. Another source says 25 March/7 April. See, Brusilov, “Proryv,” (art), p. 67. This is obviously incorrect. 309. Brusilov, SN, 205; 2014 Rus. Ed., 200–201. 310. Brusilov, SN, 205. 311. Brusilov, Moi Vospominaniia (2014 Russ. ed., 201.)

Chapter 4

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

The reader has observed how Brusilov’s handling of his army during the Great Retreat made him a well-known figure both in and outside of Russia. The press, both foreign and domestic, mentioned him often, with reporters even commenting on characteristics like his weight, or lack of it. Many Russian generals his age had become rather portly, but Brusilov remained “compact and astonishingly light,” wrote one reporter.1 M. Breshko-Breshkovsky, correspondent of the Petrograd Bourse-Gazette, told his readers that Brusilov’s “erect, lean figure looks as if it were sculptured out of bronze.”2 He seems to have kept his trimness by not overeating, snacking only on fruit and nuts from Nadia, and taking his long walks daily when the military situation permitted. Brusilov also saw that his men maintained a healthful regimen. An army report described the food as “very good.” For lunch there was rice soup and buckwheat kasha with butter. There were substantial portions of meat at the dinner meal.3 As always, he saw to it whenever possible that they took hot baths. As a result, disease outbreaks among his men were rare.4 He habitually continued his men’s basic training at the front, and the raw recruits soon made “good fighting men.”5 He also received more and better equipment as the Russian industrial machinery refined the quality of its output, and in the spring, he described his force’s ammunition as being “in abundance.”6 Moreover, his men were all in all in “excellent spirits,” and he felt at one with them. “My army knows me and I know it and I am certain the divisions in the trenches will now fight like tigers,” he wrote his wife, adding, “I would occupy myself anywhere, but I am best of all commanding my dear, dear army, which I love and which loves me.”7 Brusilov’s reference to his troops’ love for him is not a fabrication. Even the English nurse Florence Farmborough, who spent many months on the Eastern Front, wrote in her diary that being transferred to Brusilov’ command “has done much to boost our morale.” “His soldiers 137

138

Chapter 4

will be all afire to advance—we will be with them; we, too, will advance!”8 Sir Alfred Knox, who does not seem to be as enthusiastic about Brusilov as others, did praise his skill, especially as a cavalry man.9 The end of 1915 witnessed one more brief Russian offensive that was in no way a success. It was a hastily contrived affair resulting from the collapse of Serbia. On October 11, 1915, Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, and shortly afterward, a combined effort of Austria, Germany, and Bulgaria overran the outnumbered Serbs. There was not much time for preparation, but on December 23, Brusilov’s VIII Army in conjunction with Lechitsky’s IX and Sakharov’s XI attacked the Südarmee and the Austrian 7th in an effort to relieve the beleaguered Serbs.10 Lack of extensive preparation, together with Austrian air reconnaissance’s provision of advance warning, produced only modest gains and little relief to Serbia.11 Winter weather was also a factor in inadequate placement of troops and artillery. Brusilov took several villages but not much more. There was desultory fighting, but most of it sputtered out early in January. In general, except for General Lechitsky’s failed attack in January and the disastrous Lake Narocz offensive in March, the entire Eastern Front fell silent until the spring. There were only 100 to 150 casualties a day on the entire front from the Baltic to Romania. The breathing space for the Russians proved valuable for the restoration of the Russian armies, of which the Germans remained ignorant.12 Commanding the Southwest Front was General Ivanov. Trotsky, who rarely had anything positive to say about anything from the tsarist era, disparaged Ivanov as “a flabby, old man, meagerly grasping the political situation, possessing neither strength, nor energy, nor will.”13 His personal staff consisted of six men, all of whom were princes, “one rheumatic, one asthmatic,” wrote Alfred Knox. Yet, there was much more to Ivanov than Trotsky, Knox, and Denikin believed. When at headquarters at Berdichev, Ivanov’s staff slept in a railroad car while he slept in town in a barracks on a broken down camp bed in a Spartan room with no window treatments. He began work every day at 6:00 a.m., rested from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., and then worked until he went to bed at 10:30 p.m. He dined alone on a special diet. The men who served him held him in high regard, but he was beginning to show the strain of a year-and-a-half of war. The tsar replaced “Old Ivanov,” as he called him, trying to placate him by kicking him upstairs as a military advisor at Stavka. The tsar likewise appointed him to the State Council, the upper house of the tsarist legislature, to further soothe his feelings,14 and had Alekseev draft the ukaz appointing him.15 He had little to do but sit around Mogilev until he was summoned to play an unsuccessful role in tsarism’s attempt to quell the February Revolution. Ivanov did not, however, go quietly and tried to blame Brusilov for the 1915 disaster, which was ridiculous, but Denikin remembered that Stavka

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

139

supported Brusilov, and that support made it final.16 The English press immediately approached Brusilov for a file photograph “of the leader of the gallant Russian army under your command.”17 His fame was continuing to grow. Brusilov arrived at Berdichev at 6:00 p.m. on April 7, what Stanley Washburn called “a small Jewish town,” in mid-April to take command with only a safe-conduct pass issued to an “A. A. Brusilov,” with neither titles nor authority listed. The New York Times reported that he “apparently [seemed] of little importance as far as his bearing went.” He wore a cavalry officer’s uniform “of indefinite grade” and people regarded him as an object of suspicion until his staff arrived a fortnight later. He had a large office, in which he sat at a desk that overlooked vast wheat fields.18 At the staff dinner that evening, Brusilov sat across the table from Ivanov, and the meal passed in silence. One observer noted that Ivanov himself was “persistently [?] silent.”19 Probably because of the constant intrusions of American journalist Stanley Washburn during the 1915 campaigns, one of Brusilov’s first acts was to send home all of the newspaper correspondents. He then directed them to tell no one in Petrograd what A. A. Brusilov was doing until he had done it,20 a jab at journalists’ penchant for inventing news. As the battles of the winter were in progress, the Allied representatives met at French headquarters at Chantilly, France, in December 1915 to plan their 1916 offensives. Representing Russia was the chief of the Russian military mission in France, General Ia. G. Zhilinsky, who had coordinated the illfated East Prussian invasion of August 1914. Joffre chaired the meeting at which Zhilinsky, fearing a repeat of 1915, stressed that if the Central Powers attacked before the Allies were already, then all Allies should attack on their respective fronts whether they were prepared or not. Given no enemy interference, they would all advance more or less simultaneously to prevent the transfer of enemy troops from one front to another.21 The Russians and the Italians were to attack on June 15 to draw troops to the east, with the British and the French attacking in the West two weeks later.22 As for the Russian front, Alekseev suggested a joint offensive on Budapest, with the Russians attacking in Galicia and the British and the French advancing north from Salonika.23 Since the Lake Narocz plan had failed so miserably, the tsar thought that they should devise an exotic new plan and summoned the three front commanders to his headquarters to concoct a new scheme. He also believed that such a meeting would enable him to see Brusilov “before his new movement.”24 The result was a Council of War at his headquarters scheduled for April 14. At the time he wrote this letter to Alexandra (March 28), he must not have planned to be on the Southwest Front, but mid-April found him with Brusilov at the Galician city of Kamenets-Podolsk, shortly before the April 14 meeting. He left the Galician front for Stavka only

140

Chapter 4

two hours before Brusilov and his chief of staff Klembovsky did, both arriving at Mogilev on the appointed morning.25 The emperor officially presided over the meeting, but as was typical, he said little, usually sitting there in silence, chain-smoking cigarettes. Present were the front commanders: Brusilov, Evert, and Kuropatkin, Shuvaev the minister of war, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, the inspector general of artillery, and Alekseev. There were assorted staff members as well of each of the generals. Of course, the impotent Ivanov was there as well.26 Alekseev announced that the main blow would be in the direction of Vilna from Kuropotkin’s Northern and Evert’s Western fronts, optimistically adding, “and on to Berlin.” It was a majority consensus that the only way to win was to defeat Germany, a position Polivanov had taken at a luncheon with the French ambassador Maurice Paléologue.27 Even if he was to receive, therefore, the lion’s share of the reserves and the artillery, so much so that he outnumbered the Germans he was facing by two-and-a-half times, Evert was to attack on a twenty-five mile front to the north and south of the village of Krevo in the vicinity of Molodechno.28 As for Brusilov’s Southwest Front, Ivanov had denigrated the fighting abilities of the Southwest Front so severely that Alekseev had excluded it from his plans. It was to remain passive, given the limited number of shells and reserves that the army had, and it was to attack only if the offensive on the two fronts to the north were successful.29 The general attack could not take place before the end of May because of climatic conditions of the rasputitsa, the muddy period after the snows melted.30 The only role possibly played by the Southwest Front was an attack of the VIII Army toward Lutsk.31 At this point of the planning, both Evert and Kuropotkin injected a strong dose of pessimism. The latter opined that there could be no rupture of the line on the Northern Front and indeed there would be huge losses with little gain, given the inadequacy of heavy artillery. Evert agreed with him. With the Lake Narocz disaster still fresh on his mind, Evert suggested that they should remain only on the defensive.32 At this point, Brusilov interrupted. He had been readying his own VIII Army for months for whatever offensive occurred in the summer of 1916, and he was obviously annoyed, and probably puzzled as well, that now as a front commander he would not be an active player, since he did not discover Ivanov’s criticisms of him until December 1916. In his usual polite way, Brusilov stated to the Council that he did not know about the conditions on the other fronts and would therefore not comment on them, “but as far as my own front, I am persuaded that it not only can but should take the offensive. . . . Under the circumstances, I see no reason why I should sit still and watch my fellow soldiers do the fighting.” An attack of his own forces would draw enemy forces away from Evert’s Western Front and weaken the enemy there. Brusilov then outlined his plan to attack on

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

141

his entire front. Although the VIII Army would be the most aggressive and receive the lion’s share of whatever reserves that were available, he would attack along the entire front of 250 miles to keep the Austrians guessing where they should send their reserves. Each Russian commander of the four Southwest Front armies would be expected to exploit any rupture of the line.33 Still at first, he believed and accepted that his front’s place would merely be a diversion for troops from before the Western and Northern Fronts, making the main attacks there easier. General Denikin, who was not there but who read the minutes of the meeting later when he was chief of staff to the Supreme Command, wrote in his memoirs that Alekseev entered the discussion at this point and supported Brusilov’s position. They changed their tune somewhat. Alekseev then agreed to allow Brusilov to attack with his broad-front tactics but told him that he could expect no additional reserves or artillery.34 Brusilov later learned that Ivanov had gone to the tsar after the meeting and “with tears in his eyes” begged the emperor to stop the offensive on his old front. The tsar refused. Evidently Ivanov was still smarting about his removal.35 Although his explanations contained a lot of “ifs,” Brusilov was truly very optimistic about Russia’s chances for a successful 1916 campaign and in general for winning the war. He wrote his wife in February 1916 that if they can stand firm and not be “shaken up,” Russia can win the war, especially since the enemy was “badly clothed, badly fed,” and the people [non-military] only “pray for peace.” He did admit that “we are becoming tired,” but he felt that there was no one who would want peace “while we are not beating the enemy.”36 Golovin, who was the first major postwar historian of the Russian army, attributed Brusilov’s optimism to the fact that he had been successful in 1914 and had conducted a skillful retreat in 1915, when Evert and other generals to the north had not done as well.37 In general, the officers in the room expressed little optimism for Brusilov’s plan. Nicholas II seemed a little exasperated but as usual said nothing and starring out the hermetically sealed window which curiously framed a sentry’s bayonet.38 As for Evert and Kuropatkin, they remained unenthusiastic, if not outright hostile. Denikin remembered that they had “clearly lost spirit and lacked confidence.” Displaying no boldness would infect their own troops with pessimism, and Brusilov could not understand why Stavka did not replace these two men with leaders who favored the offensive.39 When the group broke for dinner, one of the older generals (Brusilov does not say which one) pulled Brusilov aside and told him, “You have only just been appointed front commander, and you are lucky enough not to be one of those picked out to take the offensive.” He cautioned him that to do so would risk his military reputation, which was now “quite high.” He warned that he would “lose that military halo, which you have at the present time.”

142

Chapter 4

Then the general added, “If I were in your place, I would avoid any offensive operations.” Brusilov replied something that he had said to Nadia time and again, that is, that he did not seek anything for himself but that “I consider it my duty to act for the good of Russia.” The general left Brusilov on that note, looking over his shoulder at him with great sympathy as he walked away.40 Ever ready to fish in troubled waters, the empress, who had her doubts as well, did not hesitate to express them to her husband. For some reason she questioned Brusilov’s ability. After the meeting, she wrote her husband, “How was Brusilov [her italics]? Did he speak out his opinions and did they seem good [?].” Then she added, “I do wonder whether he is capable to fill such a responsible place.”41 Winston Churchill, from a different vantage point wrote that Brusilov would “certainly go down in history as an officer of exceptional energy and comprehension.”42 This instance was of course not the only time Alexandra’s judgment would prove faulty. The armies under Brusilov’s command on the Southwest Front were 585 battalions and 404 squadrons, which Knox described, at first, to be “fully armed.” He told London that the Russian weakness was, as always, heavy guns. Smaller calibers were more plentiful but hardly abundant. Knox later reported that the Russians were short 84,973 rifles. Five divisions on this front were armed with 125,000 captured Austrian rifles. There was only 108 six-inch guns (one for every three miles), but the three-inch guns did have a full complement of shells.43 The front that Brusilov commanded had the same four armies that Ivanov had led. The VIII Army was now commanded by General Aleksei Kaledin since Brusilov’s promotion; the XI Army was under General Nikolai Sakharov; the VII Army under General Dmitri Shcherbachev; and the IX Army under “the coarse Siberian” Platon Lechitsky, aged sixty. To the VIII Army’s right linked with Evert’s Western Front, whose most left-wing was the III Army of General L. V (P). Lesh.44 Strengths seem to have varied depending on what days they were counted, since even on Brusilov’s front, desertions were a problem, and by mid-summer, there were an estimated 70,000 AWOLs from his four armies. Some sources state that full trainloads of replacements coming from stations in the rear would arrive at the front half empty.45 This attrition seems a bit high for this time. In April, General LaGuiche reported to Paris that the “general mentality of the [Russian] troops is excellent.” He had already sensed “for a long time” that the troops wanted to return to the offensive. The American military attaché had told him that in the Russian army “there was a spirit that he had not seen before.” Even the Emperor Nicholas’s personal Cossack guard “deserted him” to return to the front and to be part of any offensive of 1916.46 Of these generals on Brusilov’s front, Knox felt that three of the four were “remarkable men.” He does not state which was not remarkable, but it was

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

143

probably Kaledin, who had replaced Brusilov with the VIII Army. He was not, Knox tells us, of the beau sabreur (dashing cavalry) type, but shortsighted, shy, silent, and married to a Frenchwoman. He somewhat dismissed Sakharov as being “less well spoken of,” adding that he had a puffy face as though he had been stung by hornets. Shcherbachev, at 59, was a “tall, thin soldierly type” and had commanded the Military Academy in peacetime. Lechitsky, he said, was “a man of self-education but of strong will [and] good common sense.” Illness had sidelined both Kaledin and Lechitsky in the spring but were back at the front by late April. Brusilov’s front also contained a division of Serbian volunteers, combed from Austrian POWs. Coming out of Odessa, they were probably with Lechitsky’s IX army.47 Facing him were essentially five Austrian armies. Opposite the Russian VIII Army was the Austrian 4th Army under Archduke Joseph Ferdinand and part of the 1st Army under Paul Puhallo von Brlog. The Russian XI Army faced the Austrian 2nd Army under Eduard Freiherr Böhm-Ermolli and part of the hybrid Südarmee (part Austrian and part German), commanded by the Bavarian general Count Felix von Bothmer. General Shcherbachev’s VII Army faced mainly the Südarmee, with a small part of Karl von PflanzerBaltin’s 7th army at his extreme left flank. Leshchitsky’s IX Army wholly faced Pflanzer-Baltin’s 7th army. Both Leshchitsky and Pflanzer-Baltin’s southern flanks were on the Romanian border. The terrain facing Brusilov’s armies was not the most desirable for taking the offensive. Opposite the VIII, for example, there were a number of rivers that formed swampy areas. This condition made it difficult to use cavalry. Only on crossing the Stokhod River, which generally paralleled the front, was there some open land, where cavalry could be used. Opposite the XI and VII Armies, the land was more varied. Any army advancing would have to cross the Zlota Lipa and Gnila Lipa Rivers, which did not produce swamps. Around the Styr, though, which had to be crossed first, there was boggy terrain. The ground facing the IX Army was probably that over which it was most difficult to advance. The terrain was forested and the Dnestr River meandered more or less parallel to the front. It was a hundred or more meters wide at points and at least two to three meters deep.48 It would prove quite a nuisance for both the IX and the VII Armies. On Brusilov’s personal staff were Vladimir Napoleonovich Klembovsky, his outstanding chief of staff, and Nicholas Dukhonin, his quartermaster general and most trusted subordinate. Klembovsky was a Pole, who had abandoned Catholicism and become a Lutheran because, since the 1830 Polish Revolt, Catholics were barred from serving on an army’s general staff. Dukhonin was a thirty-nine year old rosy-cheeked general, who had acquired the job when General Mikhail Dieteriks was sent to France with the Russian Expeditionary Force.49 Both were hardworking and brimming

144

Chapter 4

with self-confidence. Klembovsky, like Brusilov, later served the Soviets. A year-and-a-half later, Dukhonin would become the commander-in-chief of the entire Russian army shortly before the Bolsheviks seized power. After the Bolshevik Revolution, he refused the Bolshevik order to negotiate a truce with the Germans, so they removed him from his position. As the new Soviet commander approached Stavka to assume command, a mob of soldiers and sailors dragged Dukhonin from his railroad carriage and beat him to death.50 Brusilov’s plan was to attack along a 250-mile front, rather than on a narrow sector of only ten or twenty miles, usual on both Eastern and Western Fronts, was a bold one. He planned to throw in whatever reserves he had when a certain place ruptured on the long front. Many said at the time that “he is like a man tapping on a wall to find out what part of it is solid stone and what is only lathe and plaster.”51 He had made the point at the Council of War that he might not succeed. Since he would be attacking at a number of points, however, success might come where it was least expected. He told his subordinate generals to be ready to move by May 23, and after phoning in their readiness, they should be absolutely prepared to move in one week.52 Brusilov hoped to make his greatest gains on the VIII Army front, driving for Lutsk and then L’vov. The other sector about which he was most optimistic was facing Lechitsky’s IX Army in Bukovina in the very south designed to induce Romania to enter the war.53 Each of his armies would make an attack of no less than thirty kilometers at points of their choosing. The scheme was touchy to say the least. Brusilov had only a manpower advantage over the Austrians of about 130,000. Moreover, the artillery bombardment would be relatively brief before the scouts entered no-man’s to assess the damage before infantry would be ordered to advance. Alekseev repeatedly begged Brusilov to attack on a narrow front of twenty kilometers with heavy artillery preparation, but he would not hear of it.54 The Austrians were supremely overconfident. Despite the obvious Russian buildup, they remained unconcerned.55 Their lines were well-constructed, sometimes as much as ten feet deep, with four rows of trenches connected by deep perpendicular communication links,56 Conrad confidently told a Swedish journalist, “We have held out for two years, and those two years are the worst. Now we can hold out in a cheerful and confident frame of mind. . . . We are not to be conquered again.”57 In fact the Austrians were so sure that they would not be dislodged that they planted gardens just behind their trenches. They even constructed beer gardens and sausage factories. Advancing Russians were surprised to find large quantities of women’s lingerie there, indicating that the officers “did not spend their lonely nights reading.”58 Their cocksureness would prove a serious mistake. Brusilov assembled his generals on April 18 at Podvolochinsk, the most centrally located place for all of them, to discuss the summer offensive.

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

145

General Konstantin Krymov attended for General Lechitsky, who was ill. Brusilov wanted to give his generals a chance to consort with one another, but this meeting was no council of war. He did not want advice, he informed his generals. The meeting was to give them orders. When Shcherbachev expressed some misgivings about success of such a plan, stating that an offensive at this time was “very risky and undesirable,”59 Brusilov repeated sternly that he had not summoned them for their opinions but to give them their orders for the summer offensive.60 “I warned them,” he later wrote, “that I would tolerate no hesitation or half-measures of any sort.”61 Preparations would begin immediately after the winter thaw had dried.62 Then, he outlined his campaign of multiple attacks as described above. His order of the day for April 19 spelled this strategy out: “The attack must be carried on the entire front, depending on strength, on a wide front to tie up the enemy, not giving him the possibility to transfer his reserves.”63 He made it certain, nevertheless, that his sole objective was to draw reserves away from Evert’s front and/or prevent the transfer of reserves from his front to Evert’s. To underscore this role, he informed them that Evert had been given most of the reserves that were available.64 Yet, Brusilov’s preparations were those for an offensive that was much more than a tying down operation or a demonstration, which makes one wonder whether he really had a greater role in mind than the one he outlined. As always with him, it was precisely planned with a set of objectives for each army. In the days of preparation, Brusilov was in touch constantly with his four army commanders, micromanaging as was his wont the readiness, the distribution of supplies and shells, and the organization of the units.65 Although each of Brusilov’s four armies were to go on the attack, the main thrust was always to be by the four corps of the VIII army, with which he placed much of his heavy artillery, and presumably most of his reserves. They were to make a concerted drive toward Lutsk and Vladimir-Volynsk and ultimately the rail junction of Kovel, roughly sixty miles from his jumpoff position. Kaledin, seeing that he was in for the heaviest fighting, expressed doubts, but Brusilov replied that he would be the concentrated attack, because he himself had already prepared the VIII for any summer offensive action before he was elevated to overall command. As early as late February, he wrote his wife that his preparation of his men left them “well trained, warmly dressed, [and] superbly fed.” He noted the deficiency of heavy artillery but that there was “an abundance” of shells and cartridges.” He summed it up by writing, “In a word, it’s good.”66 Kaledin, nevertheless, became so unnerved before the attack that Brusilov had to go to Rovno to reassure him.67 Brusilov also augmented the VIII with the 46th corps, the 12th cavalry division, and twenty-four additional pieces of heavy artillery, probably to

146

Chapter 4

reassure Kaledin as much as anything. The 8th, 32nd, and 39th corps of the VIII would drive toward Lutsk and then toward Brest-Litovsk. The 4th corps would drive for Kovel from the northern wing of the VIII, creating a pincer movement trapping the enemy there and forcing it to retreat.68 Its main objective was to be the Kovel rail junction on the north-south rail line paralleling the front, for to take that city would prevent the Germans from reinforcing the Austrians to the south if they buckled. If the VIII faltered, he would shift the major focus of the offensive south to Sakharov’s XI Army and so on down the line.69 Brusilov knew that Sakharov’s XI Army was by far the weakest of all of his armies, and it had only a corps to use in the offensive. In his own words, “[it] was not strong enough to undertake operations on a large scale.”70 On Sakharov’s left flank was Shcherbachev’s much stronger VII Army consisting of seven infantry and two cavalry divisions.71 Brusilov likewise made some small troop adjustments with the XI and VII Armies, which were to drive west of Tarnopol and Buczacz, with L’vov’s being the ultimate objective. The extreme left-flank IX army under General Platon Lechitsky consisting of two corps would drive into Bukovina toward the Carpathians. Lechitsky was a stern disciplinarian with a fiery temper. He had “sprung from the people,” Knox reported to London and had “forced his way up by hard work and force of character.” He had been appointed commander of the IX Army during mobilization and was the only general that late in the war who commanded the army with which he had originally been placed.72 His army faced a front of about sixty miles with ten infantry and four cavalry divisions. Half of his artillery were 6″ guns brought in from the fortress of Ochakov on the Black Sea.73 One of the reasons for its success was the fact that Austrian railroad connections opposing him were poorly developed,74 Thus the supplying of the Austrian army was difficult, putting it on par with the Russians’ poorly developed system. A second reason was the crack 32nd division and the leadership of Lukomsky. Realizing that he had tough terrain in which to fight, he reconnoitered the area and built roads and trench works. Like his boss Brusilov, he was in the trenches every day, supervising the work, despite the fact that his men were under heavy artillery and machine gun fire. When asked what his plans were if there would be a breakthrough, he replied, “I can’t think beyond that. If God gives us success, I’ll think about it then.”75 By the end of May, he was fully prepared to attack.76 Each commander was to choose his striking points, but Brusilov ordered them not to concentrate anything at the point of attack until the last possible minute so as not to reveal the principal objective to the enemy.77 Telephone lines between Brusilov and the infantry and artillery were to be maintained, as well as with each other, and he ordered each to prepare his front by sapping

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

147

forward to within 200–300 paces of the enemy trenches.78 As soon as the flooding after the thaw was absorbed, they were to begin preparing their fronts for the attack,79 and all commanders were to complete their preparations by May 11.80 Brusilov would orchestrate it all from Berdichev, which was some considerable distance from the farthest parts of the front.81 As usual, however, he micromanaged his armies with his usual effectiveness, even to the point of telling his commanders what villages to take.82 After the offensive, when Brusilov was telling Knox that his success was the result of his strategic plan, Knox refuted that, remembering, “In the armies, however, opinion was very definite that the success was due entirely to the careful local preparations, and that the staff of the front had little hand in it.”83 Knox’s statement is somewhat contradictory, but it is clearly not intended to give any praise to Brusilov. There was indeed some other criticism of Brusilov’s plan, most of it after the fact. Danilov in his La Russie dans la guerre mondiale wrote that “his weakness was that he had in reserve only three divisions of infantry,” adding that there “was no time to garner any reserves from north of the Pripet.”84 The reader, however, will remember that Brusilov was told from the beginning that there would be no additional reserves, so the initial lack of them was not his fault. Golovin was likewise critical after the war. Ignoring the fact that the attack would be all along the front, he criticized Brusilov for attacking on the fronts of the IX and VIII armies, which he said, incorrectly, were not strategic points. It was hardly the case that the Evert’s left flank was not important, and to advance anywhere was to be an advantage, especially if he might roll up the enemy line, as Lechitsky was able to do. He also calls L’vov “of the greatest strategical importance,”85 which it clearly was not at the beginning of the offensive. Kovel was, and he incorrectly criticized Brusilov for using the XI Army, his weakest, to drive for it. He somehow believed, with a giant leap of the imagination, that a “concentric attack on L’vov would have crushed the Austrians before German help could arrive,”86 which might well have occurred. German reinforcements, however, turned out to come more quickly than he anticipated. The plan for the all-important VIII Army was a bit more complex. The 32nd, 8th, and 39th corps were to drive toward Lutsk, and then having taken the city, they were to change directions and push northwest toward Kovel, the aforementioned important railroad junction, and having cut the enemy’s north-south rail connection, they would drive on toward Brest-Litovsk, an obscure city that would shortly become quite famous. Meanwhile, the 24th corps in the north was to also drive toward Kovel, creating a pincer movement which would encircle the enemy or to force it to the northwest, opening a breach in the line. 87 One of the most serious flaws in the plan remained in Kaledin’s leadership. He did not express any enthusiasm for the scheme at Brusilov’s council

148

Chapter 4

meeting with his generals, and we have seen that in the weeks of preparation, Kaledin nearly had some sort of a breakdown requiring Brusilov to go to Rovno to bolster his confidence.88 In his memoirs, Brusilov regretted not having removed Kaledin. “I plead guilty to another mistake,” he wrote, stating that he should never have accepted Kaledin, when he had shown such faintheartedness. He also regretted not removing his commander of the cavalry Ia. F. Gillenschmidt. Their removal, he felt, would have made a difference. “It is very likely that with these changes of personnel, Kovel would have been taken at one stroke,” he later wrote, but added, “But is it no use crying over spilt milk [ne teper’ raskaianie bespolezno].”89 One must remember that the original purpose of Brusilov’s offensive was only to detract Germans from in Evert’s front. His actions signified a different strategy. As for the Austrians, his broad front attack, as he outlined it in his Ukazanie of April 6/19, 1916, was “really to engage the enemy, not giving him the possibility to transfer his reserves.”90 “For the time being,” he noted in his memoirs, “I did not look beyond that, for the future was uncertain.”91 Nevertheless, it was not in Brusilov’s character to do anything in half measurers, and his preparations were those of someone whose forces were the major focus of the attack. Moreover, his frequent request for more reserves (which were, until he broke the front before him, constantly denied) indicates from him a more offensive plan to exploit breakthroughs, not simply diverting Germans southward. His stated long-range objectives for the VIII Army mentioned above were deep penetration of the enemy lines and the taking of cities some distance behind the front, with little mention of shifting Germans. Either Brusilov unconsciously planned a major attack which was his offensive nature or else he planned it consciously and lied to Alekseev about his limited objectives. The latter was not out of the realm of possibility. Brusilov was an aggressive general. We have seen this time and again. His mindset would not allow him to be sidelined as he was being done at the Council of War. Whatever he thought as he planned and prepared for the offensive, his actions created a situation that was to occur many times in the Great War: a diversionary action to assist another front would become the main attack because of its unexpected success. Yet, on May 23, Cadorna squealed. Through the Russian military attaché Colonel Enkel asked the Russians to “begin a punch” to help the Italians. Enkel described the situation to his government as “serious but not hopeless.” Nonetheless, he warned that if something was not done, Italy’s role in the war “will almost become nothing.” Therefore, he informed the Russian leadership that General Pappo (maybe Poppo) “begs to importune Gen. Alekseev in the name of General Luigi Cadorna [the commander-in-chief of the Italian armies] his heartfelt request . . . to begin the offensive.” The Italian minister of war also weighed in, so Alekseev contacted Brusilov. What was to be the

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

149

attack was probably enhanced by a direct letter from the Italian king Victor Emanuel III to Nicholas II to apply force on the Austrian front to relieve the pressure on him, not knowing that one was already in the works. This Austrian offensive, as it turned out, was indeed a boon to Brusilov, since he not only had a numerical superiority in his favor, he faced some of Conrad’s worst troops. The nature of the Austrian trenches that Brusilov faced were sometimes as many as four trenches of five to six kilometers buttressed with artillery and pill boxes with machine guns. In some of the bunkers for the officers, there were iron beds and stoves. Some even had electric lighting, and sanitation was definitely better than in the Russian trenches. All were not so well fortified, but enough were that the Austrian lines presented a formidable obstacle for any Russians to take.92 After the offensive, Austrian apologists tried to invent stories of poor Austrian morale. Norman Stone wrote that that perception was not true, as Austrian desertions had dropped to a “trickle.” Austrian problems lay in poor leadership and overconfidence. Moreover, Austrian intelligence warned of the attack, as did deserting Russian soldiers, who had been issued clean underwear, which for some reason warned Russian soldiers that an offensive was imminent. Also the sapping forward of Brusilov’s troops, done in the open, was a definite clue, and which the Austrians in their self-confidence made no effort to impede.93 As was typical, Brusilov threw himself energetically into preparing his armies to attack, and he performed his typical micromanaging with his usual efficiency.94 His day began early in the morning. He first inspected his forces, talking with his officers and men to better understand their role in the war. He did studies, prepared reports, demonstrating his extraordinary energy. First of all he felt that secrecy was imperative. He banished from headquarters what was left of the usual hangers-on, the journalists, politicians, and court figures. He told the journalists that if there would be any special movements of his troops, they would be able to learn about them when he chose. He had no intention of allowing news of his actions to get to Petrograd and thence to Berlin and Vienna “by the Petrograd switchboard.”95 Even in his conversations with Washburn, he “was not extremely communicative.” When Washburn would ask him a question, he only “smiled enigmatically.” Brusilov even claims that he lied to the empress about when he would commence the offensive.96 When Prince A. Lobanov-Rostovsky, who would in 1917 command Russian troops in France but fought under Brusilov in 1916, approached the VIII Army’s front, he was surprised to see large numbers of reserve troops well hidden in villages and forests.97 Evert, who never afterwards let pass an opportunity to denigrate the offensive, pointed out to Brusilov that any preparations could not be kept secret from the Austrians. To counter that problem, Brusilov ordered trench preparations before each

150

Chapter 4

army over the entire front in twenty to thirty places so that the enemy would be clueless as to where the attack might come.98 As one historian has written, “He overwhelmed the Austrians with information.”99 Extra trenches were dug, or half dug to appear real from the air, and in some cases, they were also just painted on the ground to deceive Austrian air reconnaissance.100 Much of his trench work, however, was indeed real. We have noted how on the Eastern Front there were sometimes whole inhabited villages in no-man’s land, with sheep grazing peacefully between the opposing forces, with Russian soldiers, usually from farming villages, sometimes catching them and playing crude jokes with them.101 Brusilov ordered that all along the line trenches be generally sapped forward to within two to three hundred paces from the enemy,102 and he gave his usual detailed instructions to the sappers preparing the new trenches103 Sometimes the new trenches were as close as fifty paces.104 Night after night the Russian soldiers went forward into no-man’s land and dug new trenches and erected barbed wire entanglements on chevaux de frises, and the surprised Austrians would awaken to discover that the new Russian lines were within shouting distance. Trenches were dug that would never be used, and place d’armes that would never see weapons were built along the entire front. New guns would also be brought in by night, and at the dawn, they would sporadically fire on the enemy. Then after sunset, the Russians began digging again, and the guns were removed to another sector to fire and move again.105 Parallel trenches were connected with communication trenches in what must have been the most elaborate trenching system of the Russian front in the war.106 Troops built shelters behind the new trenches to hide forces to be brought forward. So much was done that even the Russian soldiers themselves did not know where the attack was coming, and those who deserted to the Austrians could tell them little.107 Moreover, sappers provided troops with scaling ladders and planks to enable them to go over their own barbed wire.108 What is all the more amazing is the Austrians did nothing to interrupt this frenetic activity. Norman Stone records that Archduke Joseph Ferdinand had been too busy in debauchery with some of his party friends to bother.109 Brusilov also made a detailed study of the Austrian trenches from photographs taken from air planes and gas balloons, and General Constantine Velichko, commandant of the engineers of the Southwest Front, produced for him a detailed breakdown of them.110 Imitating the Great Russian general Suvorov at the siege of the Turkish fortress Ismail in 1791, Brusilov even went so far as to make mock copies of the Austrian trenches after he had photographed them from the air in order to practice attack techniques on them. When later an Austrian officer was captured with a detailed map of the Austrian trenches, they were no better than the ones that Brusilov’s cartographers had made. They also watched modifications which the Austrians constructed during the winter and early spring and made adjustments to their own maps.111

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

151

Russian historian Vestoshnikov contends that still everywhere the Russian trenches were inferior to those of the Austrians,112 but if that was true, then it did not matter since the Russian trenches were not being attacked. In some cases, the Russians made raids on Austrian positions to capture soldiers to interrogate them but also to disrupt work that the Austrians were doing on their front.113 This observation of enemy emplacements was designed to be used by the artillery to destroy enemy artillery, machine gun nests, and bunkers as well trenches.114 What is more, he spread nationalist propaganda among the Austrian lines, written in the polyglot of languages of the various ethnic groups of the empire: One such pamphlet written in Russian, Italian, Romanian, Czech, Polish, Slovenian, Hrvat, Serbian, German, and Hungarian told the Habsburg troops, “Fighting on the side of Austria and Germany, you are shedding your blood against your will for the pan-Jewish yoke, which does not give you the freedom to breathe. Many thousands of Russian people, who serve in the Austrian forces, have surrendered into the arms of the Russian tsar and are now living happily in Great Russia, but after the war they will return to their wives and children. Surrender to the Russian forces who are fighting for your freedom, for the Russian faith, for the personal fate of Galicia, Bukovina, and Hungarian Russia [ugoskaia rus’].” The pamphlet includes pictures of happy POWs being given plenty to eat and living in pleasant surroundings.115 Brusilov’s preparations were strongly complemented by his modern use of weapons and modern military leadership. He told a correspondent of the Petrograd Bourse-gazette that modern war is “Technique, technique, and still [more] technique. Forty years have passed since the Russo-Turkish War. . . . Then splendid bravado had its object. . . . Now everything is buried underground.”116 In the 1916 offensive, he used cavalry to a limited degree,117 but he did not mass them behind the front as was their usual place, but kept them further back behind the lines, which diminished their potential to be used in a breakthrough.118 He promoted the use of artillery and air power in conjunction with the infantry (i.e., a proponent of combined arms) and was in that sense more modern than many Russian officers of the day, who still regarded the bayonet as the ultimate weapon. A recent historian on the Brusilov offensive called Brusilov the father of Soviet Combined Arms Doctrine,119 which is carrying it a bit far, but he certainly readily abandoned weapons that had outlived their usefulness and adopted those that were state of the art.120 Arms (rifles and artillery) had from the beginning of the war been a problem for the all belligerents, but we have seen that they were not so for the Russians. By 1915, there were situations where soldiers shared rifles and troops arrived at the front never having fired one. Moreover, units would often have a mixture of different rifle makes–Russian, American, and captured Austrian pieces, creating a cartridge nightmare for supply. Yet, the paucity

152

Chapter 4

of them was the core of the problem. In December 1915, the Tula Arms Factory, which had been making military weapons for Russian governments for centuries, produced only 84,835 rifles. In December, a year later, it produced 127,200, a significant increase but still inadequate for the demand.121 In 1916, the Russians produced 11,072 machine guns to Germany’s 21,600, by June 1916; however, all front line troops had their full complement of rifles and ammunition.122 Still, the most crucial problems remained, as always, in artillery and shells. In April 1916, those divisions with the most guns had only thirty-six pieces, and this number fell to eighteen pieces for the new formations. LaGuiche reported to the French ministry of war that Russian artillery numbers are “notoriously insufficient, so much more since the heavy artillery is in an embryonic state.”123 A lot of their artillery had come from Japan, and they were “very mediocre” and “explode easily.” He noted that at the time of the offensive in Galicia (curiously he is writing in April, unless he has the date wrong), “the provisioning of the armies of the Southwestern Front has been insufficient.” He goes on to say that the “most tried” (eprouvée) front was Army Group West,124 which may explain why Evert was so hesitant to attack. Yet, with the thawing of the White Sea in the spring, 450 pieces of all sizes will be arriving from France, and monthly production of heavy pieces was slightly more than sixty pieces. By May 1, the Russian army expected to have 1,300 heavy pieces.125 Guns, of course, are of no value unless there are adequate numbers of shells. One historian has written that Brusilov’s guns fired only 250 rounds in the first two days of his offensive, whereas the British had fired 600 a day on the first day of the Somme.126 The 250 figure is doubtful, or if that is true, that may have been all they needed. The bombardment, as the reader will learn, was relatively short. Of 3″ shells alone, there were 8,000,000,127 A Russian artillery man wrote to his family, “The Austrians shoot once, and our batteries shoot at them a hundred times. Now we have enough shells.”128 Even taking into consideration that the exuberant artilleryman was thinking that more than he had had in the past was enough, there is an air of plenty. By November 1916, there were 10,401 active guns in the Russian army, 90 percent of which were made in Russia.129 Average daily shell production between November 1915 and April 1916 consisted of a rather stunning (and frankly dubious), according to a French report, 45,000–50,000 per day, with an additional half million coming from France in that time.130 Four days before the offensive opened, Alekseev, however, warned all commanders of “our insufficient restocking of shells” and how it eliminated the possibility of a decisive blow on all fronts.131Since the main blow was to be delivered by the Western Front, it of course received the lion’s share of those shells available.132 At any rate, Brusilov put great stock in his artillery, realizing that ineffective use or no use at all would result in enormous casualties for no gain.

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

153

“Preparations for an attack,” he wrote to his generals, “must begin with a strong artillery bombardment, which . . . destroys the enemy defenses,” then adding that the subsequent attack against the enemy should also be “supported by artillery fire.”133 He also stressed that the initial artillery attack should be followed by observation to determine what degree of destruction of enemy positions had been achieved, and he outlined detailed instructions on how artillery should be used to support the infantry attack.134 We have seen that earlier Brusilov had seen that his army was well fed, but one beginning shortage that was undeniable, however, was food provisions.135 By 1916 food deficiencies were becoming a problem throughout the country as peasants refused to sell their grain because of the absence of consumer items to buy with their money. This problem manifested itself in the army as well, and in April, as Brusilov was planning his attack, Shuvaev, the minister of war, reported at Stavka that the meat norm could not be met in 1916. Army regulations required that each Russian soldier be given a pound of meat a day, but Shuvaev was cutting the ration to a half pound for soldiers at the front and one-third pound for those in the rear. Part of the problem as always was transportation, since the rail system in the country was beginning to have the breakdown that would finally bring tsarism to its knees the next year but also there was the insufficiency of meat in the country.136 This shortage was not yet serious. A man can live on a half-pound of meat a day, if he has other things, and since there is no mention anywhere of a shortage of bread or kasha, that age-old stable in the Russian diet, we can be certain that there was not at this time any famine in the trenches.137 The Russians had the least developed air force when the war began, but each of the twelve armies at the front did have a fighter squadron by June 1916. In August, the army formed the first large fighter group at the XI Army and a second one on the Southwest Front in September.138 It probably would not have had one at all if the Grand Duke Alexander, Nicholas II’s brotherin-law and cousin, had not taken a personal interest in air power and even spent a lot of his own money establishing an air arm for the Russian army. In 1914, Russia had thirty-nine squadrons with a total of 263 planes and twelve balloon companies, but only 129 pilots and a hundred observers. At this point, France had 600 planes, Great Britain, only 160 (pilots had to pay for their own training); Germany, 450; and Austria, 112.139 In January 1916, there were several memos in the military archives stressing the importance of this new weapon. One read, “It is necessary to take to all armies this work [with aircraft], to find artillery positions, to determine false positions from real ones.”140 Later that month, another memo stressed the airplane’s value to the VIII Army, which Brusilov was still commanding.141 By the time Brusilov was preparing for his great offensive, the Russian army had seventy-five squadrons, 502 pilots, 357 observers, and 716 planes.142 Yet

154

Chapter 4

despite this growth, the air arm of Germany had grown much faster, and by 1916, Germany’s dwarfed Russia’s air force. Yet, Russia had one and in 1916 produced at least 2,000 planes (to Germany’s more than 8,000).143 Brusilov readily made use of it, such as it was, and it was especially effective on the Southwest Front.144 A year later, Brusilov was most pleased with the French officers sent to assist, and he expressed regret to a French representative that the more promised had not yet arrived. At this point, a number of the planes destined for Russia were still at Brest, and Brusilov inquired into having the shipment hastened.145 The Russian air arm continued to grow, and by June of 1916, each Russian army had at least one fighter squadron. These forces had photographed the entire front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Two months into his offensive, the XI Army formed the first large fighter group and a second one was created on the Southwest Front in September.146 Brusilov’s extensive use of air reconnaissance and to direct artillery during his offensive gained in importance quickly.147 During his offensive, two Muromets planes flew reconnaissance missions deep into enemy territory and bombed railroad stations and warehouses.148 By late June, the air arm was requesting weather reports for the next half month.149 In September, General Zaionchkovsky praised the work of the 6th aviation unit that served not only his corps but all the army.150 The Russians on the Southwest Front had developed a crude antiaircraft weapon composed of a piece of artillery placed on a wooden structure over a hole, with the gun that could swivel up to a 55o angle. When it fired, it recoiled into the hole. Langlois felt that this primitive device was important enough to mention in a note to Paris and send a diagram as well.151 This new cannon was probably not very effective, but its invention showed a certain ingenuity. Later the Russians gained more sophisticated antiaircraft weapons. In the actual offensive itself, one squadron of six planes dropped fortyeight bombs. Another of fifteen planes dropped seventy in an effort to neutralize train stations, roads, railroads, and artillery warehouses, starting in the process some serious fires.152 In July, a wagon load of incendiary bombs arrived at the IX army,153 indicating a surprisingly broad use of air attacks. The Russian air force performed invaluable service for the Brusilov offensive, but the general observed several times, it was markedly inferior to that of the Germans and the Austrians. Kaledin’s chief of staff told Knox that the shortage of aircraft was one of the reasons that the Brusilov offensive was not more successful than it was.154 Although the air force was “terribly weak in comparison with the enemy’s, it was invaluable in directing artillery fire,”155 Brusilov later remembered that the comparatively weak air link actually furnished most of his information about the enemy.156 Nevertheless, its small size stretched the air arm to the breaking point, and in mid-September,

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

155

Zaionchkovsky reported that the 6th aviation squadron was so over worked that it “has become exhausted by the work beyond its ability.” He asked for reinforcements.157 In the midst of his preparations for the 1916 offensive, Brusilov received a directive from Alekseev that the tsar, his wife, and his daughters were going to Odessa to review a Serbian division of about 10,000 men cobbled out of deserting Austrian Slavs who were willing to fight on the side of the Russians. Brusilov was to rendezvous with the tsar at Bendery on May 13, while he was in the area. Brusilov went immediately to Odessa to acquaint himself with the Serbian division and its leaders before the tsar would review them. He found them quite unprepared for the front, but he went on to meet the tsar the next day in Bendery. He was invited into the tsar’s train, where he met Prince Dolgorouki, a cavalry administrator Count Grabbe, and Flag Captain Nilov, all rather superfluous members of an entourage that usually traveled with the tsar. He found the tsar rather uninterested in things on the front, and seemingly greatly bored. He proceeded to Odessa with him.158 That same May 13, Brusilov dined in the Imperial mess between two of the grand duchesses, but the tsarina, who was traveling with her husband, did not join them. On his second day in Odessa, however, the empress invited Brusilov into her compartment, where he remembered that she greeted him coolly. She asked him if he was ready for his offensive. He told her that he would not be ready for another month, a statement that was clearly an untruth. She asked him when he expected to attack, and he sidestepped the question. Writing in her memoir, Nadia stated that he would not tell her because he feared it might get to Rasputin and hence to the Germans.159 She asked if her canteen trains and her bath house trains were of use at the front, and he told her that they were. In his memoir, he remembered that she gave him an enamel medallion of the miracle-working St. Nicholas of Myra. Rather soon afterward, however, the image of the saint wore off, leaving only the metal plaque, implying that she had intentionally given him something cheap. He noted, “Never was I able to understand why the tsaritsa so strongly did not like me.”160 This account has the flair of some postrevolutionary editing. Empress Alexandra was often cool toward strangers, mostly because she was pathetically shy and ill at ease with people she did not know, so her unfriendliness did not necessarily mean dislike. Nonetheless, Brusilov hints that she wanted military information so she could supposedly pass it on to the Central Powers, which she would never have done, but which was said of her untruthfully by many before, during, and after the Revolution, simply because she was German. She certainly had no reason to dislike Brusilov, and in her correspondence with the tsar never mentions him with any great distaste, as she did many others. One might suggest that this anecdote was included and embellished because it was popular in Soviet times to denigrate the Imperial

156

Chapter 4

family, especially the “German” empress, and one’s revolutionary credentials would certainly be heightened if one could claim to have been the object of the empress’s displeasure. As Brusilov returned to his front, the Austrian troops launched an attack in the Tyrol plateau. On May 24, Alekseev telegraphed Brusilov telling him of the Italian difficulties and asked him how soon could he be ready to mount an offensive to relieve pressure on their Italian ally. Brusilov immediately replied that the armies on his front were ready and he could begin an offensive within a week of receipt of orders to attack. He said, however, that it would be necessary for Evert to attack on the Western Front as well, to prevent the Germans’ transfer of troops to help the Austrians. The Russian invasion of East Prussia in 1914 had been the reason for the Russian successes in Galicia that same year.161 The date of the attack was set for June 1.162 Langlois reported to Paris that on the eve of the offensive that Russian arms were “very brilliant,” but then went on to state that to arm fully their front, they would need another thousand pieces of artillery.163 This opinion probably reflects what we have already witnessed: A comparison with what Russian arms had been. He also praised Russian morale as “excellent,” and then he went on to praise General Brusilov as one of “some of the happy choices” that had been made. He described him as “imposing” and as a person “with whom one is able to have confidence.”164 Several disquieting events darkened these prospects in the months before the attack. One was some extensive fraternization between Austrians and Russians in the VIII Army around Easter. White flags had appeared in the trenches of the Austrians at 6:00 a.m. on Easter Sunday morning, and some Austrian troops came over no-man’s land into the Russian trenches, while some Russians crossed over into the Austrian trenches, where they were detained. Brusilov blasted the officers who had allowed this fraternization to occur, calling it “an example of impermissible slackness,” blaming it on “a Slavic mildness, carelessness and good nature [which is] entirely out of place in a combat situation.”165 A second troubling development was a rather high desertion rate on the Southwest Front. One historian reports that between January and July 1, 1916, close to 60,000 men deserted the front or jumped off the trains bringing them to the front—the equivalent of three divisions.166 All armies of all nations experienced a rise in desertion before offensives, but these figures seem a bit high for 1916 and would seem more realistic for 1917. David Stone has pointed out how shaky Russian casualty statistics were.167 Pre-offensive reports of enthusiasm too high and Brusilov’s soldiers fought too well in the coming weeks for the morale to be so low that such numbers would abandon the army. Brusilov’s message to his troops on the eve of the offensive exuded a strong optimism: “The time has come to expel the infamous enemy. All

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

157

armies on our front are attacking simultaneously. I am confident that our iron army will gain a complete victory.”168 Yet, to his wife a week earlier, he had written a somewhat pessimistic note about his chances. At the bottom of his letter, his wife wrote, “From this letter it is already evident how he had begun to be irritated and that his nerves had begun to torment him.”169 Brusilov frequently was a pessimist as if expecting the worst would result in something better. In the weeks that were to follow, he would have little to be pessimistic about, and on June 4, 1916, there began his successful offensive which one hyperbolic historian once called “one of the greatest victories of World History.”170 On May 26, Brusilov dispatched a directive to his generals to be ready to begin the artillery attack on June 1, but cautioned that they were only to begin firing when specifically ordered to do so.171 On May 31, Alekseev’s directive to Brusilov and Evert was to attack on June 4 for Brusilov and to Evert on June 10 or 11.172 Yet, on May 31, Alekseev wired Brusilov that the attack was to be delayed until June 4, giving him no reason for the delay. In an archival source, Alekseev told Brusilov it was because Evert was not ready.173 He also, apparently to sweeten the news, knew Brusilov would not like, added that he was sending him the 5th Siberian corps and the motor division for which he had asked.174 In his memoirs, Brusilov remembered that Alekseev had phoned him and expressed doubts about his tactic of attacking on a broad front and suggested that the whole offensive be delayed for a few days so that he could pick a single point for a shock attack, adding that the tsar himself favored this modification.175 Brusilov refused, stating that it was too late to change, noting that troops were already in their jumping off positions and that by the time the word got to the front, the artillery preparation would have already begun. Moreover, with the frequent change in plans, the men would lose confidence in their officers. Obviously indignant, Brusilov added that if they insisted on the change, he would resign, and suggested that the tsar be consulted. Told that the tsar was sleeping, Brusilov commented that “the commander-in-chief’s slumber was no concern of mine” and that he had “no intention of thinking it over,” demanding an immediate answer “yes” or “no.” Alekseev backed down, saying, “Have it your way” and “Well, God be with you.” Brusilov opined that he knew that the tsar had never been brought into the matter, and that it was the method of Stavka under Alekseev “to first take one step forward, then promptly to take one back.”176 General Lukomsky with the IX Army visited the 32nd division in the trenches the day before the attack. While inspecting the position, “a none too handsome private” from the company stable approached him obviously wanting to say something. The general asked in private what he thought of the Austrian positions, he replied in peasant Russian, “I dare say pretty strong, your excellency, but we are going to take them tomorrow. . . . And then I’ll

158

Chapter 4

get lots of nice hay for our horses,” adding that there was lots of “fresh grass” in front of the Austrian trenches. Lukomsky was puzzled until the next day, in the midst of the fighting, he saw the fellow in no-man’s land with a scythe cutting hay!”177 The next day, an epic battle of Tolstoyan grandeur, indeed the largest battle of the Great War, began. In its course, hundreds of thousands of men would become casualties of some type, and it would directly and indirectly decide the fate of both the Russian and the Habsburg empires.

NOTES 1. “Brusiloff and Korniloff,” 44, which quotes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 2. “A Certain Mr. Brussiloff,” 38. 3. Prikazi nachal’nika, March 21, 1916, f. 2070, op. 1, d. 18, l. 128, RGVIA. 4. Brusilov, SN, 199. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 200. 7. B to N, February 24, 1916, Corres. 140–280, p. 184, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 8. Farmborough, 173. 9. Knox’s report, p. 13, January 9, 1916, WO 106/1084, British National Archives. 10. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 169–70. 11. Ibid., 20. 12. Churchill, 361. 13. Trotsky, 1: 79. 14. Knox report, April 3, 1916, n. p., WO 106/1074, British National Archives. 15. Lemke, 3: 636. 16. Denikin, Career, 275. 17. C. C. Sievers to B, April 27, 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 93, GARF. 18. Washburn, With the Russian Army, 191. 19. Lemke, 3: 680. 20. “A Certain Mr. Brussiloff,” 38. 21. Chantilly Conference of General staff, 6 December 1915, WO 106/1454, British National Archives. 22. Golovin, art. 571. 23. Danilov, La Russie, 496–97. 24. N-S Correspondence, 159; Furhmann, ed., 417. 25. Brusilov, SN, 213. 26. Letter entry, Thursday February 24, 1916, Parson papers, prt. 1, p. 57, Lambeth War Museum Archives. He describes Evert, Ivanov, and Kuropatkin but strangely not Brusilov, but his observations were not made at the actual meeting itself. 27. Paléologue, 2: 293. 28. Churchill, 360.

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

159

29. Denikin, Career, 275; Brusilov, “Proryv avstro-germanskogo fronta v 1916 godu,” Voina i revoliutsiia, nos. 4 and 5 (1927), 72–73; Alekseev to Nicholas II, 1 April 1916 (NS), Nastuplenie iugo-zapadnogo fronta, 72. 30. TsVIA [RGVIA], f. 2003, d. 1104, ll. 224–28, cited in Vetoshnikov, 21. 31. F. 2003, d. 1104, p. 470–71, in Nastuplenie, 81–82. 32. Sokolov, 64; Brusilov, SN, 218; Vetoshnikov, 24. 33. Brusilov is credited with this broad front tactic, with which he was most successful, but the tactic had already been tried to a smaller degree on the Western (French) Front, by Joffre. See Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2005), 169, 180, 296, 315. 34. Alexander Kerensky, The Catastrophe (New York: Appleton, 1927), 276. 35. Brusilov, SN, 277; 1963 Rus. Ed., 253–54; see also, Brusilov, “Proryv,” 74; Kerensky, Catastrophe, 276. 36. B to N, February 11, 1916, Corres. 140–280, p. 180, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 37. Golovin, art. cit., 574. 38. Marsengo, 92. 39. Denikin, Career, 276. 40. Brusilov has left us two versions of this Council of War. One, his memoir A Soldier’s Notebook, p. 217 and another in the memoir-article “Proryv,” 74. 41. N-S Correspondence, 314; Furhmann, ed., 434. 42. Churchill, 360. 43. Knox dispatch, April 24, 1916, WO 106/1074, British National Archives. One Russian historian has written that there were 608 battalions and 400 squadrons of men and only 1,815 pieces of artillery, only 145 of which could be described as “heavy.” Semanov, B: DV, 182–83. 44. His middle name was Vil’helmovich, but the tsar gave him permission to change it to Pavlovich so that he would not have the patronymic of a son of the Kaiser. Sergey-Tsensky, 183. For a detailed composition of the Southwest Front, see Vetoshnikov, 26–27. For divisional strength, see Charles Repington, The First World War (London: Gregg Revivals, 1991), 244n; For the front strength of each army, see Nastuplenie, 248. 45. Ruutherford, The Russian Army, 197. 46. LaGuiche to amb. and Min. War, 6/19, April 1916, 7N757, Vincennes. 47. Col. Vinokurov to Gen. Marks, April, 3 1916, f. 2067, op. 2, d. 509, l. 62 ff., RGVIA. 48. Vestoshnikov, 28–30. 49. See my book, With Snow on Their Boots (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). 50. Brusilov, SN, 234; Knox report, p. 13, 9 January 1916, WO 106/1084, British National Archives. 51. Cruttwell, 286. 52. Brusilov, SN, 224–25; 1963 Russ. Ed., 216. 53. Cruttwell, 286. 54. Stone, The Eastern Front, 239.

160

Chapter 4

55. Ibid., 242. 56. Vetoshnikov, 30–33; Brusilov, “Proryv,” 81–82; The Times History, 9: 18. 57. The Times History, 9: 15. 58. Ibid, 17. 59. Brusilov, “Proryv,” 74–75; Denikin, Career, 276. 60. Ibid.; O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 364–65; Vetoshnikov, 36–37. 61. Brusilov, SN, 224. 62. Andrianov, “General Brusilov,” (brochure), f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, p. 14 (or 8?), GARF. 63. Nastuplenie, 14. 64. Brusilov, SN, 237 ff. 65. Ibid., chap. 4, p. 124 ff. 66. B to N, February 11, 1916, Corres. 140–280, p. 179–80, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 67. Stone, Eastern Front, 239. 68. Brusilov, “Proryv,” 78. 69. Brusilov, SN, 224. 70. Ibid., 253; 1963 Rus. Ed., 238. 71. Pares, Fall, 361. 72. Knox report, p. 11, January 9, 1916, WO 106/1084, British National Archives. 73. Ibid., 3–4. 74. Golovin, art. cit., 576. 75. Operation of the 32nd by Lukomskii, p. 5–6, Lukomskii Collection, box 1, Hoover Institution. 76. Ibid., 10; This report also appears in Golovin collection, box 14, Hoover. 77. Brusilov, “Proryv,” 76; Danilov, La Russie, 501–2. 78. Brusilov, “Proryv,” 74–75. 79. Andrianov, “General Brusilov” (brochure), f. 5972, op. 1, d. 13, l. 14 (or 8), GARF. 80. Vetoshnikov, 36–37. 81. Nastuplenie, 192; Golovin, art. cit., 576–77. 82. See his telegraphic correspondence with Kaledin and other commanders, 21 May/3 June 1916, Nastuplenie, 134–35. 83. Knox, 437. 84. Danilov, La Russie, 502. 85. Golovin, art. cit., 578. 86. Ibid., 582. 87. Brusilov, “Proryv,” 78. 88. Stone, Eastern Front, 239. 89. Brusilov, SN, 241; 1963 Rus. Ed., 228–30. 90. Nastuplenie, 14. 91. Brusilov, SN, 238. 92. Vetoshnikov, 30–33; Brusilov, “Proryv,” 81–82. 93. Stone, Eastern Front, 241.

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

161

94. See his telegraphic correspondence with Kaledin, May 21/June 3, 1916, Nastuplenie, 134–35. 95. “Brusiloff and Korniloff,” 44. 96. Brusilov, SN, 227. He related this meeting in his memoirs, but it is doubtful that it ever took place. She does not seem to have ever toured the front with her husband at this time, although she did visit him several times. 97. Andrei Lobanov-Rostovsky, The Grinding Mill (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 177. 98. Brusilov, “Proryv,” 76. 99. Jukes, 111–12. 100. Rutherford, The Russian Army, 196. 101. Ibid., 119. 102. Nastuplenie, 88–89, 112, 213–18. 103. See f. 2067, op. 2, d. 509, ll. 170 ff; see also Nastuplenie, 88–89. 104. Stone, Eastern Front, 238. 105. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 368–74. 106. Stone, Eastern Front, 238. 107. Brusilov, “Proryv,” 76. 108. Charles Johnson, “General Brusilov’s Achievements,” New York Times Current History: The European War, 8 (July–September, 1916), 613. 109. Stone, Eastern Front, 241. 110. The final report was dated August 22/September 4, 1916, long after it would have been necessary. See Nastuplenie, 100–110; see also O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 368–74. 111. Golovin, art. cit., 579–80. 112. Vestoshnikov, 35–36. 113. Communique officiel, 29, April 1916, dossier?, no. 5, 16N2954, Vincennes. 114. Brusilov, Moi Vosp (1963), 8. 115. Rukovodiashchiukaza, the unnumbered folder, box 1, Vasilii Uperov collection, Hoover Institution. 116. “A Certain Mr. Brusiloff,” 38–39. 117. See Maxim Os’kin’s Krakh konnogo blitzkriega: Kavaleriia v pervoi mirovoi voine (Moscow: Eksmoi, 2009). 118. Jones, “Imperial Army,” 240. 119. Dowling, 175. 120. Rostunov, 45. 121. Kratkii Otchet, p. 68, Hoover. Sir Bernard Pares states that by May 1916, the Russians were producing rifles at the rate of 100,000 per month, an unlikely figure. Pares, Fall, 355. 122. Stubbs, 128. 123. Knox dispatch, p. 2, 20 June 1916, WO 106/1080, British National Archives; Langlois reported the same optimistic news to Paris a few days earlier. Rapport Langlois, 12 June 1916, annexes, 7N1547, Vincennes. 124. LaGuiche to Min. War, 6/19 April 1916, 7N757, Vincennes. 125. Armament des forces russes, January 25, 1916, dossier 4, 16N2953, Vincennes.

162

Chapter 4

126. Jones, “Imperial Army,” 240. 127. Despatch, p. 2, June 20, 1916, p. 1, WO 106/1080, British National Archives. 128. “Soldatskie pis’ma v gody virovoi voiny,” KA, 65–66 (1934), 137. 129. Emetz, “Petrogradskaia konferentsiia,” 27, cited in Heenan, 5. 130. Rapport de Langlois, June 12, 1916, chapt. 3, p. 13, 7N1547, Vincennes. 131. Nastuplenie, 189. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid., 18. 134. Ibid., 23–24. 135. Actually there had been shortages a year before on the eve of the Great Retreat. Etat material de l’armée russe, p. 8, in Rapports Langlois, 10 April 1915, 7N1547, Vincennes. 136. N. E. Kakurin, ed. Razlozhenie armiiv 1917 g. (Moscow and Leningrad: Gos. Izdat., 1961). 137. Peter Duz, The History of Aeronautics and Aviation of the USSR, 307, cited in Morrow, 254. 138. Duz, 24, 116, cited in Morrow, 88. 139. Stubbs, 133. 140. Col. Skapon (?) to?, January 22, 1916, reel l, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 1622, l. 80, RGVIA. 141. Ibid., 77; “Epizody iz boevykh deistvii russkoi aviatsii,” KA, 96 (1939), 121. 142. Golovin, Russian Army, 150–51. 143. Stubbs, 133. 144. “Epizody,” KA, 96 (1939), 121; Note, June 1, 1916, Rapports 1, Mission Janin, 16N3180, Vincennes; Kratkii Otchet, p. 6, Hoover. 145. Tel. 14 June 1916, dossier 3, no. 18, 16N3180, Vincennes. 146. Morrow, 188. 147. Duz, 31, cited in Morrow, 82. Brusilov wrote essentially the same thing in his memoirs (Brusilov, SN, 199), and it was on his front that Russian aviation was most effective in 1916–17. Bloome, art. cit., 2. 148. Morrow, 88; Telegram, May 19, 1916, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 1644, reel 3, l. 168–69, RGVIA. 149. Telegram, 9/22 June 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. l, d. 1622, l. 193, RGVIA. 150. Ibid. 151. Quelques details sur les Russes, n. d., in Rapports du Col. Langlois, 15 April 1915, 7N1547, Vincennes. 152. Telegram, May 19, 1916, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 1622, reel 3, l. 168–69, RGVIA. 153. Ibid., June 29, 1916, l. 184. 154. Knox, With the Russian Army, 2: 495. 155. Brusilov, SN, 199. 156. Duz, 31, cited in Morrow, 82, art. cit., 2 and 6. 157. Telegram, September 1, 1916, f. 2003, reel 4, op. 1, d. 1622, l. 278, RGVIA. 158. Brusilov, “Proryv,” 79–80; Brusilov, SN, 225; 1963 Rus. Ed., 217. 159. Vosp. of Nadia Brusilova, p. 69–70, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22-A, GARF. 160. Brusilov, “Proryv,” 80; Brusilov, SN, 227–28; 1963 Rus. Ed., 218; clipping from Krasnaia gazetta, no. 66, March 19, 1926, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l. 85, RGVIA.

Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May 1916

163

161. Laguiche to Min. War., 6/19 April 1916, 7N757, Vincennes. 162. Nastuplenie, 188. 163. Rapport de Langlois, June 12, 1916, pp. 2 and 5 of Chapter III, 7N1547, Vincennes. 164. Ibid. 165. Jukes, 118. He denounced and named the slack officers, which included Denikin, calling the neglect “a lack of necessary leadership.” 166. Ibid., 120–21. 167. David R. Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 2015), 11 ff. 168. O-U Letzten Krieg, 4: 375. 169. B to N, 12 May 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 256, GARF. 170. Walter Hubatsch, Germany and the Central Powers in the World War, 1914–1918 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1963), 72. 171. Nastuplenie, 178. Also on May 26, he wired Alekseev that his army would be ready to attack on June 1. 172. Nastuplenie, 188–89 and 191. 173. “Voennaia deistoiia armii,” p. 4, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, RGVIA. 174. Nastuplenie, 188. 175. Brusilov, SN, 236. 176. Ibid., 236–37. 177. “The Forgotten Army,” 27–28, box 1, Lukomskii papers, Hoover Institution.

Chapter 5

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

In the early morning hours of June 4, as dawn was breaking over Galicia, from the Pripet marshes in the north to the Romanian border almost 250 miles to the south, 1,938 Russian guns opened a murderous fire on the Austrian lines.1 It was not, of course, a solid wall of fire, for the Russians did not have that many guns, but it was continuous enough to make the Austrians wonder how an enemy, so mauled the year before in the Great Retreat, could mount such an attack. Doubtlessly, many Austrian commanders must have thought at first that it was a mere demonstration, but they were soon to learn otherwise. Brusilov had ordered his four army commanders to choose spots to concentrate their fire and had told them, “The success rests not in a hurricane-type fire, but in good guided fire to precise targets.”2 Since Russian artillery was always the weak point in their forces, the Austrians must have been doubly surprised at the strength of the Russian assault. Even when the Austrians and Germans later counterattacked, their actions were broken not only by Russian infantry but by Russian artillery fire as well.3 Yet, in general, the artillery was so successful that in many places when the Russians went over the top, the Austrians could not resist the Russian tsunami.4 Whereas Brusilov attacked all along the line as planned, the main thrust was that of his pet VIII Army, to which he allotted 140 pieces of heavy artillery and a full corps in reserve. Its first objective was to be the city of Lutsk, which he had been pointlessly ordered to evacuate the year before.5 At 6:30 a.m. on the day that the attack commenced, Brusilov issued an optimistic “order of the day” to his men. “The time has come to drive away the infamous enemy,” he told his men. “All the armies of our front are attacking together. I am convinced that our iron army will win a total victory. I send greetings to all army commanders, generals, staff officers, and together I express the hope of a full victory for the joy of our fatherland.”6 165

166

Chapter 5

Given Russia’s chronic shell problem and the fact that their guns were outnumbered, Brusilov had carefully planned his use of artillery.7 On the full front, there were nineteen specific attack points, one for every 10.5 miles.8 Light artillery was to obliterate the barbed wire before the trenches, while the heavier pieces and the howitzers shelled the foremost Austrian trenches, and the very heaviest weapons fired on the enemy artillery.9 The targets were carefully picked because each shell had to count, and the Russian guns had been carefully ranging selected targets with a few shells each day for some time so that everything in the Austrian lines was “registered to a foot.”10 For the first time, the Austrians were now on the receiving end of intense artillery fire.11 To further confuse the enemy, each army had a different duration for firing, depending on the success of their initial fusillade. Sakharov (XI Army) felt that six hours were enough, while Leshchitsky (IX) considered that eight hours were necessary. Kaledin deemed twenty-nine hours adequate for the VIII, while Shcherbachev (VII Army) fired for forty-five hours.12 There were pauses on all fronts periodically for scouts to reconnoiter the damage being done, with resuming fire directed on undamaged places identified by them on their return. This technique led to an erratic nature of both firing and infantry attacks up and down the line, further confusing the Austrians on what their official history of the war called “a warm summer’s day.”13 That very day, Tsar Nicholas II wrote to his wife: “Tonight we have begun the bombardment of the Austrian positions. . . . May God bless our troops, who are eager to begin the attack.”14 Washburn reached Brusilov’s headquarters soon after the attack began and found him cordial but uncommunicative. When Washburn, who by this time obviously had a good rapport with the correspondent-shy general, asked him what his objective was, he only smiled “enigmatically.” Washburn looked at his maps and assumed that the town of Kovel was the chief goal for the VIII Army because it was an important railroad junction and likewise the place where the German and Austrian armies were seamed together.15 Aside from the fact that he did not wish to divulge any plans, Brusilov well knew that objectives change. He told Klembovsky at one point, “The commander-inchief of a big front is very much like a stage manager. The only differences between them . . . is that the stage manager knows his play inside and out before he begins to produce it, whereas the commander-in-chief has still to write his play—and is encumbered with a co-author [the enemy leadership], too, who is liable to introduce important changes.”16 Often during the pauses, the Austrians emerged from their bunkers with their machine guns and weapons, only to find themselves facing not attacking Russian soldiers but a resumption of the artillery barrage. The false starts several times along the front led to a confusion of the enemy, so that when the Russian infantry did finally attack, it often found the Austrian troops

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

167

still in their bunkers, who often surrendered with little resistance.17 Then, all along the front, when the artillery had done its work in its respective places, 600,000 Russian soldiers and 58,000 mounted horse cavalry went toward the enemy trenches along the entire front.18 General Lukomsky left a riveting account of the first day of the IX Army. “To an ear-splitting roar . . . was added the thunder of deafening explosions of bombs hurled by mine-throwers from the front trenches.” he remembered in his memoirs. “At 11:00 AM, there was a fifteen minute pause [during which] the Austrian trenches came to life. . . . Their reinforcements rushed up. . . . Then the bombardment began [again], and I remembered seeing fragments of human bodies flung into the air when the shells hit.” About noon, the firing stopped, and then “rising from the trenches like one man, our division went forward . . . and success was decisive: the whole fortified line of the enemy was occupied, and its surviving defenders captured.”19 An addition to which the Russian soldiers were not accustomed was continued artillery shelling to cover them and interrupt the enemy’s bringing up reserves.20 Varying degrees of success occurred along the entire 250 mile front. In some places, breakthroughs advanced into the third trenches of the Austrian lines, and on less successful sectors, no infantry advanced and the artillery only continued its work to prevent the Austrians’ repairing the wire and the destruction. Overall, this fire, directed by Russian aircraft, had done enormous damage to the Austrians, and the destruction was so complete that Conrad, on receiving the reports, was so stunned that he refused to believe them. The Russians captured enormous numbers of POWs, many of them Slavic soldiers that barely resisted or else deserted en masse. As one historian described it in a bit of overstatement, “Within a week, all resistance had vanished on a 200 mile front.”21In the first two days, the Russians did indeed capture at least 15,000 prisoners.22 The advance was assisted by the fortuitous choosing of June 4. The commander of the Austrian 7th Army, Pflanzer-Baltin, was ill in the hospital and had to try to direct the defense by telephone from his hospital bed,23 while a number of Austrian officers had gone to Teschen in Poland to a birthday party for Archduke Friedrich. Moreover, the apparent collapse of Italy led Conrad to continue to move some of his best troops to the Italian front, leaving a large proportion of Slavic troops, who we have seen were of questionable loyalty.24 It would take two weeks to retransfer these troops to the Galician front.25 Ludendorff later wrote that the Austrians had shown “such small powers of resistance” that at one blow, the whole Eastern Front “was in dire jeopardy.”26 Two days later, Hoffmann summarized the situation: “The Austrians have got another thrashing from the Russians in the neighborhood of Rovno,” then added most incorrectly, “It seems that the entire Russian reserves are on our front, and in Galicia the Austrians have the superiority in numbers. . . . It’s

168

Chapter 5

a raging scandal.”27 Ludendorff noted in his memoirs, however, that everyone knew that the major assault was to fall on the German lines somewhere around Baranovici, Smorgon, or Riga because that is where German intelligence told them that the Russian reserves had been placed. This information led him to believe correctly that Brusilov’s offensive was “more in the nature of a demonstration,”28 which indeed was what it was supposed to have been. This offensive was not the first nor the last time in the Great War that a secondary attack became the major effort. At the Austrian headquarters at Lutsk on June 4, word arrived that the front had collapsed a few miles away. The news came “like a thunderclap,” The Times later reported. In desperation the 13th division was thrown into the breach to halt the Russian advance, but it was mauled.29 In places the Austrians held for a while, especially Hungarian units, but their resistance slackened.30 When the XI Army under Sakharov attacked toward the Tarnopol-L’vov railroad, it ruptured the line in several places, and the Austrian 7th army under Pflanzer-Baltin fell back behind the Dniester River to more defensible positions.31 Further down the line, Shcherbatchev had his VII Army imitate Brusilov’s whole front tactics by shifting attacking forces. If an attack on one wing bogged down, he would change the direction to the other wing and shift reserves there. These maneuvers totally rattled the Austrians and brought panicked retreat.32 In short, on the first day, therefore, all along the line, the Austrians took quite a drubbing, and literally thousands were taken prisoner. Not surprisingly, figures of captured vary. A Russian report speaks of a unit’s taking 6,000 here and another unit’s taking 4,000 there, probably all exaggerations, and some accounts mention a doctor or general captured. All casualty reports are replete with accounts of Galician villages falling like nine pins before the advancing Russian armies.33 Other accounts the next day tell of a suspect 40,000 soldiers and 900 officers captured, along with seventy-seven pieces of artillery.34 The French observers reported to Paris that 13,000 were taken the first day with 25,000 enemy taken by the end of day two.35 Within a few days, the Austrian 4th army had lost 54 percent of its men,36 but whatever the true numbers, the early days spelled the developing of an undeniable disaster for the Hapsburg Empire. Most alarming to the Austrians were reports of the easy surrender of Slavic units, especially Czechs, but also Serbs, Poles, and Ukrainians. Usually they surrendered (read: deserted) in twos and threes, but there were cases of whole regiments coming over with banners unfurled and bands playing. For example, on June 5, the entire Czech 8th infantry of the Austrian IV army surrendered as a unit.37 Sir Bernard Pares recorded that it “became typical not to ask Czechs [POWs] ‘Where did you surrender?’ but ‘Where did you come over?’”38

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

169

There were many reasons for the easy surrender of the Slavic units. One, of course, was the Russian tradition of being the “Big Brother” to the “Little Slavs” (Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Slovaks, etc.) The Czechs had little loyalty to the Habsburg war effort. Historian Jan F. Triska noted that the war was little more to them but “a brutal interruption of their lives. They wanted it to end, win, or lose, and go home.” They had no loyalty to the empire beyond “the first firefight, the first battle. Remaining alive was [then] the chief . . . concern.”39 This phenomenon was augmented by the fact that the Russians were advancing into parts of the Austrian empire that was inhabited largely by Slavs, who greeted the Russians with ikons and bread and salt, a traditional Slavic welcoming.40 In many cases, the homes of the Austro-Slavic soldiers were in the Russian occupied areas, and the Russians simply let captured Slavs go to their families. Behind the Russian advance were villages full of free adult males still dressed in their Austrian uniforms.41 On June 5, the tsar wrote to Alexandra, “This morning I heard good news about the beginning of our offensive. . . . So far we have taken yesterday several guns and over 12,000 prisoners. . . . God grant that it may go on in this way.”42 By the second day, the Russians had pushed forward six kilometers on a twenty-five kilometer front, an Austrian source states, and from the next day onward, the troops of the Dual Monarchy were retreating on the entire front in disorder.43 That day Brusilov threw in reserves on the VIII Army front at 10:45 a.m. and attacked again at 1:15 p.m. The Austrians had committed their reserves only in dribbles to plug holes, making them ineffective against the advancing Russians,44 and the Russian artillery also continued the splendid work begun the day before, forcing the arriving reinforcements into trenches, where many were “blown up by artillery fire.” Austrian staff headquarters before the VIII Army were dispersed by the fire and did not reassemble until the end of the day. By early evening, the Austrian 10th corps had retreated to its third line, but by then the general retreat had become a rout. Fleeing Austrian troops were trapped in their own wire. Telegraph lines were cut and Austrian artillery did not return fire because in many places men fled leaving the guns unmanned.45 Later that day, Nicholas II confirmed the success in his diary. “Yesterday after a strong shelling of the enemy positions, a breakthrough was achieved with 13,000 POWs taken, 15 guns [and] 30 machine guns [taken],” adding, “God’s blessing on our brilliant forces giving a most long-range success.”46 The next day he summed up the events of June 5 by adding that the news from the front was “wonderful.” The Russians, it had been reported to him, had taken 480 officers and more than 25,000 prisoners, adding incidentally in passing, “The day was hot.”47 Brusilov himself remembered that by mid-day on June 6, 40,000 had been captured, along with seventy-seven guns, 134 machine guns.48 The bungling was too great for Austrian heads not to roll, and on that day, the ineffective

170

Chapter 5

Archduke Joseph Ferdinand was replaced by the Hungarian general Carl von Tersztyansky.49 Brusilov’s broad-front tactics were proving quite successful. Brusilov later told Washburn that “The main element of our success was due to the absolute co-ordination of all the armies involved and the carefully planned harmony with which the various branches of the service supported each other,” demonstrating Russia’s first effective use of combined arms. He had been right: It had been impossible for the Austrians to know where and when to shift reserves.50 Brusilov was, not surprisingly, ecstatic. He recorded later in his memoirs, “These were the happiest days of my life.”51 Throughout, Brusilov continued his micromanaging. For example, on opening day of the offensive, he ordered General Kaledin to tell General Ia. F. von Gillenshmidt how to attack: “Again I repeat my uncompromising order to the 4th cavalry corps to attack quickly in order to fight through and carry the raid to a higher result [his italics]. . . . If Gillenshmidt is not able to fulfill that [, he has] to be relieved and replaced with [General] Volodchenko.”52 Then he added additional directives: “Order them not to attack at sunrise but prepare [the objective] with artillery and then solidly and correctly go into the attack,” adding what he must have thought a comforting note: “Against him are only Polish legions.”53 When later that day the unfortunate general had not performed to his expectations, he ordered the front commander to “Please pass on to General Gillenshmidt my full displeasure with his weak actions and bad management. This is the moment when energy must be allencompassing, but actions of the cavalry in these cases must be impudent and daring. Brusilov.”54 Brusilov’s displeasure with the unfortunate Gillenshmidt might have been a bit unfair to the cavalry general. He and his 4th corps were placed to the northeast of Kovel, and his actions were to be of greatest importance in the attempted breakthrough.55 Gillenshmidt was not just facing “the Polish Legion,” as Brusilov thought, but the 1st, 9th, and 11th cavalry divisions of the enemy as well.56 In the final wash, Gillenshmidt does not seem to have done so badly,57 but it does not seem to have been good enough for Brusilov. What eventually became of the hapless Gillenshmidt, we do not know, but it is probably safe to assume he eventually lost his job. On June 9, Brusilov informed Kaledin that the enemy was strengthening before his army and ordered him to attack to keep the enemy off balance. Then with his close attention to detail, he directed that commanders of the First Army Corps “to take to disembark the head of the troop train.” He then ordered that the 1st Turkestan Corps, which comprised his reserve in the region of Muravits, to disembark. As these moves were happening, the III Army, under Evert’s front command, was to take the offensive at Pinsk.58 On the day after the offensive began, he noted small details in a report that

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

171

“uniforms and shoes are in foul condition. Tobacco [is] given out only to those with money; that is totally undesirable.”59 Furthermore, five days into the successful offensive, when one might expect that his attention would be elsewhere, Brusilov was tending to shortages of underwear, boots, etc., noting that the men had already received waterproof boots, overcoats, new caps, and trousers.60 The Russian offensive definitely ended the idea of any renewed Austrian actions in Italy, and Conrad formally cancelled the already inert Italian offensive the third week in June and began transferring men from the Tyrol back to Galicia on June 16.61 The result of the Russian successes made the Italians able to make the most successful advance in the Isonzo valley of the war thus far, even taking Gorizia, a major city in the valley, by August.62 The Italians were extremely grateful, and Marsengo told Nicholas II that Italy would never forget their help.63 Brusilov’s successes throughout the month of June added to his fame and popularity. Telegrams of congratulations flooded in first from front commanders. Douglas Haig and Joseph Joffre sent congratulations, and on June 25 the French army conferred upon him the Légion 1st class Croix de guerre.64 Eventually even the tsar sent what Brusilov called “a few cold, insipid words of thanks,”65 saving his effusive praise for his “well-loved troops.” On June 7, he wired Brusilov, “Send to my beloved troops, on the front consigned to your command, the expression of the pride and satisfaction with which I [have] for their hardy actions. . . . God has granted us his help to chase the enemy from our territory. I am convinced that everyone will hold firm and fight to the glorious end for Russian arms. Nicholas.” Prince Georgii L’vov, later to become better known as the Prime Minister of Russia after the February Revolution, wired Brusilov the effusive-type praise that he was getting from everywhere. While speaking of “the great sacrifice going from victory to victory,” he referred to his “strong hand of leadership” and his “mighty Russian soul . . . [which supports] you in your honorable glorious times.”66 Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich was even more lavish, stating that Brusilov’s successes “drive me into rapture.” Nicholas II soon became even more enthusiastic about Brusilov’s successes, if not of Brusilov himself. On June 18 after it had become clear the extent of his advance, the emperor wrote Brusilov, “I repeatedly thank your valiant forces for their deeds,” singling out the XI, VII, and VIII Armies for special praise.67 These successes of the “Brusilov Offensive” enhanced even further its architect’s fame to the international public, especially in victory-starved Britain, France and Italy, for now the Russian steamroller was living up to its name. One observer noted that “his name [Brusilov’s] did not leave the pages of the papers in the West,” and to his headquarters, came hundreds of people pouring into his headquarters to meet him, talk with him, and witness first

172

Chapter 5

hand his work. His renown even spread to the non-belligerent United States as is evidenced by a letter he received from a Nathan Kohn of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Enclosing in with what he wrote was “one of the many articles in the American papers” praising Brusilov, Kohn added hopefully, “I cannot help but admire your courage by leading your forces to victory.” Then having warmed Brusilov up, he made a request: “No doubt that you are also a good-hearted soul[,] and if you are as perfect a gentleman as the papers talk so much about you, please be so kind and do me a favor and let me know about my poor sister and brother-in-law [in Galicia].”68 The army that made the most gains in the initial onslaught was of course Brusilov’s old VIII, and the attainment of its full objectives would block any shifting of forces southward from the Western and Northern Fronts.69 After giving Kaledin detailed advice on attacking, he called on the VIII “energetically to follow the enemy, not letting them stop. You must try quickly to close the lines at the Styr [River].”70 After a long bombardment in which the Russians even used some gas shells, the soldiers advanced at 9:00 a.m. on June 5.71 The Russians had sapped forward during the bombardment in places to within forty-five paces of the Austrian lines, and many of the Austrians did not have time to escape from their underground bunkers when the Russian infantry attacked. In places, the Austrian officers fled, leaving their men leaderless, and by early afternoon, the Russians of the VIII Army had taken all three Austrian trench lines.72 Marsengo remembered that within twenty minutes the 2nd division of sharpshooters had taken the first two lines of Austrian trenches, with the 4th division having taken three lines. They were commanded by General Denikin.73 Brusilov’s telegrams to Kaledin indeed reflect more interest than to the other armies, but possibly it could have been because he felt that Kaledin needed to be pushed. He had performed superbly while leading a cavalry division and had been promoted to army corps commander, and Brusilov had then picked him to succeed himself. The Times History of the war described him as “a short, thick-set man. His quiet, sober eyes inspired confidence in anyone who had dealings with him.” He was even highly respected even by enemy writers.74 In his memoirs, Brusilov, however, remembered that Kaledin showed “an absence of determination,” and felt that “his limit was in fact the command of a division. Even an army corps was beyond him.”75 The brunt of this Russian assault fell on the Austrian 4th Army under Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, especially on the 10th (Hungarian) and the 2nd division, which was composed largely of Slavic troops. The Russians ruptured the lines in several places through which the Russian cavalry drove, cutting off from behind large numbers of Austrian infantry from retreating before they even knew that their line had been broken.76 The 4th Austrian army disintegrated into a disorganized mob, and within a few days, its remnants were

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

173

driven to the Styr River.77 The VIII Army had easily overrun all three Austrian trenches before it and ripped a hole twenty miles wide, into which the Russians advanced five miles deep into the Austrian lines, exposing the flanks of Böhm-Ermoli’s army group, the 1st and 2nd Austrian armies, forcing them back.78 In some places, Austrian barbed wire caught their own troops, and Austrian engineers, in their panic, blew up bridges, trapping their own men on the Russian side of the river.79 One Austrian division commander wired headquarters, “This is a debacle; out troops are no longer worth anything.”80 Amazingly at this point, Conrad still did not take the crisis too seriously, and he refused to interrupt the birthday dinner of Archduke Friedrich, telling his staff that “at most we will lose a few hundred yards of land.”81 Already by the June 6, however, the Russian VIII Army had advanced more than twenty miles and was approaching from two sides the city of Lutsk. The Austrian defenders fled and at 8:25 p.m., Russian troops entered the abandoned Austrian army headquarters. The Archduke Joseph Ferdinand and his staff had left the afternoon before, and their departure had been so precipitous that the Russians took a battery of six 4" guns, which were even loaded but unfired. The city was full of enemy supplies as well as wounded abandoned in the hospitals.82 Brusilov continued to push Kaledin, who must have been lagging or certainly was not striving to the extent that Brusilov had wanted. Brusilov in general praised the accomplishments of the VIII Army to Kaledin by saying, “The VIII Army has energetically pursued the enemy, not allowing him to rest,” but then he urged Kaledin onward: “What is possible to take without cost today, tomorrow will have to be taken with a fight,”83 but still Kaledin held back. In advancing too quickly, he would expose his right flank as long as Evert’s Western Front failed to attack. One historian of the battle felt that even L’vov (Lemberg) could then have easily been taken.84 Brusilov felt that Kovel could have fallen as well.85 Both the historian and Brusilov had the advantage of the proverbial 20/20 hindsight, and Kaledin had a point. Brusilov’s memory was faulty when he wrote his memoirs on this phase of the battle. He recorded in the 1920s, “I plead guilty to another mistake. I should never have consented to the appointment of Kaledin [as commander of the VIII Army],” obviously forgetting that he had handpicked him as a successor. It is very likely that with these changes, “Kovel would have been taken at one stroke soon after beginning the operations against the city.” Then he added, “but there is no point in crying over spilt milk.”86 On June 7, Brusilov continued goading the reluctant Kaledin. “The VIII Army will pursue the enemy not giving him time to stop. . . . Go after the enemy. Do not wait for him because that it is necessary to carry the blow today and a dash tomorrow . . . Brusilov.”87 Brusilov’s orders must have

174

Chapter 5

worked because later that day the VIII Army resumed its advance, meeting no resistance from the fleeing Austrian units, and on the night of June 7–8, they reached and crossed in places the line of the Styr and the Ikva Rivers. In four days, the Russians had penetrated the Austrians lines twenty-five miles and won two pitched battles.88 Russia could already claim a smashing tactical success. On June 8, however, German reinforcements first began to arrive to buttress the sagging Austrian armies. The first to appear was a “scratch division” from the front before the Pripet marshes, including the 57th Landwehr and the 39th and 268th Landsturm regiments. Shortly afterward, several other German divisions from the Northern Front arrived, along with Ludendorff himself, and in a major shakeup, Austrian General Alexander von Linsingen assumed command of the Volhynian front. Yet, the Russian advance did not stop with the first arrival of the Germans.89 The Russians also captured Mlynov on the Ivka. With the use of artillery fire, the Russians took Rozhyshche, seizing many provisions, and after heavy fighting, Dubno fell, as did other villages to the west. On June 9, Brusilov noted to Kaledin that “the attack of the army of the front is a tactical success,” then he ordered him to “call in the cavalry to break through and harass the enemy’s rear.”90 Although numbers invariably vary, Austrians were indeed being captured in staggering numbers. One historian cites 20,000 taken by the VIII army alone by June 6.91 Marsengo wrote that by June 9, they had captured 1,014 officers and 40,000 soldiers,92 but he could only have gotten his information from the Russians. An official army report states that for June 5–7, they had taken 922 officers and 43,000 men, 66 pieces of artillery, 150 machine guns, and an astounding amount of war materiel.93 These losses were so desperate for the Austrian 4th army that on June 10, General Paul von Puhallo’s 1st Army had to stretch itself northward to help secure the rupture. By June 12, the Russians were eighteen miles west of Lutsk, and by June 13 they were midway between Lutsk and Vladimir-Volhynsk. Their advance to date had created a salient forty-five miles deep,94 and the important north-south railroad junction of Kovel was endangered. At this point the Russian advance was, however, becoming vulnerable because enemy concentrations were appearing on the flanks of the salient they were making, as Kaledin had feared. The Russians, however, still took Kolki and pushed beyond it on June 13, and the enemy was retreating behind the next major river barrier, the Stokhod.95 In the words of military historian Liddell-Hart, the front had broken “like a crust of pastry.”96 On June 16, the Austrians and Germans, under their new commander von Linsingen, made their first major counterattack near the town of Gadomyche, six miles west of Kolki, where the Styr and the Stokhod are only a few miles apart. The attempt was broken by the Russians, and they then pursued the

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

175

fleeing enemy. A Siberian regiment strove so vigorously that it crossed the Stokhod near the town of Svidniki and captured an entire German battalion. Other Germans continued to counterattack for the next few days, but the Russians broke their effort each time.97 Kaledin had wanted to drive on Vladimir-Volhynsk, but Brusilov had his sights on Kovel. He fed to the VIII the 5th Siberian corps from his limited reserves, leaving only the 113rd division and the 23rd corps of his reserve unengaged.98 He then two days later instructed Kaledin to focus on Kovel. “I beg you to turn your attention in the direction of Kovel,” he wired the hesitant Kaledin, adding, “It is necessary for you to support yourself in the north and northwest with strong reserves.99 At this point, Kovel was only twenty-five miles away.100 Meanwhile, the Austrians and Germans continued to advance, despite having suffered terrible casualties, and von Linsingen again tried a major counterattack on June 21. Conrad estimated that in the Lutsk fighting, he had lost 2,400 officers and 204,000 men, 150,000 of which were prisoners,101 and Archduke Friedrich admitted to the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Istvan Burian after Lutsk that the war could not now be won.102 Despite the pessimism, nevertheless, the Central Powers continued to try to drive the Russians across the Stokhod, but these hapless counterattacks were broken easily by Russian artillery.103 The success of the VIII Army, while still not sufficient to Brusilov’s liking, was drawing the attention of Stavka, which was beginning to think in terms of its efforts becoming the main thrust for 1916. At this point, Evert’s III Army under General L. V. Lesh, his extreme left flank force, was transferred to Brusilov’s command with orders to drive toward Kovel, meanwhile changing the focus of the VIII to join Sakharov’s XI Army in its drive for L’vov.104 Sakharov faced two Austrian armies, part of the 1st, the 2nd, and part of the Südarmee, essentially an Austrian army which included one German division and was commanded by General Felix von Bothmer, a Bavarian. After brief artillery fire, the XI army had attacked on the June 4 general starting day at about 2:00 p.m., even before the VIII Army had, and in many places, and it overran all three Austrian trenches.105 Then the 16th and the 4th divisions attacked the 32nd Austrian infantry division, taking 44 officers and inflicting 1,800 casualties. The 18th corps took 69 officers and 2,798 POWs.106 The advance of Sakharov XI Army did, of course, in no way equal that of the VIII, and one has to assume it was the German Korsetstetten (corset stays, as they called the German reinforcements) in the Südarmee of the one brigade that made some of the difference.107 Cruttwell, at any rate, credits Bothmer with the lack of Russian success, adding, “Without his steadfastness, there would have been a complete rout.”108 Ludendorff credits Bothmer as well, but he overstates the facts when he said that the Russians were

176

Chapter 5

“completely repulsed.”109 Austrian artillery fire seems to have become more effective here, and the Austrians used gas shells. The reader will remember that the XI Army was Brusilov’s weakest, but by June 11, even Sukharov had made respectable gains.110 On June 12 and 13, the Austrians continued counterattacking, but their efforts were always broken by the Russians,111 and the Austrians continued to have heavy losses.112 By mid-June, the Russians resumed their advance in this sector, but more slowly. In trying to cross one of the rivers, a Russian company had to traverse an especially deep spot, and many of the men drowned.113 The terrain over which they had to attack was a “defender’s dream.” In a letter to his wife, Nicholas II expressed the opinion that “our successes are everywhere satisfactory, with the exception of one place,” that is, where Sakharov’s attack was stalling. The losses were heavy, he admitted to Alexandra, but attributed the success on the other fronts to the fact that Sakharov’s army “had to attract the enemy’s attention, and in so doing help their neighbors”114—a monumental rationalization. Shcherbachev’s VII Army on Sakharov’s left had been originally created to assist the Romanians should they enter the war,115 but by 1916 Stavka had placed it between the XI and the IX Army of Leshchitsky, whose left flank rested on the Romanian border. Austrian sources report that the VII Army had only twenty-three heavy artillery pieces.116 On the first day, the VII Army was to attack toward Galich driving ultimately north by northwest toward L’vov.117 On June 4, the 22nd and 16th corps of the VII were hit by enemy artillery fire, probably preparing for a counter-attack, but the artillery of the Russian 2nd corps unleashed on the Austrians preparatory for the attack. By June 7, the VII Army had carried the Olekhovets line on the tributary of that name and reached the ridge between the stream and the Strypa River. At dawn on June 8, the Russians took Butchach (Buczacz) itself and that day occupied a village a few miles to the west of it, capturing a huge Austrian artillery park with many shells and howitzers. After a week of fighting, however, the VII bogged down as German reinforcements began to stiffen the Austrian lines.118 The Russians anyway had captured 7,000 POWs, and Pfanzer-Baltin reported to Conrad that he could not continue to hold his line.119 What is more, Austrian troops facing the VII were showing signs of severe demoralization, and in the week that followed, the Russians resumed their advance to the Dniestr River. They held off “unfriendly [sic]” counterattacks, which included hand-to-hand fighting, and the Russians counterattacked themselves, bagging 4,000 POWs, including an entire regiment of Honved (something like the national guard) troops.120 In less than two weeks, the VII Army had captured 716 officers and 33,500 men, among whom were a thousand Germans. It likewise captured 47 artillery pieces and 105 machine guns.121 Russian statistics reported to headquarters, probably more accurately than some figures conjured up later,

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

177

speaks of 133,546 men taken prisoner between June 4 and June 10 (including 27,000 puds [a pud = about thirty-six pounds] of barbed wire and 100,000 puds of cement),122 and an additional 169,134 POWs and 3,336 officers taken between June 10 and June 16.123 The IX Army of Lechitsky on the Romanian border was to attack to hold troops before it from being transferred northward, or even better, to draw troops from the north toward it. General Lukomsky’s 32nd corps was to be the major attacker and had almost the entire army’s artillery.124 Before them was Bukovina, with Czernowitz as its capital. As for Lechitsky himself, his career reads like a military Horatio Alger story. He was born in 1856 the son of an Orthodox priest in a small provincial town, and he himself prepared for the priesthood in a seminary in Vilno. Having no social connections to gain entrance into one of the military academies, he joined the army as a volunteer and worked his way to the top, distinguishing himself in the Russo-Japanese War. By 1916, he was heading the IX Army.125 Its success was phenomenal, especially given its limited artillery. Its artillery prep was the shortest anywhere, and their men went over the top as early as 12:00 p.m. on June 4, but by 3:00 p.m., they had taken prisoner more than 11,000 men and officers.126 By June 11, units of the IX reached Horodenka, more than forty kilometers from its starting point. By June 17–18, they had crossed the Pruth River and were endangering Czernowitz.127 As had been typical, Austrian counterattacks were broken, and all along the front, the Austrians were falling back. On June 18, Czernowitz fell to Lechitsky’s troops.128 The Times History reported that the University of Czernowitz was “the farthest outpost of German Kultur.” Classes were taught in German and the university had awarded in 1915 honorary doctorates to the Archdukes Friedrich, Eugene, Joseph Ferdinand, and even Conrad. They ironically just happened to have planned a pro-German exhibition for June 4, which Pflanzer-Baltin was scheduled to attend. The beginning of the offensive and Pflanzer-Baltin’s incarceration in a hospital made the Austrian general unable to be present, and whatever activities still took place did so to the background of the distant rumble of Russian artillery fire. In the panic to evacuate the city as the Russians approached, the citizens watched helplessly as Austrian forces passed through the city in flight, with one lone Russian plane flying lazily over the city.129 The Austrians in their retreat left “great stores of supplies including automobiles.” Ironically, in a village outside Czernowitz, the Russians took a monument to the Austrian victories of 1915 in the Great Retreat, and in another village, they appropriated a depot of materials for building bridges and railroads.130 Even the Austrian official history of these events states that “the road was [now] open to the Carpathians.”131 That somewhat overstates the case, but of great importance was the fact that the Austrians were now transferring large numbers of troops from the Tyrol and the Isonzo.132

178

Chapter 5

Alfred Knox, who seems to have spent some of the early days of the offensive with the IX army, praised its staff. He reported to London, “To live with Lechitsky’s staff was a delightful change after the strained atmosphere on the Stokhod. The IX Army takes everything lightheartedly; . . . everything goes well.”133 Knox’s dislike for Brusilov is again reflected his reports. In this specific account in a paragraph discussing the reasons for the IX Army’s success, he concludes with the sentence, “Brusilov had no more to do with the success than the American correspondent [Stanley Washburn] of The Times.”134 On July 30, Knox asked Brusilov if he thought that Lechitsky needed reinforcements. Brusilov dismissed his meddling with “The IX Army’s spirit was such that it did not want [for] men.”135 By June 13, this army had captured one Austrian general, 754 officers, 37,832 soldiers, 120 machine guns, and 49 pieces of artillery.136 By September 1916, he had taken a total of 106,000 of the enemy, 7,000 of which were Germans and 127 pieces of artillery.137 The French reported to Paris that by June 14, the Russians had taken 1,720 officers, 120,000 soldiers, 130 cannons, and 260 machine guns.138 Within a short time, all of Bukovina was in his hands. In places the Austrians were retreating on all fronts so swiftly that they were leaving bridges intact,139 and in places the Austrian army had fallen back so swiftly that at times the Russian forces had lost touch with them.140 Brusilov resumed his general total front drive on June 14, and the French report dated the next day informed Paris that “the offensive of General Brusilov has not stopped as of yesterday.” It reported that the Russians had taken by the time around 150,000 prisoners.141 The III Army under Lesh on the right flank of Brusilov’s front began driving toward Pinsk as a feint, with Kaledin’s VIII attacking toward Kovel. The IX and VII armies were to attack to prevent the transfer of troops northward.142 By June 16, the tsar wrote to his wife that the Russian railways were “working much more effectively” and the transfer of troops from the North to the South “was accomplished much quicker with better order than formerly.” The transporting of a corps usually took about a fortnight, whereas each corps now was moved in a week or less.143 It was indeed grim for the Austro-Germans. Hoffmann told his diary that helping the Austrians would take time “and we must have patience,” adding a little sardonic humor, “The Austrian defeat is not, of course, agreeable, but we must not pull all our hair out at once.”144 The initial success of the first day of Brusilov’s offensive was indeed stunning. It was a repeated process like a metronome: The Russians would attack and push back the Austrians, and everywhere the Russian accounts tell of Austrian counterattacks after “a hurricane of artillery fire,” but each time they are broken “with terrible losses, and the Russians attack again.” “You [now] know the strong result taking place at the front,” Brusilov wired Alekseev on June 7. “With God’s help,” on which Brusilov frequently claimed he

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

179

called, “it will not stop at this and will develop into larger successes.”145 At the same time, Nicholas II wrote to his wife, “The staff has recorded that the total number of . . . prisoners taken by us reaches 70,000 men and a thousand officers. The word ‘victory’ has been used for the first time in the official communications.”146 Brusilov’s success had the effect of turning his front into the major 1916 effort, which was not of course the original plan. Churchill wrote that movement to reinforce extensively Brusilov began as early as the 9th or 10th of June,147 but given the Russian rail system, however, reserves could not reach him as swiftly as the Austro-German forces facing him could be reinforced. Brusilov, therefore, called for the original planned attacks on the Western and Northern fronts to pin down German forces from being transferred. Without these attacks, he could only have limited tactical victories.148 Still, even with the enemy’s reinforcements, the Austrian front continued to retreat,149 and their efforts at counterattack continued to be easily repulsed with great losses.150 These first days certainly had the Austrians terrified. Conrad even evacuated his wife from Teschen. He had been “completely surprised by the Russian successes,” and he requested of the emperor “ten to fourteen days of patience and calm nerves,” something he himself certainly was not exhibiting.151 Even the Germans seem to have begun to panic. On June 9, the German General Staff published a history of the disastrous Narocz Offensive apparently to remind the Germans they had once beaten the Russians decisively.152 The offensive in its early days had definitely been more successful than anyone (except perhaps Brusilov) expected, but it had not been consistently so. The VIII Army’s drive toward Kovel had created a large salient, and the IX Army’s drive had overrun Bukovina had gone well, but the advance of the VII and the XI Armies had not been as successful because they faced the armies of Gen. Paul von Puhallo, Boehm-Ermoli, and Count Bothmer. Although severely damaged, their Austrian front had not been irreparably broken. Furthermore, the Austrians continued unbroken their lateral rail line paralleling their front, which made resupply and reinforcing easier.153 Another hindrance to success was the appearance by as early as June 7 of shortages of cartridges and shells. Soldiers were already conserving, and they were even in some places using Mexican rifles.154 Moreover, Brusilov had been told early on, the reader is aware, that he would be given no additional reserves, and the slightly more than 100,000 men that Brusilov had as a reserve had been consumed in a few days.155 Marsengo remembered that the rolling stock of the railroad system was in “a very bad state,” adding that “the traffic on the network is enormous, appalling.”156 The Russian army, like all others, was powered largely by horses (In 1916, the army had 431,147 of the beasts.)157 which meant a mountain range of fodder had to be provided

180

Chapter 5

daily. One bright spot was rifle production, which for 1916 was 1,321,000, over a hundred thousand more than Germany produced.158 Also by the spring of 1916, supplies from the All-Russian Land Union, a civilian volunteer organization, started appearing in reports as being the major source of food and medical supplies.159 Yet, there remained the transport problem. The real worry for Brusilov, though, was the reinforcement of the sagging Austrian front by Germans. Their appearance meant the difference between the stunning advances of 1914 and solid but lesser successes of 1916. French observers “noticed the arrival of German elements coming from the north of Polesie,” and Germans had already appeared among the POWs within a week of the beginning of the offensive.160 Falkenhayn had created eight mixed (Austrian and German) divisions on the Stokhod under the German General Georg von der Marwitz, and Germans had been brought from the north of the Eastern Front. The Times History reported that four divisions had been moved from France, one from Verdun, which had arrived in the east in only six days.161 Other sources reported that the Austrian transferred fifteen divisions from Italy to Galicia, and the Germans moved eighteen divisions from the West,162 and 3½ German divisions were transferred from Salonika. Two Turkish divisions likewise arrived from there.163 By mid-June, more and more Russian reports mention fighting Germans, not Austrians, and that Germans, not Austrians, were being captured.164 Hoffmann wrote in his diary on June 12 that “There are so many German troops there by this time, and others on the way, that there seems no more need for anxiety at that point. . . . This danger is now over.”165 Two days later he added, “Then we shall gradually have everything in order again.”166 Yet, he blamed in part the GHQ of the German army for removing all the German troops from the Austrian front since last year. “We are needed to keep them steady,”167 Hoffmann noted. One of the reasons for the great successes of the Russian IX Army in the far south was spelled out by Hoffmann. “The Austrians could not hold Czernowitz, so they had much better give it up instead of losing 100,000 more men over it. For we could not help them there. There are no railways to those parts, or rather only little single-tract lines.”168 It is impossible to know the exact numbers that were moved eastward from anywhere, and it is impossible to state with complete correctness, as the Russians later tried to do, that they “saved” Italy or Verdun, but it is clear that whatever troops moved to Brusilov’s front meant the end of any strong offensives at Verdun and any at all in Italy. Moreover, Brusilov’s successes aggravated the existing friction between the Austrians and the Germans. It was a bitter pill for Conrad to have to go hat in hand to Berlin on June 8 to ask for more troops. With German help, nevertheless, Austrian resistance stiffened by June 19. Reports show that Austrians are frequently counterattacking and occasionally Russian attacks fail.169 Churchill wrote that whenever the

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

181

“Russian waves had encountered German troops, they [the Russian troops] had swerved [around] as from a rock [in a stream].”170 Both contemporaries and later historians were to agree that had Brusilov had to face only the Germans, he would not have been anywhere nearly as successful. In October 1916, Col. Langlois said as much in his report to Paris. “Brusilov said he was a disciple of Napoleon [who concentrated on one place in the enemy line], but in reality he attacked everywhere at once. Against the Germans . . . more solid and better organized, these attacks are insufficient . . . giving the [Russian] infantry heavy sacrifices.”171 World War I historian C. R. M. F. Cruttwell stated the position quite clearly: It is certain, however, that the resistance of the German troops would not have been so lightly overcome. The majority of Austrians, on the other hand, “had little stomach for so unsuspected an onslaught.”172 Indeed, one-third of all of the Austrian forces facing Brusilov on June 4 were by June 13 taken captive,173 but by the end of June, there is no question that Germany saved Austria from a certain defeat in 1916, far worse than 1914. The retreat of the Central Powers was, nevertheless, far from over. The Russian victories, however, had not come without a great price. Washburn was at Mogilev during the beginning of the offensive, and he found among the staff there “a great state of uncertainty” since the casualty reports were “already mounting enormously.”174 The Russian historian Golovin placed the numbers for the entire offensive (June–October 1916) at 1,200,000 killed and wounded and 212,000 taken prisoner.175 Whatever the Russian losses, and they were great, were not large enough to make the advance a pyrrhic victory, but to the illiterate peasant infantryman by the fall of 1916, the game did not seem to be worth the candle. Once Brusilov’s front became for Stavka the major effort instead of a secondary one, the efforts of General Evert became even more important. We have seen that once Brusilov agreed to go on the attack to “save” Italy, he had insisted that Evert attack to pin German troops on the Western Front to his north, and the Western Front attack against Germans was at that point still intended to be the major attack of the 1916 Eastern Front Offensive. Evert seemed to be preparing to attack as Hoffmann had feared as early as June 2. “South of Smorgon the Russians are pushing forward, but they had not yet attacked,” he wrote in his diary, adding, “the suspense makes one a little nervous—will they or won’t they?”176 Clearly what Evert was doing was dragging his feet. The disaster at Lake Narocz in March had thoroughly rattled this normally aggressive commander, and he had no confidence that his attack to assist Brusilov would be successful. Moreover, a failure of his effort would “incite public opinion” against him. Rumor also had it that he did not want to get a bloody nose so Brusilov could get the credit, although Brusilov himself did not believe this story,177 and it is unlikely that this attitude affected Evert’s

182

Chapter 5

reasoning. He had, the reader will recall, given Brusilov similar assistance during the Great Retreat, but Brusilov himself seems to have come to believe it later. In a meeting with Marsengo, he told the Italian officer, “Do you know what he [Evert] has said? . . . He said that he did not intend to work for my glory. I am furious, furious,” Marsengo added that Brusilov trembled like “a lion wounded.”178 On June 25, Brusilov wrote his wife, “I have not lost hope that all will turn out right, but with such a neighbor as I have [Evert] . . . it is difficult [to remain optimistic].”179 After Brusilov’s death, Nadia wrote that she “never personally knew Evert, but I only know that my husband was very annoyed [with him] and was indignant with him and General Kuropatkin when they did not assist his army in 1916.”180 Evert was supposed to have attacked on June 9, a few days after the offensive had begun, but he had not, and the date was now set for an action on June 14. Yet on June 14, Brusilov received a telegram from Alekseev on the clumsy Hughes Telegraph apparatus that “due to bad weather,” Evert would not attack until June 18. He postponed it again, and Brusilov, at any rate, felt that he had done so without telling anyone.181 “I was exasperated beyond measure,” Brusilov remembered later. Brusilov had feared that this would happen and resigned himself to attacking alone, but he asked Alekseev if he could definitely depend on an attack on June 18 and was told that there was “no doubt.”182 On June 17, Brusilov wired Alekseev, apparently not trusting the “no doubt” response, to ask that “for planning purposes,” could he be told when Evert would attack. He then asked Alekseev to replenish his exhausted ammunition supply, adding that “without the rapid sending of these military provisions, I will not be able to continue to fight.” Alekseev replied that he had never stated that Evert would attack on the 18th and added that he would instead attack no later than June 28–29. On June 18, Brusilov received another telegram stating that Evert had reported to Stavka heavy concentrations of troops in his sector and wanted to transfer the action to the lines opposite Baranovichi, General A. F. Ragusa, who had not even made any initial preparations at all to attack.183 It must be said in Evert’s defense that he had a good record during the Russo-Japanese War, and he had, of course, shown skill and aggressiveness in withdrawing during the Great Retreat. Moreover, LaGuiche reported to his government as early as April that Evert’s armies were the most tested by the shortages that existed in the Russian army.184 What is more, Evert was truly troubled by recent extensive rains which made Russian roads impassable. Certainly neither heavy artillery nor munitions could be moved to the front in sufficient quantities, and without them, there could be no successful attack on the fortified German front. General Danilov reported later that it was generally known that it would be the end of June before the front would be dry enough to be readied.185

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

183

It is not that Alekseev did not encourage Evert to attack, something of which Brusilov seems not to have been aware. As early as June 7, he wired Evert that “enemy activity demands a drive in the Pinsk region, not only in the interest of your neighbor [Brusilov] but also your own front.186 On June 18, Brusilov explained the advantages of Evert’s attacking on his right, adding, “We would finish now with the enemy,”187 and on the same day, when Evert clearly was resisting attacking, Alekseev is stressing to Evert that his would-be attack toward Brest and Kovel on the German front would not only help Brusilov but also the Anglo-French forces in the West, “who are energetically attacking the enemy.”188 By way of excuse, Evert replied the next day with the justification that “all the artillery shells that I have are located in the Vilensky region in army warehouses, and transport must be made quickly . . . [if I am to attack].”189 Ignoring Evert’s shell problems, Alekseev wired back the same day, adding that the emperor had ordered him to demand that Evert attack. “The general situation and the position of the Southwest Front has been borne by the Southwest Front alone. It is equally intolerable that there has been an absence of a blow in the region of Pinsk. . . . Therefore your important smack must fall not later than 16/29 or 17/30 of June. . . . General interests demand this . . . [action] be fulfilled.”190 Still, Evert did not move. Indeed on June 29, he called on Brusilov for the same help when the Austrian 4th Army began an offensive on the Baranovichi Front. He asked Brusilov if the III Army under Lesh, which the reader must remember had been transferred to Brusilov’s command, could make a demonstration on its front as a flanking motion191 to give him some relief. As the Russian armies were catching their collective breath, the AustroGerman forces launched their first major counterattack the last week of June against the northern flank of the Volhynian salient between the Stokhod and the Styr Rivers. This manoeuver, if successful, would necessitate a complete Russian withdrawal. The Russians did have to retire from the western bank of the Stokhod near Svidniki, and bitter fighting ensued with villages changing hands several times with a number of Russian successes, but the Russians did make a tactical withdrawal of five miles as a defensive measure.192 On the whole, though, the Russian lines held. Brusilov told Marsengo that “things were in disorder” and he was encumbered by thousands of prisoners,193 but the Russians were seen able to retake Svidniki, capturing 450 German soldiers in doing so.194 Yet obviously the enemy front was stiffening, and the number of prisoners taken were daily listed in the hundreds, not the thousands announced in the earliest days of the offensive. On June 22, Brusilov wired Alekseev that “on the front from the Pripet [marshes] to the Dnester, the enemy is showing firm resistance.”195 On June 18, for example, the Russians took only 3,000 on the

184

Chapter 5

entire 250-mile front.196 Also, for the first time in the military archives there is a document dated June 8/21 which mentions large Russian losses. “Yesterday’s fight assumed a very cruel character, [sic] prisoners not taken because the Germans shot with exploding bullets, [sic] loss of 2 rifle unit’s officers killed, five wounded, 266 lower ranks killed, and 1224 wounded. One regiment had 50% casualties, another 70%.”197 Nevertheless, the Russians fought on persistently, and French reports recount tales of wounded men staying in the line and refusing to go to the dressing stations.198 Moreover, everywhere Austro-German counterattacks were always broken, so the Russian successes were far from over, but obviously the heyday of the offensive had ended. Russian losses began seriously to mount.199 The only part of the front that continued at this point to be highly successful was that of General Lechitsky’s IX Army in Bukovina, the most likely reason being that the Germans could reinforce this sector of the front only with great difficulty. “For we could not help them there,” Hoffmann wrote in his diary. “There are no railways to those parts.”200 Czernowitz fell on June 17 to the IX Army at the time that the VIII Army was stalling. The Austrians began evacuating the city at 6:00 p.m., and within an hour, the city was in Russian hands.201 By June 23, almost all of Bukovina had fallen to the Russians. In one town, the Austrians had fled leaving 88 empty railroad wagons, 17 wagons with Turkish wheat, a wagon of forage, and 50,000 kilograms of anthracite and construction materials.202 Nicholas II rejoiced in a letter to his wife: “Thank God, again good news from Lechitsky. Yesterday his army captured 22 officers and 10,000 men. So many new hands for work on our fields and [in] our factories.203 The next day, the Russians entered Kolomea in the last unconquered western part of Bukovina, and by July 2, the Russians had the train station there open to traffic. The Russians then moved both north and south, rolling up the line.204 The Times History’s account is a bit embellished, but once again the Russians were indeed fighting in the shadow of the Carpathians. Meanwhile in the north, instead of driving westward from Lutsk for Kovel, Kaledin had ignored Brusilov’s orders and pushed instead toward the Russian target of Gorodishche, pursuing a beaten enemy. Brusilov was livid. After blasting him for not following orders, he wired on the Hughes Apparatus, “You well must know that I do not tolerate such independence. I order you to report quickly to me the reason for your cancellation of my orders.”205 By the 19th Brusilov was again micromanaging Kaledin’s front, inquiring and ordering troop movements, delivery of arms, shells, etc., obviously not trusting the VIII Army’s general to do his bidding.206 Whatever the combination, the Austrians were again withdrawing before the VIII’s assault, retreating under the first artillery bombardment before the Russian infantry even attacked.207 The Austrians retired to the Lipa River by June 21, but here the enemy resistance

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

185

stiffened mainly with the addition of German troops “from the Balkans [Italics in original].” Forward movement being stymied, Brusilov ordered the VIII to dig in and prepare for a new attack early in July,208 but with Kaledin’s dillydallying, the enemy further fortified the important city of Kovel, especially with troops from France and Italy, and made it more difficult to take. In his memoirs, a frustrated Brusilov wrote, “This helped Russia’s allies but not Russia.”209 The VIII Army had had, however, relatively few casualties at this point, only about 30,000 by the 18th, with enemy losses at over 100,000 men and 100 guns.210 Its situation was still very favorable. Meanwhile, the VII Army had not fared so well. It had taken 716 officers but only 33,000 prisoners,211 many fewer than on the other armies, but the VII was partially facing the redoubtable Südarmee. Moreover, the VII was attacked by the Austrians on June 17 after “a furious fire of light and heavy artillery,” but it was stopped by the 1st Finnish Brigade, which attacked its flank.212 On June 20, the Germans facing them went on the attack about 11:00 a.m., but they were stopped by 4:00 p.m., and a Russian counterattack recovered what they had lost in the morning.213 During the fighting, Austrian and German airplanes bombed the Russian positions and wounded a few soldiers, but they did little damage.214 Brusilov ordered to the whole front that every unit was to hold. “In the case of a counter-attack of the enemy,” he told his generals, “hold your positions. Brusilov.”215 To assist him, the tsar wrote his wife, “All available troops are being sent to Brusilov. . . . All Evert’s and Kuropatkin reserves had to be sent there.”216 Meanwhile, on the Stokhov and the Styr, the Germans continued broad counterattacks after heavy use of artillery. In most cases their efforts were repulsed, but the Russians did not try to advance.217 On June 29 came the first report of the Germans’ taking and holding Russian-conquered territory.218 Austrians had also begun using artillery fire at night, and there are references to night bayonet attacks like those used by the Russians in the Great Retreat. On the front facing Bothmer’s army, there was no Russian advance at all.219 Yet, Conrad was still in a panic. On June 18, he wrote General Hans von Seeckt, Mackensen’s chief of staff, “Doubtless the current superiority of the Russians is in their rich replacements that they brutally throw into battle. If the Germans don’t help soon,” he added, “the whole thing will go bad.”220 Generally, Brusilov’s line held, however. In the struggle in the end of June, Linsingen also repeatedly counterattacked, but each time he was stopped by Brusilov’s skillful shifting of troops, thus countering the attacks with strong numbers. If he made small gains, they would soon be lost.221 Some of the success was attributable to Brusilov’s remarkable micromanagement. On July 2, he wired Sakharov, “I hope that the arrival of the 6th Siberian division restores the position of the 45th corps. . . . This would

186

Chapter 5

shore up the entire front. . . . By all means we are trying to accelerate the movement of the 51st Corps.”222 His directing was often done while driving about from one place to another in an open car, which exposed him to enemy aircraft. When he was warned by an officer that he was endangering himself, he replied, “Do not imagine that for the sake of personal security I would lose this splendid contact, which I now have with the troops.”223 Some of these military peregrinations seem to have taken place while Brusilov seems to have been ill. On July 1, he wrote to Nadia, “I don’t know why but I for the last few days I have felt bad. My liver is ailing, and I haven’t been sleeping well.” By way of possible explanation, he continued, “After all I’m knocking on 63 years[,] and two years of war makes itself felt.”224 On July 6, his agitated wife replied, “My dear golubchik Alyosha, I am worried sick about your health. . . . I encourage you to drink water and in general consult the doctor.”225 By July 17, his liver and stomach problems had passed, but his nerves had not cleared up and “as always in these cases, sleep is light.”226 Therefore, by the last week in June, the offensive had slowed or even stopped in many places, although in the northern part of the Southwest Front, the enemy had been pushed beyond the Styr.227 In some cases, the daily army reports are confined to a single sentence, “At the front the armies [are engaged] in sporadic rifle skirmishes.”228 In the north before the VIII and part of the XI Armies, the enemy line was holding although the Russians had created a salient that was forty-five miles deep. South of that bulge, the front of the XI and VII Armies, about forty miles, had hardly advanced, but south of the Dniestr River, the reader is aware that the IX Army had already overrun Bukovina and was at the Carpathians.229 In fact, the advance was so extensive, that due to the lesser successes of the VII Army on Leschitsky’s right flank, they were in danger of being outflanked by Bothmer and the Südarmee. Indeed Bothmer did attack south of the Dnestr and after savage hand-to-hand fighting, the Russians had to yield a little ground but finally fought the enemy to a standstill.230 At one place, the XI Army used the night bayonet attack, to sow panic in the Austro-German lines, forcing the 3rd Uhlans to flee into the woods.231 Another major reason for the slowdown was the continuing weakness of the transport sector. Cyril Falls opined that “if Brusilov had had better transport, he could have gone on indefinitely,”232 which may be so. Alekseev stressed this shortcoming in a report to the tsar, citing “metal hunger” because of transport problems, which prevented the factories from producing arms.233 By the end of June, there was likewise a shortage of horses on Brusilov’s front,234 which contributed to the chronic slowness of transport of shells. Alekseev reported to the tsar that he was moving artillery from the Northern Front to Brusilov,”235 but on June 22, Nicholas II wrote to Alexandra, “This damnable question of ammunition for the heavy artillery is beginning to make

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

187

itself felt again.”236 The Russians tried to remedy this problem by repairing the damaged railroads as they advanced or widened those that were not,237 but with only limited success. We have seen that by late June there occurred the temporary transfer of Evert’s III Army under General Lesh to Brusilov’s command, now forming his extreme right wing.238 On June 24, Brusilov issued a directive for the VIII and III Armies to attack westward, for the XI Army to remain in a holding position, and the VII and the IX to resume their respective offensives. Brusilov specifically ordered both Kaledin and Lesh to attack in the direction of Kovel. After the two generals regrouped and interconnected their armies, however, the Germans “sent from other fronts” counterattacked first but were repulsed.239 A similar event happened in the south, The VII and the IX attacked on July 4 just as the opposing Austro-German forces were about to do so themselves.240 By the first week of July, the Russians had already racked up a sound tactical (one might even argue strategic) victory even if they had advanced no farther. French military observers reported to Paris that by July 1, the Russians had captured 212,000 prisoners,241 while Paléologue reported the figure of 217,000 and 4,500 officers, 230 guns and 700 machine guns.242 Whereas a week earlier, the reported numbers captured in various actions were in the hundreds, now they are in the thousands again like earlier in the offensive.243 Those prisoners of non-Slavic origins were sent to work in Siberia and Turkestan, while those of Slavic background were sent as laborers on Russian farms, where they were a godsend to the farmers.244 Even the XI Army, which had advanced the least, took 140 officers and 6,500 of the lower ranks on June 29 alone.245 British general Douglas Haig, watching these successes from the Western Front grumbled to Sir Bernard Pares, “I wish I could take so many prisoners,”246 and at this time, Brusilov wrote to his wife, “In general things are not going badly, considering that it could be rather worse, since I had to await enemy forces heaped on me from all sides: from Evert[‘s front], from Kuropotkin[‘s front], [and] from the Italian, French and Balkan fronts.”247 It is clear that the first month of the Brusilov offensive was affecting other fronts. As for the Austrians, the Russians could easily defeat them one on one, just as they could always defeat the Turks by themselves. One observer in 1916 wrote in the New Republic, “One outstanding conclusion to be drawn from the present Russian offensive is that when the Germans leave the Austrians and the Russians alone together[,] the Russians beat the Austrians. It was true in 1914, and it is still true today.”248 The Austrians, of course, had had no German help in 1914, and the Russians were able to push into, and one place actually through, the Carpathian passes. Without the German help in 1916, it is safe to presume that the Russians would have done as well and probably even better, because the Austrians had been seriously battered by

188

Chapter 5

1916. After Conrad suspended the Tyrolian offensive, by late June, Russians were capturing Austrian troops that he been not only in the Tyrol but also on the Isonzo River or even in Croatia and Albania.249 Another sign that the Austrians were in difficulty was their drafting the French equivalent of the classes of 1917, and 1918, as well as older classes of 1870 and 1871.250 Yet the real impact came on German fronts when troops as we have seen were “loaned” to face Brusilov. It is not until the end of June before the term “Austro-German” begins to reappear in reports of attacks.251 Some German POWs told Washburn that they had come “on express schedule” from the Western Front,252 and Washburn estimates that by 1917 the Germans had transferred a million men from other fronts, which would mean that there would be no significant German offensive action in the West any time soon.253 Hoffmann confided to his diary, “We scraped together all the reserves we could find, thinned the quieter fronts and obtained in this way a few regiments.”254 Marsengo, whose information is sometimes dubious, claims that by July 5, the Germans had moved twenty-two divisions to Brusilov’s front.255 A French report, which is probably more accurate, states that by June 27 only four divisions had come from somewhere to the VIII Army front, going into the line on the Stokhod,256 but reports indicate that other divisions were sent as far south as the Tarnopol sector in the region northwest of Buczacz.”257 Russian reports have troops coming from the West through the rather circuitous route of Namur, Liège. Berlin, Pozen, Lodz, Warsaw, Brest, and the Kovel,258 but some of these had indeed come from the battlefield of Verdun.259 Brusilov had reported on June 24 that the first concentrations were deposited between Lutsk and Kovel,260 obviously to protect the endangered railroad junction in the later. The first ironically were swept away in the confusion of the flood of retreating Austrian troops, but the Russian advance on Kovel was stopped, as Ludendorff remembered it, only after “terribly anxious days.”261 Hindenburg’s command was now extended as far south as Brody on the Russian XI Army’s front,262 but the Germans had clearly saved Kovel, where Hoffmann felt, “We are quite strong enough there now,” and Russian reports cite even the appearance of more German artillery before the VII Army.263 Brusilov’s initial plan had worked almost too well. He reported to his army commanders that troops were moving from other fronts to the Southwest Front, the plans original objective. By the end of June, even Brusilov’s IX Army, the one most distant south, was facing German troops from the Balkans and Austrians from Italy.264 Now was the time for the Western and Northern Fronts to attack, according to the original plan, but as we have seen, Stavka was considering now Brusilov’s attacks’ were the major effort. The big annoyance for Brusilov, however, which would last until the end of his life, was General Evert’s inaction, especially now, Russian railroads were so poor and efforts to reinforce and resupply Brusilov could not match

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

189

what the Germans and Austrians placed before him in efficiency and numbers. Russia’s best railroads had always been in the area now occupied by the Central Powers.265 What he wanted was for the Western and Northern Fronts to attack, pinning down Germans to prevent their reinforcing the Austrians, essentially the role that Brusilov was to play in the original plan for the 1916 offensive. The orders show the movements and the repositioning of certain units, but there was no forward movement.266 Brusilov later wrote that “It is strange that Stavka, correctly understands that hasty help would be provided in my attack [to draw troops from their fronts], but not . . . when the situation was concerned with Evert’s and Kuropotkin’s actions.”267 As early as June 9, Brusilov had appealed to Evert personally to attack to prevent the German transfer of troops to his front even before it was having any effect on him. “The Germans continue to transfer units [to my front]. . . . Please [give me] assistance for the interruption of the German’s reinforcing. Brusilov.”268 Evert replied the same day with one of what was to become his chronic excuses. “In the region of Pinsk, the forces are so weak that a serious offensive is not able to be launched,” he replied to Brusilov. “An offensive in this region is more difficult because the swamps are still not yet dried out.”269 Six days later, when Brusilov was making headway and the German reinforcements were beginning to appear in greater numbers, Brusilov complained to Alekseev about Evert’s inaction. Reminding Alekseev that when he agreed to attack on June 4, it was then determined that the Western Front was to attack on June 10 and not later than June 11. “Then this attack was postponed until June 17,” he reminded Alekseev. “The enemy is [now] able to strengthen itself for new resistance.” Then he added threateningly, “I have ordered the VIII Army to stop the offensive.”270 Evert and Kuropatkin did finally attack the first week of July, but it was not the action that Brusilov wanted. He apparently expected total front attacks from each general, just as he himself had begun on June 4, but Evert and Kuropatkin made only one of those intense, narrow-front attacks that always telegraphed the blow. Evert sent the X Army under General Radkevich to attack in the direction of Smorgon and the IV Army under General Ragosa to attack toward Kovel. They were facing mostly Germans, to whom they caused “some brief anguish,” the Austrian official history put it, but by July 9, “the result of the seven-day hard attack was outwardly sparse.” For their efforts, the Russians had sustained 80,000 casualties. “He [Evert] lost a mass of people,” Brusilov wrote despairingly to his wife, “but the line of the enemy was not able to be broken.”271 Tacked onto the end of a letter to his wife the same day he called for help from Evert, Brusilov complained about Evert’s inaction. “Now again I have a big annoyance. Evert[’s] . . . actions have [now been] broken off. . . . The Germans continue to send strength to my front and now even more. This angers me greatly.”272

190

Chapter 5

Evert continued ineffectually pecking away at the German lines into the fall, efforts for which Brusilov gave him no credit at the time or even later. On July 23, he attacked north of Baranovichi, where he thought he was facing a mixture of Austrian and German troops. He made some limited successes, but German counterattacks held his fresh efforts to small gains. He continued on July 25 and again on July 27, but with little result.273 It does not appear that he pinned down any German troops on his front or drew any away from before Brusilov. He mounted small attacks in August, September, and October and caused some damage but not enough to affect the front before Brusilov. Evert, however, must have been somewhat pleased with his efforts because the tsar saw him on December 30 and wrote his wife that “he looks fresher than he did in April.”274 If he was pleased with himself, Brusilov was not. To the Belgian socialist Emile Vandevelde, Brusilov said that Evert and Kuropatkin’s inertia had put him “at the mercy of a German outflanking attack from the north.”275 The Iron General bitterly complained in November his armies were facing 2.2 million men, compared to the 450,000 he had opposed in June, and that the difference, 1,750,000 troops, had been brought there from other fronts. He contended to the end of his life that had these troops could have been prevented from relocating to the Southwest Front by Evert’s and Kuropatkin’s attacks, and had they moved, he would have been able to drive “all their armies a long way to the west.” He is probably right. “There was every reason to believe that a decisive turn . . . in our favor [would have occurred], . . . and it was probably that the victorious conclusion of the war would have been advanced considerably with fewer casualties and without the terrible ordeal that subsequently had to be borne.”276 Others have joined in on Brusilov’s criticism. Years later in her rambling memoirs written in the 1930s, Nadia Brusilova said that she never met Evert, but that she knew that her husband felt that his inaction made “his victory for Russia . . . decidedly less.”277 At the time, Langlois was equally critical. Although he noted that Brusilov was insufficiently supplied and armed, “Everywhere the Russians do not attack, that is to say on the region which extended from Pripet to the Baltic, there is the most absolute calm; some journalists spent three days on the front in the region of Krevo and Lake Narocz [and] did not hear a single blast of a cannon.”278 Ludendorff, though, stressed in his memoirs written after the war what parlous straights the German armies in the north were facing at this time. They had transferred so much south that there were few reserves behind the Northern and Western Fronts.279 Even Hoffmann wrote the refusal of Evert to attack along his whole Western Front condemned Brusilov’s offensive to failure.280 Again, these criticisms ignore that Evert did make a number of heavy but narrow attacks (which Brusilov fails to mention in his memoirs), but he was

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

191

not able to advance against the Germans because he was not facing exhausted and demoralized Austrians but well-supplied and well-disciplined Germans. Not only have we seen that he hinted that Evert was a traitor during the June days of the offensive, he did so again in 1920 at a symposium, giving as “evidence” that Evert had a German name and that he (Brusilov) had received six or seven letters which asked the question if he was a traitor.281 In a letter to Nadia on July 22, 1916, before he was eating the Soviets’ bread, however, he seems more charitable. “Evert has, to my extreme sadness, had has a misfortune happen. He has lost a mass of people, but the line of the enemy was not able to be broken.”282 This statement is the closest Brusilov ever comes to recognizing Evert’s attempts. Evert was certainly not a traitor, but he had been stung so badly at the Narocz offensive in March. Cowardice has often been given for Evert’s delays, but given general insensitivity in the Russian officer corps to casualties, that is not a good excuse. Yet most historians have accepted Brusilov’s criticism at face value, but it should not go unquestioned. A broad front attack such as Brusilov had begun in June would probably not have been successful against the stronger German lines, and it would probably not have held many, if any, German divisions from being transferred southward. Moreover, many of the new troops before Brusilov were from Turkey, Salonika, the Tyrol, and France, not simply from the Northern and Western fronts. Evert’s attacks could have stopped them. Brusilov initial successes continued to reap praise. Congratulatory telegrams from all over the country continuing arriving at Brusilov’s headquarters from leading figures, both political and military.283 Prince George L’vov, head of the All-Russian Land Unions again sent congratulations. Waxing excessively dramatic, he wrote the Iron General, “Your terrible sword like a thunderous arrow of stunning lightning flashed in the purple sky, lights up the west with the joy and rapture of the heart of Russia. Our gazes, our thoughts and our hopes are to the heroic and indestructible army, which [has made] great sacrifices [no punctuation] The full sacrifice defeats our tough enemy and goes from victory to victory with triumph.”284 He even received congratulations from the Petrograd Fruit, Tea, Wine and Fish Exchanges.285 Peasant deputations congratulated the general through his wife. Meeting them on tours of the rear, Nadia sent him their good wishes and thanks for defending them against the cruel Germans. “They cried out ‘Hurrah’ to you.” Praise came even from the more literary minded. Newspapers referred to him as “a hero,” which was even reported at his death in Soviet newspapers, and there were testaments to his “strong character” and his having “a cool mind with a warm heart.”286A short story appeared on Brusilov in Russian newspapers, and a song was written on him.

192

Chapter 5

Brusilov–our beloved Leader With him I go forward, With him in the onslaught, with him in the lead, In the falcon-like fabulous attack.287

The French President awarded Brusilov the Grand Cordon de la Légion d’honneur et medaille militaire,288 and the much relieved Italians indirectly dispatched their congratulations, begging “Your excellency to accept the warm congratulations for the shining victory” and “to pass sincere congratulations and brotherly greetings to General Brusilov and his glorious force.”289 Among Brusilov’s most excited admirers were, belatedly, Nicholas and Alexandra. On July 7, Nicholas wrote to Brusilov, “Let me give you my heartfelt thanks to the participants [he names them] who so outstandingly struggled in the thirty-day battle . . . winning successes over the stubborn enemy. Let us strain [sic?] you [he uses the familiar pronoun] our heroic strengths and complete the business with vigorous, cruel pursuit. Nicholas.”290 He also praised Brusilov to others, even to the skeptical Colonel Alfred Knox. In writing of a luncheon with the tsar, Knox noted, “He was evidently in good spirits on account of Brusilov’s success.”291 To his wife on the same day, Nicholas wrote, “Brusilov is firm and calm.”292 Brusilov speaks of reserves arriving from other fronts on June 26,293 but what came arrived in “dribbles,” General Danilov wrote in his history of the Russian army,294 and Hoffmann noted as early as the 19th that Russian troops had been “marching off from our front as fast as they could go.”295 Yet the problem, as Brusilov had repeatedly stated, was the fact that the Germans could move reinforcements south faster than the Russians could. General Lukomsky later noted that “The Germans, who were in possession of a far more powerful system of railways than we were, succeeded in bringing their army corps to their weak points on our Southwest Front long before we could get [equivalent] reinforcements [to match them].”296 As early as June 22, Hoffmann wrote, “The Russians seem . . . to have given up any idea of an offensive against us [on our Northern Front] and are sending all the troops they can south.”297 This Russian tactic let the Germans know that they were safe from attack and could securely reinforce the Austrians. In fact, it was the Germans who attacked in the north to try to stop Russian transfers. A French communique to Paris reported “violent artillery bombardment on the Riga front . . . and artillery attacks on Dwinsk at Jacobstadt” and planes bombing Polotchanyi southwest of Molodechno at the time. The author asked, “Is this to hold reserves and prevent their being transferred to Brusilov?”298 Since the Germans were transferring troops from this front southward, they could hardly have been planning a real advance.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

193

By the time of the lull, the Russians had captured over 200,000 Austrians, let alone the numbers of dead and wounded they had inflicted, but a Russian military historian claimed that the Russians themselves had sustained 300,000 casualties.299 One recent historian who never used Russian archives claimed that the VIII Army alone captured 200,000,300 roughly the same number repeated by Brusilov, although he does not state that all were captured by the VIII Army.301 Two historians have written that 285,000 Russians had been killed, with probably as many wounded,302 but in almost all cases during the war, the wounded exceeded those killed. Austrians sources put Russians killed at around 300,000, but the Austrians would have had no way to judge accurately Russian losses, given the disasters that had befallen their armies since June 4. They probably did not even have accurate loss statistics on their own forces. At this point, Brusilov, several historians note, reverted to the concentrated, narrow-front methods that he had heretofore avoided,303 but in reality he did not change these tactics just yet. When he did make limited narrow attacks, they were somewhat defensibly in that since Kovel was an objective, an attack toward it could only be done quickly with a short frontal attack. Moreover, his narrow attacks around July 4 nearly worked, for the AustroGerman front almost cracked. Lesh’s III Army did not enthusiastically pursue at first, which was a mistake, but on July 5 he was more aggressive and nearly rolled up the Styr front. His forces made a four kilometer tear in the line, and the Austrians retreated so fast that it took Lesh almost a day to re-establish contact with them.304 All the more, all along the front, however, individual armies still continued to attack on his entire front, continuing his broad-front policy. Whereas on July 7 he ordered the III and the VIII Armies to attack in the direction described above, he ordered the VII and the IX on their left flank to drive westward for Halicz and Stanislavovo. The weaker XI Army was simply ordered to hold what it had already occupied,305 so in reality he did not yet completely abandon his broad front attacks. Moreover, in the south, the German 119th infantry division, which arrived on this front on June 30, uncharacteristically broke and fled under attacks by the IX Army, and it only stabilized because they were forced to do so by Austrian cavalry.306 July saw the final, complete revision of the Stavka plans of April. Any efforts on the Russian Western and Northern Fronts made against the Germans had gone nowhere, and Brusilov had advanced in some places as much as forty or fifty miles. What had begun accidentally in the end of June became total policy by mid-July, and by this point, Alekseev was diverting all available reserves to the southwest.307 Yet the Russian rail network proved again and again inadequate. Lukomsky remembered that the IX Army in Bukovina could not get reserves (reinforcements) fast enough. “We in the IX Army were at a loss to understand what was going on,” he wrote. “We received

194

Chapter 5

reinforcements, too . . . but they arrived too late. Our offensive came to a stop in the middle of July, and pure trench warfare began once more.”308 In addition to the adding of the Guard Army, a Southwest Front addition to be discussed below, and the loan of the III Army, Stavka sent twelve additional divisions, one historian notes, to Brusilov.309 Telegrams in mid-late July show more and more men and materiel being dispatched to Brusilov’s front, and there was a frantic quest for transports to move the material.310 One unknown commander under Brusilov seemed to be grateful for anything he might get. “In view of the weak work of the railroads,” he wired to someone, “I beg you to reinforce me if only it would be with one battalion.”311 Although Ludendorff placed the time early in August, by the mass transfer of troops southward in July, the Russians had abandoned any action against the Germans from the Western and Northern fronts. Ludendorff noted that success only came in the south, hence the abandonment of any action against the Germans.312 Of course, Germans continued to move south as well. Ludendorff later remembered that he felt that as far as numbers were concerned, the AustroHungarians could have held their own against the Russians, but due to their “present conditions, [presumably the battered nature of the army] we had to come to the rescue.” He noted, nevertheless, and herein lay the impact of the Brusilov offensive, “the losses of the German troops with the Austro-Hungarian army could not be made good.”313 Many died, of course, and reports continued showing large numbers of them were captured, even by Lechitsky’s IX Army on the extreme left flank of the Russian front.314 Golovin wrote in his history of the Russian army in the Great War that the number of German divisions in the east increased by thirty from the time of the beginning of the Brusilov Offensive to the fall of 1916.315 These figures are a tad suspicious. Such numbers would have seriously weakened the Germans elsewhere and were not needed that badly in the east. We have seen that the transfer of Germans into the Austrian armies in limited numbers had already stemmed the Russian military onslaught by early July, but certainly large numbers were eventually sent.316 By the end of July, almost all of the guns captured, an almost a third of the POWs, were indeed German.317 Another historian cites the total as being forty-four, placing the German reinforcements at thirty-four, fifteen from the Western Front and nineteen from north of the Pripet marshes. Seven Austrian divisions came from Italy and two from Turkey. He observed that these transfers did not weaken the Germans in France because newly formed divisions took their place.318 This help only stabilized the Austrian front, Hoffmann recorded in his diary, since it was collapsing so swiftly. “They could nowhere amass enough to attack,”319 he observed, and the Austrians had become completely aware

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

195

of their dependence on the Germans. “Once more only German help can save us,” the Austrian foreign minister Istvan Burian confided to his diary in midJune 1916, “Our dependence is increasing.”320 By mid-July, it was near total dependence. This predicament was further evident by the fact that Ludendorff and Hindenburg maintained a “rolling headquarters” up and down the front, rushing to trouble spots and largely ignoring local Austrian commanders.321 Moreover, Russian activity resumed toward the end of July. Again, in another monumental indiscretion, Nicholas II wrote his wife, “Tomorrow our second offensive begins along the whole of Brusilov’s front. The Guards [Army] are moving forward to Kovel.”322 The Guard Army, to which Nicholas referred, was composed of two corps of elite Guards units, some of which had been created as far back as the time of Peter the Great. Technically this new force was under the direct command of the emperor. Its creation would have made it the XIII Army, but to avoid superstitious fears of the number “thirteen,” they called it the Guard Army, later the Special Army.323 It consisted of 134,000 men and outnumbered the German forces facing it.324 Originally it was to be placed under the command of Evert, but when his first July attack had gone nowhere, Stavka decided to give it to Brusilov and place it in the line between the VIII and III Armies. Washburn, whose military opinion is sometimes suspect, felt that this army consisted of “some of the best troops in Europe at the moment.”325 This new army was under the command of Lt. General Alexander M. Bezobrazov, a somewhat discredited figure who seems to have owed his position to being a favorite of the emperor.326 His suspect talents, or rather lack of them, led Brusilov to ask Alekseev to remove him when the army joined Brusilov.327 Since he was directly under the command of the emperor, however, only the emperor could remove him, so Brusilov’s efforts at first went nowhere. Sergbeyev-Tsensky describes him in a most unflattering manner. At age sixty, “he was enormously fat . . . [and had] a massive fat face with narrow slits for eyes—a purple bulbous nose with crimson veins crossing his face, testimony to the amount of alcohol he drank.” If indeed he fit the description, he was perfectly named, for the Russian word bezobraznyi means “ugly.” His court connections had placed him where he was, and furthermore, the tsar liked his “jolly stories,” which seemed to flow from him endlessly,328 so his position seemed secure. After a seventeen-hour trip at a snail-like nine versts an hour, he arrived at Berdichev and immediately called on his commander with Count N. N. Ignatiev. He found Brusilov looking at a map on which he showed Bezobrazov the sector of the front he would occupy and the additional units which would also be under his command on the Stokhod River. Bezobrazov wrote in his diary that he immediately noticed that he would be facing a swamp, through which he would be required to advance presumably over three causeways

196

Chapter 5

above the muck, which would put his soldiers exposed to enemy fire. “I asked [Brusilov] if the swamps were passable and received an affirmative reply,”329 Bezobrazov recorded in his diary, which was not a completely truthful statement, as it turned out. After dinner, he returned to his car and continued his journey to his troops that night.330 The Guard Army did attack all along its front on July 28 after an artillery barrage “of extraordinary intensity.”331 The infantry advanced at 1:00 PM, but it had to attack across swampy terrain through which there passed only three dry causeways. These fine men became bogged down in the morass and were hammered relentlessly by Austrian and German artillery as well as harassment from airplanes. Alfred Knox, who the readers have seen tended to hold the Russian army and its leaders in some contempt, noted in his diary, “The Russian command for some unknown reason seems always to choose some bog to drown in,”332 doubtlessly remembering the Lake Narocz disaster. Where they faced only Austrians, they were generally successful, capturing 11,000 prisoners by July 31. On July 31, however, Brusilov had admonished Bezobrazov to press forward at a place where the Austrians were evacuating. “Utmostly it is necessary to increase the speed of your offensive of your left flank,” Brusilov stressed to his subordinate, “since the enemy is leaving the sack in which it sits.” Given his penchant for detail, Brusilov even mentioned by name the Austrian units that were retreating. “If the enemy withdraws to Kovel,” he warned Bezobrazov, “we will meet again the tenacious resistence and sustain big losses. Brusilov.”333 Although some territory was taken, it resulted in what Knox considered unnecessary slaughter.334 Bezobrazov asked Brusilov to send him the Siberian corps but received the evasive answer that it was under the Supreme Command and therefore was not under his control. Bezobrazov stated that it was under Lesh’s army, which was on his right and therefore under Brusilov.335 By August 1, however, the attack was over “because of general exhaustion, ferocious enemy defense, and lack of support of reserves we had asked for.”336 Bezobrazov had lost 200 officers and 30,000 casualties, and his munitions were exhausted.337 Brusilov expressed his displeasure with the Guard Army to Marengo telling him that Bezobrazov’s delays had allowed the German 121st division to integrate itself with the retreating Austrians and bolster the line.338 Marengo is probably mistaken in stating that Brusilov was at odds with the army itself. He was clearly at odds with its commander, whom we have seen he admonished sternly. Bezobrazov in his diary claimed that he had crossed the Stokhod and advanced fifteen versts, taking 8,000 German prisoners, over 300 officers, two generals, and 50 guns,339 but he seemed more interested in the publicity his actions received because he complained bitterly in his diary’s pages that “not a sound, not a line [about his successes] was to be found in all the daily newspapers,” and he heard that a false rumor

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

197

circulated that his forces had collapsed and their banners taken. He blamed Brusilov, Klembovsky, and Alekseev “for all of this,”340 but it is highly unlikely that they were culpable. On August 3, he was summoned to Lutsk by Brusilov for a joint army commander meeting with the Iron General and Kaledin. On arriving, he found Brusilov in his car in the station berating Kaledin for what was not the first time, for the inaction of his 30th corps, which was on the Guard Army’s left flank. Probably to Kaledin’s great relief, Bezobrazov’s arrival was a welcomed interruption. Several days before, Brusilov had written his wife, “Kaledin seems indecisive in general and in everything questioning. Already in this period of the offensive he seems a milksop [triapka].”341 It was not until June 1917, when nothing any longer mattered that he was finally able to remove Kaledin.342 At the meeting, Bezobrazov claims that he suggested to Brusilov that since the road to Kovel lay over open terrain that they attack in that direction with the 1st and 30th army corps, and Brusilov agreed.343 Strangely there appears in the Russian archives a report written by Bezobrazov that same day in which he complains that the Guards Army did not have the means to “force the river” because it did not have sufficient air intelligence of the enemy positions or enough artillery to destroy enemy trenches.344 It is unclear whether it was written before or after meeting, but it in no way reflects the take-charge attitude he described in his diary that he displayed at the meeting. The artillery assault began at daybreak on August 8, which according to Bezobrazov, was seventeen hours late. In some places, it did not fire at all because no one ordered it to do so. The infantry attack itself was total butchery, and he sustained tremendous casualties.345 Between August 1 and September 16, the Guards Army made seventeen separate attacks through the Stokhod swamps, all of which one historian wrote, were “shredded, forming a defensive wall of rotting Russian corpses to protect them.”346 On August 18, Bezobrazov was most critical about Brusilov in his diary. He condemned him for placing him in a swamp and not giving him adequate reserves. In the unusual defensive Monday-morning quarter-backing, he fumed that had he been given the Siberian corps as he requested, he would have broken the line and that would have developed “an initial big success.”347 On August 19, Bezobrazov took a daring chance and wrote to Nicholas II of what he considered Brusilov’s faults, but the tsar replied, “I have full confidence in him.”348 Nicholas II had saved Bezobrazov once in 1915 and given him another chance to redeem himself, but after August 9, Brusilov continued a drumbeat to Alekseev for his removal, and these were added to calls for his dismissal from other quarters, even the empress. Demonstrating more knowledge of military operations than she should have known, she wrote her husband,

198

Chapter 5

“From all sides [there are] terrible cries against Bezobrazov [hers] arise, that he let the guards be slaughtered.”349 How much influence her denunciation of the hapless Bezobrazov had cannot be determined, but after his failure, his fate was now sealed. On August 27, Bezobrazov went to his dugout for a rest, and there he received a telegram informing him that the Guards Army was now being renamed “the Special Army” and that he was being replaced as its commander by General V. I. Gurko. In his diary, he again bitterly blamed Brusilov for everything and again claimed that with adequate support he could have achieved victory. He strongly denounced the Iron General, “this sly fox of Armenian origin,” and in a spate of paranoia claimed that he had participated in “a general intrigue against me” and had “placed everything from his sick head on my good head [an old Russian proverb].” He then claimed strangely that the intrigue had “cheated our dear, kind sovereign.”350 Bezobrazov, nevertheless, was not alone in his condemnation of Brusilov for the failure of the Stokhod offensive. He was joined, as was often the case, by Knox, who blamed Brusilov for the disaster. “A larger share of this failure should in fairness be laid upon General Brusilov,” he wrote in a report to London, “who fixing the exact section of the front to be occupied . . . chose marshy ground that was practically impossible.” He even went so far as to criticize the Russian soldiers, saying that “the Russian soldier has proved once again that he is poor fighting material,”351 but it is highly unlikely that British troops would have performed better in the Stokhod swamps. The criticism can easily be chalked up as another one of Knox’s slights on Brusilov. Conceivably an attack could have gone around the marshes, but it would have left miles on front from which the Austrians would have had no pressure and from which they might have shifted troops to the pressured flanks. Had the Normandy Invasion in 1944 failed, Eisenhower would have probably been severely criticized for sending men against the seemingly impossible cliffs on Omaha beach, but the Germans could not have been allowed to have a sector in the middle of the assault go unpressured. Neither could Brusilov have done so in the Stokhod offensive. Whereas the troops could have perhaps been managed better is another question, but some effort had to have been made in the attack’s center. After his dismissal, Bezobrazov went to Stavka on August 30, blaming Brusilov for his failure to anyone who would listen. The emperor did receive him but offered no reason why he had been removed. He then went to Alekseev, who explained his removal on the fact that his troops had lost confidence in him. Bezobrazov exploded in front of the tsar’s chief of staff, and beating his fist on Alekseev’s desk, shouted again the curious words, “The sovereign is being cheated.”352 He lived to survive the Revolution and died in Nice, France, in 1932.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

199

Lechitsky likewise stopped attacking in the South at the end of July to early August, and a recent historian of the offensive claims that we do not know why, since he had the Austrians “on the ropes.”353 Lukomsky also blamed the inaction on the decline of the enthusiasm of his men, an interesting metaphor for exhaustion. It had “fallen flat; they lost all impulse to advance and gradually began to fortify their positions and settle down in newly-dug trenches.”354 Lukomsky blamed the stall on the Germans’ having “taken the initiative into their own hands at the end of July,” which forced the Russians to limit their operations to meet their attacks instead of being able to deal the enemy a crippling blow.355 Shcherbachev’s VII army attacked on July 28 after only a half hour’s shelling of the enemy and did cause a minor rupture of the enemy front, but the enemy finally contained the breach. His attack had, however, pinned Bothmer’s Südarmee, thus helping Lechitsky and enabling him to break the Austrian lines, forcing even the German units before him to retreat. He did not, however, press his victory, for his army was spent.356 The offensive, therefore, stalled again early in August. The fact that by now German troops were putting plenty of spine in the flaccid Austrian lines was augmented by the extension of German control over the front. Whereas the Austro-Germans had indeed stopped the Russian advance, they could not themselves attack. Both sides seemed spent. One factor may have been that August 1916 was rainy and cold. The tsar frequently mentions this type of weather in his letters to his wife, though with the halting of his troops, he still remained optimistic. “Just at present there is a lull again,” he wrote her, adding, “Fresh reinforcements are being sent.” Then he told more classified information: “The offensive will probably be renewed about the 23rd.”357 Florence Farmborough herself, from the dubious vantage point of the Russian Army Medical Corps, found the halt unrealistic. “It is difficult to believe, but the tumultuous firing of the past night had been all in vain,” she recorded in her diary. “The enemy’s line is still intact.” She had been so certain that “the armies of our hero, General Brusilov, would have little difficulty in sweeping the Austrian forces out of Galicia.”358 He would certainly have had little trouble just “sweeping the Austrians out of Galicia,” but he was not just fighting only the Austrians. He faced large numbers of Germans as well. Even she sensed this problem because she postulated, “Perhaps it was indeed true that German guns were behind this sudden repulse.”359 Farther north at Ludendorff’s peripatetic headquarters, then temporarily at Vladimir-Volynsk, the Austrian 4th Army under Linsingen’s command had been “thoroughly stiffened” with German troops.360 The Southwest Front was clearly facing a different foe from the one it attacked early in June. Brusilov became so annoyed that he went himself to Lutsk to find out why the action toward Kovel had gotten nowhere.361 Simply put, the Germans and Austrians had fortified the region with fourteen divisions, and the Russians

200

Chapter 5

could not break through them. On August 4, Brusilov lectured his commanders. “In the fighting in recent days I have noticed numerous departures from established positions of military experience and from my orders,” he warned. He went on to remind them that “first, an attack is preceded by a thorough reconnaissance of every position,” and second, “units should maintain ties between infantry and artillery.” He was profoundly disturbed by the “enormous expenditure of shells with negligible gain,” resulting in “losses that are unnecessary.” He also complained about the lack of liaison between infantry and support groups. Noting that these were the most important mistakes, he patronizingly concluded with “In general, I recommend [that you] reread my orders. Brusilov.”362 During the early days of the July offensives, Brusilov did not write Nadia too often, and when he did, he did not discuss military matters with her with his previous recklessness.363 As usual, he drew God into the discussions, claiming that “thanks to God, . . . everything was a success [and] remains in the hands.”364 As for Nadia, she kept him informed about his popularity, which was immense. He had even appeared in what must have been newsreels in the cinemas. Telling him about this new publicity, she added, “They tell me that the public always applauds and stands up [when you appear], adding, “We want to go see it.”365 She did go see it in September, where she said, he “came out very well. Simply marvelous. I was overjoyed to see you.” Her visit to the theater must have been turned into a war propaganda event because the manager gave her a “splendid bouquet of flowers” comprised in the colors of the Russian national flag.366 Moreover, she again wired his superiors to complain that her husband was not getting the adulation that she felt he deserved. Her husband, not surprisingly, became quite angry. At the end of July, he railed out against her meddling. “Why have you sent telegrams to the tsar and to the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich? I have indeed begged you not to do this. This will give great complications for me, and I already have enough of them!”367 Nadia continued to send him gifts of candy and fruit, and she told him late in August that she was sending him “four good oranges, grapes and plums, especially for you.”368 They arrived with incredible celerity by August 30. She also continued to channel things to his armies. She wrote the Moscow Military-Industrial Committee to obtain makhorka (a cheap grade of tobacco given to soldiers) for the Southwest Front in June, and they sent 125 puds (a pud = 36 lbs) to each of his four armies.369 She also sponsored a lottery which raised 130,000 rubles for soldiers’ gifts late in September, and it was such an “unprecedented success” that she received a telegram of congratulations from the empress.370 From his correspondence with her late in July, she was apparently planning to visit him again, for he wrote, “I impatiently await your coming,”371 but she does not seem to have gone unless she quickly passed through headquarters on her way to Odessa mentioned below. It is unlikely that during

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

201

the heat of the offensive he would have sanctioned a visit from his wife, for he would permit himself no pleasures that he would not permit his men. At the end of July, Nadia moved to Odessa. “I know that you joy in this . . . since Odessa, for you, is Eldorado, a winter paradise and your triumph,” Brusilov wrote with a bit of gentle sarcasm. She must have told him that to winter there would save money, because he felt the need to point out to his frivolous wife that it was not economical to live in a cheaper apartment in Odessa if she was still paying rent on one in Moscow.372 Yet when she mentioned subletting the Moscow home, he wrote back that he was “unconditionally opposed, [for tenants] will damage all our things.” For the umpteenth time he admonished her about her inability to manage money. “You do not understand that things become more expensive and to you everything is green grass.”373 Although it failed, the unsuccessful July 28 drive on Kovel had the Germans so fearful that the Ludendorff-Hindenburg rolling GHQ came there early in August. Ludendorff remembered that von Linsingen’s Group was “not firm,” even “critical.” We have seen, however, that the Russian effort failed. Washburn sat on his balcony off his hotel suite in Lutsk and watched “hour after hour” as peasant carts four abreast carried the wounded from the Guard Army to the rear.374 After having been so victorious in June, Brusilov was not pleased that his success had waned. Given his early triumphs, he probably had thought that he would by now be in Budapest. Washburn was leaving Russia and motored over to Brusilov’s headquarters at Berdichev to say goodbye. Brusilov greeted him cordially but obviously annoyed at his recent failure said, “Let us never mention Kovel again.” Washburn asked him what had been his objective to which Brusilov snapped, “My objective is the destruction of the enemy and will be until the end of the war.”375 Brusilov had little direct way of knowing it, but he was causing the enemy much angst. On August 7, Hoffmann, who was in Kovel, wrote in his diary, “[Yesterday] at 2 PM the Russians attacked. . . . The whole army was in retreat. . . . Report early today . . . that the Russians had broken through . . . . Situation serious, etc.” Whereas Brusilov was impatient with his lack of progress, he was unwittingly terrifying the Germans. In his memoirs, he blamed his inability to take Kovel on the enemy air force. The Russians could not match them. He had asked for more planes to direct artillery fire, but they were simply not available. The enemy did have them, and the Russians suffered for it. He also blamed the officers of the Guard Army who “were not up to their work.”376 Speaking of the efforts toward Kovel, Ludendorff noted in his memoirs that Russian efforts were “repulsed,” after “severe fighting . . . up and down the line.”377

202

Chapter 5

In the south, as always, matters had been better for the Russians. Here the Russians broke through at Zaloscz and were not stopped until Zborow, when the Austrians were buttressed by the 1st German corps under a General von Eben. Yet the advance forced Bothmer’s Südarmee to retreat to avoid being outflanked, but during his withdrawal Bothmer maintained contact with the Austrian army until a stable line could be established behind the Zlota Lipa River. The Germans continued to fear the collapse of the Austrian armies until mid-August when the front under new command began to hold.378 As part of his general offensive late in July, Brusilov ordered his weakest army, the XI under Sakharov, to attack again. It had made small gains, but the weakening of the whole front gave it some advantage. Besides, Russian intelligence told of the accumulation before it of Austro-German forces obviously preparing for an attack, and Brusilov felt that a pre-emptive strike north of the city of Brody was in order. On July 18 Sakharov attacked and in a short time took 13,000 POWs and three large ammo dumps, thus forcing the Central Powers to suspend their planned attack.379 Eventually by July 28, just as other fronts were going active, the XI Army took Brody, thus widening the Lutsk salient.380 After a breather, Sakharov attacked again on August 4 with the rest of the front commanders, and despite the arrival of German reinforcements, the Russians continued to advance occupying Galician villages all along the front and capturing another 166 officers and 8,415 men.381 Their advance, in conjunction with Lechitsky’s in the south, made Bothmer’s retreat absolutely necessary. Brusilov, however, had not been pleased with the recent coordination of his two most southern armies, and he sarcastically lectured both Shcherbachev and Lechitsky. On July 31, he wired both commanders, “It is very sad that you were not able to prepare yourselves to act together. . . . Only under the condition of close ties and co-functioning of general strength are we able to take rich fruit. Yesterday the IX Army attacked, but today it stands on the defense.”382 They must have taken his advice to heart because their performance in August improved, although it should be noted that Russia had enormous superiority over the Austrians.383 Shcherbachev between August 4 and 14, made large gains on the IX Army’s right flank, capturing 55,000 POWs, 1263 officers, fifty-five cannons, 211 machine guns, and 128 artillery caissons.384 Brusilov simultaneously urged Lechitsky to advance. On August 4, in one of his many micromanaging acts, Brusilov wired the commander of the IX Army, “Do not give the enemy [any chance] to launch his attack, and it is obligatory to stop him [and] hold him.385 Lechitsky took Brusilov’s advice to heart. He continued to threaten the Carpathian passes, and Ludendorff remembered that the Austrians were “terrified” of the possibility of an invasion of Hungary.386 They were so close that Russians entertained a plan to

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

203

bomb Hungarian wheat fields to set them aflame before they could be harvested.387 Austro-German counterattacks made some gains but soon played out.388 As the large Russian offensive was stalling, Romania, which had been greedily eying Hungarian Transylvania, entered the war with the idea of taking it from the defenseless Austrians. Had they moved a month or two earlier, they may have been blessed with success. With German help, however, the Austrians and Germans quickly routed them.389 Brusilov had not been pleased that Romania had entered the war, and the Romanian debacle made his situation worse. With the Romanian collapse 2 million tons of grain had fallen into the hands of the Central Powers, to say nothing of 250,000 head of livestock and all of Romania’s oil output.390 Stanley Washburn had come to Brusilov’s office and found him “in a great state of indignation” that Romania had joined the Allies, and he was especially angry that the tsar had taken some of his best units to plug the disaster on the Romanian front. It meant, he felt, the end of his offensive. Washburn had to talk with him “for three solid hours” to calm him down.391 The collapsing Romanian front fell under his command by default, and although his troops were fighting beside Romanian troops, the Romanian king would not keep Brusilov appraised of his armies’ actions.392 Had Romania not dithered and entered the war when his offensive began, Austria would probably have been knocked totally out of the war393 instead of just crippled. Eleventh Army commander Sakharov was given the command of the Russians in Romania, and Brusilov was therefore freed from the “thankless task” of commanding the “Danube army,” which composed the flanks of a force the center of which he could not control.394 On his old front, there was a lull in mid-August except some sporadic fighting by the XI Army and some clashes in Bukovina.395 In his memoirs, Brusilov wrote years later that he cooled his offensive because he realized he could not get the support of the fronts to his north and that he would not win the war on his front alone. He could advance a few miles, he thought, but enormous casualties for so little gain would have no point. “I therefore continued to fight, but already at a lower pressure, trying to spare my men as far as possible.”396 He had to this point sustained a half million casualties in his own offensive, a little more than each side had suffered at Verdun, but he had inflicted 1.5 million on the enemy.397 Extensive fighting continued into the fall, but the offensive everyone thought at the time, and some writing history years later, was finished.398 By any measure, it was a success, and Austria had been irreparably maimed, and given the fact that Germany now had to cover more of the Eastern Front, it could not now win the war. The Germans did begin the process of rebuilding the Austrian lines, but for all purposes, Austria was finished as a serious combatant. Nevertheless, if Brusilov himself and historians declared that the offensive was over by

204

Chapter 5

mid-August, they ignore his actions in September and October when he went on the offensive again. What ended in August was not the offensive itself but its period of success. By September 1 the Russian army on the Eastern Front consisted of 141 Infantry and thirty cavalry divisions. Of these Brusilov now had forty-nine infantry and nine cavalry divisions.399 By this time, Alekseev had transferred the III and Special Armies back to Evert, because, General Golovin later wrote, Brusilov was too insensitive to the losses. Now Evert, not Brusilov, was given the assignment to take the elusive city of Kovel.400 At this point, Brusilov’s forty-nine infantry divisions now faced seventy-two enemy divisions, twenty-four of which were German. Moreover, the enemy troops had improved in quality.401 Reinforcements did continue to trickle to him from the Western and Northern fronts,402 and Russian arms production was greater than ever with 160,000 rifles per month coming from the armaments factories in Petrograd, Moscow, and Tula,403 Supply had, nevertheless, become more erratic.404 Even with these irregular supply problems, Brusilov, who we have seen claimed that his offensive had ended, decided to resume his attacks on August 31, and it would be another broad front assault of all of his armies.405 Florence Farmborough, a great distance from Brusilov and his headquarters, expressed Brusilov’s attitude by noting, “When he knows for a surety that victory is there for the taking, he could not be stopped.”406 Indeed, in the renewed offensive, the news was at first good. On the first day his armies captured 300 officers and over 15,000 Austrian and German soldiers.407 By mid-September when the Russians were advancing again all along the line, the tsar wrote the news to his wife, adding “[we are] inflicting heavy losses.”408 Brusilov was even using gas on some Turkish troops that had been brought to the front.409 Gains, though, were not what they had been, and even the tsar’s accounts must have been a tad rosy. Duma President Mikhail Rodzianko’s son told his father, “You must tell the emperor. It is a crime to sacrifice these men for nothing.”410 By the third week of September, Nicholas II is telling Alekseev “to stop our useless attacks . . . and give them [the troops] time to rest.”411 Within days, the tsar was almost frantic: “God only knows how this new offensive will end.”412 Even Brusilov’s fan Florence Farmborough learned of the Tsar’s hesitations. “We hear that the Tsar had conferred with his generals as to the advisability of discontinuing to advance into Austrian territory, in view of the tremendous human sacrifice which it involved.”413 On October 4, Nicholas did formally order Alekseev to command Brusilov “to stop our hopeless attacks,” but Brusilov asked to continue “as Gurko will help him on the right flank, and I have permitted it.”414 What was happening was the “advance of a few miles . . . for so little gain” that he claimed in August not to have been worth the cost.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

205

Not surprisingly, the empress and Rasputin weighed in. It is unclear how many times that she met the Iron General, but sometime around early October, she received him for what was the first time that she was aware (“I did not remember his sly face”). The two talked for ninety minutes, and the empress was very complimentary of his performance, unlike his view of her in his memoirs when he obliquely accused her of treason to fit the Soviet biases. “Very clever, coaxing, beautiful manners, speaks also very good French and English.” she wrote, but Rasputin felt “but [he] needs being kept in hand [,] our Friend says, so as that pride should not spoil all.”415 What may have been the next day, she wired her husband, but he did not receive the telegram until October 24, “He [Rasputin] approved of your original plan to stop [the offensive]. . . . Now you write otherwise. May God help us.”416 That same day, on hearing that the tsar had ordered that the offensive be stopped, she wrote to her husband, “Our Friend says about the new orders you gave to Brusilov [her italics], etc. Very satisfied with Father’s orders, [sic] all will be well. [her italics]. She had, of course, divulged a military secret to Rasputin, which the tsar repeatedly had asked her not to do, but she added, “He wouldn’t mention it to a soul, but I had to ask his blessing for yr. decision.”417 Despite the order, Brusilov continued to hammer away at the enemy, so on the next day, she wrote the tsar of Rasputin’s displeasure. “Our Friend is much put out that Brusilov had not listened to yr. order to stop the advance—says you were inspired from above to give that order. . . . Now he says again useless losses.”418 On October 8, she even admonished him again. “& all say the same thing, that its [sic] a second Verdun, we are sacrificing 1000[’s of] lives for nothing, pure obstinacy. Oh, give your order again to Brusilov—stop this useless slaughter.”419 Nicholas II explained to her why the fighting continued. “When I gave this order [to suspend attack in the north and continue in the south], I did not know that Gurko had decided to gather almost all the forces at his disposal and prepare an attack in conjunction with the Guards and the neighboring troops. This combination doubles our forces. That is why [Alekseev] read out the explanatory telegrams from Brus. [sic] and Gurko, with the request to be allowed to continue the attack, which was then already in full swing, I gave my consent the next morning.”420 The empress admonished her husband the next day on October 9: “Our Friend worries that one did not listen to you (Brusilov) [her italics] as you first thought was the right one and a pity you gave in, yr. spirit was right wishing the change.”421 Brusilov had finally officially called a stop to the attacks by October 4 but had allowed some units to continue fighting for another six days, formally calling a halt again on October 10. He did allow the Special army, which was no longer under his command, however, a drive to Vladimir-Volhynia on October 16–17.422 He also again asked permission on October 7 to remove Kaledin and to appoint Gurko commander over all these troops, including

206

Chapter 5

the Guards.”423 On October 10 Nicholas sent a placating note to his wife. “My dear, B[rusilov] has, on the receipt of my instructions, immediately given order to stop, and only asked whether it was necessary to send back the incoming troops or allow them to continue their movement. . . . That is, briefly speaking, the whole story.”424 With this action, or lack of it, the Brusilov offensive really came to an official end in October, not in August as others, including Brusilov, have claimed. The offensive had been a definite tactical success, and although it was less obvious, it was a strategic one as well. The Austrian lines had been pushed back an average of thirty miles on a 250 mile front. The Russians had taken almost a half a million prisoners, and Brusilov estimated that the Austrians and the Germans sustained another 1,500,000 killed and wounded.425 The latter figure is probably a bit exaggerated, but it is not too far afield. What made it a strategic victory was the offensive crippled permanently the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it would never be an effective fighting force again, most certainly not by itself. As long as Germany had to carry Austria, and Russia could stay in the war, the Central Powers could not win it in the long run. It had not the strength to do much more than hold in the West, and whereas by 1917, Germany could have made small advances in the east, they would have been pointless to attempt them. Russia would become for them the giant tar baby in which Germany could only become engulfed. On October 10, the emperor wrote his wife, “Everything is quiet at the front these days.”426 What had in effect stopped the offensive, however, were supply and transportation problems, and hundreds of thousands of casualties.427 The offensive, however, had done much more than simply incapacitate Austria. Its initial objective had been to lure German reserves from before Evert, which it certainly had done. It had not stopped the Italian offensive in the Asiago plateau, for it had bogged down before Brusilov had gotten started, but it insured that it would not ever begin again and had guaranteed that the Italians would in 1916 make their greatest gains ever in the valley of the Isonzo. It improved the position of the British and the French in the West and had disrupted the plans of the Central Powers for the whole year.428 It was not at that point known, but it gave Tsarist Russia is last splash of military glory. Even Knox called Brusilov’s success “the outstanding military event of the year.”429 The historian Norman Stone went so far as to call it “the most brilliant victory of the war.”430 Historian Jukes felt that given the supply, resource, and technical disadvantages, the offensive was “a remarkable feat.”431 American Ambassador David Francis heard that the tsarist Prime Minister Boris Shtiurmer was so pleased that he was supposed to have said, “One or two more such victories and we can do away with the Duma.”432 The reasons for the victory can be wide and varied. Knox attributed “the poor moral [sic] of the Austrians and secondly to the intelligent appreciation

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

207

by the staffs of the [Russian] armies,” whatever that meant. He also felt that the corrections of the faults in the IX Army after its January offensive failures had made a difference.433 Langlois was not as complimentary. He reported to Paris that the armies of General Brusilov, “in spite of the brilliant success in the beginning, have made no decisive result.” He blamed the German reinforcements for the shortfall, plus insufficiency of materials.” He also cited the lack of concentration of resources, ignorant of the fact that Brusilov’s efforts were never to be the main drive in the first place. He likewise states the obvious: The German movement of troops to the south could not be matched by the Russians,434 a problem that Brusilov had foreseen before the offensive began, but was unable to control. Brusilov’s own assessment was at least in part more accurate and balanced. On the overall impact, he told Stanley Washburn, “The war has already been won. The only question now is how much the enemy wants to drag it out.”435 He was right, assuming that the Russian army remained solid in the war. He essentially told another English correspondent, as was reported in the liberal Cadet Party newspaper Rech’, the same thing: “We have already won the war. The question is only a matter of time.”436 In a staff meeting on the Southwest Front on January 1, 1917, he told the assembled, “I personally . . . with my deep faith and fully believe . . . that [in 1917], the enemy will be completely and finally defeated.”437 To another correspondent of the London Daily Chronicle, he again expressed supreme confidence in the war’s outcome. “The Austro-Hungarian army . . . won’t be able to stand much longer. . . . I am no prophet, but the present war is one which it is impossible for the Allies to lose. . . . A successful result is already in our hands; the game is already won.”438 Indeed, he did not know it, but Emperor Franz Joseph had ordered his minister of foreign affairs to begin seeking a separate peace with the Allies. Why the campaign did not result in his armies reaching Budapest, Brusilov believed, was the influx of German reinforcements, and he was easily right. Falkenhayn had, one historian of the Great War noted, “with rare courage . . . transferred eastward fifteen divisions from the west between June 4 and September 15.439 Brusilov also blamed German air superiority for giving them a great reconnaissance advantage. Without air planes to match it, the Russians could not neutralize German artillery. He also blamed the toll on the Guard Army on the incompetence of its officers, but always, for the remainder of his life, he blamed the lack of total victory on Evert and Kuropatkin for not attacking and preventing the transfer of German reserves to his front. Vandervelde wrote in his memoirs that Brusilov considered the actions treasonous and that the government, “in the hands of a pro-German clique,” intentionally refused to send him adequate war material to crush Austria.440 It is highly unlikely that Brusilov said anything that graphic to

208

Chapter 5

the Belgian socialist. Except in his memoirs where he makes a few hints that the empress seemed to be a little too interested in the dates of his offensive, he never accuses directly either her or the government of treason. In all of his post-offensive writings, he blames Evert, but one should ask the question why would Vandervelde have invented it? Perhaps Brusilov was indiscrete at a weak moment. Even Lukomsky blamed General Evert but excuses him because “he lacked sufficient technical means at his disposal.”441 Yet Evert’s perceived inaction (really his lack of success) stuck in Brusilov’s craw. The one time Sir Bernard Pares says he ever met Brusilov was at a meeting over which Brusilov presided in the late summer of 1916. Pares did not form a pleasant impression of him, and Brusilov said to Pares at the end of the encounter, “Why don’t Ewarth [sic] and Ruszky [he clearly meant Kuropatkin] do anything? Why do they leave everything to me?” Pares thought it a “poor thing to say to a foreigner,” especially one that was not a military man,442 so perhaps he was in his frustration, indiscreet to both Pares and Vandevelde. In his memoirs, Brusilov expresses the fact that Russia “had no real commander-in-chief,” condemning Nicholas II for his incompetence, calling those who failed to prevent Nicholas II from taking over in 1915 “were no better than criminals,”443 forgetting that Nicholas really did little to influence policy and left planning largely to Alekseev, who was competent, and his generals, many of whom were. Brusilov’s evaluation was on this question an unfair one. Falkenhayn, from the opposing side, condemned Brusilov for attacking without concentrating his reserves,444 but the reader knows that his reserves were limited by Stavka in the beginning, which it could not have known, when more might have tipped the balance, and he intentionally did not extensively concentrate his reserves to avoid telegraphing his punch. The German minister of war unfairly felt that the offensive was little more than “a big-scale reconnaissance.”445 Golovin, in an article criticized Brusilov for not having the strategic vision to crush the Austrian army,446 without allowing the fact that from the beginning Brusilov’s front was not picked for strategic action, and he did not have the reserves for it. Many of his detractors condemned him for not fighting another battle or another war, but Brusilov rightly claimed that with the means at his disposal, he did all he could. Modestly he wrote after the war, “Perhaps a military genius could have done more, but I neither made nor could make any claim to such gifts.”447 Several of his critics condemned him for not trying to puncture the front in a small concentrated attack, oblivious to the fact that the tactic had failed repeatedly on every front in the war to that point. He pointed out that if he had, he would have been no more successful than Evert had been before Baranovichi or at Lake Narocz. “I leave the reader to decide whether this would have been more worthwhile,”448 he wrote in retrospect.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

209

Whatever failures might have emerged from his offensive, he still had enormous successes. He became, and remained until after World War II, a great Russian military hero. Today he has assumed that aura again. He acquired the affectionate name “Prince Galicia,”449 and a Polish aristocrat offered Brusilov his castle near Tarnopol as a residence.450 Nicholas II congratulated Brusilov again even after his offensive had bogged down. “In the course of the past year and especially for the last months, the activity of your forces . . . have afforded me many joyous minutes and have inspired in me still greater certainty in our near victory.”451 Perhaps his greatest compliment came from his adversary General Paul von Hindenburg, who called Brusilov “the hammer that broke the Austrian wall.”452 Brusilov Offensive historian Timothy Dowling observed that officers who served with Brusilov later held him in contempt in their memoirs (e.g., Denikin), but that was largely due to the fact that they emigrated to the West while Brusilov remained in Russia and later worked for the Soviet government. This mentality remains to this day. An American friend of Russian descent who has lived most of his life in the United States and is totally Americanized said to this author when I told him that I was writing a biography of Brusilov, “Why that traitor!” With that attitude from a later generation, Brusilov’s contemporary émigrés certainly were hardly likely to pay him compliments.

NOTES 1. Gilbert, 253; Ludwig E. Schlotheim, “Die kaiserlich deutsch Südarmee in den Kampfen währen der Brussilow-Offensive,” Münchener Historische Abhandlungen, 9 (1936), 9. 2. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 366. 3. See Correspondence d’Origine Russe, 5N141, Cabinets de Ministre, Archives de l’Armée de terre, Chateau Vincennes, Paris. 4. Schindler, 148. 5. Marsengo, 108. 6. Schlotheim, 9. 7. There were only thirty-nine heavy batteries of heavy and long-range guns. For each kilometer of front, the Russians had only four heavy guns to the enemy’s seven and one howitzer to two-and-a-half of the enemy’s. Golovin, art. cit., 580. 8. Messner, 87; Lukomski, manuscript memoir, 36. 9. Brusilov, SN, 241; 1963 Rus. Ed., 230. 10. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 197. 11. Bidou, 151. 12. Golovin, art. cit., 580. 13. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 377. 14. N-S Correspondence, 186–87; Fuhrmann, ed., 473.

210

Chapter 5

15. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 193. 16. Segeyev-Tsensky, 84. 17. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963 ed.), 8, cites A. Bazarevskii, Nastuptel’naia operatsiia 9–1 russkoi armii, Iun’ 1916 (Moscow, 1937), 35–44; 54–57; 59–85. In all of 1916, the Southwest Front consumed a staggering 52.9 million shells. Kalichestvo patronov, November 22, 1916, f. 2067, op. 1, d. 162, reel f, l. 288. 18. Herwig, 208. 19. “The Forgotten army,” unpublished ms, 28–29, box 1, Lukomskii papers, Hoover Institution. 20. Brusilov, SN, 241; 2014 Rus. Ed., 226–27. 21. Rutherford, Russian Army, 198; Clark, Suicide of Empires, 96–100. 22. Clipping from Russkoe slovo, 24 May (6 June), 1916, in F. 5972, op. 1, d. 11, l. 30, GARF. 23. Rutherford, Russian Army, 199–200. 24. Ibid. 25. Alekseev to B, 25 May/7 June 1916, Nastuplenie, 223. 26. Eric von Ludendorff, My War Memories, 1914–1918, 2 vols. (London: Hutchinson, 1923), 221. 27. Hoffmann, 1: 123. 28. Ludendorff, 1: 219–20. 29. The Times History, 9: 23. 30. Ibid. 31. Dowling, 72. 32. Ibid., 76–77. 33. Nastuplenie, 212 ff. 34. “Voenniia deistviia armii,” p. 8, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, RGVIA. 35. Communique officiel, 5 June, dos. 1, no. 5, 16N2954, Vincennes; see also Telegram, 6 June 1916, Corres. d’origine russe, June 1916–March 1916, 5N141, Vincennes, for the same figures; Gilbert, 253. 36. Herwig, 213. 37. Ibid., 212. 38. Pares, Fall, 363. 39. Jan F. Triska, The Great War’s Forgotten Front: A Soldier’s Diary and a Son’s Reflections (New York: East European Monographs (Boulder), 1998), 3. 40. Telegram, 2/15 June 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 367, l. 65–66, RGVIA. 41. Vandervelde, 142–43. Czech units that had fought poorly against the Russians had, however, fought extremely well against the Italians on the Isonzo. Schindler, 82. 42. N-S Correspondence, 188. 43. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 400. 44. Herwig, 212. 45. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 375–78; 382–94; 410–15. 46. Nicholas II’s diary, 23 May 1916 entry, f. 601, Nicholas II Collection, op. 1, d. 264, l. 87, GARF. 47. Ibid., 24 May 1916, f. 601, op. 1, d. 264, l. 88, GARF; to his wife the same day, he stated 30,000 prisoners. N-S Correspondence, 189.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

211

48. Brusilov, SN, 243; 1963 Rus. Ed., 231. 49. Herwig, 213. 50. The Times History, 9: 22. 51. Brusilov, SN, 248; 2014 Rus. Ed., 231. 52. Lemke, 3: 822. 53. B to Kaledin (?), 26 May 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, d. 79, l. 191, RGVIA. 54. Brusilov’s telegram, 26 May 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 196, RGVIA. 55. Ibid. 56. Os’kin, , 288, 295, and 297. 57. Ibid., 285. 58. Ibid., 300–301. 59. F. 2003, II, d. 513, ll. 234–37, in Nastuplenie, 357. 60. Prikaz no. 198, 21 May 1916, f. 2970, op. 1, d. 18, RGVIA. 61. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 514–15. 62. Regeler, 365. 63. The Times History, 9: 106; Galantai, 182. 64. Nicholas II does not seem to have been impressed with the Italian and wrote his wife that Marsengo was “stupid and other foreign officers do not like him.” N-S Correspondence, 190. 65. Alekseev to B, 29 May 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 98, l. 13, GARF. 66. Brusilov, SN, 249; 2014 Rus. Ed., 232. 67. L’vov to B, 28 May 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 40, RGVIA. 68. Nathan Kohn to B, 16 September 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 137, RGVIA. 69. “Voennyia deistviia armii,” p. 5, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, RGVIA. 70. B to Kaledin, 25 May/7 June 1916, f. 2003, op. 2, d. 513, l. 186–87, RGVIA. 71. Herwig wrote that the Russians had attacked at 6:30 a.m., but that time does not fit with the record showing that the VIII’s artillery bombardment lasted twentyeight hours. Herwig, 212. 72. Dowling, 79. 73. Marsengo, 112. The VIII Army also had another famous name in its ranks: Marshal Carl Mannerheim, later to become the president of an independent Finland. 74. The Times History, 9: 10. 75. Brusilov, SN, 163. 76. The Times History, 9: 23; O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 378. 77. Sokolov, 67. 78. Herwig, 209; Rutherford, Russian Army, 198. 79. Rutherford, Russian Army, 198–99. 80. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 403. 81. St. A-Ka Nachlass Schmeller, B/509, vol. 2, June 4 entry, cited in Herwig, 209. 82. The Times History, 9: 25. 83. F. 2003, op. 2, d. 513, l. 186–87, in Nastuplenie, 224. 84. Rutherford, Russian Army, 199. 85. Brusilov, SN, 241; 2014 Russ. Ed., 226. 86. Ibid.

212

Chapter 5

87. Telegram, 25 May 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 186–87, RGVIA. 88. Knox, p. 12, 1 September 1916, WP 106/1084, British National Archives. 89. The Times History, 9: 25. 90. B to Kaledin, 27 May 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 194, RGVIA. 91. Messner, 92. 92. Marsengo, 119. 93. Telegram, 29 May 1916, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 367, l. 3, RGVIA. 94. Dowling says 45 kilometers on p. 85–86, but by his own map on page 148, he clearly means miles. 95. The Times History, 9: 25. 96. Liddell-Hart, The Real War, 225, cited in Lambert, 38. 97. The Times History, 9: 26. 98. Brusilov telegram, 29 May 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 203, RGVIA. 99. B to Kaledin, 31 May 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 211, RGVIA. 100. Telegram, 2 June 1916, reel l, f. 2006, op. 1, d. 367, l. 74–75, RGVIA. 101. As usual, figures of casualties very widely. Probably to cover himself, Conrad refered to the lack of success as “bad luck,” (an aleatoric moment), Protokolle des Geheimer Ministerrates, 454, in Herwig, 213. 102. Herwig, 213–14. 103. Telegram, 3 June 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 367, l. 231, RGVIA. 104. Danilov, Russie, 502. 105. Nastuplenie, 204; 209–12. 106. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 378–81. 107. One journalist called it, and the sluggishness of the advance of the Russian XI Army was attributed to “the heroism of the German soldiers.” The Times History, 9: 32. 108. Cruttwell, 287. 109. Ludendorff, 1: 221. 110. Telegram, 29 May 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op.1, d. 367, l. 14–15, RGVIA. 111. Telegram, 30 May 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 367, l. 30, RGVIA. 112. Ibid., 1/14 June 1916, l. 52. 113. Telegram, 16 June 1916, Com. d’Orgine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 114. N-S Correspondence, 195; Fuhrmann, ed., 484. 115. Jukes, 131. 116. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 417. 117. Messner, 71. 118. Bidou, 154–55. 119. Dowling, 73. 120. Telegram, 1 June 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 367, l. 53, RGVIA. 121. Ibid., 3 June 1916, reel 2, l. 265. 122. Ibid., 1 June 1916, no. 7266, reel 1, 64. 123. Telegram, 7 June 1916, f. 2003, reel 1, op. 1, d. 368, reel 1, 1. 368, RGVIA. 124. Lukomsky, Memoirs, 36. 125. The Times History, 9: 10–11. 126. Sokolov, 67.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

213

127. Bidou, 156. 128. Lukomsky, Memoirs, 36–38; “Operations of the 32nd corps,” p. 18 ff., box 3, Lukomskii papers, Hoover Institution. 129. The Times History, 9: 37–39. 130. Telegram, 13 June 1916, Corres. d’Origin russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 131. O-U Letzter Krieg, 4: 400. 132. Ibid. 133. Knox report, p. 11, 1 September 1916, WO 106/1084, British National Archives. 134. Ibid., 5. 135. Ibid., 7–8. 136. Copie Tele., 13 June 1916, Com. d’Origine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 137. Knox report, 1 September 1916, p. 5, WO 106/1084, British National Archives. 138. Telegram, 14 June 1916, Com. d’Oirgine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 139. Telegram, 30 May 1916, p. 22–23, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 367, RGVIA. 140. Marsengo, 123. 141. Copie (452), 15 June 1916, Corres. d’Origine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 142. Dowling, 92. This is unlikely, since the Austrians would hardly have removed troops from the front where they had been given the worst thrashing. 143. N-S Correspondence, 198–99. 144. Hoffmann, 1: 126. 145. Telegram, 25 May 1916, f. 2003, op. 2, d. 1299, l. 9, in Nastuplenie, 268. 146. N-S Correspondence, 191. 147. Churchill, 363. 148. Sokolov, 67. 149. Nastuplenie, 272. 150. Telegram, 29 May 1916, f. 2003, reel 1, op. 1, d. 367, l. 1–2, RGVIA. 151. Nachlass Schneller, B/509, vol. 2, June 8, 1916, cited in Herwig, 211. 152. The Times History, 9: 4–6. 153. Ibid., 19–21. 154. Nastuplenie, 226 ff and 250. 155. Danilov, Russie, 503. 156. Marsengo, 108. 157. Kratkii Otchek, p. 41, Hoover Institution. 158. Stubbs, 130. Germany, of course, did not need as many, and there still existed a rifle shortage in the Russian army. 159. Prikazy nachal’nika, 6/19 April 1916, f. 2070, op. 1, d. 18, ll. 176 ff., RGVIA. 160. Communique officiel, 10 June 1916, dos. 4, 16N2954, Vincennes. 161. The Times History, 9: 27 Hoffmann had believed that on June 6 the ytroops would have to be gotten from the West. Hoffmann, 1: 123–24. 162. Telegram reçu, 18 June 1916, Corr. d’Origine, 5N141, Vincennes, reports the defeat of an enemy counter-attack composed of forces sent from the French front. 163. Golovin, Russian Army, 241–42; f. 2003, II, op. 1, d. 513, l. 238 in Nastuplenie, 363. Dowling writes that Falkenhayn had sent five divisions. Dowling, 89–90.

214

Chapter 5

164. Telegram, 29 May 1916, f. 2003, reel 2, op. 1, d. 261, l. 2, RGVIA. 165. Hoffmann, 1: 125. 166. Ibid. 167. Ibid. 168. Ibid., 126. 169. Telegram, 6 June 1916, f. 2003, reel 1, op. 1, d. 368, l. 3, RGVIA. 170. Churchill, 364. 171. Rapport de Langlois, 30 October 1916, chap. 1, p. 2–3, 7N1547, Vincennes. 172. Cruttwell, 286. 173. Gilbert, 254. 174. Washburn, With the Russian Army, 191. 175. Golovin, Russian Army, 244. 176. Hoffmann, 1: 122. 177. Brusilov, SN, 247; 1963 Russ. Ed., 234. 178. Marsengo, 129. 179. B to N, 12 June 1916, p. 210, Bakhmetev Archive. 180. “Ne dlia pechat,” 1 October 1936, f. “Minor Writings,” box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 181. “Voennaia deistviia armii,” p. 8–9, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, RGVIA. 182. Alekseev to B, f. 2003, II, d. 1299, l. 162–64, in Nastuplenie, 338–39. 183. Brusilov, SN, 244; see also B to N, 6 June 1916, p. 210, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 184. Laguiche to War Min., 6/19 April 1916, 7N757, p. 39, Vincennes. 185. Danilov, La Russie, 500. 186. F. 2003, II, d. 1299, l. 160, in Nastuplenie, p. 340. 187. Ibid., ll. 181–82. 188. Ibid., l. 186, in Nastuplenie, 344. 189. Ibid., 212–19, in Nastuplenie, 355–56. 190. Ibid., l. 223, in Nastuplenie, 356. 191. F. 2067, I, d. 532, l. 455, in Nastuplenie, 399. 192. The Times History, 9: 29. 193. Marsengo, 129. 194. Copie, 17 June 1916, Corres. d’Origine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 195. B to Alekseev, 9 June 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 245, RGVIA. 196. Telegram, 19 June 1916, Corres. d’Origine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 197. Tel., 8 June 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 368, l. 69, RGVIA. 198. Telegramme, 22 June 1916, Corr. d’Origine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 199. See Tel., 12 June 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 368, l. 142, RGVIA. 200. Hoffmann, 1: 126. 201. Tel., 6 June 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 368, l. 4, RGVA. 202. Radiogramme étrangère, 25 June 1916, Corr. d’Origine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 203. N-S Correspondence, 210–11; Furhmann, ed., 506. 204. The Times History, 9: 234–35. 205. Tel., no 1749, f. 2067, I, d. 5341, l. 116, in Nastuplenie, 341.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

215

206. Nastuplenie, 358–59. 207. Tel., 4 June 1916, reel 2, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 367, RGVIA. 208. Tel., 7 June 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 238, RGVIA. 209. Brusilov, SN, 250–51; 1963 Rus. Ed., 236. 210. “Report on the Front 1916,” p. 5, by Mikhail Rodzianko, box 1, Rodzianko papers, Hoover Institution. 211. Tel., 5 June 1916, reel 2, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 267, l. 356, RGVIA. 212. Tel., 4 June 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 367, l. 249, RGVIA. 213. Tel., 7 June 1916, reel 1, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 368, l. 16–17, RGVIA. 214. Ibid., 6 June 1916, l. 16. 215. Ibid., 12/25 June 1916, reel 3, l. 245. 216. N-S Correspondence, 205. 217. Tel., 26 June 1916, Corres. d’Origine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 218. Tel., 16 June 1916, reel 2, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 368, l. 327, RGVIA. 219. The Times History, 9: 203. 220. Dowling, 103, cites an Austrian archival source. 221. Ibid., 96–97. 222. Nastuplenie, 457. 223. “A Certain Mr. Brusilov,” 39. 224. B to N, 18 July 1916, Brusilov papers, p. 213, Bakhmetev Archive. 225. N to B, 23 June/6 July 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 16, l. 232, GARF. 226. Ibid., 4 July 1916, p. 219. 227. Tel. 18 June 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 368, l. 382, RGVIA. 228. Ibid., June 14–27, 1916, l. 355. 229. The Times History, 9: 202. 230. Ibid., 235–37. 231. Tel. 16 June 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 368, l. 365, RGVIA. 232. Falls, 186 in Lambert, 195. 233. “Dokladnaia zapeska,” (copy) by Alekseev to N II, 15 June 1916, box 1, Alekseev papers, Hoover Institution. 234. Tel to Southwest front general staff, 26 June 1916, f. 2067, op. 2, d. 509, l. 49, RGVIA. 235. “Dokladnaia zapiska,” 15 June 1916, box 1, Alekseev collection, Hoover Institution. 236. N-S Correspondence, 204–5; Fuhrmann, ed., 496. 237. Ibid., 203. 238. Brusilov’s report on June 12/25 1916, mentions the III Army for the first time. F. 2003, reel 3, op. 1, d. 69, l. 248, RGVIA. 239. Brusilov, SN, 250; 1963 Rus. Ed., 236; Marsengo, 132. 240. Jukes, 125. 241. Telegramme, 29 June 1916, Corr. d’Origine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 242. Paléologue, 2: 286. 243. Tel. 1 July 1916, reel 2, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 368, l. 245, RGVIA. As always the numbers vary. Nicholas II told his wife on June 29 that they had taken 144,000 POWs. N-S Correspondence, 211 notes. Even Brusilov in his memoirs reported

216

Chapter 5

“about 200,000” by June 23, with 219 guns, 644 machine guns, 196 minenwerfers, 46 ammo wagons, and 38 searchlights. Brusilov, SN, 249; 1963 Russ. Ed., 234. 244. The Times History, 9: 15. 245. Tel., 16 June 1916, reel 3, f. 2003, op. A, d. 368, l. 431, RGVIA. 246. Pares, My Russian Memoirs, 384. 247. B to N, 18 June 1916, p. 213, Brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 248. G. Morgan, “The Russian Offensive,” The New Republic, 7 (July 1, 1916), 223. 249. Compte-rendu no. 114, 4 July 1916, 5N141, p. 552, Vincennes. 250. Ibid. 251. See reports from June 9, 1916, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 368, reel 1, RGVIA. 252. Washburn, At the Russian Front, 199. 253. Ibid., 315. 254. Hoffmann, 2: 141. 255. Marsengo, 133. 256. Compte-rendu, 2 July 1916, p. 545, 5N141, Vincennes. 257. Ibid., 24 June 1916. 258. Telegram, 26 June 1916, Russie, no. 18, 16N1211, Vincennes. 259. Marsengo, 131; N-S Correspondence, 207–8; Dowling incorrectly concludes that no troops were brought from Verdun sector because Falkenhayn planned one more blow there. Dowling, 104. 260. B to Command of Armies under him, 24 June 1916, Nastuplenie, 400. 261. Ludendorff, 1: 226. 262. Ibid., 226–29. 263. Nastuplenie, 403–4. 264. B to SW Front Army Commanders, 12 June 1916, reel 3, f. 20903, op. 1, d. 79, l. 248, RGVIA. 265. Pares, Fall, 360. 266. Orders of the Day in June 1916, folder 2, box 1, Vasilii Uperov Collection, Hoover Institution. 267. “Voennyia deistviia armii,” p. 5–6, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, RGVIA. 268. B to Evert, 27 May 1916, f. 2003, op. 2, d. 513, l. 199 in Nastuplenie, 253. 269. Evert to B, 27 May 1916, Ibid. 270. B to Alekseev, 2 July 1916, fl 2003, op. 2, dl 1299, l. 111, cited in Nastuplenie, 317. 271. B to N, 26 June 1916, 216–17, Brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 272. Ibid., 26 June 1916, p. 218. 273. Ludendorff, 1: 230. 274. N-S Correspondence, 310. 275. Vandervelde, 120. 276. Brusilov, SN, 267; 1963 Rus. Ed., 247. 277. Vosp. NVB, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22, l. 138, GARF. 278. Première Partie, L’Armee russe, p. 30 in Rapport Langlois, 30 October 1916, 7N1547, Vincennes. 279. Ludendorff, 1: 235.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

217

280. Hoffmann, 2: 156. 281. Cherkasov, ed., Lutskii proryv, 23. 282. B to N, 26 June 1916, p. 216–17, Brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 283. F. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 48 ff., RGVIA. 284. L’vov to Brusilov, 28 May 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 48, RGVIA. 285. Baranov to B, 2 July 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 114, RGVIA. 286. 19 March 1926, Gazeta Dni, p. 4, box 1, Brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 287. “Pesnia generala Brusilova,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 388, GARF. 288. Marsengo, 137. 289. Kalmykov to B, 10 June 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 104–5, RGVIA. 290. N II to Brusilov, 24 June 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 54, RGVIA. 291. Knox, 428. 292. Fuhrmann, ed., 491. 293. Nastuplenie, 411. 294. Danilov, Russie, 503. 295. Hoffmann, 1: 127. 296. Lukomsky, Memoirs, 41. 297. Hoffmann, 1: 129. 298. Communique russe, 25 June 1916, Corres. d’Origine russe, 5N141, Vincennes. 299. Golovin, art. cit., 586. 300. Dowling, 98. 301. Brusilov, SN, 249; 2014 Russ. Ed., 234. 302. Lincoln, Passage, 255; Dowling, 101. 303. Ibid. 304. Stone, Eastern Front, 256; Lincoln, Passage, 255. 305. Dowling, 110. 306. Brusilov, SN, 249; 2014 Russ. Ed., 232. 307. Stone, Eastern Front, 260. 308. Pares, Fall, 266. 309. Lukomsky, Memoirs, 39–40. 310. Repington, 278. 311. Telegrams, 10 (?) July 1916, f. 2070, op. 1, d. 837, l. 240 ff., RGVIA. 312. Commander (signature illegible) to?, 8 July 1916, f. 2070, op. 1, d. 837, l. 185, RGVIA. 313. Ludendorff, 1: 236. 314. Ibid. 315. See Corres. d’origine russe for August and September 5N141, Vincennes. 316. Golovin, Russian Army, 592. 317. Lambert, 40. He does not give his source, states that eighteen German divisions, plus three German and two Turkish divisions from the Balkans, were drawn to bolster the Austrians—a more realistic number. 318. N-S Correspondence, 231; Fuhrmann, ed., 534. 319. Jukes, 143. 320. Hoffmann, 1: 140.

218

Chapter 5

321. Galatai, 189. 322. Ludendorff, 1: 232. 323. N-S Correspondence, 229; Fuhrmann, ed., 534. 324. Pares, Fall, 366. 325. Jukes, 127; for the transport activity, see telegrams 24 July 1916, f. 2070, op. 1, d. 837, l. 268, RGVIA. 326. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 205. 327. See his diary, V. M. Bezobrazov, Diary of the Commander of the Russian Imperial Guard, 1914–1917 (Boynton Beach, FL: Dramco Publishers, 1994), xvi. 328. Lincoln, Passage, 255–56. 329. Sergeyev-Tsensky, 265–66. 330. Bezobrazov, D, 103. 331. Ibid. 332. This action was part of the general frontal assault. At the same time Sakharov attacked toward L’vov and Stanislau, pushing the Austrian back on Brody. O-U Letzter Krieg, 5: 146. 333. Knox, 470. 334. Brusilov to Bezobrazov, 18 July 1916, reel 5, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 316, RGVIA. 335. N-S Letters, 230; Knox report, no pagination, WO 106/1083, British National Archives. 336. Bezobrazov, D, 106–7. 337. Ibid., 107–8. 338. Dowling, 130; Report on the Front (1916), by Rodzianko, p. 20–21, box 1, Rodzianko Collection, Hoover Institution. 339. Masengo, 140. 340. Bezobrazov, D, 107–8. 341. Ibid. 342. Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 73. 343. Bezobrazov, D, 108. 344. Report of Bezobrazov to Brusilov, 21 July 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 120, RGVIA. 345. Bezobrazov, D, 108–9; Herwig, 219 states it began on August 5. 346. Herwig, 219. 347. Bezobrazov, D, 109. 348. Ibid., 110. 349. N-S Correspondence, 379; Fuhrmann, ed., 548. 350. Bezobrazov, D, 111. 351. Despatch S-2 of 30 September 1916 of Col Knox, WO 106/1083, British National Archives. 352. Ibid., 112. 353. Dowling, 134. 354. Lukomsky, Memoirs, 41. 355. Ibid.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

219

356. Lincoln, Passage, 258. 357. N-S Correspondence, 232; Fuhrmann, ed., 359. 358. Farmborough, 225. 359. Ibid. 360. Ludendorff, 1: 231. 361. Marsengo, 140. 362. B to Army Commanders, 22 July 1916, reel 5, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, ll. 331–34, RGVIA. 363. Even in his giving her classified information, he sternly cautioned her: “About this to no one [breathe] a word.” [his italics], B to N, 18 June 1916, p. 214, Brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 364. Ibid., 26 June 1916, p. 216. 365. N to B, 22 August 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 80, GARF. 366. Ibid.,? September 1916, l. 84. 367. B to N, 18 June 1916, p. 214, Brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 368. N to B, 22 August 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 80, GARF. 369. Ibid., 30 August 1916, l. 243. 370. Sergei Smirnov to NVB, 18 June 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 7, l. 161, RGVIA. 371. N to B, 28 September 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 92, GARF. 372. B to N, 11 July 1916, p. 220, Brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 373. Ibid., 17 July 1916, p. 223. 374. Ibid., 30 September 1916, p. 239. 375. Ludendorff, 1: 230–33. 376. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 211. 377. Ibid. 378. Brusilov, SN, 259; 2014 Russian ed., 240. 379. Ludendorff, 1: 236. 380. Ibid., 236–37. 381. Jukes, 126. 382. The Times History, 9: 205. 383. Ibid., 231. 384. B to Commanders of the VII and IX Armies, 18 July 1916, reel 5, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, RGVIA. 385. Klembovsky to Nashtarverkh, 9/22 July 1916, reel 4, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 303, RGVIA. 386. Telegram, 14 August 1916, Corres. d’Origine russe, Communique du front, aout 1916, 5N141, Vincennes. 387. B to Com. IX Army, 22 July 1916, reel 5, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 79, l. 339, RGVIA. 388. Ludendorff, 1: 233. 389. Avianants, n. d. reel 3, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 1622, l. 175, RGVIA. 390. Glenn Torrey, Romania and World War I (Oxford: Center for Romanian Stdies, 1999) and his The Romanian Battlefront in World War I (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 2011). 391. Washburn, On the Russian Front, 261–62. 392. Brusilov, SN, 264; 1963 Russian edition, 245–46.

220

Chapter 5

393. Herwig, 217–18; Cruttwell, 293. 394. Brusilov, SN, 265–66; 1963 Russian Ed., 246. 395. N-S Correspondence, 241; Fuhrmann, ed., 554. 396. Brusilov, SN, 257; 1963 Rus. Ed., 240. 397. Jones, “The Imperial Army,” 240. 398. Dowling, 150. 399. Précis of Knox, 1 September 1916, no. p, WO 106/1984, British National Archives. 400. Golovin, art. cit., 588. 401. Ibid., 590. 402. Telegram, 25 August 1916, f. 2070, op. 1, d. 837, l. 328, RGVIA. 403. Précis of Knox report, n. p. 1 September 1916, WO 106/1084, British National Archives. 404. Brusilov, SN, 263; 1963 Russian edition, 244–45. 405. N-S Correspondence, 247; Fuhrmann, ed., 562. 406. Farmborough, 237. 407. N-S Correspondence, 248; Fuhrmann, ed., 563. 408. Ibid., 253. 409. Gilbert, 288. 410. Rodzianko, Reign, 205. 411. N-S Correspondence, 267; Fuhrmann, ed., 596. 412. Ibid., 261 and 583. 413. Farmborough, 237. 414. N-S Correspondence, 267; Fuhrmann, ed., 596–601. 415. Ibid., 408–9 and 598. 416. Ibid., 269 and 603–4. 417. Ibid., 411 and 601. 418. Frank Golder, ed., Documents in Russian History, 1914–1917 (New York: The Century Co., 1927), 214. 419. N-S Correspondence, 413; Fuhrmann, ed., 604. 420. Ibid., 270 and 603. 421. Ibid., 415 and 608. 422. Jukes, 144. 423. N-S Correspondence, 270; Fuhrmann, ed., 603–4. 424. Ibid., 273 and 611. 425. Brusilov, SN, 266; 1963 Russ. Ed., 247. 426. N-S Correspondence, 272; Fuhrmann ed., 611. 427. Stubbs, 44. Stubbs states a million, and Knox, who was better suited to know also places the number at a million. Knox, 550–51. 428. Brusilov, SN, 269; 1963 Rus. Ed., 248. 429. Knox, 550–51. 430. Stone, Eastern Front, 235. 431. David R. Francis, Russia from the American Embassy (New York: Scribner’s, 1922), 46. 432. Knox, p. 14, 1 September 1916, WO 106/1084, British National Archives.

Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October 1916

221

433. Rapport Langlois, 30 October 1916, chap. 3, p. 30, 7N1547, Vincennes. 434. Trans. of an article in The Times (London), 18 March 1926, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l. 114, RGVIA. 435. Sokolov, 73. 436. Ibid. 437. Unidentified newspaper clipping from Minnesota, n. d., f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 136, RGVIA. 438. Cruttwell, 288. 439. Vandervelde, 119–20. 440. Ibid. 441. Lukomsky, Memoirs, 42–43. 442. Pares, Russian Memoirs, 398. 443. Brusilov, SN, 267–68; 1963 Rus. Ed., 248. 444. Falkenhayn, 280, cited in Lambert, 235. 445. Ibid. 446. Golovin, “Brusilov Offensive,” 594, cited in Lambert, 222. 447. Brusilov, SN, 269–70; 1963 Rus. Ed., 249. 448. Ibid. 449. “Brusilov v pervye dni revoliutsii,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 313, GARF. 450. W. Fedorowicz, 29 August 1916, f. 163, op. 1, d. 3, l. 132, RGVIA. 451. Nicholas II to B, 23 August 1916, F. 5972, op. 3, d. 98, l. 16, GARF. 452. Hindenburg, 118, cited in Lambert, 223.

Chapter 6

A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

Given the defeats of 1915 and the gridlock in the West, Brusilov’s successful offensive of 1916 made him a hero among all of the Allied nations, starved for any show of real success. A poet named Giliasovsky dedicated a collection of epic poems “To Brusilov” that sold thousands of copies, and French and Italian composers devoted compositions to him. A movie entitled Brusilov played to packed movie houses. The French government, especially desperate for anything that set the Germans back, awarded him the insignia of the Grand Officer de la Légion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre. Deeply touched, Brusilov sent his “profound gratitude” to the President of the French Republic.1 Someone with the by-line “N. N.,” reporting for the newspaper Svobodoe slovo in Kamenets-Podol’sk, wrote in the fall of 1916 of Brusilov’s local popularity, where he had “never missed one great ball or one celebratory concert.” He had apparently once even attended a fund-raiser for household pets.2 Langlois reported that despite the leadership shakeup in other armies, “General Brusilov has retained his command and has even increased his popularity,” but he felt the need to add that Brusilov’s tactics that were so successful against the Austrians would not have been so against the Germans.3 Brusilov, buoyed by his fame, expressed optimism in September that the war would be over in a year. To a reporter of the Daily Chronicle, he made his usual caveat that “the future is in God’s hands,” but added that “if I had to make a hypothesis, I would be inclined to think that the month of August 1917 would see the end of our memorable war.”4 Early in 1917, he said more definitely that he had “profound faith” that “in this year the enemy will finally be decisively beaten.”5 The fall of 1916 saw not only the emergence of rumors about Brusilov’s becoming involved in politics, there was talk of plots to remove the Tsar 223

224

Chapter 6

and Tsarina, incarcerating them in the Solovetsky Monastery and making Brusilov the regent for the Tsarevich.6 There was nothing serious in this allegation, but Brusilov does seem to have been somewhat uncharacteristically critical of the tsar. In his memoirs written years later, he was censorious of the emperor for not knowing his own mind or being able to understand the situation in which he found himself.7 Yet, he must have been indiscrete enough times because Marsengo recorded, “He [Brusilov] has no tenderness for the emperor, and he has shown [this feeling] openly many times that he does not like him.”8 He was received very coolly at a council of war in mid-October, possibly because of his alleged indiscretions, but probably because he was still continuing his faltering offensive.9 Brusilov had stirred in politics with certain members of the imperial family. To Grand Duke George Mikhailovich, who came to distribute Crosses of St. George, Brusilov spilled his worries about the disintegration of the Russian army. He took the opportunity to have a conversation with the grand duke to ask him to press the tsar not to quarrel with the Duma, to stop the chaotic ministry changes, and, Brusilov writes, to form a responsible ministry.10 It is highly unlikely that he suggested a “responsible ministry” to the imperial court at the time. This inclusion was probably a bit of Soviet Era editorializing, but Grand Duke George stayed in secret contact with Brusilov into the New Year and possibly became the reason that the emperor began to develop a dislike for Brusilov.11 Grand Duke George, like others in his clan, had indeed already tried to influence the increasingly isolated tsar. Late in November after talking with Brusilov, he wrote, “Dear Nicky, after long talks with the brave AdjutantGeneral Brusilov, who is exceptionally devoted to you, I consider it my duty to write you.” He described the general disintegration of the whole country, but stressed “not only in the rear but even here [at the front.]” He called for a responsible ministry (actually a ministry of confidence) “to protect you from the deceit of your enemies.” Noting that he was hearing demands for change “not only from the Left, but from men who are deeply devoted to you,” the grand duke concluded that he was hearing it where he “never expected to hear it here, in the army, the very thing I had heard everywhere in the rear.12 In January, Brusilov even tried to reach the tsar through his brother Grand Duke Michael, when the latter visited his headquarters. Brusilov pleaded with the grand duke to go to his brother and report the crumbling situation. Michael agreed to do so, but added truthfully, “I have no influence [with the tsar], and I am of no consequence. . . . He [Nicholas II] is the slave of influences and pressure that no one is in a position to overcome.” The two men shook hands and the grand duke returned to his home.13 Brusilov tried in January 1917 to get to the tsar through the aged Count Fredericks, minister of the court, writing to ask him “to intercede and get the

A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

225

tsar to grant the promised constitution” (more Soviet editing) and to make use of the Zemgor, the private organization of interested citizens which helped supply the army.14 Fredericks never even answered the letter, but in February he told Marsengo that Brusilov was “a revolutionary” who “neither loves nor respects the tsar” and kept repeating, “He’s a revolutionary, a revolutionary.” Fredericks attributed Brusilov’s rapid rise in the army to his “intrigues” and suggested that Ivanov had been brusquely fired. The minister of war Shuvaev told Marsengo that Brusilov had told Fredericks “to put a break on his tongue.”15 It is highly unlikely that Brusilov ever openly criticized the tsar in the fall of 1916. It simply was not part of his nature to do so. If he was critical of conditions, it was in correspondence with his wife. Nadia wrote just before her death, “He was a monarchist and only when he saw that the monarchy could not be saved, he took his pledge to save Russia,” she wrote, and “remained in his native land, stayed to serve the government, with which he had nothing in common.” When he was critical to his wife, she replied “Your letter was very true—and very literal and I have witnessed many scoundrels in Rus [sic]. I don’t know how it all will end.”16 By the fall of 1916, however, there were many plotters who were meeting to discuss plans to remove the empress and the emperor, and these included members of the imperial family. The emperor might have believed that Brusilov was hostile to his regime to some limited degree, but he never must have believed that he was really in opposition to him or he would have removed him. He had, after all, remained blissfully unaware of the plotting against him.17 There is no evidence that Brusilov was part of any of these conspiracies, but Bonch-Bruevich believed that Brusilov was writing that there were “numerous hints and statements” that fed such a belief.18 A statement circulated widely that he had said, “If I must choose between the Emperor and Russia, then I march for Russia,”19 Yet, the simple statement, if indeed he said it, and he probably did, is not proof that he was involved in any of the plotting. Furthermore, most of it was generated in Petrograd, and he never even visited the capital before the February Revolution. One historian believes that this phrase attributed to him encouraged the plotters,20 but there is no evidence that he was involved in any direct way. He did make a visit in November to the Dowager Empress, Nicholas II’s mother, in Kiev,21 but she most certainly was not part of any plot to remove her son. Whatever was attributed to him, though, real or imaginary, earned him the enmity of the empress, which was never hard to do. Most probably whatever tales she heard were untrue, but the statement about the choice between “tsar or Russia,” if she ever heard it, would have sufficed, given her mentality.22 Her dislike for Brusilov puzzled him. He later wrote, “She must have known that I was working without stopping for the glory of the country and

226

Chapter 6

consequently for the glory of her husband and son.”23 He even attributed the disintegration of an enamel figure of a saint she gave him as having been intentional.24 Yet, dislike him she did. In a letter to her husband on December 14–27, 1916, she specifically ordered him to “Forbid Brusilov etc. when they come to touch political subjects.”25 The empress’s denunciations of Brusilov must have worked. At the council of war in December, the meeting began with lunch at which the tsar treated him “coldly,” despite the fact that he had not seen him since his great victories.26 When that same fall, General Alekseev went on leave for illness, he was temporarily replaced by General V. I. Gurko. Several people in Paris expressed surprise that Brusilov was not given the position, given his successes in 1916, but Langlois replied with murky logic that the post of Chief of Headquarters was not that of commander-in-chief. The former, he wrote, cannot be replaced by an officer attached to a headquarters.27 Since the military could do whatever it wants, Langlois’s explanation seems rather hollow. There could have been many good reasons why the successful and popular Brusilov was not chosen, but this motive was not one of them. Brusilov clearly was no longer on favored ground. The Russian army by the fall of 1916 had endured staggering punishment. Over 14 million men had been mobilized since 1914, or 36 percent of the working age men, roughly two-thirds of whom were peasants.28 General Peter Wrangel of Russian Civil War fame remembered that a majority of the original officers and men “had been [either] killed or [otherwise] put out of action”29 by 1917. The Kriegsarchiv in Vienna put Austrian losses for the year at 450,000, German losses at 250,000, and Russian losses at 1,200,000.30 Austrian losses are clearly understated, and Russian casualties’ figures are too great, but probably not by much. Since the beginning of the war, Russian troops captured exceeded 1,200,000 by Germany alone, according to a report sent to British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George.31 Over 2 million had been taken prisoner, which more or less tallies with the report to Lloyd George, including those captured on the Austrian front.32 Some estimate that by the February Revolution in 1917, the Russians had sustained up to 8 million killed, wounded, or captured.33 A Russian source puts the total number of casualties at six-and-a-half million,34 but that figure was probably lessened because it was reported at an Allied conference. To these problems were added food shortages. War material was in greater supply than at any time since the beginning of the war,35 but they had told the Americans that they would not need any. By the fall of 1916, however, everywhere was beginning to feel the pinch of food shortages. Thirty to forty per cent of the Russian land was not planted in 1916 for a host of reasons, and Russia was saved from famine only because it could not export the usual amount of its grain production due to the war.36 To cite one statistic reported

A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

227

to Paris, the wheat reserves in Petrograd in January 1916 had been 26,660,500 poods. In January 1917, it was only 3,793,000 poods.37 Acute problems emerged in other areas. In the military hospitals, Grand Duchess Marie remembered that “Materials at first plentiful were now scarce and of a lower quality,” adding that some things could not be gotten at all, noting especially rubber gloves. Gangrene operations had to be performed with bare hands.38 General Alekseev complained, “My supplies are decreasing. . . . It is even necessary to think about bread. We are already cutting down the rations.”39 Nadia was in Odessa late in the summer of 1916 and stayed there into October. She was very pessimistic about the situation behind the lines and claimed that Brusilov was “missing the correct picture of what a time we are living in and how difficult it is now to live.” This attitude is curious, since she was apparently living in rather sumptuous surroundings, in a “palace with a view of the marvelous sea,” adding that it would be paradise “with you [her italics].” In July, she did not “see Russian patriotism, but only court interests.”40 In September, he saw more ominously the public’s somber mood. “Today I had [conversations] with various persons. Things aren’t going brilliantly. There’s a lot of pathos in their words.”41 She had not been hearing from him regularly, and this dearth of information disturbed her, and she returned to her usual pouting self. She had returned in October to Moscow, and he may have written to Odessa, causing the need to forward his letters to him. “Again I beg you to wire me two words in Moscow,” she asked. “It will be two weeks since I have heard anything from you.”42 He was probably too busy, but he may have indeed been annoyed with her. She had been stirring in military matters and expressing too freely her opinion. In her next communication she turned sarcastic, “I forgot to say that you, perhaps, forgot the Moscow address: Ostrozhenko, Mansurovsky 4.”43 He did finally wire her that he was well, she wrote him on the train when she made a trip to Petrograd early in November, traveling in “a coupé full of presents for soldiers.”44 Nadia at this time seems to have gotten out of sorts with her brother-in-law Boris Brusilov. She complained in October that he had written her “a stupid letter,” adding that “If he were not your brother . . . and a good man, . . . I would definitely not have anything to do with him.”45 What he said, we do not know, but his wife seems to have been dying, putting him under a great deal of stress. She passed away just before Christmas. On December 21, Boris wired his brother, “It has pleased God to call to himself today my dear Nina. Pray for her and for us, her poor orphans. Boris.”46 Nadia returned to Odessa for the winter in December, and from there, she continued to send him treats such as apples, chocolate, and even lemons, which must have been extremely difficult to have obtained. She also sent more mundane items like candy, cheese, vegetables, kabul (?), and “jam, that you

228

Chapter 6

love: quince and black cherries.”47 She also continued to send him bad news from the gossip she had heard in Odessa. She also chided him for not having written her, apparently oblivious to the work and responsibilities under which he labored. In mid-February, she remonstrated with him about how hard his silences were for her. “Dear Aleksei,” she began, using his formal first name, “it’s very difficult for me not to have news in weeks,” again not noticing the problems of wartime conditions and the problem of wartime mail delivery. “I know nothing about your health and in general neither about you,” she complained, and she begged him at least to send a telegram.48 Yet she also sent wine, fruit, and candy, including hard-to-obtain pickled herrings. In the letter informing him of the coming gifts, she concluded with a subtle rebuke: “I await news.”49 Brusilov did wire her, and she seemed consoled. “My dear, received your telegram,” she wrote, “and all is set straight.”50 Brusilov did find time late in February to write her a long letter in which he complained about the conditions internally in the country. “That we have weaknesses—the interior, that is, the internal conditions of Russia—terrible disorder in the administration. . . . But our enemies don’t have it so good internally [either]. So, it is necessary to hold on and fight to the end.” Then he added stoically, “It is necessary to suffer. Can it be that you think it’s easy for me?”51 Yet, ironically in the same letter, he chided Nadia for her pessimism. “It [your last letter of 10 February] is full of sadness and anxiety. . . . What can I say to you about this? To whom is it not difficult and who would not want peace? . . . Indeed now it isn’t possible to make peace—we would lose the war. . . . This would be the fall of Russia. We have strengths and ability and hope to beat the enemy—completely.”52 Three days later, his optimism had weakened somewhat, when he wrote complaining about the economic dislocation within the country. “Why are they so stupid?” he asked rhetorically. K [? apparently someone in the ministry of commerce] is a downright jackass! . . . There is no coal, . . . and without coal, engines aren’t able to run. . . . Disorder, really is terrible—there is no coal.”53 As the Russian domestic situation deteriorated, the Russians and their allies planned another offensive for 1917. Although no one realized the depth of Russia’s decay by the late fall of 1916, weaknesses were obvious. In Otto von Bismarck’s observation of an alliance that there can be a horse and a rider, Russia had by late 1916 become the rider despite the fact that the Russians tied down, one authority states, 49 percent of the entire forces of all the Central Powers in one place or another.54 The figure was probably greater than that. In the minds of the Western allies, however, Russia had proved rather useless against the Germans. Despite their inability to break the Germans in the West, the British and the French could not understand why the Russians had not already reached Berlin. By late 1916, the British and the French were making plans for the Russians without consulting them.

A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

229

At the Chantilly conference in November 1916, Russia was just told what they would do in 1917, and it seemed to accept their second class status.55 The conference “decided” that the Russians would attack the Germans on their front in May, and the English and the French would begin an offensive in the West two weeks later. A conference in Petrograd in January–February 1917 underscored the combined offensives for that year and especially called on the Russians to make an effort, although it recognized Russian shortages in arms, planes, and transportation.56 There were to be attacks all along the front, but special effort was to be made on Brusilov’s Southwest Front, and in February, Brusilov summoned all of his front commanders to discuss the role each would have in the coming events. As in 1916, the VIII Army would deliver the main blow, attacking toward L’vov, but as in 1916, there would be advances toward Vladimir-Volynsk and Kovel. They even planned an offensive in Romania.57 In the fall, military discipline in the army seemed excellent, at least on the surface. Langlois reported to Paris that military discipline in the Russian army “remains excellent, and the brilliant success from the beginning of the summer 1916 has wiped out the memory of the troops the defeats of 1915.”58 Not as optimistically, one contemporary historian, however, overstates the case, as we shall see, when he wrote that the morale in the army was low, but it was basically ready to fight up until the events of February 1917.59 Lobanov-Rostovsky remembered that in September “never had the army been in better state. . . . The discipline in the regiments I visited was good. . . . There was no sign of coming revolution.”60 Knox, perhaps better informed, reported to London that by September 1916, that each regiment employed forty military police while each division and corps utilized 200 to maintain discipline. “They herd in stragglers and are sometimes seen escorting unarmed draftees, like prisoners, to the front.”61 The malaise in the rear was clearly beginning to infect the front. In 1905, a large percentage of reserve officers went over to the revolution. From the beginning of the war in 1914, these same reservists served conscientiously, but by early 1917, the high command distrusted them. Coming from the rear, they brought with them the discontent of the population. Wild stories circulated that there was famine in Moscow and Petrograd and that merchants were throwing soldier’s wives out of their houses and that the German minister of war had given a billion roubles to starve as many simple people as possible.62 Even Trotsky noted that demoralization was most prevalent in the villages and among the city poor.63 Almost no career officers engaged in “revolutionary indiscipline.” Almost all officers who did so were reservists.64 The need for officers had reduced the social background of the officer corps by 1916. A young man with four years of school and four months of active duty could apply, receiving only four months of training, hardly enough to instill in a candidate the obligations of

230

Chapter 6

a career officer. By 1917, only 4 percent of the Russian officers were nobles and 70 percent had a peasant background.65 Graduates of military cadet schools had had instilled in them a strong sense of loyalty, personal honor, religious ideals, and devotion to duty. Men brought from the ranks and made officers in a ninety-day wonder program could not have these traits, and these men, having recently come from the privations of the rear, could never have the sense of duty of the officers of 1914. At a meeting of front commanders at Stavka in December at which the tsar yawned and seemed abstracted, General Ruzsky spoke of indiscipline and called the city of Riga, a large city with a native German population on the edge of the front, “the misfortune of the northern front, . . . A nest of propaganda.” Since troops sent to the front would often pass through these cities, they received a dose of the infection. Brusilov noted that the troops of the 7th Siberian Corps from Riga “arrived demoralized; soldiers refuse to attack.” There was also the beginning of officers being attacked by their soldiers. One company commander was lifted on the points of his soldiers’ bayonets. After a crackdown and some soldiers were shot, order was restored.66 Evert reported that at the distribution of sugar, a riot had erupted resulting in several soldiers being shot.67 There remained, though, some semblance of order on Brusilov’s front. Brusilov, as was his wont, began training these men and soon put things right, so much so that he felt that even in the winter of 1916–1917 the troops under him would have “done their duty.”68 Some of it may be attributed to Brusilov’s popularity and leadership, but most of it was probably because of the distance from the rising radicalism of the capital. Even on Brusilov’s front, however, unsigned letters circulated as early as October 1916 telling soldiers not to fight, and Brusilov himself received anonymous mail from soldiers stating that they no longer wanted to fight, and if the war did not end quickly, they would kill him.69 Some letters even went so far as to state, “We don’t care that part of our land is in the hands of the enemy.”70 Never having had any discipline problems, Brusilov found this turn of events so disturbing that he even reported it to Stavka.71 Trotsky wrote, probably with gleeful embellishment, that by October 1916, deserters were everywhere, and anyone who had any dealings with the army “must carry away a complete and convincing impression of the utter moral disintegration of the troops.”72 A most ominous sign came in October, when 181st Reserve Infantry Regiment, stationed in the Vyborg district of Petrograd, helped striking workers from the Reno Automobile Plant fight the police. Four Cossack regiments were needed to reestablish order, and eventually the army court martialed and shot 150 mutinous soldiers, and transferred the remainder of the unit from the capital.73

A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

231

Rodzianko, the Duma president, weighed in November that the “Army has ceased to have faith in its leaders. . . . Every slander is being commented upon and taken as proof of the complete incapacity of the commanding personnel.” This has resulted, he felt, in the appearance in the army of a “lack of initiative and a paralysis of courage and valor.”74 Moreover, the number of self-inflicted wounds of soldiers, especially when they knew of a coming offensive, accelerated, and hordes of them would mobbed hospital trains en masse.75 It was in December that Brusilov had what was the first serious “collective indiscipline” on his own usually stable front. When the 223rd Odoevsky Regiment (56th Inf. Division of the Special Army) was ordered to replace another regiment in the line, it mutinied and refused to go to the front. The soldiers remained polite to their upper ranks, but the officers could do nothing with them. Brusilov deputized a Lt. General. Ogorodnikov to investigate the disturbance, and he arrived to find the regiment in perfect order, with sentries even posted at duty. Puzzled, he addressed the men, spoke of duty and obedience, and finally got one of the two battalions to depart for the front. The new corps commander, General Pavlo Skoropadsky, who later served as hetman of Ukraine in the Russian Civil War and played some sort of game with the Nazis in World War II, tried twenty-three mutineers and shot five. Order was restored.76 By December 1916, Kerensky believed that already a million deserters roamed in the rear. Rodzianko reported the number was 1.5 million.77 The army organized a special military police force, and its members received a bounty for each deserter they shot. By January and February, he later remembered that there was no discipline at all at the front.78 In February, several regiments on the Northern Front refused to attack, and repression and shooting of soldiers followed.79 Other accounts report apathy and indifference.80 The reader must take note that this disintegrations of the army occurred months before the February Revolution and the infamous General Order No. 1, which is usually regarded as the bullet that destroyed the tsarist army. At the Stavka meeting mentioned above, the generals agreed that given the erosion of order in the army and the general lack of munitions, there could be no offensive on the Eastern Front before May 1917.81 Even with this unrest, at the meeting at Stavka mentioned above, the front commanders began discussing the 1917 offensive. Ruzskii wanted a large pincer attack, with the main effort coming on the Northern Front and Brusilov’s Southwest Front. Evert, who seems to have caught some spirit of attack which had eluded him in the summer, suggested that the main effort should come on his front, the Western, with a drive toward Vilno, because success there would result in the necessity for the Germans to withdraw from Riga. For his part, Brusilov suggested that the main attack come on his front, with

232

Chapter 6

artillery demonstrations in the north. The generals nonetheless arrived at no decision, and Rasputin’s murder led the tsar to return to Petrograd.82 Brusilov contended in his memoirs that the three front commanders generally agreed that the 1917 push could come on his front.83 Brusilov remembered that he left the meeting “profoundly perturbed,” since he clearly saw that the machinery of government was disintegrating and that the “ship of state was tossing in a sea of troubles, with neither pilot nor rudder.”84 One bright spot occurred on the military horizon that same month when the Russians recaptured Riga, which Jones says had fallen to the Germans. In a five-day battle, the Russians retook the city and pushed the German army southward. In a counterattack on January 22, the Germans recovered some of the lost ground, but by the first of February, the XII Army had stopped the Germans before the city. This operation was tsarism’s last offensive. It showed that the Russians could defeat the Germans as well as the Austrians, and military historian David R. Jones states that it demonstrated that Brusilov’s tactics and methods had spread throughout the army.85 After the dawn of 1917, the disintegration intensified. Again, the main problem was the collapsing transportation system. Much rolling stock was diverted to deliver this materiel to the front, which led to greater shortages in the cities. The army, though, lacked boots because many of the new recruits, Brusilov remembered, sold a pair of their boots to civilians on their way to the front because on arriving there, they could get another pair. Some sold their other clothing as well, reaching at the front virtually shirtless. No efforts seem to have been made to correct these violations of military policy, or if they were, they were inadequate.86 The command, meanwhile, reduced rations again from the standard three pounds of bread a day to one-and-a-half. The pound of meat regulations gave each soldier was reduced to three-fourths and then one-half pound. Lentils, untypical in the Russian diet, replaced kasha, common to the Russian diet. These changes added to the discontent.87 Army horses were sometimes eaten.88 These shortages, of course, produced terrible inflation in the rear. From 1914 to 1917, black bread had risen 150 percent, while white bread had increased 300 percent.89Eggs had increased 600 percent, while butter had risen 800 percent. A tram ticket had doubled since 1914. A luxury item like oranges had risen 800 percent.90As is always the case in such inflation, it was the poor who felt the problem the worst. Yet, curiously order, declining everywhere, was better at the front than in the rear. Brusilov remembered that discipline at the front remained strong in 1917, but it was poisoned by the replacement of these men by soldiers who had been victimized in the rear by pacifist or German propaganda.91 British Agent R. N. Bruce Lockhart remembered that “right up to the revolution,

A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

233

the nearer one came to the front, the more optimistic was the prevailing sentiment.” He felt that “All the best of Russia... was in the trenches. It was the rear and not the front that let the country down.”92 Georgii Zhukov, who would later have a statue of him erected at the Kremlin’s gates for his work in the defense of Moscow in World War II, remembered that his cavalry unit had been issued ammunition and sent behind the lines to suppress an incipient disturbance.93 Late in January 1917, soldiers of the 34th army corps refused to obey orders to fight. On February 5, a military court condemned five ringleaders to death and fourteen others to hard labor for terms of six to fifteen years.94 Of course, an army must be a coherent force, and if the rear disintegrated, so will eventually the front. One general told Rodzianko in January that dissatisfaction and distrust of officers was growing in the trenches and that discipline threatened to collapse completely. He feared that during the winter, which was especially severe,95 the army “just might abandon the trenches and the field of battle.”96 General K. A. Krymov, who had served with Brusilov, met secretly with members of the Duma in Rodzianko’s house, where he informed them that the army was falling to pieces. Again he blamed conditions in the rear.97 According to Nadia, however, writing almost two decades later, Brusilov continued to be optimistic about his forces. She wrote that he had said, “Give me three months, and we will be in Berlin to dictate our terms.”98 It is hard to accept that he felt that way early in 1917. Langlois reported to Paris that the armies of Brusilov were “in an interesting crisis,” and the armies on the Northern and Western Fronts, which had only faced the Germans unsuccessfully, had a built-in inferiority complex toward the Germans. Only Brusilov’s troops had known victories and major advances since 1914. The successes of 1916 had been theirs until “the Germans showed up and their victories stopped.” Now their attitude was, “If we, the best soldiers in the world, commanded by the best generals, are not able to overcome the Germans, who can? Not [our] Allies evidently. Such is for some time the thought that rules the armies of Brusilov.”99 The demoralization of the soldiers on the Southwest Front was of a different stripe. Having known success against the Austrians, but having been stopped by the Germans, they had the same sense of inferiority as the armies of the north, but having won victories, their defeat at the hands of the Germans became all the more detrimental. No matter how one examines the Russian army on the eve of the revolution, it was a time bomb waiting to explode, and the Revolution was much more than who really needed to detonate it. As for the political scene, things were just as chancy. In his memoirs, Duma President Mikhail Rodzianko claims he had a meeting with the tsar on March 7, at which the tsar had promised he would appoint a ministry responsible to the Duma. The tsar had probably promised no such

234

Chapter 6

thing. He might have promised to remove some of the more objectionable ministers, but in any case, whatever he promised, or Rodzianko thought he had promised, Nicholas II told Rodzianko that he had changed his mind and would make no governmental alterations. Moreover, he would return that night to Stavka. “The next day, suddenly something seemed to snap,” Rodzianko recorded, “and the state machine jumped off the rails.”100 On March 8, 1917, a lockout at the Putilov Works, coupled with the shortage of bread and a large demonstration for women’s rights produced the perfect political stoichiometry, which resulted in a tectonic eruption in Petrograd known in Russian history as the February Revolution.101 From the beginning, the police. The city was in the grip of the mobs, and the Duma, although prorogued, finally formed a provisional government, doing so only when it learned that soldiers and factory workers had elected a “soviet,” a socialist body that was a ghost from the 1905 Revolution. Nicholas II remained blissfully unaware of the seriousness of the disturbances until his wife wired him on Monday, March 12 telling him that “Concessions are necessary.”102 On Tuesday, March 14, Nicholas II dispatched General Ivanov and supposedly the loyal troops to Petrograd to help restore order, leaving himself ahead of this force but switching eastward to the Moscow line to give them an unobstructed straight rail line to the capital. Ivanov, after buying some presents for his family that lived in the capital, casually departed late on Tuesday afternoon. He did reach the tsar’s palace outside the capital and spoke with the empress, but he did nothing to restore order. Nicholas, meanwhile, had found his way to Petrograd blocked on the Moscow line and routed his train instead to Pskov, south of Petrograd, where General Ruzskii, the Northern Front Commander, tried to badger him into abdicating. At this point, Alekseev must have decided that the argument needed pressure from the front commanders, and Brusilov and the other front commanders asking their opinions, hoping to add additional weight for abdication. He informed them that “one of the most terrible revolutions has made it appearance; it is difficult to keep the passions of the people in hand; now the dynastic question has been put point blank.”103 The replies of all of the front commanders recommended the abdication of Nicholas II, and each response implies that each commander must have known more about the situation in the capital than what we know Alekseev had told them.104 Easily the most assertive was that of the Iron General. Stressing that he himself was a “faithful subject” and someone “loyal to the throne,” if not to the incumbent tsar himself, he wrote that “the only solution that could save the situation and make possible the continuation of the struggle with the external foe . . . is the abdication of the throne in favor of the heir tsarevich, under the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. There is no

A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

235

other way out. Speed is necessary, so that the popular conflagration, which had grown to large proportions[,] can be rapidly extinguished; otherwise it will result in incalculable catastrophic consequences. By these acts the dynasty would be secured in the person of the lawful heir. General A. D. C. Brusilov.”105 The same day that he supported the tsar’s abdication, he wrote Nadia, “You, of course, know what has now taken place. . . . I pray to God that this terrible crisis in the time of the horrible war will end quickly in order that the foreign enemy could not be able to bring about our ruin.” Expressing the belief that the enemy could not now attack since the winter thaw would make the battlefields unpassable, he nevertheless expressed the view that an attack at this point would be “a terrible misfortune.” He lamented that “I cannot write [more] at present. Tied up with work.” He concluded with the usual “I hug you. Your Aleksei.106 Nicholas, of course, abdicated, but threw a monkey wrench into the works by abdicating also for his sickly son in favor of his hapless brother Michael, who learned of the fast-moving events when he received a telegram from his brother addressed to His Imperial Majesty Tsar Michael II. In a meeting in Petrograd with what would be essentially the Provisional Government on the morning of March 16, he declined the throne unless a constituent assembly, the election of which the government had promised at its inception, would pick him.107 The popular Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich initially regained his position as commander-in-chief of the Russian armies, but opposition to his reappointment ranged from Rodzianko to the Soviet, the latter because of his opposition to the democratic reforms that the Soviet had unilaterally initiated in the army in the early days of the Revolution and a fear that the positioning of a popular member of the imperial family might result in his becoming the Napoleon of the Russian Revolution. The frontrunner to replace him was Alekseev, probably because events had moved too fast for anyone to think of anyone else. Yet, the now rather impotent Rodzianko, who had not been included in the Provisional Government,108 wrote to the Provisional Government’s Prime Minister Prince George L’vov that Alekseev would be unacceptable, mainly because he was feuding with Rodzianko, and suggested Polivanov or Brusilov, for whom he had the greater enthusiasm. His reason for supporting Brusilov seems to have stemmed from his past successes and the general stability of his Southwest Front. “There [on Brusilov’s front] obviously discipline rules,” he told the prime minister, and he attributed that state to Brusilov himself. “This singular general . . . [is] so broad in understanding of the political assignment of Russia, [and] talented to appraise quickly the existing situation.”109 Yet, his advice was ignored, and Alekseev, Polovtsov states, received the nod because Alekseev was a genstabist and Brusilov was not.

236

Chapter 6

NOTES 1. Telegram chiffre, 15 November 1916, divers, Decorations pour l’Armée russe 1916, 7N761, Vincennes. 2. Clipping, “Brusilov v pervye dni revoliutsii,” Svobodoe slovo, p. 3, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 112, GARF. 3. Première partie, l’Armée russe, p. 2 in Rapport Langlois, October 30, 1916, 7N1547, Vincennes. 4. Atlanta Journal, September 11, 1916, p. 1. 5. Letopis’ voiny 1917, no. 124, p. 2026, cited in Rostunov, 160–61. 6. Ibid. 7. From a review of A Soldier’s Notebook in The Scotsman, January 8, 1931, “Vyrezki,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 12, GARF. 8. Marsengo, 129. 9. Ibid., 144. 10. Brusilov, SN, 280; 1963 Russ. Ed., 256. 11. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich to B, 30 December (o.s.), 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 80, GARF. 12. Nikolai II I Velikie Knaz’ia, 122–24, in Golder, 247–48. 13. Brusilov, SN, 286; see Rosemary and Donald Crawford’s Michael and Natasha (New York: Scribner’s, 1997), 252. 14. Brusilov, SN, 285; 1963 Russ. Ed., 259. 15. Ibid. 16. N to B, 12 December 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 105, GARF; typescript (untitled), 19 February 1936, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 48, l. 5, GARF. 17. See the chapter “The Palace Plotters,” in Rosemary and Donald Crawford’s Michael and Natasha, 247–55. 18. Bonch-Bruevich, 101. 19. Figes, 289. 20. Richard Luckett, The White Generals (New York: Viking, 1971), 26. 21. Knox, 492. 22. “Brusilov v pervye dni revoliutsii,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 313, GARF. 23. Review of A Soldier’s Notebook in The Scotsman, January 8, 1931, in f. 5972, op. 1, d. 12, GARF. 24. Ibid. 25. Andrei Maylunas and Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 490. 26. Brusilov, SN, 276; 1963 Russ. Ed., 253. 27. 8th rapport of Col. Langlois, March 19, 1916, p. 27, in conference de Petrograd et 8th rapport, 16N3180, Vincennes. 28. Zagorsky, 52. Langlois reported to Paris a similar figure. Rapport de Langlois, 30 October 1916, chap. 1, 3–5, 7N1547, Vincennes. 29. P. N. Wrangel, From Serfdom to Bolshevism; The Memoirs of Baron P. N. Wrangel (London, 1927), 3. 30. Oskar Regele, Feldmarschall Conrad: Auftrag und Erfülling, 1906–1918 (Vienna: Herold, 1955), 366.

A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

237

31. Despatch 14, December 25, 1916, F591/4, Lloyd George Papers, House of Lords, London. 32. Gilbert, 294n. 33. Geyer, 55. 34. Martinov, “Konferentsiia,” KA, 20 (1927), 39. 35. Wharton Barker to Bakhmateff (sic), October 25, 1916, box 12, f. September 20–October 31, 1916, Wharten Barker papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, but they told the Americans that they would not need to order any. 36. Situation en Russie à la date 8 Mai, p. 27, 7N1545, Vincennes. 37. Ibid., 28. 38. Grand Duchess Marie, Things I Remember (London, 1931), 249. 39. Golder, 226. 40. N to B, 13 July 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 71, GARF. 41. Ibid., date unclear, probably mid-September, 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 16, l. 254 (84), RGVIA. 42. Ibid., 102. 43. Ibid., October 26, 1916, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 102, GARF. 44. Ibid., November 5, 1916, l. 103, GARF. 45. Ibid., ? October 1916, l. 92. 46. Boris Brusilov to B, 21 December 1916, f. 162, op. 1, d. 3, l. 444, RGVIA. 47. N to B, 17 January 1917, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 60, l. 113, GARF. 48. Ibid., 5 February 1917, l. 120. 49. Ibid., 18 February 1917, l. 123. 50. Ibid., ? February 1917, l. 124. 51. B to N, 14/27 February 1917, Corres. 140–280, p. 263, Brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 52. Ibid., 14 February 1917, p. 263. 53. Ibid., 17 February 1917, p. 265. 54. Col. Aimé Constantini, Les Operations de l’éte 1917 sur la Front Orientale, 2, cites Andolenko, “Apercus sur la guerre 1914–1918 sur le front russe,” 43. 55. Heenan, 1–2. 56. “Confidential Note on the Allied Conference at Petrograd, January–February 1917, Feb 4/17, 1917,” F201/3/2, Lloyd George papers. 57. Brusilov, SN, 286–87, cited in Heenan, 18. 58. Rapport de Langlois, 30 October 1916, chap. 1, p. 7, 7N1547, Vincennes. 59. Lambert, 288. 60. Lobanov-Rostovsky, 188–89. 61. Knox, p. 18, 1 September 1916, WO106/1084. 62. W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917–1921. 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 1: 67. 63. Trotsky, 1: 22. 64. See Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie armii i na flote v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny 1914-fevral’ 1917, ed. A. L. Sidorov (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), 371. 65. Kenez, 372, 374. 66. Ibid., 7; Trotsky, 43.

238

Chapter 6

67. “The Dissolution of the Army in 1916,” 30–32, cited in Chamberlin, 1: 226. 68. Brusilov, SN, 282, 287. 69. Ibid., 282. 70. Speech to Congress of Delegates of the Southwest Front, 20 April 1917, f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, 19, RGVIA. 71. Wildman, The End, 116. 72. Trotsky, 22. 73. Marc Liebman, The Russian Revolution (New York: Random House, 1970), 86. For general pre-revolutionary disturbances in the army, see “V tsarskoi armii nakanune Fevral’skoi burzhuazno-democraticheskoi revoliutsii,” KA, 81 (1937), 105–20. 74. Browder and Kerensky, 1: 9. 75. “Revolkiutsionnoe dvizhenie,” KA, 4 (1923), 421. 76. “V tsarskoi armii,” KA, 81 (1937), 105–20. 77. M. Frenkin, Russkaia armiia i revoliutsiia 1916–1918 (Munich: Lagos, 1978), 25. In one of his books, Kerensky wrote that by January 1917, there were 1,200,000 deserters, noting that “the army was demobilizing itself.” Kerensky, Catastrophe, 99. 78. Alexander Kerensky, “Why the Russian Monarchy Fell,” Slavonic Review, 8 (March 1930), 507. 79. “Iz dnevnika Gen. Selivacheva,” KA, 9 (1925), 105. 80. A. Zaionchkovsky, Strategicheskii ochert, 1914–1918 (Moscow, 1933), 38, cited in Frenkin, 31. 81. Heenan, 15. 82. Zhilin, “Podgotovki nastuplenie,” 163–64, cited in Heenan, 15–17. 83. Brusilov, SN, 278–79; 1963 Russ. Ed., 255. 84. Ibid., 280; 1963 Russ. Ed., 255–56. 85. Jones, “Imperial Army,” 241. 86. Brusilov, SN, 281; 1963 Russ. Ed., 256–57. 87. Ibid., 282 and 257, respectively. 88. Lomanossoff, 7. 89. Interestingly, a hussar in the tsar’s army, Mr. Eugene Reichardt, who has appeared in previous endnotes, told me in one of our many conversations that the soldiers were issued black bread, while the officers were given white bread. Frequently the officers would go to the trenches and trade their white bread ration to the common soldiers for their black bread. 90. Situation en Russie, no number, see Annex, 7N1545, Vincennes. 91. Brusilov, SN, 282; 1963 Russ. Ed., 257. 92. R. N. Bruce Lockhart, British Agent, 105, cited in Lambert, 309. 93. Gilbert, 313. 94. “V tsarskoi armii,” KA, 81 (1937), 105–20. 95. Bonch-Bruevich, 115. 96. Mikhail Rodzianko, “Gosudarstvennaia duma i fevral’skoi revoliutsiia,” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, 6: 43, cited in Alexander Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 19.

A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917

239

97. Rodzianko, Reign, 244–45. 98. Nadia’s ramblings, 19 February 1936, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22-A, l. 129, GARF. 99. 8th rapport de Langlois, 19 March 1917, p. 35, Conference de Petrograd, 16N3180, Vincennes. 100. Rodzianko, Reign, 263. 101. Jamie Cockfield, “The Union Sacrée: tsarism and the Constitutional Democratic Party, 1914–1917” (Unpublished PhD dissertation at the University of Virginia, 1972), 176. 102. Browder and Kerensky, 1: 94. 103. Ibid., 96–97. 104. Ibid., 95–96. 105. B to N, 1 March 1916, p. 266, Corres. 140–280, Brusilov Papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 106. Gleason, Alexander Guchkov, 68; in an interview with Prince Dmitri Romanov in his apartment in London in 1971, he told me that in the Imperial Family, Grand Duke Mikhail was known as “Michael the Fool” because he would believe anything you told him, meaning that he could be, and was easily manipulated. 107. See Semion Lyandres’ excellent article, “Conspiracy and Ambition in Russian Politics before the February Revolution of 1917: The case of Prince Georgii Evgen’evich L’vov,” The Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography, 8 (2015), 99–133. 108. “General Alekseev i ego otnoshenie [s] M. V. Rodzianko,” KA (1922), no. 2, 284–85. 109. General P. A. Polovtsov, Glory and Downfall (London: Bell and Sons, 1935), 40–41.

Chapter 7

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

Brusilov at first welcomed the Revolution, although Florence Farmborough felt that his first “prikaz” demonstrated his loyalty to the tsar. She had clearly misread it because he failed to mention his abdication, stating only that “in accordance with God’s will, Russia has entered upon a new historical course.”1 From the beginning, however, it is impossible to divine conclusively what Brusilov thought because both his public and private statements are often contradictory. The historian is essentially deprived of his letters to his wife, because they slow to a trickle in the months after the February Revolution and are usually very brief when he wrote any. As for his interviews with Washburn, they disappear entirely. Brusilov, like many, welcomed the removal of Nicholas II, but none who approved of the abdication envisioned the chaos that followed. Brusilov certainly never foresaw the disintegration of his beloved army. For whatever reason, he did indeed adapt rather quickly to the new “revolutionary army.” He was among the first generals to remove the imperial insignia from his uniform, and he quickly accepted the role of a “soldier’s general.” He continued to encourage Russian officers to do what he himself had always done: Get close to your soldiers and bridge the chasm that had always divided the Russian soldier from his officers. In a joint meeting of officers and members of both the Provisional Government and the Soviet in May 1917, Brusilov observed that 75 percent of the officers had opposed the Revolution and were effectively in isolation. “We are taking measures to get the officers out of their shells,” he noted. Speaking of the common solider, he truthfully bragged, “I have known him for forty-five years. I like him and will try to bring him closer to our officers.”2 This behavior would eventually be seen by some as self-promotion by the officers who could not bend to the New Order. Brusilov’s apparent acceptance of the democracy, however, was 241

242

Chapter 7

far from that. He truly seems to have believed what he had written, but he himself would quickly come to realize, after the damage had been done, that the Russian soldiers would become at best truant school boys, at worst an uncontrollable, armed mob. The illiterate peasant soldier had little or no understanding of socialist ideology; Brusilov was later to write in contrition. When the Petrograd Soviet announced that the socialist program called for a peace with “no annexations and no indemnities,” the soldiers probably thought that anneksiia (annexations) and kontributsiia (indemnities) were two countries in the Balkans.3 To the soldiers, the triumph of Lenin’s Bolshevism came quickly to mean what they wanted most: Peace and Land.4 At any rate, force was not going to be an option because the mutineers, combined with “loyal” but unenthusiastic soldiers, created an overwhelming majority of what was the army. There were soon not enough disciplined solders left to enforce discipline. Brusilov seemed to believe the “most important [factor] is the spirit of the army, and spirit underwrites success. Success encourages.”5 Discipline would follow. To resist the collapsing discipline would not work, hence his flow with the revolutionary tide. Win them over and they would follow. This argument seemed to be Brusilov’s recipe for restoration of the collapsing army. Yet, was he whistling in the dark? The Bolshevik arguments were in these situations hard to counter, and no arguments about patriotism, duty, or love of country could trump their program. The rather pathetic calls for discipline based on these patriotic notions quickly developed the air of the efforts to control an undisciplined child by a parent who know they cannot force their will on their offspring. No soldiers were going to return to the trenches on the threat that if they continued to disobey authority, they would be deprived of the right to vote for the Constituent Assembly, a body of which the peasant infantryman had no understanding whatsoever. Almost immediately after the abdication of the tsar, the army began seriously to unravel. It is not surprising, since we have witnessed tattered edges had appeared before the Revolution. Brusilov, however, expressed to his wife around March 14 that “all soldiers are calming down” and are no longer “dancing the sarabande on the roofs [of railway carriages] or breaking into first class [compartments].”6 If he truly believed that discipline was reforming, he was sorely mistaken. If disorder seemed to be subsiding, it was because the Revolution was only catching its collective breath. The “disorder” of what Brusilov wrote was no more than rowdiness compared to what was to follow. The first blow that turned the casual indiscipline into open mutiny came the day before the tsar’s abdication in the form of General Order Number 1, issued unilaterally by the Petrograd Soviet. Fearing perhaps that the army might be turned on the Revolution, the Soviet decided to break the officers’

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

243

autocratic grip over the soldiers under them by issuing new regulations changing that relationship. Although the already broken army would probably have disintegrated anyway, General Order No. 1 certainly accelerated its demise. General Ruzskii called it “the beginning of the end.”7 The infamous order called for “soldiers’ committees” to be elected in many levels of army divisions to protect soldiers’ rights. Arms, machine guns, and army automobiles were to be placed under the control of these committees. Major orders from the Duma Military Commission, a body organized in the early hours of the Provisional Government, were not to be obeyed unless they had the approval of the Soviet, to which military units were to elect delegates. Off duty, soldiers were to be treated like free citizens and under any circumstances could no longer be addressed by the familiar pronoun “ty.” Officers were no longer “Your Excellency” but instead “Mister General” or “Mister Colonel.” Infractions of any of these rules could only be brought to the committees for adjudication.8 Moreover, “in all its political actions,” the military is subordinated to the Soviet and “to its own committees.” The breakdown of military order was almost immediate, and within a few days General Alekseev was calling on the Provisional Government to take measures to restore discipline in the army.9 To an exhausted and unstable army, General Order No. 1 was a recipe for its death. Bonch-Bruevich wrote of General Order No. 1, “It was clear to me that this order . . . smashed at one blow the machinery with the aid of which we . . . succeeded in maintaining subordination . . . over millions of resentful armed men deeply disillusioned by the war.”10 On the evening of March 14, a soldier appeared at the Temporary Committee of the State Duma, the precursor of the Provisional Government, and presented Col. Boris A. Engel’hardt, chair of the Military Commission, the General Order. When Engel’hardt refused to accept it, the soldier threatened him, and over the head of the Provisional Government, which was then itself morphing in the night of March 14–15 from the Temporary Committee into a formal government, the Soviet printed thousands of copies, sending them out to the barracks and to the trenches over the military committees’ bitter objection. Alexander Guchkov, minister of war in the new Provisional Government, fought bitterly with the Soviet and finally obtained from it General Order No. 2, which limited the order to soldiers in the Petrograd Military District,11 but the damage had been done.12 Probably few of the common foot soldiers understood any of the finer points of the directive, but even to the most ignorant, it was clear that the officer he had so long feared no longer had sovereign control over him. Soldiers quickly became passive and then hostile. Up until this point, the Russian soldier feared his officers. From this point on, the officers began to fear their men. In the words of Kerensky written years later, “the Russian front grew still. A grave silence ensued along

244

Chapter 7

the hundreds of miles of our line. . . . A virtual armistice was established on the Russian front.”13 About two-and-a-half months after the Revolution began, Kerensky, then minister of war, issued what Alekseev called, “the last nail driven into the coffin of the Russian army,”14 the less famous General Order No. 8, the Declaration of Soldiers’ Rights. Shortly after General Order No. 1, the Petrograd Soviet began discussing a general directive more precisely outlining the rights of the soldier. Guchkov was so horrified on reading the draft version, he resigned as minister of war over it. Kerensky, who could at least temporarily mesmerize soldiers with his “revolutionary” rhetoric, replaced him, and the issuance of No. 8 on May 24 was his first official act. Calling the Russian soldier “the freest in the world,” it nevertheless on paper restored officers’ authority at the front and reinstated corporal punishment there—two changes demanded by Brusilov.15 The order also gave soldiers personal and political rights that even extended to participation in anti-war propaganda. Outside of the zone of combat, it further decreed that soldiers could be punished only by “elected army organizations, committees, and courts.”16 Article 6 permitted defeatist literature to circulate in the trenches.17 Denikin later recorded that Brusilov said that he “still had hopes for improvement [of the army] if only the Declaration was not introduced,”18 but he does not seem to have tried to do anything to stop it at the time of its issue. This document probably had little effect on anything, despite the dire statements written after the fact. By late May 1917, the Russian army was in shambles anyway, and the desertion rate had turned into tsunamical proportions. Its restoration of officers’ rights could be cheerfully ignored by everyone, and they were largely lost in the shuffle of the leftward rush of the Revolution. Brusilov’s view of these innovations is puzzling, and the evidence why is contradictory. Whereas most generals opposed the “reforms,” Brusilov seems to have welcomed them at first.19 Denikin claimed in one of his post-revolutionary memoirs that Brusilov had said that from the days if his youth, he had been a socialist and a republican.20 Brusilov probably never said any such thing, and certainly not to Denikin. Brusilov seems, nevertheless, genuinely to have felt at first that the “new revolutionary army” would become a firstrate fighting machine. At a joint meeting of commanders, members of the Soviet, and representatives of the Provisional Government, Brusilov stated that “officers welcomed the Revolution.” He added that had they not given it so friendly a reception, “it might not have been brought about so easily,” but most of them (about 75 percent in his estimation) are “not in sympathy with the new order of things.” He noted that the officer corps had effectively withdrawn “into their shells” and that an effort must be made to bring them out. Stating that he had known “the common soldier for forty-five years,” he

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

245

wanted to bring him closer to the officers.21 He had, of course, put his finger on a major problem in the Russian army: The chasm that had for centuries existed between officers and men, a distance that he had always personally tried to bridge with the men he led. At least initially he seems to have thought that the democratization of the army would make the soldiers fight, often drawing comparisons with the French revolutionary armies.22 Again, if he truly believed it, and it is difficult to tell whether he did or not, he could not have been more wrong. Brusilov had indeed quickly removed his imperial insignia after the emperor abdicated and embraced the committees quite readily, and the editor of his 1962 memoirs noted that when he spoke to his men, they listened to him when they would not listen to other generals because of it,23 for he had responded favorably to their complaints and had from the beginning worked with the soldiers’ committees.24 His subordinate General Sakharov wired Brusilov asking if this move was “wise,” and he received the reply that more than “wise,” it was “vital.”25 Brusilov later took great pride that there was not one lynching on his front while he commanded there.26 Even as late as June 1917, when the Russian army was a mere ghost of its former self, Brusilov wrote to his brother Boris that the old government had acted “stupidly” and had “brought us to the edge of ruin.” The Revolution, on the other hand, would give birth to “a new, bright, free, and reasonable Russia with a bright future.” Although noting that Russia was now “sick,” he felt strongly that there was no need to fear, “since the healthy organs will take out the disease.” Given the fact that he expressed this opinion in private correspondence, not a statement issued for public consumption, we can only surmise that it must have represented his true feelings at the time. He even called a Congress of Delegates of the Southwest Front on May 3 to discuss general army problems, a great departure from the practices of the former regime.27 His motives, therefore, might have been more than a show of willingness to accept the democracy of the Revolution. In his speech, however, he excoriated the tsarist regime, which gave the army “no artillery, no cartridges, no shells, no clothes and28 no provisions.” He called the last months of the Old Regime “total twilight,” adding that “All of Russia passed into a deep despair that need not have happened.” He was cheered with a great “Hurrah!” at the end. It is hard, however, to believe that such a practical man could be so naive, and as we shall see, later he would change his mind. Brusilov’s prerevolutionary popularity continued at least in the early days of the Revolution. At one point, he was carried through a town on the shoulders of a crowd of 10,000,29 and he was elected Supreme Chair of the Committee of the Fronts of the Revolutionary Battalions.30 His behavior had negative consequences for him. At some point in the first six months of the Revolution, Brusilov was present when Kerensky made a speech to

246

Chapter 7

a Congress of the Army Groups Committees at Kamenets-Podolsk. Later, when Brusilov engaged Kerensky in a personal whispered conversation, a soldier, seeing this secretive behavior, approached Brusilov and said very impolitely and in a dry tone, “I am asking you to stop this conversation.” Brusilov immediately bowed to this request.31 To his fellow former officers, this type of behavior seemed to be pandering to the masses, and but whatever his motives, he earned by it the enmity of the post-revolutionary Russian émigré community in the West, to say nothing of the former tsarist officers, who denounced him for it to the end of their lives.32 Now allowed in the open, radicals appeared everywhere, dispensing their various left-wing malodorous propaganda. British ambassador George Buchanan was horrified, on taking his seat in the Marinskii Theatre in Petrograd, to find two former terrorist assassins Vera Figner and Vera Zazulich in the next box between his and the government’s.33 With Lenin’s return in April, the Bolshevik Party adopted his anti-war stance. Their influence in the army was greatest near the capital, of course, but on the eve of the summer offensive, Bolshevik pacifists were active as far south as the Romanian front.34 They openly made speeches at the Front Congress, calling for the end to the war. They were not received well there, but Brusilov realized that their arguments would play well with “the ignorant masses” [temnaia massa] and given their freedom to do so, “the struggle against it [their propaganda] is difficult.”35 So successful was their work that the Central Powers stopped allowing soldier-to-soldier fraternization across no-man’s land for fear of infecting36 their own troops and turned their antiwar propaganda distribution over to trained professionals. Their agents, plying them with vodka and what was Bolshevik propaganda, threw parties which included brothels in no-man’s land for the Russian soldiers.37 Brusilov could comprehend the Bolsheviks’ attitude, but he was puzzled at that of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who supported the war but “wished to destroy the army for fear of counter-revolution.”38 All of these activities, of course, worked well on a soldiery that could see no sense in continuing the war and who did not wish to die for Constantinople or the Dardanelles.39 To use a comment of Trotsky’s about a group of Russian soldiers serving in France: “They did not want to die for Alsace and Lorraine. . . . They wanted to try living in the New Russia.”40 Bonch-Bruevich had noticed almost immediately their effect in the ranks, which was fertile ground for Bolshevik propaganda. “Instead of marching in formation, “he noted that soldiers now moved about in disorderly groups” and “A general’s shoulder straps... had no effect on them whatsoever.” He realized that the tsarist army had disappeared forever.41 General A. E. Gutor reported to Brusilov in April that “discipline in his [former VIII Army] could not be worse.” Plebiscites had been held in some units on whether or not to participate in the

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

247

spring offensive, men refused to assemble for drill, and units refused to enter the trenches. Officers were completely ignored. Brusilov had feared that there were no safeguards against this sort of behavior, and in what could only have been incredible naiveté, he suggested that the minister of war should try to “educate the troops as to the seriousness of the situation and draw guidelines for behavior.”42 Time for such “education” had passed, if indeed it had ever existed. At this point, words, little else other than force, which was lacking, could reverse the death of the Russian army. As discipline disintegrated, another evil arose: Mass desertion. Slow at first, it turned into a flood within months, especially when word began reaching the trenches that landlords’ land was being confiscated and distributed among the peasants in the rear. To a largely peasant army, this development was a huge incentive to return home. To remain at the front, the soldiers felt, would most likely be to receive no land after the war. To make matters worse, soldiers returned armed, and these men turned into unruly mobs in the rear. They commandeered trains, mobbed stations, and plundered food in the canteens.43 French general Albert Niessel described them as “savage hordes who go about destroying everything.”44 Vladimir Nabokov, the famous author of Lolita, and his brother were fleeing south in a sleeping car in a train infested with “deserters” or “Red heroes” (depending on one’s political views, he wrote). Soldiers kept trying to break into the Nabokov’s compartment, while soldiers on the roof of the wagon were using the compartment’s ventilator as a toilet. They managed to maintain their privacy by pretending that Vladimir’s brother had a bad case of typhus, which kept the soldiers at a distance.45 How many soldiers deserted is impossible to determine. Bruce Lincoln put the figure at 12,000 a week by July 1917.46 Orlando Figes wrote “perhaps a million left their units between March and October,”47 while Golovin puts the figure at a probably more accurate (if too precise) 1,865,137.48 Those troops who did remain in the trenches could hardly any longer be described as a real army. Before the end of March, front commanders were asked to assess the degree of stability. General Ruzsky, commander of the Northern Front, was the first to report. He felt that given the situation of the army, there should be no attempt as an offensive in 1917, no matter what the Russian government had promised the Allies at the Petrograd Conference. The tsar’s government, not the Provisional Government, had made these promises, and in the lull, the officers should work instead to stabilize their fronts.49 Ruzsky was removed for his advice and replaced by General A. M. Dragomirov. General Vladimir Smirnov, temporarily the commander of the Western Front, reported that his generals did not want an offensive any time soon and suggested instead a posture of defense. He did state that in a few months, an offensive might be possible, even desirable, in order to take the soldiers’ minds off politics.50

248

Chapter 7

Brusilov’s report from the Southwest Front was the only one to hold out any real optimism, reporting that all of his commanders, those who led the VII, VIII, XI, IX, and the Special Army, favored, even were eager, for an offensive. He added that besides, they owed an offensive to their Allies “and the world [?]” and expressed the view that the Allies should never be given the notion that Russians are “refusing to fulfill our obligation.” Unlike the other accounts, Brusilov’s report was signed by all of his generals.51 A recent historian of the army at this point has written that Brusilov was only telling Stavka what it wanted to hear.52 That view may well have been correct, but it was not typical of Brusilov to make rash proposals on which he knew he was unable to deliver, but it does fit with the aggressive posture that is evident throughout his career. Perhaps he genuinely wished to test the new revolutionary army, one that he had felt would fight now that it was free. Moreover, he had been successful the year before, unlike the other generals, and that may have been a factor in his optimism. Yet, a German attack on April 3 should have repudiated the latter idea. Led by Group Linsengen, the Central Powers attacked to the northeast of Kovel assaulting the bridgehead on the Stokhod. The Russians barely defended themselves, and the Germans took 25,000 POWs. Ludendorff was stunned at the success.53 So unenthusiastically did the Russian troops on any front fight, Hoffmann wrote in his diary early in June that along many points of the line, an un-negotiated armistice was in effect.54 The Russian front became so quiet that the Germans demobilized in 1917 almost 1,200,000 soldiers to work in German civilian industry.55 Meanwhile, the Provisional Government, in an effort to appear more powerful than the Soviet, issued General Order No. 114 to the army. It was apparently designed largely by Guchkov, at the time the minister of war. It restated some of the points of General Order No. 1, keeping, for example, soldiers’ rights to elect committees. The general staff and the front generals rose against it. Brusilov’s strongest objection to it was the soldiers’ right to political activities “since this undermines the basic tenants of military service . . . [since] the army should be above politics.” He informed Guchkov of his displeasure.56 Yet, Guchkov went even further by purging the officer corps of the army. He cashiered 150 senior officers in what Denikin called “the massacre of the innocents” and replaced them with younger, more energetic officers. This move, moreover, removed from the ranks a large number of officers who supported the Provisional Government.57 By the end of April, the rosy picture Brusilov had painted the month before had turned very dark. A report from his XI Army commander, General Aleksei Gutor, reported that “discipline among the troops could not be worse.” He told Brusilov that soldiers were not appearing for drill and refusing to go to the front to relieve soldiers there. Gutor, who had also been optimistic the month before, now told Brusilov that in any conflict with the enemy,

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

249

either offensive or defensive, the leadership could not depend on them. He wrote that the soldiers “are still extremely mistrustful of their officers, whose exhortations nobody heeds.” Even the officers were apathetic and completely uncertain about their future.58 Historian Cruttwell wrote, “Brusilov understood that in the new army, discipline could not be forced. Although he would in time call for the restoration of capital punishment, Brusilov felt that in the spring of momentous 1917, such restoration would be ‘impracticable.” “Even if death sentences were imposed,” Cruttwell wrote, speaking for Brusilov, “no firing squads could be found to put them into execution” and to try to do so would result in a “more dangerous state of active mutiny than already existed.”59 Realizing this truth, Brusilov seemed to believe that the only possible route to salvation was to try to coax the army along with the help of the committees and the Soviet. At any rate, that was the path he took. Early in May, Brusilov convened the above-mentioned Congress of Delegates of the Southwest Front to discuss the discipline problem. It had to have occurred to him by this time that his appearance of cooperation with the Revolution was not having a calming effect on the troops. Acting as though the officers had been turning a blind eye to the disintegration, he admonished the congress, “Do not be blind, for inefficiencies exist; they are known to both you and me. Here in our army... there are excellent people, but here is also to be found a weakness of will [spirit], and it follows that there is a defect which will be able to prevent us from fulfilling our duty to our Native Land.” He stressed that the war must be “carried to victory,” which would not be possible with the “relaxation” of discipline, accompanied by “desertion” and “fraternization with the enemy.” As always, to avoid sounding like a counter-revolutionary, he attacked the tsarist regime which gave them “no artillery, no cartridges, no shells, no clothes and no provisions.” Speaking of the Revolution, he expressed the view that if the war had ended, there would still have been a revolution. Praising the Provisional Government for its desire to carry the war to victory, he blasted the Social Democrats, meaning only the Bolshevik wing of the party, for their “peace without annexations or indemnities,” saying it was “German inspired.” He said “Victory would come only through advancing. There is no other road, and this we must understand.” Observing that to the Russian soldier “no annexations” meant maintaining only a passive defense, he taunted them: “Is it possible that our soldiers are weak? . . . I well know the Russian army and the Russian soldier, and I strongly say that the Russian soldier is the best in the world!”60 Like all such speeches, it was immediately followed by a thunderous “Hurrah.” This combination of warning and praise would appear repeatedly from Brusilov’s lips in the months that would follow, but they would have little effect on the armies he led.

250

Chapter 7

The first of May saw the first Provisional Government ministerial crisis. Paul Miliukov, the government’s minister of foreign affairs, was forced out of office by antigovernment, antiwar demonstrations. He was followed by the resignation of Guchkov as a result of the flap over The Declaration of Soldiers’ Rights. As a result, a number of socialists were admitted to the Provisional Government, moving it leftward. The Petrograd Soviet was moving to the left as well. Lenin had returned from Switzerland in April and had begun his destructive work in the capital. One antidote Brusilov applied to fight the army’s indiscipline in the spring of 1917 was introduction of “shock battalions” into the army. He seems to have first mentioned these units in his speech to the Congress of Delegates of the Southwest Front when he called for the establishment of “volunteer, revolutionary battalions for the training of shock groups.” Brusilov readily sold Kerensky on the idea when he was in Kamenets, and Brusilov requested, curiously, that a delegation of the Black Sea Fleet be sent to visit reserve regiments in the Moscow and Petrograd garrison to make “fervent appeals” to recruit those who wish to join. Any volunteers should be withdrawn from the units as quickly as possible and isolated from the others in echelons at Brusilov’s disposal.61 In fact, he had already sent a delegate, a sailor named Batkin, to the Petrograd Soviet to ask permission for their formation,62 in effect having gone over the heads of his superiors. These units, often called “Battalions of Death,” were to be formed by combing through all units for the most reliable soldiers and officers and producing well-disciplined battalions to inspire those not so eager to fight. He also wished to have these units serve in the crumbling rear, because “I consider using everything that approaches raising the spirits [of the men everywhere].”63 As a further inducement, Brusilov asked that a law be passed that in the case of death of these soldiers, their families would be given a pension.64 Not waiting for anyone’s orders, Brusilov began forming these units and so informed the minister of war, adding that he had “reason to count upon success.” Apparently referring to other fronts, he added “After obtaining the support of the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the recruitment will start.”65 On June 5, after he was named commander-in-chief of all Russian armies but had not yet left for Stavka, he announced the creation of these new forces. “For the defense of freedom and the strengthening the military revolution, upon which depends freedom of democracy not only of Russia but all the world, . . . it’s necessary for volunteers in the center of Russia form special revolutionary shock battalions, which in the time of the offensive will be sent against important military units of the enemy. . . . The assignment [of these forces] . . . is to show the army that all free Russian people are going with it into the struggle for freedom and a quick peace.”66

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

251

On his first day as commander-in-chief, June 4, Brusilov issued a formal public order calling for the creation of these “Battalions of Death.” “To arouse in the army the offensive spirit of the Revolution,” he wrote, “we must form special shock battalions of the Revolution, made up of volunteers recruited in the interior. This will do its part to fill the army with faith that . . . it is fighting for an early peace.” He could send these revolutionary battalions to the “most outstanding sections of the front to set an example by their onslaught to those who may be hesitating.”67 The recruitment organization was to be called “the All-Russian Central Committee for the Organization of a Voluntary Revolutionary Army.” Members of these committees held public meetings in the rear that had, according to Bernard Pares, “the air of tent revival meetings.”68 The oath of these battalions had a revolutionary flair that masked the real reason for their creation. Beginning with “Before the red and black banners, the symbol of revolution and the struggle for freedom,” the oath had the soldier say, “I give my word of honor of a revolutionary citizen that voluntarily, unselfishly, exclusively with love for the freedom of Russia” that he would have as his goal “the defense of [Russia’s] honor, freedom, equality and brotherhood and the return of occupied lands to us.” It ended with “I enter into the ranks of the revolutionary shock battalions and accept for myself the obligations of a revolutionary soldier.”69 For all the talk of dedication to the Revolution, Brusilov’s new units were clearly more like the disciplined units of the pre-revolutionary army, and in addition to inspiring the lax soldiers into battle, they could also be a force that could be used against these soldiers if need be. As these units were created, he also formed others consisting of women. Originated by the colorful Maria Bochkareva, who had on petition to the tsar served in the ranks since early in the war, these groups of women were created to shame the all-male units, laggards, and deserters back into the trenches. Bochkareva petitioned Brusilov to form the first one, and he approved,70 although he does not seem to have had much to do with it otherwise.71 One such unit served on the Southwest Front, and one was the only military force other than a group of high school military cadets to defend the Provisional Government in its last hours. Bochkareva’s battalion actually fought well in the battle of Smorgon on the Northern Front during the summer offensive.72 The day after Guchkov’s resignation in May, Alekseev called an army high command conference at Mogilev for May 15 to plan a strategy for a meeting with the Provisional Government and the Soviet on May 17 to discuss the formation of a new government, since the departure of Miliukov and Guchkov had brought its downfall. It would also address the chronic question of military discipline.73 He had sent copies of The Declaration to each commander for review before the meeting.

252

Chapter 7

Gurko proposed radical action. He called for all of the front commanders and the commander-in-chief to threaten to resign if it was implemented. Brusilov himself was very upset by it, and according to Denikin, he essentially agreed with this idea to resign because of it. At the meeting, he said, “expressing sincere and unfeigned pain” about The Declaration, he ended his comments with, “There still remains some hope of saving the army . . . provided that The Declaration is not issued.” Then Denikin remembered that Brusilov made the extreme threat: “If it is, there is no salvation, and I would not remain in office for a single day [longer].”74 They had essentially decided nothing firm when they went to Petrograd two days later to meet and try to influence the new Provisional Government and the Soviet of a need for strong disciplinary action. Brusilov and the other front commanders arrived in Petrograd on a special train sent by Prime Minister George L’vov to confer with the new ministry and the soviet leaders. When they arrived, a guard from one of the women’s battalions met them at the station, and at the call of “Attention!” the soldiers remained at ease and merely looked at the generals. They carelessly strolled on the platform when they passed in review and acted contemptuously to Alekseev’s salute, sauntering past as though they were doing him a favor.75 From this cold greeting, the commanders passed through the city which was shrouded in a “sinister atmosphere,” and Brusilov felt a distinct hostility.76 L’vov received the generals in a pleasant manner, and they lunched with the prime minister and met with members of both the government and the Soviet. At the meeting, all generals had horror stories of indiscipline and fraternization in their units. General Avraam Dragomirov of the Northern Front told of troops refusing arms and ammunition because they felt that they would not need them since the soldiers were not going to fight.77 At the meeting with the Soviet’s representatives, Brusilov expressed his amazement at the postrevolutionary actions of the Soviet that had ruined the army. He realized the reasoning for their taking the teeth out of the military, that is, their fear that it would become an instrument of counterrevolution, but he stressed that “an overwhelming majority of my officers had identified ourselves with the Revolution,” and “We are all now as much revolutionaries as they themselves,”78 a stretching of the truth that Brusilov could not have himself believed. He seemed to have come to think of Kerensky, now-minister of war, as a savior of the army and asked for another visit from him to the Southwest Front to demand discipline and regain the support of the men for their officers.79 In the heat of the discussions with the new ministers, Brusilov, Dragomirov, Gurko, Shcherbachev, and Alekseev made “sharply worded accusatory speeches,” according to V. B. Stankevich, a Russian army general who later sided with the Soviets.80 Alekseev spoke first on discipline problems.

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

253

Brusilov spoke second on them as well. The Iron General did not repeat the threats to resign that he had made at Mogilev. He criticized the poor training that troops had received before arriving at the front, making discipline even worse. “The freedom was only given to the men,” he reminded the politicians, “whereas the officers had to be content to play the part of pariahs of liberty.” He then made the puzzling statement that the men had to realize that the revolutionary freedom was meant for officers as well. He added that it was essential that officers not remain on the defensive.81 These words and arguments are confusing. Perhaps Denikin’s memory was faulty or perhaps Brusilov’s thoughts were simply inchoate. Nevertheless, what he said seems to have gone largely ignored, despite the fact that he was the only general who expressed any optimism. As usual, the meeting produced no concrete action. It concluded with Kerensky’s order to the generals to go and prepare their men for the coming offensive, which none of them wanted.82 A further effort to pressure the government to restore discipline came from the first All-Russian Congress of Officers of the Army and the Fleet. It assembled on May 30. Brusilov, amazingly, does not seem to have been there, but it had a great influence on his immediate future. At the assembly, Alekseev sharply denounced the policies of the Provisional Government in regard to the army and in convoluted language predicted dire consequences for Russia’s immediate military future. “Russia is perishing,” he told the delegates. “She is on the brink of an abyss. Another step and she will fall into the abyss and will drag along Russia and all her liberties, and there will be no return.”83 He enjoined his colleagues to be candid about the possible success of an offensive. “The war spirit of the Russian army has failed. Only yesterday it was mighty and threatening; today it stands a pitiful weakling before the enemy. . . . Where, Gentlemen, is patriotism? Where is love of country?”84 As it turned out, his flagrant attacks and his criticism of the government sealed his fate, and his days as commander-in-chief became numbered. At roughly the same time, and probably why Brusilov was not at the Officers’ Congress, Brusilov and Kerensky made an inspection tour of the Southwest Front together, where their planned offensive would be launched. Everywhere, the two were enthusiastically greeted. In an open car, the two men passed through masses of soldiers, shaking hands through the crowd, “each trying to utilize the other’s popularity,” one of Brusilov’s Soviet biographers cynically noted.85 The script for each inspection did not vary and was a more elaborate version of those that Kerensky made by himself. At any unit that they visited, the two men would walk down the line into the center of the ranks, where an improvised podium had been erected. As they mounted the platform, there came a word of command and from all sides, thousands of soldiers would

254

Chapter 7

rush toward them, surrounding the platform in a huge circle. Commanders spoke first, followed by committee delegates. Then Kerensky and Brusilov would speak. Kerensky would later remember that the soldiers, “confused in mind and weary in body and spirit, would become animated by a kind of new life. Their souls would become aglow with enthusiasm which at time reached the peaks of mad ecstasy.” Sometimes it was difficult for Brusilov and Kerensky to move on to their next rally, so great was the press, but finally escaping they would rush to their new inspection.86 During these tours, Kerensky and Brusilov became well acquainted. Kerensky recorded that driving in a closed car to Tarnopol, they found themselves in a violent thunderstorm. The lightning flashed and the rain beat against the automobile’s windows. Somehow in these conditions, Kerensky remembered that he and Brusilov became closer and “actually talked like old friends.” They discussed Russia’s problems, and Brusilov told Kerensky of the harm done to the army by the obsolete bureaucratic system of administration and how remote the higher officers were from the reality of the situation. They basically concurred on problems and agreed that the Russian army still was able to fight.87 The two men bonded during their time together, and on returning, Brusilov reported to Alekseev that Kerensky’s visit “had had a favorable influence” on his men. He also informed him of how the soldiers had made “demands” in order to agree to go on the offensive, in itself an ominous portent. In addition to adequate artillery, rest, and substantial reserves for the offensive, the soldiers strangely added to the list adequate underwear!88 Kerensky likewise returned the favor to Brusilov. On passing through Mogilev on June 2, he highly praised Brusilov to everyone except Alekseev, “expressing the view that [because of his leadership] the general spirit and the relations between officers and men were excellent.” Two days later, the quartermaster general woke Alekseev in the early morning hours to give him the telegram announcing his dismissal and replacement by Brusilov. On reading the wire, this man who had been an intimate of the tsar burst into tears.89 He and Kerensky had talked for about an hour on June 2, but in Alekseev’s words, “Kerensky did not find within himself sufficient courage to tell me this openly,” Alekseev later recorded.90 The Provisional Government praised Alekseev loudly in an open letter that announced his removal to try to soothe his feelings, but he was not appeased. “They threw me out as you would a lackey,” he later wrote in his diary.91 The telegram announcing Brusilov’s appointment stated that the Provisional Government had appointed him but strongly indicated that he had the approval of the Soviet as well.92 This wording was probably the Provisional Government’s way of maintaining the fiction that they were really in charge and that it was icing on the cake that the Soviet approved. He clearly, though, had the Soviet’s confidence, or we can be certain that he would not have

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

255

received the appointment. Denikin was likewise left, temporarily, as it turned out, as the army’s chief of staff. Forty-nine-year-old General Aleksei Gutor, formerly commander of the VII Army, replaced Brusilov on the Southwest Front.93 Why Kerensky chose Brusilov is not much of a mystery. First, his name had been suggested in March by Rodzianko, who felt that Brusilov would have been much more in tune with the times than was Alekseev.94 That appraisal was probably correct, but Rodzianko had also had a long-standing feud with Alekseev. Literary Digest fatuously informed its readers that Brusilov had been picked because he was an aristocrat and Alekseev and Ruzskii were not.95 There is absolutely no logic in this notion. Russian general A. M. Nikolaev in an article in Russian Review stated that the reason that the Southwest Front had been relatively quiet during the February Revolution was because Brusilov could control his men.96 A reason for this stability, according to Brusilov himself, and he is probably correct, was his own personal popularity, in part a holdover from his prerevolutionary popularity, but most certainly in part from his willingness to accept the Revolution. In his memoirs, Brusilov bragged that “in any case my front remained staunch [derzhalaia tverno] until my departure for Mogilev,” in June, and at that time there had not been “a single case of murder of officers [his italics], which is more than other fronts can say.” There were some disciplinary incidents on his front, to be sure, and the driving off of officers, but in such cases, Brusilov went directly to these brush fires and extinguished them. When he arrived at a troubled brigade, he was always greeted with enthusiasm, and after he reproached the men, they always agreed immediately to accept the return of their officers. Yet he added that he never was able to obtain an agreement to attack in an offensive from these troubled units. When he tried to do so, he was always met with the words “No annexations and no reparations,” which of course had nothing to do with attacking, but these words were clear proof that socialist propaganda had reached them. Brusilov felt that it was only a means of “avoiding the question they did not wish to discuss.”97 It was certainly more sedate than the other fronts, but that was probably due as much to the distance from Petrograd than anything else. As we have seen, Kerensky had taken a liking to him during their tour of the fronts, and he had witnessed first-hand Brusilov’s popularity with the troops, the way he “understood the character of the soldier,” and how he ‘sensed quickly every change in the spirit of the army.”98 He later remembered in The Catastrophe that Brusilov was “not given to much conversation,” and given that Kerensky liked to hear the sound of his own voice, he was probably pleased during their long rides when the general said little as he himself held forth on the future of Russia and his ideas for the army. He also noted in The Catastrophe that “General Brusilov was not

256

Chapter 7

a politician,”99 which likely meant to the ambitious minister of war that he did not have to fear from Brusilov a military takeover as he was later to face from General Lavr Kornilov. He clearly recognized Brusilov’s competence and curiously credited him for the rallying of the armies in “the first weeks of chaos” after the February Revolution.” Alekseev, Kerensky was later to write, “knew how to propose a choice for a decision. Brusilov was capable of making that choice.”100 In Brusilov, Kerensky saw an outstanding general who would not be a political threat to him, nor to the Revolution. He appeared to be the perfect choice. Brusilov’s appointment had further been enhanced by his general optimism at a meeting at Mogilev on May 14, in which he expressed great confidence in the future. “I believe in the sound common sense of the Russian people,” he told the gathering, expressing the belief that after the “gradual [?] shock, . . . then they will calm down.”101 Right or wrong, this sort of thinking is what Kerensky wanted to hear, and it merely reinforced his desire to have Brusilov as commander-in-chief. Brusilov later wrote that when he was offered the job of supreme commander, he took it despite the fact that he felt that for Russia the war was over. The “revolutionary army,” he felt, would never fight, but he added that he hoped he could dispel any notion among the troops that he and his officers did not serve the Revolution by inviting Kerensky to the front to speak to the men. He called it “the last shot in my locker.”102 This attempt, like all of the others Russian officers had tried, failed to restore the army; Brusilov probably deep down realized that it would not. If Brusilov personally believed at this juncture that the army was finished, he did not relay this view to Col. Langlois, who reported to Paris that Brusilov “seems to have new regained confidence in the valor of his troops,” adding that he had “been much less optimistic when he left the Southwest Front.”103 Whatever he said that gave Langlois this optimistic impression, it clearly was an act. There is too much evidence to indicate that Brusilov had troubling doubts about the Russian army’s ability to fight, but he could never have revealed these doubts to the representative of his ally. Alekseev vented his spleen in his diary, in which he enumerated what he said were Brusilov’s faults,104 which were generally fabrications. He also blasted the general’s “democratic tendencies,” denouncing Brusilov for catering to the Provisional Government and “the Soviet of Dogs’ Deputies,” and going along with “the revolutionary slogans.” “He grouched that Brusilov answered to the demand of the moment catering to the tastes of Kerensky.”105 Why did Brusilov take the appointment? He would not have been human had ego not played some sort of role, but he genuinely seems to have believed that he had something to offer Russia, and given his past leadership, he did. After the Revolution, his wife wrote in her endless scribblings that at some

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

257

point in the nineteenth century, Brusilov’s aunt Elena Petrovna Blavatskaia had “learned” at a spiritual seance in St. Petersburg that “Brusilov will save Russia.” She wrote that her husband, who the reader might remember dabbled in spiritualism, had believed this prediction, adding “and this ruined him.”106 Let us remember that Brusilov’s correspondence with his wife, if not his express actions on the battlefield, had a certain Que sera, sera flavor to them, that everything was in the “Hands of God,” and so forth. It is certainly in part possible that he saw himself as the savior of the Russian army, and hence Russia. This outlook was once suggested in a letter to his brother Boris. Stressing the “extraordinarily difficult grandiose responsibility before Russia,” Brusilov noted that “in general I do not fear [it].” Also noting that he did not seek glory, a frequent point he seemed to make too often at times, he wrote that “from my soul I wish and have only one goal—to save Russia from ruin.” Then, reflecting his fatalism, he added “I have a deep internal faith that we will win and with honor we will leave this titanic struggle.” He recognized that Russia was “sick,” but he told Boris that there was no need to fear this illness “since its healthy organism will drive out this disease.”107 To the reporter T. Ardov of Utro Rosii, shortly after assuming command, his fatalism was also evident. “I am not a prophet,” he told the journalist. “I am only fulfilling my duty. . . . But I trust that everything will be successful.” Then he permitted himself a touch of pessimism when he noted that what had happened is “the natural way of revolutions,” and admitted that “our army had become sick from the Revolution,” like it had become sick from the Old Regime. “It is necessary to thread one’s way along,” he added, expressing the usefulness of committees “by which we must administer all of the army.”108 After Brusilov’s death in 1926, Kerensky, in an interview on Brusilov with a French journalist, took on those who had accused him of being “an opportunist, a hypocrite, [and] a Tartouffe.” Noting that Brusilov was indeed ambitious, he added, “But a leader who sees his men sacrificed uselessly can suffer sincerely without being called for that a hypocrite.”109 Langlois, who had observed the Russian army throughout the war, felt that he was “by far the most qualified of all the Russian generals to take command,” not due to his personal qualities but because of the great reputation he had acquired by his success in 1916.110 Brusilov did seem to have seriously believed at one point that the Russian army could be salvaged, but it is curious that his appointment came at the time when he began to have doubts. Given that nothing short of peace could have calmed the army, however, Brusilov probably was the best choice, although at this juncture, neither a Napoleon nor an Alexander the Great could have restored the fighting ability of this once great force. Many letters of congratulation on his appointment naturally poured in, often wishing him happy Easter as well, but not very many came from

258

Chapter 7

famous Russians, Gurko being an exception. He predicted Brusilov’s leadership would result in “new brave deeds that would bring joy to our country.” Nevertheless, Brusilov’s appointment was generally, if not universally, well received by Russia’s French allies, so starved were they for victorious leadership. Colonel Langlois wrote to his government, “General Brusilov has just taken supreme command. . . . Militarily he is an officer of dash, of judicial conceptions, and clear-cut [nettement] offensives. Favored by fortune, he has known nothing but success from the beginning.” He added, however, that his volte face after the Revolution had led to reproach from his fellow commanders, which “gives one to think is not unjustified.”111 “He was the first to put on the red cockade [a symbol of support from the French Revolution of 1789; Langlois does not mean literally] and the only one of the commanders of the group of armies to render the wearing of it obligatory.” This fawning to the Left, as Langlois saw it, would help restore order. General Ferdinand Foch, who would conclude the war the next year as the Supreme Allied Commander in the West, congratulated Brusilov on his promotion. In his reply, Brusilov referred to “our glorious troops who have fought for three years with yours . . . and created a new force in liberty . . . and contributed in union with their allies in the triumph of their cause.”112 Brusilov in return sent a telegram of congratulations to General Philippe Pétain, himself recently appointed the commander-in-chief of the French armies (and who unknown even to France’s allies had the onerous task of putting together the French armies after the frightening mutinies in May) on France’s national holiday. On July 14, he invited the French officers at Stavka to a luncheon to celebrate.113 The Franco-Brusilov love affair even spilled over into the press, where Le Gaulois even praised Nadia’s family for both their literary work and their physical beauty.114 At another point, this same paper praised him orgiastically. Reporting that the war had placed Brusilov “in the spotlight and rendered him popular among the Allies,” it added, “In the future, history will pay just homage to the qualities of intelligence, of the heart, and strong will. She will inscribe in letters of gold the name of those who have been called to become the liberators of Russia.”115 It would indeed be difficult to remain modest with such praise. At home, Rech’, the liberal Cadet Party newspaper, felt, without passing judgment, that Brusilov was prone to take chances, unlike the “more cautious and self-controlled General Alekseev.”116 Others had been more cautious. Butler Wright of the U.S. Embassy wrote in his diary, “We learn that Alekseev will relinquish command and that Brusilov [will] assume it—which would be good, I think.”117 Whatever his contemporaries’ views, Brusilov’s elevation, less than a month before the offensive, was probably unwise militarily and reflects in part Kerensky’s lack of military experience and his over-absorption with his own political future. Some opined that Brusilov’s

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

259

departure from the Southwest Front to Stavka so soon before the offensive was a mistake because they felt that he was the only one who could make these men fight as they had in 1916.118 Indeed, Brusilov himself later told General Knox that he had warned Kerensky that if he had planned to promote him, he should have done it earlier. Although Brusilov likewise felt that since his name was synonymous with the only successful Russian offensive since 1914, his promotion to commander-in-chief would “automatically” have “an encouraging effect on the leading on all fronts.”119 This belief, if he truly held it, would prove disastrous in the extreme. Some closer to him were also not pleased with his appointment. After Brusilov’s departure for Mogilev, at luncheon of his old command, one of his former subordinates characterized him “as merely an opportunist, sincere in nothing and searching only for popularity.” One other officer spoke of “the folly of his antics” but did believe that he was taking the only course that was available to restore the army.120 Other officers on the Southwest Front were very outspoken, with one calling Brusilov’s actions “political gymnastics.” Another rather harshly opined that before the Revolution, Brusilov had been necessary to the Southwest Front, but after the upheaval, he was needed “nowhere.” Another officer even criticized his competence to Alfred Knox, adding that at Mogilev he would be “a positive danger, as he would give way in everything to the politicians.”121 When Kerensky came to Stavka to be near the direction of the summer offensive, Brusilov told him on his second day there that the soldiers’ committee wished to speak with both of them. At the meeting, they learned that the Central Committee of the All-Russian Army and Navy Officers’ Union was “very hostile to both of them,” and Kerensky remembered that Brusilov was “greatly astonished” to learn this news, but Kerensky dismissed it as being untrue. He later learned that it was indeed correct. This important unit did not want Brusilov in command.122 Some of the Allied representatives seemed less than fully pleased as well, even some who had praised him earlier. We have seen that Knox already had faint regard for Brusilov, but even Colonel Langlois reported to the Quai d’Orsay the subtle tweak that “Brusilov is less well gifted in the point of view of character than in those of intelligence.”123 General Maurice Janin, a member of the French military mission, wrote in his diary that “decidedly Brusilov is an old weasel [fouine] who always looks out for himself and his personal interest. . . . Having with effusion kissed the hand of the tsar, [on] the day of his nomination, he appealed to soldiers [after the Revolution by] rubbing off their golden eagles . . . and their imperial symbols.”124 Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, the sarcastic intellectual in the imperial family, wrote to his brother that “Probably all the General Staff will change because the majority does not want to serve with Brusilov.”125

260

Chapter 7

Doubtlessly his ambition was a factor in his rise. Few men are without it, and given the times, anyone in it would definitely feel, as Churchill did in 1940, that he was “walking with destiny.” Knox wrote that on the evening of June 5, in a speech before the officers with whom he had served, Brusilov made what was for him an uncharacteristically self-laudatory remark. “I carry luck everywhere with he,” he told these men. “The VIII Army was always victorious and so has been the Southwest Front under my leadership. Now I will lead all of the armies of Russia to victory.”126 This attitude—one Knox would have been highly unlikely to have fabricated—runs counter to the modest pose Brusilov had always displayed, as well as his “all-in-the-handsof-God” stance to which he often referred. Perhaps for once his ego took control. Perhaps he was encouraged by some of the praise he was receiving abroad.127 His reputation as an outstanding general and his readiness to bend to the will of the Revolution had undoubtedly been the major factor that gained him this promotion. Yet, through no fault of his own, his new position would do much to tarnish that great reputation. On arriving at Stavka, however, he demonstrated that one thing had not changed: His sense of democracy within the army. Grand Duke Sergei wrote to his brother that on his arrival, Brusilov was wearing a red bow on his uniform. He addressed the guards with “Greetings, Comrades!” and then shook hands with everyone regardless of rank, causing some confusion as sentries had to fumble with their rifles to free their hands. He then announced that he was not the supreme authority in the army, but “at the beck and call of the Soviet of Peasants’ and Workers’ deputies.” Grand Duke Sergei, obviously full of foreboding, added, “Under these conditions the army will not be resurrected.”128 In his first prikaz to the Russian army on arriving at Mogilev, he called on the troops “to rally around the red symbol [banner–stiag] with the slogan of “Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood,” but he added with it the suggestion that he had used so often: “and rush at the enemy, forever smashing German imperialism, which oppresses the people of all the world.”129 Since there were no workers in Mogilev, the local soviet consisted largely of peasants. Its chairman, however, was a Lieutenant Goldmann, a Jewish soldier who had been a deserter at the time of his election as chair of the Mogilev soviet. This “governmental body” terrorized the local populace with impunity. Brusilov immediately proposed a meeting with Goldmann and sent a car for him. He later made a car available for Goldmann whenever he wanted one. He also allowed Goldmann to use the army’s telegraph lines to wire Petrograd.130 While he was fawning over the soviet, Brusilov was ranting at the committee of officers. In contrast, when Kornilov became the commander-in-chief in August, one of the first things he did was arrest Goldmann.131

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

261

Brusilov’s attitude merely emboldened the Soviet. The local soviet asserted itself on what could only be described as Brusilov’s invitation, and from this point onward, it was “a significant force” at army headquarters.132 Under Alekseev, it had acted “with great prudence and reserve,” but after Brusilov’s obsequious behavior, the soviet became more and more daring each day and “requested of him in the most determined way” to destroy counter-revolutionary elements at Mogilev, presumably the officer corps, and Brusilov dutifully issued a statement that he would never tolerate “any counter-revolutionary manifestations on the part of his subordinates at Stavka.”133 Denikin, serving as chief-of-staff described his dealings with Brusilov at Mogilev as “opportunism slightly tainted with subservience to the Revolutionary Democracy.”134 In conversations with Brusilov, the “Iron General” constantly corrected anything Denikin said that was “undemocratic,” but he at one point probably expressed his true feelings when he said, “Do you think that I am not disgusted at having constantly to wave the Red Flag. What am I to do? Russia is sick, the army is sick. It must be cured, and I know of no other remedy [than to go with the flow].”135 Denikin decided that he could not, under these hypocritical circumstances, continue to work with Brusilov. “I found it difficult to speak to him now, for he was a different man and was so recklessly . . . throwing his reputation to the four winds.”136 He asked for a transfer and was given the command of the Western Front.137 Brusilov appointed General Lukomsky to replace Denikin as his chief of staff and General E. M. Romanovsky, formerly chief of staff of the VIII army, to be the army’s quartermaster general.138Involved with Brusilov on the Southwest Front was a man who would have an impact on Brusilov’s future: Boris Savinkov, a curious figure who had been a notorious pre-revolutionary terrorist, but as a friend of Kerensky had been named Commissar of the Southwest Front. He had fled Russia in 1906 and had lived until the February Revolution in France, where he served in the French army and wrote underground novels praising political assassination. Although still a leftist, he more and more sympathized with the Right where army discipline was concerned, even praising Kornilov’s stringent attempts to restore discipline. He seemed to have a great deal of influence over Kerensky where appointments were concerned, and it was on his recommendation that General Gutor replaced Brusilov on the Southwest Front, and General Kornilov took his place at the head of the VIII Army. Brusilov opposed this shuffle, especially the elevation of Kornilov, his old unruly subordinate, whose disregard of Brusilov’s orders in 1914 had involved the VIII army a large amount of trouble.139 Liked or not, Brusilov typically threw himself into the work of his job. One of his biggest problems beside the absence of discipline in the ranks was the shuffle of other commanders that the nonmilitary Kerensky had made after becoming minister of war. The shakeup on the crucial Southwest

262

Chapter 7

Front, where the main focus of the offensive was supposed to be launched, was especially disturbing, with the VIII Army receiving its new commander just two weeks before the attack date and the XI army’s new leader assuming command only five days before the offensive.140 These new leaders lacked the time to familiarize themselves fully with their fronts and to become known to their officers, to say nothing of their men. They were having to assume the inchoate, and to them unfamiliar, preparations of others and try quickly to complete them, a task that could not be done well in so short a time. All of these problems occurred while Brusilov had doubts about the army. Writing after the war, Brusilov remembered that at the time of his elevation, he saw no hope for restoring it. Brusilov stated that at the time of his transfer to Stavka, he believed that “essentially the war was over for us [at this point] for we had no means for getting the soldiers to fight.”141 Reports from all parts of the front state essentially the same thing. General Denikin reported to Brusilov after he had assumed command that his artillery had the best morale and were ready for the offensive, but in his X Army several divisions “are not battle fit as far as their morale is concerned.” In his II Army, again the artillery was stable, but in the infantry, the morale was “considerably worse than the army commander imagines.” On his own report, Brusilov wrote, “Is it worthwhile to prepare a blow there with such bad morale?”142 Brusilov’s earlier caution had turned pessimistic soon after assuming command, since any failure would be blamed on him, and he had developed serious doubts about the advisability of an offensive. A few weeks later, Alekseev recorded in his diary, “I have received word that in some units the officers are being slaughtered by their own men.”143 Both Kerensky and Brusilov, moreover, were receiving hate mail. On the eve of the offensive, one such letter boldly said, “No, we will not advance against the Germans, but we will advance very soon against the Russian bourgeoisie; we will pierce them all with our bayonets and at the same time we will pierce General Brusilov and Kerensky. Kerensky and Brusilov, await your death!”144 Writing of these times years later, Kerensky noted that what Russia needed now was “a general on a white horse,”145 and to him Brusilov appears to have been the closest thing to it. Brusilov’s office suite was a comfortable one, much larger than the one he had in Kamenets. In the entrance hall was a huge table covered with maps. In his private office on his desk was a large table lamp with a silk lampshade. On the wall by the window was an etagère, and there was a redwood sofa in the corner. There was a dining room adjoining with a bright red-framed lithograph on the wall. Off the dining room was a balcony, and below was a “magnificent garden with a view of the Dnepr [River].” It was the same office that Nicholas II had occupied only a few months before. “In general, it’s good,” he wrote Nadia, but adding that without her, “it’s boring, dreary.”146 His living quarters was a small, two-storey house that had traditionally been

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

263

the home of the governor of Mogilev Province and Nicholas II’s domicile when he was commander-in-chief. Attached to it was a large, shady garden in which, in the spring of 1917, no flowers had been planted, probably casualties of the Revolution. There was a large swing, which had been used by the tsar’s children when they visited him. From the garden, one could see the countryside for miles.147 On first becoming commander-in-chief, Brusilov strangely told Nadia that he now found his work load lessened. In a letter just days before his new appointment but still on the Southwest Front, he wrote of his work habits. “All day and part of the night I work. I fall asleep from fatigue quickly, but around 2 AM I am not able to fall asleep again. . . . Well! What is to be done, [sic] while living I will fulfill my duty. I can rest when God calls.”148 Yet from Mogilev, he wrote, “Here it is much easier for me, and I don’t get as tired to the degree I did there [on the Southwest Front],”149 That respite doubtlessly ended with his trips into the trenches to restore order and defuse the chronic unrest. By mid-July as the front crumbled, he complained, “I am busy from early morning to 2–3 o’clock at night. I don’t even have time to take a walk.”150 In his new post, Brusilov continued his usual pattern of hands-on command, even to his usual point of micro-management, and it is not surprising that he did the same as supreme commander. In a memorandum from Denikin, he jotted questions throughout in the margins: On the absence of a general from his post, Brusilov asked, “Please report to me why he was gone so long;” On a statement about the slowness of preparations, he asked “Why?” On reports of actions of a divisional committee, he wrote expletives such as “Foul!” “Totally nasty!” and “Disgusting.”151 Shortly after assuming command, Brusilov made his first appearance among the troops especially the highly unstable Western and Northern fronts. He quickly learned that he had to avoid the use of such words as “offensive” and “attack,” for they catalyzed unrest among the troops. In some places the soldiers seemed enthusiastic, but Brusilov got the impression that their commanders were frightened. Although he was well received, it was somewhat of a veneer. While meeting with the 1st Siberian Regiment, he received a most enthusiastic reception of the tour, but when he departed, the meeting he had convened continued, and he came under attack. Some agitator said to the men, “Why do you listen to this old bourgeois?” and he was reviled by other speakers. To these slurs, the men applauded and shouted “Hurrah!” just as they had when Brusilov had spoken to them.152 In some places, he faced open hostility. Once near Dvinsk, although he displayed his “democratic tendencies” by carrying his tunic on his arm when speaking to the sullen men, it became evident that he was not the politician Kerensky was. Trying to show how barbaric the Germans were, he

264

Chapter 7

told the soldier’ group that the Germans had vandalized one of the French people’s finest properties, several vineyards where champagne was made. The soldiers reacted negatively and then exploded, “You want us to spill our blood so that you can drink champagne?” Apparently shaken by the outburst, he summoned his guards around him and put on his coat. When the crowd eventually calmed down, he asked a soldier to state his position. A red-headed recruit replied that the army had had enough of war, adding, “If the generals wanted to fight to drink champagne, they could go spill their own blood.”153 In Minsk, accompanied by Denikin, Brusilov attended a meeting of the Front Committee. I. E. Liubinov, a member of the Bolshevik faction of the assembly, who called him “small feeble Brusilov, a typical swordsman [rubaka],” recorded that after Brusilov had spoken “unaccustomed words of revolution [and] of freedom,” he asked for their opinion of the coming offensive, hoping for a resolution supporting it. All he received was hostility. Liubinov added that already at that time, there were many units “in our hands.”154 In a speech he made in the Pushkin auditorium in Petrograd, he tried to make a joke of his dilemma. Noting that he received letters from all over Russia, he read two, one from a Rightist, who called on him to save Russia and threatening to kill him if he did not, the other from someone who praised him for freeing Russia from Tsarism, but who also threatened to kill him if he showed any counter-revolutionary activity. “As you see, in both letters they are threatening to kill me. I don’t have a choice.” Nadia added that this seeming contradiction was the Russian “laughter through tears” and showed that he was “looking far into the future to see and understand the inescapable tragedy of his position.”155 After his return from these tours, one wonders how Brusilov could have even feigned optimism, but there is still evidence that he continued to believe in the Russian soldier’s soul, even if it was now misguided. Nadia claimed she eavesdropped on a conversation between her husband and Guchkov when he was still minister of war from a little chamber off her husband’s office. She has left two slightly different. Nadia remembered that Guchkov, with irony in his voice, said “You, General, believe in the soldier’s soul, like Suvorov?” obviously referring to the reasons for the chaos in the army as though Brusilov thought that there was a simple solution. To this remark, Brusilov replied that the committees and (depending on the versions) General order No. 1 or The Declaration of Soldiers’ Rights had destroyed the army, and he reminded Guchkov that the minister of war and the Provisional Government had supported them,156 and that these actions played into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Observing to Guchkov that the army had never been so well supplied and armed, and apparently referring to an army with the old discipline, Brusilov declared, “Give me three months and we will be in Berlin.” Guchkov replied,

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

265

“You defend this regime against which the people fought . . . ?” to which Brusilov’s answer was silence.157 This conversation has a phony ring to it. Nadia tended in her writings after the Revolution to “rewrite” her husband’s biography, and this incident might be one such case. Brusilov, as we shall see, turned in time against the ideas of military democracy, but at this point, he was in full cooperation with them, or at any rate, was acting outwardly as though he was. The differences in the two accounts indicate fabrication. Guchkov, Nadia must have forgotten or never knew, had resigned over the Declaration, and it had been Kerensky’s first act as minister of war to introduce it. Moreover, although Nadia had been to the front once after February, the chance that Guchkov might have been there at the same time is unlikely, although possible. Moreover, the description of Brusilov’s office makes no mention of an antechamber. Eavesdropping plays a frequent and important role in nineteenth-century Russian literature, on which Nadia had been reared. This account sounds as if it might have come from one of them. Brusilov soon learned, however, that he had another problem beyond those of military discipline: That of provisioning the army. Whereas the Russian forces were better armed and supplied with war matériel than it had ever been, there had developed serious shortages of food and fodder. Up to a month before he became supreme commander, Brusilov notified his superiors that as early as March and April, there had been a “considerable slackening” of deliveries of fodder, a very serious problem since his army moved literally by horsepower. These shortages were leading to “the destruction of horses.” Apparently the difficulties came from transport, not supply. He had called at the time for the commissars of the rear to assist the ministry of agriculture in organizing pools of horses and wagons to deliver to the armies the hay that the railroads could not provide.158 This problem lingered under his tenure as supreme commander, and as late as July, during the early days of the offensive, he approved bureaus to regularize such shipments in conjunction with the nonmilitary Zemstvo Unions.159 Food distribution to the army had likewise become critical. After the February Revolution, unrest had of course spread to rural areas, as peasants seized land. In the ensuing chaos, acreage went untilled and planted, and although there was still grain from the year before, the rural chaos prevented its being shipped to the army. In the midst of the offensive, Brusilov approved bureaus to regularize food distribution in an effort to solve the problem,160 with patchy results. The major problem that Brusilov faced, nevertheless, was the direction of the planned offensive of 1917, due to commence less than a month after his assuming supreme command. Although there were abundant reasons to council it, Brusilov seems to have been the only older general for a number of

266

Chapter 7

reasons who favored continuing with the prerevolutionary offensive plans.161 The military discipline, first of all, was disintegrating daily, and each day the army’s abilities were therefore worsening. Delay could only mean attacking with a less effective army. He also thought that if the army could succeed as it had in 1916, it might restore discipline. Yet, in his interview with Russkoe slovo after the 1917 offensive had failed, he declared that he had told Kerensky that it would not succeed, but he had hoped that it would make evident “the debilitative conditions of the army out into the open providing irrefutable proof that I had been right to demand that discipline be introduced.”162 If Brusilov actually made this fatuous statement, he could not have believed it himself. There was ample evidence to all that the army was a broken reed. Perhaps underlying his desire to attack was his history of believing that “the best defense is a vigorous offense,” and he wanted to strike the Central Powers before they could attack him, thus giving the Russians the initiative.163 He had told Kerensky that “each day of delay merely helps the enemy, and only an immediate and determined blow can one disrupt his [the enemy’s] plans.”164 The offensive was originally set for May, to begin several weeks after the infamous Nivelle Offensive on the Western Front, and Brusilov later told General Janin that he regretted not having attacked in May, “but the army was sick.”165 It was much worse when he finally did. Whatever he stated in public, Brusilov in private was pessimistic about success. In a report, Denikin stressed the poor discipline and morale. Brusilov wrote back on June 11, “Is it worthwhile to prepare a blow there with such morale?”166 At a meeting at Stavka after the offensive had foundered, he reminded everyone that he had warned that “one should not rely too heavily on its success.” Yet the Russian leadership was serious about trying to fulfill its obligation to its allies. Alekseev’s last act as commander-in-chief was to set the date of July 3 to launch the 1917 offensive. The next day he was replaced by Brusilov, who changed the date of attack to June 15 on all fronts except the Southwest and then having hopefully pinned down enemy troops on these other fronts, the offensive would begin on the Southwest Front on June 23. At least to Kerensky, Brusilov expressed mild optimism for a “chance for success” but adding a caveat, “the size of which at the moment it is impossible to foretell.”167 He later changed the date to June 25. Then on June 24, the day before the offensive was to begin, Kerensky wired Brusilov that he thought it necessary to obtain the support of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, a meeting of representatives from Soviets from all over Russia, which had begun its first meeting on June 16. Brusilov wired back that it would be possible to delay the attack for a few days but warned against any further postponement, fearing that the Germans might disrupt Russian plans with an attack of their own.168 The Congress of Soviets did endorse the offensive on June 26, the Bolsheviks still being in a minority (although they

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

267

loudly objected), and the ego-driven minister of war delayed things a few days further until he could get to Stavka with the Congress’s endorsement so as to give the appearance that the order to attack had come from him.169 Not surprisingly, reports continued to arrive of further military disintegration, and it should have been obvious to anyone that the offensive should have been cancelled.170 For example, in the X army on Denikin’s front, troops were refusing to take their assigned positions, to do reconnaissance or to sap forwarding trenches. Denikin expressed to Stavka that the army leadership “is not firmly convinced that the troops will fight.”171 Furthermore, from all fronts came reports of delays, pernicious committee activity, and demoralization. Some units on the Northern Front had even expressed the view that “for them, there is no authority but Lenin.”172 What is more, the army of the rear was in total shambles, running roughshod over duty ordinances, taking over parks and train stations, and in general interfering with any attempts to maintain order.173 One report to the French ministry of war informed the minister that troops left posts at will, roamed the streets of towns and cities, behaved scandalously toward women, riding trams without paying, and commandeering trains. One wonders how Brusilov and Kerensky could have continued with the offensive with such disastrous intelligence. Brusilov’s strategy was similar to his successful one in 1916, but this time he was overall commander-in-chief and could order the more hesitant commanders to attack. He planned to strike near Dvinsk and Smorgonik (Smorgon) on the Northern Front. The shock battalions would in each case lead the attacks, hoping to rupture the front and encourage the more recalcitrant troops to follow and exploit any breakthroughs.174 All reports were not totally bleak. Lukomsky informed his superiors that troops were going to the front willingly, but he did not say where.175 On the day he became supreme commander, even Brusilov reported to the government that in his VII Army, relations between soldiers and officers had become better (literally “more equal”) and that a majority of the men supported “the necessity of an offensive.” On the XI Army, his report was much shorter and conditions were described as “much better and favorable.”176 General Gutor, reported in mid-June from the Southwest Front that although preparations for the offensive had not been completed, “the mood is improving” in the VII Army. Although in the VIII Army, “the idea of an offensive has still not inspired the masses,” he stated that in the Special Army, the mood is “improving.”177 Regardless, the optimism of Kerensky and Brusilov, whether real, imaginary, or artificial, continued to be the official line. A squadron leader, having had lunch with Brusilov and Kerensky, returned to his unit reporting that the two leaders felt that the war would end successfully in 1917.178 In an interview with a reporter from Utro Rossii a week before the offensive began, Brusilov gave a somewhat optimistic appraisal of Russia’s chances.

268

Chapter 7

Speaking slowly and deliberately, with long pauses between sentences as though he was giving the interviewer time to record everything, he expressed a cautious optimism. “I am not a prophet. I am only fulfilling my duty,” he said to the reporter, “but I trust that everything will be successful.” He added a caveat that the army had “fallen sick under the Old Regime,” and that he had received many anonymous letters warning him that the army would not advance when ordered to do so, but he stressed to the reporter that the army would “rise to the occasion” when called on to attack.179 Janin later blamed Brusilov for the failure. He felt that Brusilov might have called it off. “If General Brusilov had said firmly that he did not believe the action viable, I am convinced that the government would not have given him the order to attack. . . . The responsibility . . . of General Brusilov is in this regard very heavy.”180 It is highly unlikely that Brusilov could have talked Kerensky and the government into stopping the attack. Too much was riding politically on it. His resignation in protest would have prevented nothing. Possibly due to the frenetic nature of events, Brusilov did not write Nadia again after his letter of March 14 until April 19, a hiatus of almost seven weeks, or at least any letters written in the time period were either lost by Nadia or by the postal service. Perhaps his workload was to blame. When a couple of letters do appear in their correspondence, he does complain of his workload but more interestingly, and not surprisingly, they have none of the frail optimism that is evident in his conversations with public figures or in his official statements. “I am not able to find time to fulfill all that is necessary, and [I] do not straighten up [?] almost all day and part of the night.” In a desperate cry, he added rhetorically, “When is this torture going to end? A non-ending war, passing into very strange phases [zapiraniia]. I do not know what to do to succeed. The forces are exhausted and in many ways, now there is little desire to go on the offensive.” He took at least verbal refuge in his usual reliance on “with God’s help, all will end well.”181 He then predicted that the war would terminate in three to five months,182 which in effect it did, but not as he had thought. At any rate, Nadia continued to write to him and send him presents A few days after his March letter, she wrote, “I am sending you eight cans . . . of conserves and dried pears, . . . all of this is for Holy Week and for Rost, poor fellow, who has nothing.”183 In April she sent him apples, and he wrote that he “had received them and was pleased with them.”184 Early in May, we know that Nadia visited him briefly because he mentions at visit in a letter written on May 8.185 Yet by the summer, even her missives, which most assuredly had been written, were not arriving. In a letter dated June 18, he complained to “My kind, dear lovely Natashenka, it has been a long time since I heard any news from you—where are you now”? . . . I guess that you are in Moscow.”186

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

269

Meanwhile, the disintegration of the army added to his burden of other distractions such as visiting dignitaries from Petrograd.187 One was American Elihu B. Root, a close advisor to President Woodrow Wilson, who was accompanied by Mikhail Tereshchenko, the foreign minister of the Provisional Government. Brusilov’s friend Stanley Washburn was also present. Brusilov hosted a luncheon for the American diplomat, when he had better things to do than entertain, and he greeted the two gentlemen wearing two of his St. George’s crosses. Root’s interpreter Eugene Prince was impressed with Brusilov’s appearance. “He is a slender man of medium height and a straight and graceful body of a cavalry man,” he wrote, adding, “He does not look as old as he is,” not knowing that he was underestimating Brusilov’s age by six years.188 Brusilov impressed them by speaking English while presiding over a simple lunch of fish, veal, fresh strawberries, and coffee. Washburn claimed that when Root was at lunch, Brusilov pulled Washburn aside and asked him to use his influence with Root to in turn use his influence with Kerensky to call off the offensive. Washburn claimed he spoke to Root, who said he would speak to Kerensky, but he doubted that it would do any good.189 This anecdote also has an unlikely ring to it, but Washburn would hardly have invented it out of whole cloth. One might wonder why Brusilov did not speak directly to Root, or directly to Kerensky, for that matter. Probably because he could not be alone with Root without Tereshchenko. Possibly he had already spoken to Kerensky and gotten nowhere. Something must have happened, but in any case, it is indicative of the grave doubts Brusilov had about the coming action. Yet, Brusilov publicly supported the offensive, although privately he had told Janin that he in no way expected to repeat the success of the 1916 offensive. The Russian army, however, even in its sad state, could not just remain passive, given that “The illness of the Russian army is too serious,” he told the French general.190 Neither in his mind was victory necessary. An offensive was only needed to prevent the army from falling apart until America’s weight could be felt.191 In short, Brusilov seems to have hoped that if the Russian army could simply hold out, the war could be won by the British, French, and Americans in the West.192 He had no illusions about the Russians’ ever reaching Vienna, Budapest, or Berlin, but already leaders well knew of the lack of dependability of the new “revolutionary soldier.” With his characteristic élan, Brusilov went forth with the doomed offensive, which would carry the historical name “the Kerensky Offensive,” instead of that of its military leader. Given the disaster that accompanied it, he should have been grateful. With the newly formed disciplined shock battalions leading the advance, he planned for the principal blow to be made by the VII Army, which would drive for L’vov, a major, but unattained, objective

270

Chapter 7

in 1916. The XI Army on its left flank would likewise drive to L’vov, while the Guard and the III Armies on his right would make for Vladimir-Volhynsk and Kovel, all of which had eluded the Russians the year before. Brusilov’s old VIII Army had been moved to the extreme south in the foothills of the Carpathians and would attack to assist the Romanians in their diversionary attack. The army was generally better supplied with army than in 1916, but Brusilov noted that there was a serious lack of horses, for which he petitioned the high command for more.193 Until the day the offensive began, however, Brusilov and Kerensky continued to receive bad news from the front. Whereas there were occasional positive reports of voluntary groups forming from military schools, Cossack units asking to be dispatched to the front, and the troublesome 1st machine gun regiment in Petrograd offering to send 500 machine guns to the front,194 the mood was rarely this enthusiastic. In fact, it was much to the contrary. Units continued to refuse to enter the lines, and others did so only when forced by the reliable shock battalions. There were still reports of many desertions. Everywhere there was the usual talk about their fighting was only doing “the business of the capitalists, and that now they need peace.”195Meanwhile Kerensky continued his peregrinations up and down the line, trying to shore up morale by speaking of the honor of fighting and a “democratic peace,” whatever that phrase meant. Not infrequently, soldiers now showed him disrespect to his face, which he would lamely answer by making weak comparisons to what would have happened if the soldier had behaved this way in the time of Sukhomlinov.196

NOTES 1. Farmborough, 260. 2. Golovin, RA, 270–71. 3. Figes, 416–17, cites Brusilov, SN, 290–91; 307–8; 340. 4. Figes, 416–17. 5. Notes of unknown authorship quoting Brusilov, n. d., f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, l. 110, RGVIA. 6. B to N, date?—around March 1, 1917, f. 5962, op. 3, d. 60, l. 129, GARF. 7. Bonch-Bruevich, 117. 8. B and K, 2: 848–49. 9. V. I. Nevskii, “Verkhovnoe Komandovanie v pervye dni revoliutsii,” KA, 5 (1925), 226–27, in B and K, 2: 850. 10. Bonch-Bruevich, 118. In a conversation with Mr. Eugene Karlovich Reichardt, a hussar in the tsar’s army, I asked about the collapse of discipline. “We didn’t have any trouble with discipline in the cavalry,” he told me, “until Kerensky sent those damned students to tell the soldiers their rights,” he said, referring, I guess, to

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

271

those who delivered copies of General Order No. 1 to the front. “How did you receive them,” I asked. “We hung the first three or four of them,” he thundered. 11. William E. Gleason, Alexander Guchkov and the End of the Russian Empire (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Historical Society, 1983), 72. 12. Rodzianko, “Gos. Duma,” ARR, 6 (1922), 74–75; Rech’, no. 177, p. 4, in B and K, 2: 851–52 and 846; Golder, 388–90; according to Gleason, Guchkov was instrumental in limiting it to units everywhere “behind the front,” which clearly did not happen. Gleason, Guchkov, 72. 13. Kerensky, Catastrophe, 173. 14. B and K, 2: 994. 15. Figes, 414. 16. B and K, 2: 881–83. 17. Ibid., 994–95. 18. Ibid., 994. 19. In his memoirs, Guchkov states that General Evert even trampled his imperial insignia. Nadia, writing twenty years after the event, remembered, probably correctly, “I decidedly refuse to believe this.” Ne dlia pechati, 1 October, 1936, “minor writings,” box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 20. Denikin, Turmoil, 16. 21. Golovin, 270–71. 22. Feldman, 530; see Emile Vandewelde’s “Resumé du rapport” among loose papers, p. 2, 7N762, Vincennes. 23. Brusilov, Vosp, ii. 24. Mayzel, 105, 107. 25. RDRA, p. 40, in Wildman, The End, 285. 26. Brusilov, SN, 290; Reese, 320. 27. Speech to Congress of the Southwest Front, 20 April 1917, f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 17ff, RGVIA; Nadia mentions this meeting in her memoirs in Gazeta DNI, f. Gazeta Dni, box 1, p. 83, Brusilov Papers, Bakhmetev archive. 28. Ibid. 29. Gazety Dni, delo 6, p. 82, box 1, Brusilov Papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 30. Memo, 27 June 1917, f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, l. 61, Brusilov papers, RGVIA. 31. Rapport Col Langlois, 20 July 1917, p. 27–28, Mission Militaire: Col. Langlois, July 1917–January 1918, 6N224, Vincennes. 32. Even a young Russian adult friend of mine who was born in the Soviet Union but had lived in the United States since he was twelve and is very interested in Russian military history called Brusilov “That Traitor!” when I told him that I was writing this biography. 33. G. Buchanan to Charlie [Hardinge], 9 April 1917, Lloyd George papers, F/59/1/12, House of Lords. 34. “Bolshevizatsiia fronta,” KA, 58 (1933), 86–100. 35. Razlozhenie armii, 91. 36. Torrey, 5. 37. Figes, 418. 38. Brusilov, SN, 290–91; Russ. 1963 ed., 263. 39. Bonch-Bruevich, 123–24.

272

Chapter 7

40. Trotsky, History, 2: 273. 41. Bonch-Bruevich, 119. 42. Katkov, Kornilov, 25, cites Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii v 1917 g., ed. L. S. Gaponenko, 72. 43. Sukhanov, Zapiski, IV, 137, cited in Lincoln, Passage, 405. 44. Niessel, “La Decomposition,” Revue des deux mondes, 57 (January 15, 1940), 318–19. 45. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1966), 243. 46. Lincoln, Passage, 407. 47. Figes, 380. 48. Stubbs, 73. 49. Shliapnikov, Semnatsityi god, 3: 283–85, in Heenan, 42. 50. Ibid., 3: 285–87, in Heenan, 42–43. 51. Razgrom armii, 30 in Heenan, 43. 52. Heenan, 43 ff. 53. Constantine, “Les Operations of 1917,” 4, types ms., Vincennes. 54. Hoffmann, 1: 182. 55. Stubbs, 227. 56. A. Shliapnikov, Semmadtstuo god, 2: 104. 57. Feldman, 121–25; Mayzel, 88. 58. Gapnenko, 72. 59. Cruttwell, 428. 60. Speech to the Congress of the Southwest Front, 20 April 1917, f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, l. 17ff, RGVIA. 61. Razlozhenie armii, 64. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 66–67. 64. Ibid., 65. 65. B and K, 2: 932. 66. Plan, f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 62 ff, RGVIA. 67. Golovin, 265–66. 68. Pares, Russian Memoirs, 452. 69. Razlozhenie armii, 69. 70. Bochkareva, Yashka, 151–68, cited in Figures, 412. 71. Razlozhenie armii, 70 ff. 72. See Jamie H. Cockfield, “Russia’s Amazons: The Women’s Battalions of Death in the Great War,” Command, no. 46 (December 1997), 80–84. 73. “Iz dnevnika generala M. V. Alekseeva,” 17, in Feldman, 194. 74. Ibid. 75. Brusilov, SN, 309; Russ 1963 ed., 274. 76. Semanov, B:DP, 252. 77. Lincoln, Passage, 403. 78. Brusilov, SN, 310; Rus. 1963 ed., 274–75. 79. Ibid. 80. B and K, 3: 1270, cited V. B. Stankevich, Vosp., 128–32.

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

273

81. Denikin, Turmoil, 175–78. 82. Mayzel, 104–6; Gurko, Memories and Impressions, 303–4. 83. There are various versions of this speech. “Nekotiriia zametkii, iz dnivnika,” 17, box 1, Alekseev papers, Hoover Institution; Golder, 406; Sokolov, 85. 84. Ibid. 85. Semenov, B: D, 257. 86. Kerensky, Catastrophe, 197; Kerensky focuses on his speeches, not Brusilov’s. 87. Kerensky, Russia, 278–79. 88. Razlozhenie armii, 91. 89. Luckett, 54. 90. Nekotoriia zametki i pis’ma, 16, by Alekseev, box 1, Alekseev papers, Hoover Institution. 91. Alekseev, “Iz dnivnika,” Russkii istoricheskii arkhiv, collection 1 (Prague, 1929), 15, cited in Katkov, Kornilov, 20. 92. Telegram to B, 22 May 1917, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 141, RGVIA. 93. Biographical information on him in loose, untitled papers in 7N762. 94. Katkov, Kornilov, 24. 95. “Brusilov and Kornilov,” Literary Digest, 55 (16 August 1917), 44. 96. Nikolaev, “February Revolution and the Army,” Russian Review, 6 (Autumn 1946), 22–23. 97. Brusilov, SN, 290; Rus. 1963 ed., 263. 98. Kerensky, Catastrophe, 198. 99. Ibid. 100. Kerensky interview with George Suarez in Le Figaro, 9 April 1926, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 12, GARF. 101. A. S. Senin, Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov (Moskov: Skriptoryi, 1996), 124, cites A. M. Zaionchkovsky, 139. 102. Brusilov, SN, 311; Russ. 1963 ed., 275. 103. Rapport Col. Langlois, 20 July 1917, p. 28, Mission militaire: Col. Langlois..., July 1917-1st ‘18, 6N224, Vincennes. 104. “Iz dnevnika, in “Nekjotoriia zametki,” 23–24, box 1, Alekseev papers, Hoover Institutiion. 105. Ibid., 33–34, Interestingly, Rostunov, one of Brusilov’s Soviet biographers, attributes Brusilov’s appointment to “reactionary circles of the bourgeoisie.” Rostunov, 174. 106. Nadia’s memoir notes, n. d., f. 5962, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 284, GARF. 107. F. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 122, cited in Sokolov, 85; Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1962, no. IV, p. 48, in Rostunov, 174. 108. “V Stavke I A. A. Brusilova,” by T. Ardov, op. 1, d. 21-A, ll. 349, f. 5972, GARF. 109. Kerensky to George Suarez, Le Figaro, 9 April 1926, f. 5962, op. 1, d. 12, GARF. 110. Rappor du Col. Langlois, July 20, 1916, p. 28, Mission Militaire: Col. Langlois, July 1916–January 1918, 6N224, Vincennes. 111. Ibid., 27.

274

Chapter 7

112. Janin to Foch, 17 June 1917, p. 31, dossier 3, no. 18, 16N3180, Vincennes. 113. B to Pétain, copie d’un télégram, 14 July 1917, pp. 1 & 4, dossier 1, 16N3181, Vincennes. 114. Le Gaulois, 9 June 1917, f. 5962, op. 1, d. 11, l. 9, GARF. 115. Clipping from Le Gaulois, 9 June 1917, f. 5962, op. 1, d. 11, l. 9, GARF. 116. B and K, 2: 940. 117. J. Butler Wright, Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolutionary Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright, ed. William Thomas Allison (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 86. 118. Heenan, 67. 119. Knox, 627–28. 120. Ibid., 629. 121. Ibid., 628. 122. Kerensky, Russia, 287. 123. Rapport du Lt. Col. Langlois, 20 July 1917, Mission Militaire: Col. Langlois, July’17–18, 6N224, Vincennes. 124. Janin, “Au GQG russe,” Le Monde Slave, 165. 125. “Iz pereipiska S. M. i M. N. Romanovykh v 1917,” KA, 53 (1932), 148. 126. Knox, 628. 127. Ibid., 629. 128. “Iz perepiska,” KA, 53 (1932), 149; Polovtsoff, 218. 129. Sokolov, 88, quoting Russkoe Slovo, 31 May 1917. 130. Janin, “Au GQG russe,” 164–65. 131. Allexes du chapitre 11, a work by Buchenschutz, 28 Dec/10 Jan 1918, 6N224, Vincennes. 132. Luckett, 57. 133. Lukomsky, Memoirs, 82–83. 134. Denikin, Turmoil, 73. 135. Ibid., 262. 136. Ibid. 137. In Turmoil, Denikin wrote a contradiction. He states that he went there early in August, but he also implies that he was there in time for the “Kerensky Offensive” that occurred in July. Ibid., 262–63. 138. Knox, 652. 139. Lincoln, Passage, 414. 140. Brusilov, Vosp. (Rus 1963 ed.), 276, cited in Lincoln, Passage, 408. 141. Knox, 2: 639 in Lincoln, Passage, 408. 142. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963), 275. 143. Razlozhenie armii, 89–91. 144. Alekseev’s diary, 10 June 1916, p. 21 in Lincoln, Passage, 410. 145. Kerensky, Catastrophe, 290. 146. B to N, 10 June 1917, Corres. 140–280, 274, Bakhmetev Archive. 147. “To the Southwest Front with General Scott,” box 1, folder (1919) (1917), Eugene Prince papers, Hoover Institution. Prince was the interpreter for the excursion. 148. B to N, 19 April, 1917, Corres. 140–280, p. 267 (?), Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive.

The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917

275

149. B and K, 2: 956. 150. Ibid., 5 June 1917, p. 272. 151. Ibid., 30 June 1917, p. 277. 152. Razlozhenie armii, 90. 153. B and K, 2: 992. A report from Denikin. 154. “Meeting with General Brusilov,” box 1, Pronin papers, in Figes, 416. 155. I. E. Liubinov, Bor’ba zu Oktiabri v elorussii (Kursk:Arbat, 1923), p. 9–10, in Rostunov, 178–79. 156. Nadia’s memoirs in Gazeta DNI, p. 83, “Gazeta Dni,” box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archiv. 157. Guchkov had not supported The Declaration. 158. Nadia’s rambling untitle memoir notes, 19 February 1936, “Minor writings,” box 1, Brusilov papers; untitled typescript of NVB, 19 February 1936, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 48, l. 3, GARF. 159. B and K, 2: 263. 160. Ibid., 2: 654. 161. Ibid.; Chugaev, ed., Rev. Dvizh: Iiulskii krisis, no. 421, p. 482. 162. Mayzel, 105. 163. Russkoe slovo, 22 July 1917, no. 166, p. 2, cited in Katkov, Kornilov, 36. 164. Feldman, 531–32. 165. B and K, 2: 942. 166. Tel. Janin to War, 19 June 1917, dos. 3, p. 18, 16N3180, Vincennes. 167. B and K, 2: 941. 168. A. M. Zaionchkovsky, Kampaniia 1917 goda, vol 7, cited in Feldman, 537. 169. Chamberlin, 2: 160–62. 170. Kakurin, ed., Razlozhenie, 94 ff. 171. Razlozhenie armii, 89–91. 172. Rev. dviz. v Rossii v mae, dok. 325, p. 372, cited in Rostunov, 180. 173. Katurin, ed., Razlozhenie, 119. 174. Feldman, 536. 175. Lukomsky, Memoirs, 79–80. 176. Razlozhenie armii, 91. 177. Ibid., 86. 178. Herval, 75. 179. Utro Rossii, 11 June 1917, cited in Sokolov, 87–88. 180. Janin to war, 23/5 August, 1917, Rapports 1, Russie, no. 19, 16N3180, Vincennes. 181. Ibid., 25 April, 1916, p. 269. 182. B to N, 25 April 1917, Corres. 140–280, p. 269, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 183. N to B, 18 March 1917, f. 5962, op. 3, d. 60, l. 125, GARF. 184. N to B, 19 April 1917, p. 267 (?), Corres. 1–140–280, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 185. Ibid., 25 April 1917, p. 269. 186. B to N, 5 June 1917, f. 5962, op. 3, d. 69, 1. 185, GARF. 187. See letter 19 April 1917, p. 267 (?), Corres. 140–280, Bakhmetev Archive.

276

Chapter 7

188. “To the Southwest Front with Gen. Scott,” box 1, Eugene Prince papers, folder: (1919) (1917), Hoover Institution. 189. Washburn, At the RF, 305. 190. Janin to war, 10 July 1916, p. 107, dos. 3, no. 18, 16N3180, Vincennes. 191. Kerensky, Catastrophe, 209–11. 192. Sokolov, 98. 193. Brusilov, SN, 286–87; Rus. 1963 ed., 260–61. 194. Lavergne to war, 4/17 July 1917, p. 11–12, dossier 1, 7N761, Vincennes. 195. Rapport du Troussard, p. 1, Mission Militaire 1, from June 13 to August 31917, 7N761, Vincennes. 196. Herval, 62.

Chapter 8

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

Facing Brusilov in June 1917 were four armies and “an army-sized group” under von Linsingen. The armies were the Austrian 4th Army under Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, the Austrian 2nd Army under von Bohm-Ermolli, the Südarmee under the Bavarian General von Bothmer, and the Austrian 7th Army under von Pflanzer-Baltin.1 The Russian plan to attack this force was a staggered offensive, with the Western Front attacking on June 16, the Northern Front attacking on June 18, and the Romanian Front following on June 22.2 The major assault would be on Brusilov’s old Southwest Front, where he had had such success the year before. It would begin on or around July 1, after the other attacks had supposedly drawn forces away from this front. When Kerensky asked Brusilov on June 15 what the general morale was like on his fronts, the Iron General gave a mixed review. He replied that the Northern Front, the one we have seen most subject to Bolshevik propaganda because of the proximity to Petrograd, was “very mixed” adding that the Western Front was “better.” Reporting on the Southwest Front, he stated that it was “not too good,” but added that he would plan around June 25 personally “to take the Southwest Front in hand.” He added optimistically, with an optimism that must have included an enormous amount of bravado, “I believe that we have a prospect of success.”3 The overall artillery attack would last for only five hours.4 The major dislocating event before the offensive, as we have seen, was the radical shifting of command officers. First, a number of army commanders had been replaced in April. The command of the XI Army changed twice in three months, and the officer who led the offensive had arrived to assume command only five days before the attack began. All corps commanders and most of the divisional commanders were changed within three months before the offensive.5 Brusilov himself went to Mogilev to assume overall command 277

278

Chapter 8

just three weeks before the attack would begin.6 With this leadership leapfrog, none of the generals had sufficient time to come to know their armies. Officers, nevertheless, need time to get to know their men, and more importantly, for the men to come to know their officers. Like any performance, rehearsal of the component parts is necessary, and the musical chairs of the officers did not create comfortable leadership. They needed time that they did not have to become acquainted. This problem, though, would merely be added to the many others create the disaster that was looming. Meanwhile, the Germans were ready. General von Hoffmann wrote in his diary late in June that they anticipated that the Russians would attack on June 30, one day in fact before they planned to do so. Moreover, he did not expect much of an effort from them, adding, “It is a pity. . . . We have provided such a delightful surprise for Herr Brusilov.”7 Brusilov’s confidence in the ability of his troops seems to have led to a mental roller-coaster ride in the weeks before the offensive. In his conversations with individuals and in letters to his wife, he showed wild mood swings, so it is difficult to know what he really thought. In a conversation in mid-May with General Janin, he expressed the idea that “my means are together, all the officers are ready.” He added, however, “It is necessary that I prepare morally my troops,” he told the French general, for “if I attack now, they will perhaps not execute my orders.” He noted that as far as materiel was concerned, he was better off than before, but added it would take three to five weeks to restore morale,8 certainly a rosy assessment. His optimism seems to have risen several weeks later after he had made a visit to Petrograd, or so a French colonel with whom he spoke reported to Janin.9 His mood seems to have remained cheery for another conversation on June 19 with Janin himself, who informed Paris that “General Brusilov has had a more gay and confident air than the last time that I saw him.”10 Yet, the very next day, Brusilov told a French captain that “without a miracle . . . the war on the Eastern Front must be considered as terminated.”11 Exactly what he truly thought is therefore hard to assay. It seems unlikely that he would express such pessimism to French officers and such optimism to others, but it is equally unlikely that the officers are fabricating his views one way or the other. Yet, the fact that he would say anything negative at all to an ally is a strong indication that he had little hope of success for the coming days. The Belgian socialist Vandevelde made a good-will tour of the Russian front and generally wrote favorably on the Russian troops. Whereas he restated that “the long periods of inaction had allowed the accumulation of a great quantity of war materiel,” he repeated in his memoirs that “discipline had been shaken, [and] whole armies had been undermined by Leninist propaganda.” Speaking of the coming offensive, he expressed that he would “hope for the best.”12 A few days later he reported that “fraternization had

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

279

essentially stopped.”13 He seems to have gotten his information from Brusilov in an earlier conversation at Stavka on May 6, as Brusilov was ending his tenure on the Southwest Front when he certainly knew there was more than indicated. Vandevelde himself later remembered that there were by June millions of deserters,14 but wrote that after wandering around in the rear they became bored and “placidly returned to their barracks.”15 Vandevelde’s view of the army in the rear was different from what he saw of the front-line troops. “What have they been doing during the past three years? Very little assuredly,” he recorded.16 Observing that drill took only three hours a week, discipline was so poor that officers could not accomplish much training: “Little or no target practice, no route marches, no grenade throwing, or trench construction and maneuvers,” although he seemed to think that these conditions generally existed well before the Revolution,17 which the reader knows did not. Russian military discipline was strong until the fall of 1916. Vandevelde wrote that he met with Brusilov on May 6 (the date incorrect), as Alekseev was leaving and Brusilov was assuming command. Brusilov spoke French so well that the two did not need an interpreter. The conversation must have been on the most banal level, however, and for some reason, Brusilov does not seem to have been as truthful with the Belgian as he had been with his French associates. For example, he told the Belgian socialist that there were only “10,000 deserters from the front”18 when he knew there were many more than that.19 Why Brusilov would have lied to the Belgian emissary is anyone’s guess. Belgium’s position in the war was not crucial at this point, and it would have been more likely that he would have lied to the French, who were still supplying them with arms and money. Perhaps given Belgium’s relative insignificance, he felt that there was little need to make more than polite conversation. Where control did seem to exist, it was largely on the surface. The officers, knowing the situation, had no “heart,” Kerensky wrote, and there were occasions of officers’ actually sabotaging preparations. Openly Kerensky spoke about the “enthusiasm and the high sense of triumph” of the Russian soldiers, but up to the last moment, the officers did not know if the troops would follow them into battle.20 Brusilov, who had previously stated, and repeated, that he wanted the attack to begin early, uncharacteristically asked at the end of May for four more weeks for preparation.21 Having seen first-hand the condition of the troops, he had changed his mind and wanted to delay the attack.22 Kerensky brushed him off, however, stating that the army could profit from the present élan (?) and have a great success.23 Again, on the eve of the attack, Brusilov untypically asked for a further delay of ten days. He had just returned from a morale-building trip to the front, where he had spoken to units up to eight

280

Chapter 8

times a day, telling the men that “just one more effort and soon you will return home.”24 Again he was denied a postponement. Knowing the problems on the enemy side, Hoffman wrote in his diary early in the offensive, “Heavy fighting in Galicia, but no cause for anxiety.”25 Kerensky later remembered that this difference probably explains why he did not grant Brusilov a delay, for at the end of June, he saw the front had improved from what it had been just a month before. On tours in May, there was “deadly silence and emptiness,” he recorded, but now “there was life, movement, [and] action preparatory for the great effort.” He saw “regiments . . . marching, ammunition boxes bumping, [and] field kitchens thundering by toward the front lines.”26 This description of the Russian army does not coincide with Brusilov’ assessment at the time (nor what he later wrote, for that matter). Perhaps it was the appearance of Russian superiority that gave Kerensky his optimistic view. On Denikin’s front alone, there were 184 battalions and 900 pieces of ordnance, while the enemy had seventeen in line and twelve in reserve, with only 300 pieces of ordnance.27 This supremacy, though, was made almost useless because of the low morale of the troops as shown by the lack of enthusiasm of the soldiers’ committees for the offensive. Denikin later reported that on June 21, the Western Front Committee had passed a resolution not to advance when ordered; then ten days later, it passed another resolution to advance if so ordered. The committee of the II Army had done the same thing.28 Meanwhile, Brusilov’s contact with Nadia remained tenuous. In June 1917, it took ten days for a simple telegram from Nadia to reach him.29 “It’s been a long time since I received any news from you,” he wrote, asking almost rhetorically, “Where are you now—I don’t know, but . . . I think that you are in Moscow.”30 He must have received a letter from Nadia shortly afterward because he wrote a letter on June 23 that was overflowing with longing. “My dear, darling little girl Nadiushenchka,” he gushed, “I love you so much and without you it’s terribly boring.” He suggested that she visit him in July.31 Indeed he had earlier suggested that she and Lena remain with him for the remainder of the summer and into the fall, in what would have been, oddly, in the midst of the offensive. He apparently received a letter from her probably written before his last sentimental one. In her note she complained about conditions in Moscow and apparently blamed him for her being there. He sympathized with her. “I’m very grieved that you and Lena are doing badly in Moscow,” he replied sympathetically in a letter written in the early days of the offensive. Yet then he defended himself “How was I supposed to know it. Furthermore[,] I did not force you or Lena to go there, but only advised it, and apparently unfortunately.”32 He had told Nadia earlier that he wanted to live in Moscow in the winter of 1917–1918, at which time he thought that the war would have ended.33 He thought that the Constituent Assembly, the

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

281

democratically elected legislature to be elected later in the year, would meet there then, and he, who had always shunned politics, wanted to be there for its first days. These few letters seem to indicate a certain mental fatigue. They express ideas that are impractical, when he was rarely impractical. How could Nadia and Lena stay with him for months on end at the front? The reader will remember that he previously would not allow her to stay longer than the wives of the other officers. He certainly had every reason to be exhausted, because he had been under enormous pressure since the events in March, and although, as readers will recall, he noted that his workload was less at Stavka, in itself a strange statement, his duties as supreme commander had to weigh heavily on him. The uncertainty of the offensive, of course, was on his mind night and day by this time, especially since he seems to have feared the worst for it. While his letters to his wife in these days are all the evidence the historian has in order to guess his innermost thoughts, it is clear that his mind was in danger of snapping. Kerensky arrived at Mogilev for the offensive on June 28, and on June 29, he issued the formal order to attack. Employing his typically florid, bombastic rhetoric, he addressed the men, saying, “Russia, having thrown off the chains of slavery, has firmly resolved to defend, at all costs, its rights, honor and freedom. . . . Warriors, our country is in danger! [his italics] The liberty and Revolution are threatened. The time has come for the army to do its duty.” He also played to Brusilov’s popularity: “Our supreme general [Brusilov], who has won so many victories, is of the opinion that each day . . . brings the defeat of the enemy, and a single blow can finish him off. I call upon the armies, strengthened by the vigor and spirit of the Revolution, to take the offensive . . . I say to you, FORWARD!”34 The “Kerensky Offensive” actually started with an artillery bombardment of the Austrian trenches on June 29 on the Southwest Front. It was an artillery assault unlike any the Russians had ever delivered before. According to Denikin, at first the Russian ordnance performed superbly. He later remembered, “In all the three years of war, I had not seen such wonderful work of the artillery.”35 Kerensky, who was in Tarnopol on June 29 to give the official order to advance, later remembered that in “watching the shelling, we all kept looking at our watches. The strain was unbearable. Suddenly there was a terrible hush; it was zero hour. For a moment we were gripped by a terrible fear that the soldiers might refuse to go forward.”36 Even earlier he had written, “Would the troops advance? No one ventured to answer the question.”37 In most places the Russians did advance at first, if only perfunctorily, but attack they did, led by the few well-disciplined shock battalions. The Austrians who were facing them were probably in worse shape than the Russians.38 After the bombardment, which in itself had shattered the Austrian trenches in

282

Chapter 8

many places, the Russians ruptured the Austrian lines in many others, seeming to inflict more damage on the Austrians than Brusilov had done in his earlier days the year before. As in the previous year, streams of Austrian soldiers, disgusted with the war, readily surrendered to the advancing Russians. Following the strategy in the offensive of 1916, the attacks on various fronts were staggered to throw the Austrians off balance, and as in the year before, many of the same actors were on hand to play the same roles. The initial attack like that of 1916 was to begin on the Southwest Front on July 1, with an attack commencing on the Western Front on July 19, followed by an offensive on the Northern Front on July 22, with one on the Romanian front to commence on July 24.39 On the Southwest Front, the VII Army as planned an attack on the Austrian 2nd Army under Böhm-Ermolli, while the XI Army was to charge the Südarmee. The right flank was to be held by Brusilov’s old VIII army, commanded by Kornilov, which would advance on the Austrian 3rd Army under General Karl von Tersztyansky.40 On the whole, the troops of the Southwest would be attacking on a forty-mile front, and their general objective was the Galician city of L’vov, which had eluded Brusilov in 1916. In the early fighting, the “Russian steamroller” briefly lived up to its name for the last time in the Great War, and with the shock battalions leading the way, the Russian army initially ran roughshod over the demoralized Austrian forces. The VII and the XI Armies took Brzezany and Zbrow in short order, and by July 5, the VIII occupied Stanislavov, then passed over the Bystritsa River, taking Halicz and driving on to Kalusz, all cities that had fallen to Brusilov in 1916. In so doing, they created a thirty-mile break in the Austro-Hungarian front, and by July 5, Kornilov alone had taken 7,000 prisoners and 48 guns. The supporting offensive on the Western Front to the north of the Southwest Front was almost as successful. Denikin’s artillery was so devastating that his men took the first three lines of trenches unopposed.41 The other advances on the Southwest Front were equally successful, in part, Kerensky later insisted, because the troops were facing Slavic units in the Austrian army, especially Czech ones, many of whom, we have seen, easily surrendered to their Slavic brothers. Böhm-Ermolli’s 2nd Army was forced into chaotic retreat at Zlochow, where over 3,000 Czechs of the 19th division surrendered. Kornilov’s vigorous attack caused Tersztyansky’s 3rd Army to crumble. Even as late as July 7, when some Austro-German troops counterattacked, they were stopped and repelled.42 By July 15, the Russians had captured 834 officers, 36,000 soldiers, ninety-six pieces of ordnance, and 500 machine guns.43 These early successes gave hope that the offensive would replay Brusilov’s “immortal days” of 1916. In an action that would shortly place him on the centerstage of Russian history, Kornilov, Brusilov’s nemesis, was the most successful of the

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

283

commanders. Issuing a ringing call to arms on the eve of the offensive, one Semenov, commissar of the Southwest Front, warned the men that “the Revolution is still in great danger. Mustering our strength . . . we are going over on the offensive. Let his [the enemy’s] insidious designs be ripped open at the front with one treacherous stroke.”44 Within four days, Kornilov seems to have done just that, for he had taken 10,000 Austrian prisoners and 125 pieces of ordnance in what is called the battle of Stanislavov. The enemy army before him was in total retreat, and he advanced thirty versts. The morale of his army seemed sound.45 Within a few days, he had 36,000 Austrian POWs and and 400 machine guns.46 In this brief moment of glory, Premier L’vov issued a ringing announcement of the Russian victories. “Only July 1, the entire world has been shown the power of the Revolutionary Army, which has been founded on democratic basis and the ideals of the Revolution.”47 His joy was short-lived. In many places, all had not gone so well. After their initial successes, the shock battalions often found themselves way out front alone. Other troops had stayed in their trenches, or having taken undefended Austrian ones, returned to their own lines. Some units debated whether or not to attack. Many who did advance crumbled and retreated at the first enemy resistance. Because other units did not follow and support the shock battalions, it was they—the most reliable troops—that sustained the greater part of the casualties. Thus, the best forces were decimated. The military historian Golovin lamented their loss, opining that they would have been better utilized as complements to the Cossacks or the cavalry, where discipline endured the longest.48 Alekseev wrote to Rodzianko that using them in that manner had been “a great mistake.” The reader is aware that Alekseev was never terribly enthusiastic about them anyway, but here the army had uselessly sacrificed its best men, and the former commander-in-chief came to believe that they would have been better used “behind the others” to force the faint-hearted “who have lost their conscience.”49 Within a few days of its commencement, the offensive was sputtering out everywhere. Alfred Knox, who was with the VII Army, noted that all looked “rosy” at 2:00 p.m. on July 1, but by 3:00 p.m., units were complaining of enemy fire when there was not any, and some were streaming to the rear. “Delegates” from soviets were sent to these troops to try to talk them into standing, which seems to have infuriated Knox, who wrote, “The delegate is now looked upon as the universal panacea, but he is not half so efficient as were the subaltern’s boot and fist in former times.”50 A perfect example of his observation occurred on the Western Front. When Sokolov of General Order No. 1 fame visited with a delegation from the Petrograd Soviet and tried to admonish the Western Front’s 703rd Surmansky regiment, which was known for its unreliability, he and the delegates were attacked, severely beaten, and jailed. They were saved from being killed only by loyal troops.

284

Chapter 8

Brusilov quickly had his worse fears become reality. Not only was there trouble in the army’s rear, which undermined the offensive, there were also political troubles in Petrograd. On the very day that the offensive began, antiwar and antigovernment demonstrations erupted in the capital. Even if the offensive had been successful, these disturbances would have destroyed any victory it would have enjoyed. During these so-called “July Days,” the government in Petrograd seemed at first to have lost control of the streets, and the disturbances, under Bolshevik leadership, appeared to be about to overthrow the Provisional Government.51 In a telegram to L’vov marked “Very secret, very urgent,” Brusilov warned the prime minister that with the agitation in the rear and in the capital, “many units refuse to take positions and categorically speak out against the offensive.” He noted that in a few regiments they “openly express that for them, besides Lenin, no one has any authority as far as they are concerned.” He expressed the opinion that stability in the army could come about only after improvement in the rear, and that would be achieved only when the government recognizes that “the propaganda of the Bolsheviks and Leninists is criminal, punishable the same as state treason.” He stressed that this last measure must be taken not only in the regions of the active army but also in the capital. “It is not possible for the sake of free speech to permit propaganda which is destroying the army and ruining Russia.”52 Brusilov had come a long way from the days of his revolutionary rhetoric and actions in March, when he seemed to think that the Revolution had been good for the country. With his army dissolving beneath him, he had lost most of the enthusiasm he seemed to have had for the Revolution, and he believed that the only way Russia could be saved from total disintegration would be the re-establishment of discipline in a fractured army, war-weary and exhausted. How to accomplish that goal he seems not to have known. Meanwhile, attacks on the Northern and Western Fronts, designed to prevent the transfer of enemy reserves southward, proved useless.53 Always on these fronts had been delayed by the unwillingness, indeed even refusal, of the soldiers to attack.54 Finally, in what seems to have been an evasion of responsibility, the front commanders told each army commander under him to attack when he thought his troops were ready.55 A Russian officer on the Russian Western Front told their French counterparts that the offensive on Russia’s Western Front might have to be postponed because of rain. In his telegram to Paris, the officer added, “It is possible that the delay is also due to the morale of the army, which leaves a lot to be desired.”56 The most successful efforts seem to have been made in Romania, where by late July both the Russians and the Romanians were still advancing. These men were at the greatest distance from the Bolshevik propaganda and were thus least affected by it, but the collapse of other fronts led Kerensky to order a halt the offensive.57

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

285

Troop discipline, not good before the offensive began, now had almost totally unraveled. Seeing the army breaking down, Brusilov and Kerensky both issued hollow orders for units to be quickly brought “to obedience,”58 certainly knowing privately that the restoration of discipline was not possible. On July 9, both Kerensky and Brusilov signed a joint order. “The present command must be quickly obeyed by all forces and implemented in fulfillment without the smallest hesitation, remembering that the appearance of weakness [might] bring at the present moment the ruin of Russia and the Revolution.”59 For outsiders, Brusilov continued to put on a brave front. An American general visited the Southwest Front in the early days of the fighting, and having seen the army only advancing, returned to Mogilev, where he was received by Brusilov, whom he congratulated on his successes. Brusilov confirmed that the initial attacks were indeed felicitous, and knowing better, he told the general that the Russians “were advancing all along the line.” He then gallantly presented the general and his interpreter with a medal for being with Russian troops under fire. Similarly, since news of the disaster on the Russian front had not yet reached France, congratulations of Brusilov’s successes in the early days arrived from the French command there. Not hinting that he knew the offensive had failed, Brusilov returned his “thanks” for their congratulations and likewise thanked them for their expression of their unshakable confraternity of arms, expressing also his “sincere admiration for their army.”60 All along the front, bad news continued to arrive. In some cases, Russian soldiers attacked advancing shock brigades. In certain instances, officers literally had to beg the men to attack. The men would sometimes trickle out of the trenches, two or three at a time, then maybe five, but not all together as in former times. In one case, the 90th regiment abandoned its positions for the rear, leaving two versts of undefended trench. Florence Farmborough remembered someone’s asking for reinforcements to be sent, with the reply being, “But will they go?”61 In many places, meetings that sometimes lasted for days were held to debate the offensive. Divisions that did go forward often scattered at the first sign of enemy resistance.62 Farmborough, who had been transferred to Kornilov’s VIII Army on July 9 and hence was with one of the most nearly disciplined armies, saw on July 11 some “ill-humored soldiers who were angry with a commanding officer maimed his horse.”63 Kerensky remembered years later that dispatches from the front “seemed to stress” bad discipline among the enlisted men but “valiant behavior [on the part] of the officers.”64 Even appeals from the Petrograd Soviet could not stop the rout. One delegate from Petrograd experienced soldiers’ anger when some from the X Army “beat him on the head until he was covered with blood.”65 The chaos suggested by these facts was fertile ground for

286

Chapter 8

a debacle in the making, and it began when the Austro-German forces counterattacked. The Russian offensive, which was an offensive in name only, came formally to a halt when von Bothmer’s Südarmee struck back and stopped the XI Army in its tracks on July 19. On that day at Sloczow, nine German and two Habsburg divisions went forward, and the casual indiscipline of the previous three weeks turned into a general retreat. In some cases, Russian soldiers deserted their positions when the enemy fired their first shots. In other cases, “they did not even wait for the enemy to appear,” and by July 20 the Austro-German forces had seriously ruptured the lines at Tarnopol.66 With the approval of the commissars and the soldiers’ committees, the commander of the XI Army gave the officers the right to “shoot at everyone who runs from his post.”67 Except for some semblance of order in Kornilov’s VIII Army, the Russian offensive all along the line completely crumbled, and the disintegrating army turned into a riotous mob. In this “offensive,” the Russians had lost 40,000 men killed, most of them members of the disciplined shock battalions, to the Central Power’s loss of 12,500.68 What made it worse, the retreating mob turned on the civilian population of the towns and villages, which they were supposed to be protecting. There occurred looting, burning, and rapine. Farmborough remembered that in the abandoned town of Tlumach, “all shops had been ransacked.” She saw soldiers carrying pictures, books, boxes, and even rugs. She had earlier seen a bakery plundered of its products with the soldiers taking what they could carry, throwing the remainder on the ground to be trampled underfoot.69 More ominously she noticed that the soldiers, who had always been patient, grateful men when the nurses were treating them, seemed to turn on the nurses as well, and for the first time, she realized that the soldiers might be “capable of doing us harm.” Passing among the streams of deserting soldiers, the nurses heard them make crude remarks, and these incidents were the first time in three years of war that they had encountered rudeness from Russian soldiers.”70 Later Farmborough and her co-workers even hid from stragglers.71 As she witnessed the ruination of the Russian army, she wondered, “We still remembered our General Brusilov. . . . Where was this great soldier now?”72 General Selivachev likewise painted a lurid picture in his diary of the rout. “All these days the nightmare of the retreat continued . . . incessantly. . . . The troops refuse to hold positions and the terrain, as if to spite us.”73 Naturally, such a defeat could not be kept from the outside world. Someone acquired a photograph of undisciplined soldiers at Tarnopol, and it was published by the British newspaper, The Illustrated Daily News. The war ministry naturally became horrified at the consequences of the image of Russian soldiers fleeing from battle, calling the photograph “such a disgrace for us” and noting that the government should have censored it.74 By mid-July,

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

287

a general told General Selivachev that the Allies were calling the Russian offensive a “comedy.”75 On July 21, Brusilov wrote to his front-line commanders that “apparently a civil war is inevitable and can spring up any minute. The liberty which had been awaited by the people with such impatience is in danger.” He then blamed the Bolsheviks for the disintegration of military discipline,76 but he also asked each commander his opinion. Brusilov wrote to L’vov the next day that the offensive had failed owing to Bolshevik propaganda and the bad morale of the commanding staff arising from the democritization and the purge of the officer corps in the spring. He called for severe courts-martial for military crimes and recommended “decisive measures against anarchy.”77 L’vov’s reply supported Brusilov’s views, but Brusilov wrote back that he opposed another purge of the officer corps. What they needed, he insisted, was more training and more battlefield experience for their officers. “If we are going to appoint inexperienced petty officers to be officers of large troop formations, then they . . . in most cases will be worse than those who are heading the troops right now.” He added that Bolshevik propaganda should be considered “treasonist” and military demonstrations should be regarded as “revolt.” Still, Brusilov seemed to be reluctant to reinstate capital punishment but spoke instead of “the re-establishment of firm discipline.”78 The prominent Menshevik Iraklii Tseretelli openly opposed Brusilov on the stopping of Bolshevik propaganda, pointing out that since antiwar materials were being distributed unimpeded in other countries, it should be allowed in “revolutionary Russia.” Brusilov immediately retreated, replying to Tseretelli that he was only a soldier, “not a politician,” and that he had only “expressed his opinion which he had been invited to give.”79 This lack of backbone only exacerbated his bad relations with his officers, with whom he was already not too popular.80 On July 24, Brusilov also lectured Kerensky on the death penalty, which Kornilov had already reinstated without governmental permission in the VIII Army, and he asked that it be given “official government sanction.” Calling on the well-worn example of the French Revolution, he reminded the minister of war, “History repeats itself, the lessons of the great French Revolution, partially forgotten by us, nevertheless forcibly call themselves to mind . . . The French, having first vainly tried to reorganize the army upon humane principles, finally reinstated the death penalty and then victorious banners went around half the world.” Then Brusilov, who had yielded to Tseretelli’s objectives, mildly threatened Kerensky: “In case my demand is not satisfied . . . I will relieve myself of all responsibility for the consequences, and as supreme commander . . . I will not be in a position to direct further the military operations and to remain at my post.”81 The next day, Kerensky halfheartedly announced the resumption of the death penalty.

288

Chapter 8

Meanwhile, in Petrograd, the demonstrations against the offensive and disturbances that began the first day of the offensive had boiled over into a full-scale attempted coup d’état. The local garrison, fearful that it would be sent south as reinforcements, mutinied and joined the mobs on the streets on July 16, protesting against the government as well as the offensive operation. By the next day, the city was paralyzed and all public transportation had ceased. Cries went out of “All Power to the Soviets” and mobs tried to arrest the ministers of the Provisional Government. Victor Chernov, the radical Socialist Revolutionary minister of agriculture, who had been telling peasants to seize illegally the nobles’ estates, had his life saved from the mob only because Trotsky, then a popular Menshevik, soon to turn Bolshevik, took his hand and guided him out of the mob. Kerensky had left the city on the morning of July 16 at 6:00 a.m., just hours before the 1st Machine Gun Regiment moved into the street. Without him, the revolt was eventually suppressed largely by Cossacks, with major Bolsheviks being arrested. Lenin, who usually displayed physical cowardice when disorder and violence flared, fled the city disguised in a red wig and went into hiding in Finland. On July 21, Prime Minister L’vov resigned from the government and was replaced by Kerensky, who also retained the positions of minister of war and navy. With this governmental crisis, the entire offensive, if it had had any chance of success, was doomed. In an effort to salvage something from the situation and take pressure off his beleaguered army, Brusilov turned to the Allies, who had congratulated him on his successes just a week before. Under Brusilov’s orders, General Alexander Zankevich, who was in France as a Russian military representative, wired Foch on July 19 to launch an attack in the west “with the maximum intensity” between July 28 and August 2.82 France was being called to play the sacrificial role Russia had played for its ally more than once since 1914. At this point, however, this point Russians were leaning on the proverbial bent reed. Brusilov had no way of knowing that the French army had itself snapped after the infamous Nivelle Offensive in April 1917 and had faced mutinies itself. Marshal Pétain had restored order by July, but discipline was still fragile, and it would be November before the reconstituted French army could make even the most limited offensives. By that time, the Eastern Front was essentially nonexistent, and the Bolsheviks were in power in Petrograd, their first action being a request to the Germans for an armistice. When no offensive seemed to be forthcoming in France, Brusilov tried again. Fearing that advancing enemy armies would occupy Ukraine, with all of its newly harvested grain, he tried again at the end of the month to get some sort of action from the French. Zankevich sent his message again on July 29, requesting that “offensive operations in the Anglo-French front not be delayed but begin immediately in order not to give the Germans

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

289

the possibility of transferring other troops from the Western Front to the Eastern.”83 While waiting for the French offensive that never came, Brusilov in desperation issued, to no avail, a call for action like those to which the helpless government and military had resorted before. On July 23, he forbade meetings and gatherings of any military forces, as though he thought that the local officers could enforce the order, and then in one of those desperate appeals to patriotism, he cried out pathetically to the troops, “The Fatherland is in Danger! The illegal understanding of the armies of civil law is threatening the very existence of a free people. Our descendants will despise us, if . . . we are not able to make the fainthearted obey [a single] authority. I, the supreme commander, . . . asks for [your] full confidence. . . . All my strength is dedicated to one goal—to carry the country from this most oppressive position and to save her from imminent German slavery. Enough words. Where there is fighting, there is no place for discussion and conversation, and therefore I categorically order: (a) to end such company meetings and general assemblies in military forces . . . (b) to forbid the discussion of military orders.”84 Apparently to enforce these directives, he proposed to his commanders that they winnow their troops, especially the detritus of the shock battalions, in order to reconstitute a force still loyal to the Fatherland, which he apparently envisioned to be used against an attempted Bolshevik takeover, and to police the returning soldiers after the war. He added that the reconstituted force would also be “handy” for use in the approaching civil war.85 By then his commanders had begun to reply to his July 21 request for their opinions of the situation. Denikin wired back that the Bolsheviks were not the problem; rather, it was the “worms which [had] developed in an army organization.” Klembovsky told his former superior that what was needed was a strong central government. Kornilov did not even bother to answer, while Shcherbatov’s reply came after Brusilov was already been removed.86 Demonstrating his lifelong belief that the best defense was an attack, at the end of July Brusilov ordered an offensive on the relatively stable Romanian front, the only part of the line where the troops had universally advanced and somewhat obeyed commands. Not expecting any offensive action there, the enemy suffered a serious reverse on the first day. The paper Rech’ put a most positive face on it by saying that the attack would “partly repair the catastrophe on the Galician field.”87 It did not, of course. At any rate, it was Brusilov’s last hurrah. He would never order an attack again. Meanwhile, on July 21, General Kornilov wired Brusilov demanding the formal restoration of the death penalty, which he had already employed. He told Brusilov the now familiar story of how, despite the fact that the Russians outnumbered the enemy five to one, Russian units were voluntarily abandoning their positions, and new units would not come up to replace

290

Chapter 8

them. He called for the enactment of “exceptional measures.” Placing the blame obliquely on Brusilov, he wrote, “All the responsibility falls on the shoulders of those who believe power of speech will be effective on the terrain where death, disgrace, treason, cowardice and egotism rule.” Brusilov forwarded this telegram to the government, adding, “I approve entirely the request of General Kornilov, and for the health of Russia and liberty, I regard as necessary the immediate application of the measures proposed by him.” Meanwhile, Kornilov had not waited for official approval. He ordered his officers to turn machine guns on mutineers, and mutineers were hanged on posts along the roads.88 Surprisingly, Brusilov and Kerensky were joined in this call for capital punishment by the radical leftist Boris Savinkov, serving at the time as a political commissar on the front of the VII Army.89 That day in a letter to front generals, Brusilov and Kerensky issued a joint condemnation of the soldiers’ behavior, which was cheerfully ignored. The letter promised a crackdown on the very democratic reforms that Kerensky, and to a lesser degree Brusilov, had championed earlier. It included an order for “the use of [unspecified] force for the non-fulfillment of commands and for revolutionary activity.” Brusilov’s Soviet-era biographer notes that this command placed the great general squarely “in the camp of the reactionaries.”90 “The guilty must quickly be brought to obedience,” Brusilov and Kerensky continued, insisting that orders must be “carried out in fulfillment without the smallest hesitation, remembering that any appearance of weakness will produce . . . the ruin of Russia,” and for good measure, the letter writer threw in “and the Revolution.”91 Brusilov himself could not possibly have believed at this point that words alone would have brought order to the army. In his diary, General Alekseev, who seemed to be enjoying Brusilov’s discomfort, recorded that after the debacle, “even Brusilov . . . was stopped by the fact that the great notion of ‘homeland, patriotism, and Russia’ seemed to vanish from [the soldiers’] usage.”92 On July 24, Brusilov took a stronger disciplinary position. He personally called on Kerensky to restore the death penalty, going a step farther than merely endorsing Kornilov’s call for it earlier. Had he changed his mind or was this action a brave front for the French officers at Stavka? In what the cynical, Trotsky called “a more pedagogical tone” than that of Kornilov,93 Brusilov repeated the beginning of a history lesson to Kerensky that “History repeats itself. The lessons of the Great French Revolution . . . come nevertheless unfailing back to mind.” He noted how the French army “reforms” had brought decay and threatened to make it a “dangerous crowd of armed people,” leading the French to regret these reforms. He noted that several million armed men could not be tolerated without firm leadership. “Authority that does not depend on force is non-existent,” Brusilov insisted, noting

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

291

that in the early days of the Revolution, “we hurried on the road to fantasy, . . . without looking back into history. One should have the courage to say these decisive words, and the words are ‘death penalty.’” Adding that France had come to this conclusion during its revolution, and in so doing created a victorious army, he urged the Russian military leadership to “remember this historical lesson. . . . It is time for us to come to our senses and compel the fainthearted sons to fulfill their duty to the Fatherland. Time does not wait.” He then made restoration of the death penalty a condition for his remaining in his post.94 On July 25, the Provisional Government did formally restore the death penalty in the army. It was ordered by Kerensky as the minister of war, but it was done almost apologetically. He announced solemnly: “The shameful behavior of certain military units both at the front and in the rear . . . has forced the Provisional Government to take extreme measures . . . [and] restore the death penalty for the men in the army who are guilty of the gravest crimes.”95 It was to be administered in the form of shooting, “as the highest punishment for the highest crimes: Mutiny and state treason, desertion to the enemy, running from the field of battle.”96 Despite the exculpatory tone, Kerensky was in full agreement with the policy, at least in private conversations with Brusilov, and he opined to the Russian commander-in-chief that the Provisional Government “was faced with a tragic choice—either to sacrifice the army to cowards and traitors or to restore the only penalty that can frighten them.”97 Strangely, Brusilov’s order for the restoration of discipline issued the same day makes no mention of capital punishment. He spoke of “unconditional acceptance of very decisive measures” and spoke of “submission by all forces to the command structure” and of ending “the activities of all committees,” but he made no statement about the death penalty’s being the only way to enforce it.98 Why did Brusilov hold back in public while privately calling for it? It almost appears that he did not wish to be associated with its reinstatement. Perhaps he felt that Kerensky’s announcement was sufficient, but that is unlikely. Perhaps he did not want to take any of the expected blame for it. Certainly he knew that the decree could not be enforced. Russia simply did not have the necessary means. To restore order, they would have had to massacre whole brigades, and the Russian leadership did not have the loyal forces needed to do it. The army was in such a bad state that any attempt to enforce order by execution would have resulted in open rebellion from one end of the front to the other. The advocates of strict discipline were in a situation in which they could not prevail. The only salvation would have been to ask for peace terms from the Germans, who would have been just as Carthagenian with the Provisional Government as they were later with the Bolsheviks. Any such peace signed by the Provisional Government in the late summer or fall

292

Chapter 8

of 1917 would probably have led to its overthrow by someone or some group. Even Lenin had to use every bit of his persuasive powers to obtain majority backing from within his own party the next year for the Brest-Litovsk treaty, which the Central Powers imposed on his government in 1918. The “forces of democracy” in Russia were in an absolutely no-win situation. Brusilov was aware of the problem; like all others calling for “iron discipline” in the army, he knew that there was now no way to achieve it. The pathetic efforts to restore discipline, not surprisingly, did not lead to order anywhere, because soldiers in a number of regiments saw that these feeble efforts “signaled a return of the old regime.”99 On July 25, Brusilov again issued another plea for stability, which contained the usual desperate ring in it. “The events at the front demand prompt admission of the most decisive manner for the salvation of the army from internal destruction. . . . I am appealing to all officers and soldiers to help me in this sacred matter.” He made the usual request for the restoration of “Iron discipline,” and he said that “I categorically forbid . . . the committees to meddle and discuss whatever operation plans and military orders. . . . All military orders must be implemented unquestioningly and unhesitantly.”100 Even on the more stable Romanian front, Brusilov had to contend with unruly committees, especially Rumcherod, a representative body on the Romanian front of soldiers and sailors that had caused disturbances in the army. He tried to disband Rumcherod but was apparently unable to do so.101 The Central Powers meanwhile continued their total-front offensive. Under von Bothmer, the Germans broke through with a violent attack, and what was left of the Russian front disintegrated. Tarnopol fell on July 25.102 Regiments abandoned their positions without orders, causing the withdrawal of those on their right and left. Kerensky later wrote that some reports of retreat were not true, that units were really wiped out because of withering artillery fire,103 but there is no denying that under the slightest pressure, many troops continued to flee in cowardly disorder. In the words of the Great War historian Cruttwell, “The [Austro-Germans] cut through their disorganized opponents like a knife through [soft] butter.”104 Brusilov took all this horror rather calmly, he later remembered, “since I hadn’t expected anything else.”105 As Brusilov watched helplessly, the Russian rout continued into August, and the Russians were even considering evacuating Odessa.106 In an interview given on August 4, after he had been removed from his post, Brusilov decried the pathetic performance of the Russian soldiers in the offensive. “Our troops fled at the slightest sign of an engagement. . . . Even though we outnumbered the Germans by five to one.”107 Hoffmann, who always regarded the Russian army with contempt, wrote on July 21, “I should like a few more prisoners, [but] the fellows ran away so frantically that one could not catch any of them. Only 600 [POWs] to date.”108

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

293

On August 5, Hoffmann wrote in his diary to the effect that “our operation is practically at an end.”109 The Central Powers’ offensive did finally cease. Lengthening supply lines and general shortage of supplies were major factors in for the cessation, as it was for the British Flanders campaign in the West, which had Ludendorff frantically looking for troops to send westward.110 Moreover, the invaders intentionally paused because they feared that too deep a penetration might catalyze a Russian patriotism like that during the Time of Troubles or during the Napoleonic or Swedish invasions.111 Kornilov went over Brusilov’s head and directly informed the Provisional Government regarding the state of the army, which could not have been a great secret to them: “An army of maddened, benighted people . . . is in full retreat. The battle [fields] . . . are the scene of unrelieved horror, shame and humiliation the like of which the Russian army has never known before in its entire history.” He then turned on the government: “The extreme leniency of the government’s measures has undermined discipline and is responsible for the uncontrolled anarchic cruelty of the masses. . . . The [restoration of the] death penalty will save many innocent lives at the cost of those of a few cowards and traitors.” Many deserted and went home. To use Lenin’s famous phrase, “the Army voted with its feet. It went home.” The desertion rate is reflected in the confiscation of estates in the rear. Between February and July 1917, 244 estates had been taken by force from the landlords. Between July and October, 1917, 686 more were confiscated. Not infrequently even troops sent to stop these confiscations joined in the takeovers. New attacks on the Northern and Western Fronts were ordered to the soldiers of what was now the Russian ghost army, but they either failed because the soldiers would not attack or because the attacks were so weak that nothing came of them. In his memoirs, Brusilov wrote of these times: “All I could do was to remain at my post and await the final destruction of the army.”112 Matters had become so hopeless that in the last days of July, Brusilov even admitted publicly in an interview that “all has virtually been lost.”113 The Kerensky Offensive had failed for a myriad of reasons, most notably because of the absence of any control of the officers over their men. Since 1917, historians have deduced many other variant theories. Writing in the 1920s, Kerensky blamed the defeat on the lack of cooperation on the part of the high command and the anarchy and disorganization of General Headquarters.114 In testifying before the Muraview Commission on the Revolution, Kerensky laid the blame on Brusilov for “the catastrophic condition of the front, the want of a firm hand at the front, and a definite plan . . . and his lack of control of the officers and men.”115 Writing again half a century later, Kerensky felt that the lack of fighting enthusiasm came from the troops’ wondering why they were still fighting when a better life now lay before them after the Revolution. “The very question paralyzed their will. . . . No army

294

Chapter 8

can afford to start questioning the aim for which it is fighting.”116 This view was voiced even in the short days of victory when, in the beginning of the offensive, units in the army did not move forward. General Ivan Erdeli of XI Army was puzzled over the fact that although the forces were advancing in some places, the men did not have their spirits raised and never developed a desire “to press on.” Many felt that they had done their stint, so there was no point going on the attack.117 Kerensky also blamed the officers who expressed pleasure as the offensive petered out. He also noted, somewhat incorrectly, that in 1917, the Russians faced first-class German troops with heavy artillery, not the shaky Slavic units Brusilov had fought the year before. He even blamed the inferiority of the artillery furnished by the Allies, much of which he said was defective, since 35 percent had not held up through two days of moderate firing.118 As it turned out, this disastrous offensive was for the Allied to cause Russia’s last sacrificial role of the war. As a result of the abortive attack, the Germans were obliged to transfer, one historian recounts thirteen divisions from the West to the East, thus taking on a holding operation in the West, as their only option there.119 Given the state of the French armies in the summer of 1917, the offensive may have helped save France once more, and it most likely contributed to the success of the La Malmaison offensive of the French army in the fall of that year.120 Brusilov was eventually truthful with his French allies. At the end of July, he told Janin that he doubted under any circumstances that the Russian army would be in a state to prolong the struggle during the winter, adding that “the present events [the collapse of the offensive] diminish the chance even further.”121 To General Pascal, he elaborated further on his assessment, adding that “the total disorganization of country” prevented Russia’s coming through the winter, adding also, curiously, a note about “the desertion that the Constituent Assembly will cause.”122 The only course that Russia could take to save any vestiges of the old regime was to withdraw from the war, and Kerensky must certainly have considered doing so. One historian has postulated that had he done so, the Bolsheviks would never have come to power,123 and he is probably correct. On November 2, five days before the Bolshevik coup (rather grandiosely called the “October Revolution”), General A. I. Verkhovsky, the minister of war, declared the army unfit to fight and advised that the only way to counter Bolshevik power was by “cutting the ground from under them—in other words, by raising at once the question of concluding peace.”124 Kerensky, trapped in his curious mixture of megalomania and patriotism, did not, and the rest is history. While conflict was continuing at the front, the capital had quieted after the July Days’ disturbances. In this political lull, Kerensky told Brusilov to call a conference of important military persons at Stavka for July 29 to discuss

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

295

the military situation in general and how discipline might be restored in particular. Likewise on the agenda was the question of future dealings with the Allies. Consequently, the Provisional Government’s foreign minister Tereshchenko also received an invitation. Probably not formally on the agenda was the fact that Kerensky had to defend his dismissal of Alekseev and Gurko and the failure of the offensive. Almost all top military commanders were there: Denikin of the Western Front and Klembovsky of the Northern Front appeared, as did Generals Alekseev and Ruzskii, who were retired but on “military call” of the government. Lukomsky, Brusilov’s chief of staff, was of course there. Gurko, who had been replaced on the Western Front by Denikin, and Dragomirov, who had replaced Ruzskii on the Northern Front, were invited at first by Brusilov but were then uninvited by Kerensky. Kerensky wired Brusilov that if they would be there, then no one from the Provisional Government (read: Kerensky) would come. Kerensky had had some sort of contretemps with Gurko and would not be in the same room with him. According to Lukomsky, Kerensky also feared him, for he had a “sharp tongue.”125 Kornilov whose Southwest Front was still active, and Shcherbachev, who was directing an offensive on the Romanian front, could not be present, but they each sent a written response to presented questions. Kerensky and Tereshchenko arrived together.126 The cynical Trotsky opined that the names of the conferees sounded like “the last echo of an epoch that was disappearing in[to] an abyss.”127 The opening of the meeting was delayed for an hour-and-a-half because of a fateful conflict over how Kerensky should be received. At other appearances at Stavka, he had been only minister of war. Now he was also Minister President of the Russian Provisional Government. A man of enormous ego, Kerensky felt that he should be received as a tsar would have been. Brusilov was at a loss on what to do and consulted Lukomsky, who advised him not to go to the station platform to greet the new premier. What is more, Brusilov had work to do to prepare for the conference, so for whatever reason, he sent his regrets. It proved to be a serious political mistake. When Kerensky arrived and there was no Brusilov, he pitched a childish tantrum, during which he demanded that the generals show him proper deference. Lukomsky, who could only have gotten his information second-hand, recorded that Kerensky said, upon arriving and finding Brusilov not on the platform, “Under the tsar these generals would not show such impudence. Now they allow [themselves] to ignore the President of the government. I will show him [Brusilov].”128 In short order, Kerensky’s adjutant was in Brusilov’s office demanding that the commander of the Russian armies come to receive Kerensky properly at the station. Brusilov strapped on his sword and, upon descending the stairs, encountered Lukomsky, whom he dragooned to go with him. When they reached Kerensky’s railroad car, they

296

Chapter 8

encountered the adjutant, who had preceded them, and who entered the car to announce them. He returned with an abundance of pomp to announce that “the President of the Provisional Government was waiting.” They entered and found Kerensky seated on sofa. He barely spoke to them and then roughly turned on Brusilov, demanding, “General, report to me what is going on at the front.” Brusilov made a short report and was told, according to Lukomsky’s account, that the scheduled meeting would be at 2:00 p.m. Since it was almost 4:00 p.m. and the conference had been scheduled for three, there must have been some confusion. At any rate, Brusilov and Lukomsky were then curtly dismissed.129 Brusilov’s implied snub of the pompous president certainly lubricated Brusilov’s dismissal two days later. It was not, still, its main cause. In his quasi-memoir The Russian Turmoil, Denikin wrote that on arriving, “Brusilov surprised me.” Brusilov told the amazed general in a private conversation, “I have come to the conclusion that this is the limit. . . . All these commissars, committees, and democratization are driving the army and Russia to ruin.” He further added, “I have decided categorically to demand that they cease,” and then asked the dumbfounded general to support him in this action. Denikin agreed and then deleted from his conference report “all the bitter things that I intended to say against the Supreme commander,” that is, Brusilov.130 Although he was not at the meeting itself, Knox wrote that Kerensky presided,131 but it appears that Brusilov did, at least formally chairing the gathering. Doubtlessly, Kerensky was the weightiest presence there, but it seems that Brusilov was at least technically in charge. This view is correct, although Kerensky’s biographer, Richard Abraham, like the historian Heenan, felt that Brusilov did little at the meeting, a charge that is apparently not completely true. Both blamed his inaction on his demoralization caused, it is asserted, by the knowledge that he was in danger of being discharged. Brusilov might have had an inkling that his dismissal was coming, but at this point it was by no means certain. To Kerensky, however, Brusilov seemed “lost” and would have to go. Kerensky seemed somewhat lost himself. For much of the meeting, he buried his face in his arms on the table. As for Tereshchenko, he had tears in his eyes.132 The record of the meeting shows that Brusilov opened the discussions with a lengthy, rambling report on the general military situation. He noted that the offensive had been planned by Alekseev before the Revolution, but the Revolution had brought about a collapse of discipline so significant that “men could not be forced to undergo training or to work on fortifying positions and bases.” This weakness had delayed the attack from May until July. It is interesting that Brusilov did not mention that he himself had asked for an even longer delay postponement of the attack. Thereby he dodged responsibility for the defeat, as many others would have.

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

297

Then he timidly attacked the present system as he told Denikin that he would, but very tepidly. He praised the commissars and the committees for having been responsible for getting much of the needed work accomplished, observing that many even went into battle with the men “and shed [their] blood.” Still, discipline had not been restored, as he unnecessarily reminded the assemble listeners, and he lectured them, again unnecessarily, saying that “no success is possible . . . without discipline and the authority of the commanders.” He then returned to the committees and commissars, whom he had earlier praised. He opined that military committees should not be abolished, but they must be subordinated to the commanders, who may, if necessary, disband them. He told the group that he personally had always worked well with the committees, reminding them that “others do not,” He stressed nevertheless that “committees cannot be permitted to do whatever they wish.” Brusilov defended the commissars, “who may be abolished later on, but they are needed at the present time,” but he stressed that they “cannot [be allowed to] replace the commanders and must [only] assist them.”133 He seems for political reasons to have placed a foot in both camps, and he had hardly led an attack on these institutions as he had implied to Denikin he would do. As far as general discipline was concerned, he reported that each time the Russians did achieve a breakthrough, the offensive would soon fizzle, because the men would return to their lines “under pressure from the enemy or even without it.’” He called for the immediate restoration of the fighting ability of the army, “for no plans or decisions will have any meaning without it.” He conceded that it was impossible to restore the complete discipline of the old army, but said that “measures must be taken to reassert some control and obedience.” He informed the general that units would not even go to the assistance of endangered fellow soldiers, and that meetings and debates were being held as he spoke to discuss orders, thus causing great delays. He told the conference that units would scatter “under the least pressure,” and in effect he blamed the commissars, whom he had praised at first, for having failed “because they cannot replace the commanders,” a condition that he did not advocate in the first place. He made his point by comparing Russian with German discipline. “Germany, which is surrounded by enemies . . . is still holding out, thanks only to discipline. . . . The failures at the front stem from the fact that we have no discipline. There is no army in the world in which the subordinate does not salute his superior. . . . The act of saluting is a form of greeting. . . . For our common people, not to salute someone means ‘to spit upon him.’ When both are in uniform, failure to salute cannot be tolerated.134 History shows that there is only a limited amount of freedom that can exist in an army,” he continued, adding that and the major thing to be discussed that day was the restoration of discipline in the army. He opined that given its absence, Russia did not even have an army.135 As to any future operations,

298

Chapter 8

they would be able to do nothing until the winter, “rather, not even until spring.”136 He then asked for comments and observations from the assembled, starting with the youngest person first.137 That proved to be his outstanding subordinate Denikin. Denikin, the commander-in-chief of the Western Front, remembered the meeting differently. Denikin later wrote that Brusilov’s report was “a short speech which struck me as being vague and commonplace. In fact he said nothing at all,” adding that “[and] he did not speak again.”138 Then Denikin himself spoke. This general, who would become the most successful White general during the Civil War, began his report by stating that he had been totally unprepared for what he found on the Western Front on taking over command. He told of soldier’s atrocities, and then he bluntly condemned their behavior at the front, looking straight at Brusilov. He accused the high command of “waving the red flag, and, reverting to a habit acquired under the Tatar Yoke, groveled on their bellies before the gods of the revolution.”139 His criticism immediately became so harsh that Brusilov interrupted to say, “I beg you to speak more concisely and only concerning the questions which have to do with the capacity of the army.” Denikin snapped back that he would either “say all he thought or nothing at all.” He demanded that he be allowed to complete his report. He remembered that “a silence ensued,” which he interpreted as permission to continue as he had been speaking.140 Denikin then told his colleagues that forty-eight battalions had refused to attack, and even the shock battalions were slow to act. He related how he had been present when the red banner was handed over to the Potiisky Regiment and the soldiers swore to die under it in the attack. One hour before the offensive started, the same regiment retreated fifteen versts.141 Insubordination, looting, and robbery were the order of the day, and he criticized the commissars as being “incompatible with the army,” adding, “There cannot be dual authority in the army. An army must have one head and one authority.”142 To his face, he blamed Kerensky’s democratic rhetoric and his constant siding with the soldiers against the officers. He then called on the Provisional Government to withdraw and denounce all of its democratic reforms. He became so agitated that he even had to leave the meeting to calm himself. Others followed with the same line of argument, all more or less blaming Kerensky. The meeting broke for dinner at 8:00 p.m., reconvening two hours later. Meanwhile, Kerensky and Denikin continued to bicker at each other during meal.143 After dinner, Tereshchenko asked Brusilov about the strategic situation on the various fronts. Brusilov replied that the Northern and Western Fronts could not be relied upon to resist, especially around Riga, where presumably Bolshevik propaganda had been especially damaging. Brusilov added, however, that there was no threat from German attacks, feeling that French action in the west

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

299

would prevent it, although Podolia Guberniia, rich in foodstuffs, might tempt the enemy. In general, Petrograd was safe because by the time enough troops, four, five, or six corps, could be assembled to drive on the capital, “the season for bad roads will begin.” He did suggest that it would help if the more unruly troops were evacuated from Petrograd.144 Klembovsky agreed but asked, rhetorically, “Is it possible to put to death whole divisions? But in that case half of the army would be in Siberia.”145 It was easy to determine the problem. The assembly’s deficiency was how to solve it. In his memoirs, Brusilov explained his behavior during these revolutionary months, and in the process, concisely presented the dilemma they faced. “I fully admit that at the beginning of the Revolution, I may have made, and inevitably did make, some mistakes. . . . I acted according to my lights [po soveti] . . . to keep the army in a state of efficiency. . . . [but] I could not restore to order a populace angered and convulsed by three years of war and unheard-of casualties. One may . . . ask who of my contemporaries could have succeeded.”146 Having had a change of heart from the heady days of March, he showed, in a report to Kerensky written two days later on July 31 (the day that he was removed from his position) that he knew suppression of indiscipline was needed. He spoke especially of the necessity for the forced submission to the control of the Provisional Government of the Kronstadt Naval Base on the Gulf of Finland,147 which had become a hotbed of Bolshevik agitation, but he well knew, as he did about restoring general discipline in general, that the Provisional Government did not have the power to impose its authority. It had become a case of who would bell the cat. Apparently the report that Kornilov sent in absentia was the most bombastic of all, but it is somewhat difficult to be certain exactly what he wrote because it seems that Savinkov and Capt. N. N. Filonenko, the Provisional Government’s commissar at Stavka, apparently doctored his views before it was given to the conference.148 In the version that we have, Kornilov calls for the restoration of capital punishment and military tribunals. He also curiously blamed the officer corps for the troubles in the army and suggested a purge of the commanding ranks and an expansion of commissar authority.149 He wanted discipline restored and the strengthening of the official authority, but he also strangely wished to increase the authority of the commissars and grant them the right to confirm death sentences, prevent meetings, regulate propaganda, and prevent the actions of agitators.150 Many of these “suggestions” were ideas hostile, as the reader will remember, so one cannot be certain exactly what he favored. Nevertheless, Savinkov and Filonenko added these proposals in their version, and it was to have a major effect on future developments.151 The meeting ended at about 11:00 p.m. with no real decisions having been made. By the time of this meeting, however, there was already a general

300

Chapter 8

consensus that Brusilov had to go. Pascal notes that there was already talk as early as July 26 of replacing Brusilov with Kornilov,152 and many came to feel that Brusilov’s performance, or lack of it, at the first session of this Stavka conference was the final straw. Kornilov’s record during the offensive, while not sterling, had been better than that of most, and his no-holds-barred report raised him in the minds of high-placed government circles. Brusilov’s longtime nemesis would once again replace him, although at this time, Brusilov was not moving up, but out. General conditions would have made the perceptive Brusilov know that his days were numbered, but during the dinner at the Stavka conference, he was given additional evidence. Kerensky told him that he was going to ask him to come, curiously, to Moscow, not Petrograd, for a general conference with the Provisional Government. Brusilov believed it was some sort of trap. At any rate, he declined, using the excuse that he felt that he should not leave the front while “Russia was in her death agony.”153 Kerensky left Stavka on July 30 to return to the capital, and it was on the return trip that he made the final decision to remove Brusilov.154 Meanwhile, Brusilov made a short tour of the front. Returning at 11:00 a.m. on August 3, Brusilov received a curt telegram from Kerensky, dated two days earlier, that he was being placed “at the disposal of the government,” fancy terminology for being dismissed. Izvestiia had even reported his resignation the day before Brusilov himself learned of it. To add insult to injury, Kerensky announced that his replacement would be General Kornilov by including in his telegram of removal a copy of the telegram appointing Kornilov.155 The failure of the offensive was not Brusilov’s fault, of course. Suvorov could not have succeeded with the rabble that had become the Russian army. He had privately warned against it, but since he was its nominal leader, he received the blame for its failure. Horrified at his dismissal, Florence Farmborough heard the news with great indignation: “Brusilov was our hero,” she fumed, but she added that she had been told, “No matter how distinguished the general, if his army sustained defeat, he and only he would be blamed.”156 He was seen, rather unfairly by his contemporaries, as one historian put it, “irresolute, incapable of decisive action, and lacking any far-reaching influence both over his officers and his men,”157 A recent historian calls him “the ineffective Brusilov,” suggesting the need for his removal “was by now universally acknowledged.”158 Perhaps he was in the hopeless situation in which he found himself “irresolute” or “ineffective,” but no other Russian general could have performed otherwise. To a commission of inquiry, Kerensky eventually testified that Brusilov was dismissed “because of the catastrophic conditions of the front, by the possible development of a German offensive, by the absence of a firm hand at the front, and [his lack of] a definite plan.” For good measure, he added

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

301

Brusilov’s inability to evaluate and forestall the complications of the military situation” and “by his lack of influence over both officers and men.”159 Brusilov was indeed guilty of the above criticisms, but any officer in the same position would certainly have been judged guilty as well. By design or accident, Kornilov was, as Trotsky saw it, “a man for everybody: To the Liberals [he means ‘conservatives’], he would restore order . . . to the compromisers, he tolerated the committees and commissars.” The leftist Savinkov believed that he was a republican,160 although there is not much evidence of it. Ironically his greatest attribute was his inability to see that the situation was hopeless. His bravado gave the appearance that he would be able to fix matters. Most importantly, Brusilov simply no longer had a base of support in the army, the government, or the Soviet. The Left, to whom he had catered, wanted him removed for it feared that he could perhaps become the “man on the white horse” they dreaded so much. The conservatives, on the other hand, saw his acceptance of the revolutionary changes as a serious detriment that had helped destroy the army. The Right and the officers detested him for his apparent fawning to the Petrograd Soviet, the army committees, and commissars, “to flatter the demagogues,” as Janin later wrote in an article about him.161 Like Kerensky a few months later when the Bolshevik Red Guards began moving against the Provisional Government on that rainy Wednesday morning early in November: No one was willing to support him any longer. It was much more complicated than Denikin’s invalid point that his removal was “the clear recognition by the [Provisional] Government of the wreck of its entire military policy.”162 Actually it was much more complicated than that simple statement. In fact, it could be argued that the military chaos probably had nothing to do with it at all, except the perception that Kornilov gave that he could fix it.163 Most important, by the beginning of August, he had lost the fickle support of Kerensky, who was rapidly assuming dictatorial powers. There was, of course, the wounded ego at the railroad platform, when Brusilov had been too busy to meet him. Alekseev, in a letter to Rodzianko, wrote how personal dislike had derailed the careers of many officers and asked rhetorically if that had not been the motive for removing Brusilov? Accepting that the disastrous offensive had certainly contributed to Brusilov’s fall, Alekseev asked rhetorically, “Why then has Brusilov been so unceremoniously removed? It seems to me that injured pride was the decisive factory here.”164 Unquestionably it was indeed one of the factors, but not the only one. A number of determining elements had come together to make the “perfect storm,” which few leaders could have survived. Kornilov, the son of a Cossack and a Mongolian mother, Kornilov, a precocious student, had a gift for languages and mathematics, and an officer,

302

Chapter 8

recognizing his abilities, gained admission for him into the cadet corps. He had written articles on military subjects and even wrote poetry in Tadzhik, a dialect of Persian.165 He had come a long way in his career, and he did not deserve the derogatory remark attributed sometimes to Brusilov, sometimes to Alekseev, and once to both Trotsky and General Verkhovsky that he had “the heart of a lion but the brains of a sheep.”166 Whoever made it, the remark is not an accurate portrayal of him and sounds much like a gratuitous insult catalyzed by jealousy or the product of postrevolutionary editing. The fact that he had retained some measure of order in the army under him by ignoring the army’s revolutionary regulations and ordering officers, for instance, to take “exceptional measures,” such as turning machine guns on deserters,167 had been a factor. He had also stopped all meetings of committees,168 and he had restored capital punishment before it had become legal. According Tereshchenko, many soldiers under his command had been shot, 500 in one place.169 Denikin remembered that Brusilov was “strongly opposed to his appointment.”170 Yet Kornilov’s return from capture and his rather daring and dynamic leadership made his past unforgettable to others. When Kornilov became the military governor of Petrograd shortly after the February Revolution, Brusilov wrote Alekseev on March 15 that he felt that Kornilov was unfit for the office. “He is both blunt and impatient,” the commander of the Southwest Front wrote the commander-in-chief of the Russian army. Kornilov had powerful friends, however, among them Rodzianko, who still possessed some aura, having been president of the now defunct Duma. Alekseev was at least hopeful, feeling that “the appointment of a fighting general with a popular name will be able to carry most quickly the restoration of order and peace in the capital.”171 Both men had been popular at some point with sections of the troops. Even before the Revolution, as the reader will remember, Brusilov had a reputation of being a soldier’s general. After the Revolution, he had indeed worked with the committees.172 Kornilov had tolerated the committees, but he opposed involving them in military decisions whenever possible. He was liked by his officers, therefore, but not so well by the common soldier.173 His popularity with the officer class is typified by the diary entry of General. Selivachev, who wrote after Kerensky removed Brusilov and appointed Kornilov, “Today General Kornilov was appointed supreme commander. . . . Finally, they’ve thrown out that two faced Janus Brusilov!!!”174 It was on this slender thread that the conservatives supported Kornilov: He alone seemed to be able to restore order, and that was what the officers wanted most of all. So urgent was it for Kerensky to dispose of Brusilov that he informed him, “You do not have to await the arrival of General Kornilov to surrender [your position] to a Temporary Command and appear in Petrograd. On the time of

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

303

your departure, I ask you to wire me. Minister Kerensky.”175 Brusilov was indeed stunned, not so much that he had been removed but that he had been treated so summarily. In his speech at the Stavka meeting, Denikin had stated that senior commanders were “being fired like domestics.”176 Brusilov’s removal seemed to have been one of these dismissals. When he wrote of his discharge years later, he was still bitter, and fell back on his proverbial claim that he had never sought anything for himself. “I had never asked anyone for anything for myself, but had carried out my orders as a soldier should,” he wrote, “giving my whole soul to what I conceived to be my duty.” He had been fired, he felt, “so offensively and in a fashion I had done nothing to deserve.”177 He indeed had a right to be hurt. He had been a good soldier. He had tried at least to delay the doomed offensive. Now he was being blamed of the disaster. He readily surrendered his credentials to Lukomsky and, as indicated above, apparently left Stavka the very evening of the day that he received his dismissal. He asked to be allowed to go instead to Moscow, where his brother’s family resided and where he and Nadia had their apartment, and the government gave him permission to do so.178 Kornilov arrived at Stavka on August 6. Word circulated that Brusilov had resigned, not been removed. One Western publication even wrote that Kerensky had pleaded with him to remain.179 Even Paléologue, Brusilov contends, wrote (he does not say where) that Brusilov resigned, a charge which Brusilov bitterly refuted. “This is one of the many misstatements that have been uttered and written about me,” he later remembered.180 Brusilov made it plain in his interview with Russkoe slovo on his return to Moscow that not only did he not resign but he had also wanted to remain on his job. Telling the reporter that he had often advised the government of the army’s poor state and that he had fully supported Kerensky’s plan “to the limit of my abilities to instill discipline in the army founded on the men’s awareness of their duty as citizens,” he also stressed that he had backed the Kerensky Offensive, although “he had told him that he did not think that it had much chance of success.” He bluntly stated to the reporter, “Not for one moment did I contemplate relinquishing my post. . . . I had no wish to go. On the contrary I felt that my combat experience as a soldier and an officer and my intimate contact with the army would be a link that would assist the army to rise again in all its strength.”181

NOTES 1. Jukes, 112. 2. O-U Letzter Krieg, 6: 224. 3. Ibid., 224. It cites Zaionchkovsky et al.

304

Chapter 8

4. Ibid., 237. 5. Des. B-3, 10 July 1916, p. 3, WO 106/1093, British National Archives. 6. For all changes, see Heenan, 68; Knox, 640. 7. Hoffmann, 1: 186. 8. Janin to War, 15 May 1917, dossier 2, no 17, 16N3180, Vincennes. 9. Janin to GQG, 30 May 1917, ibid. 10. Janin to War, 19 June 1917, p. 32, d. 3, no. 18, 16N3180, Ibid. 11. Notes du Capt. de Maleyssie, 7/20 June 1917, p. 6, Opinion de C de Maleyssie sur la situation, 1, ibid. 12. Vandervelde, 120, 121; his italics. 13. Ibid., 136–37. 14. Ibid., 128. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 125. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 119. 19. Vandevelde himself notes nine pages later that the number of deserters ran in the millions. Vandevelde, 128. 20. Kerensky, Catastrophe, 219–20. 21. Doulcet to MFA, 28 May 1917, dossier 2, no. 17, 16N3180, Vincennes. 22. Janin (?) To War, 5 July 1916, dos. 3, no. 18, p. 65, Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Rapport du Troussard, p. 4, 13 June–3 August 1917, Missions Militaires I, 7N761, Vincennes. 25. Hoffmann, 1: 188. 26. Kerensky, Catastrophe, 218. 27. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 993–94. 28. Ibid., 993. 29. B to N, 10 June 1917, Corres. 140–280, p. 274, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev archive. 30. Ibid., 5 June 1917, p. 270. 31. Ibid., 10 June 1917, p. 273. 32. Ibid., 19 June 1916, p. 275; B to N, 19 July 1917, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 220, GARF. 33. B to N, 10 June 1917, p. 273, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 34. This quote is a melange of various versions of the order. B and K, 2: 942; Izvestiia, no. 86, 3 July 1917; Golder, 462–27; O-U Letzten Krieg, 6: 238. 35. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 993; Denikin, Turmoil, 273. 36. Kerensky, Russia, 285. 37. Kerensky, Catastrophe, 217. 38. There were many cases before the offensive began of Austrians’ deserting to the Russians to ask for bread. Eugene Prince, “The Southwest Front with Gene. Scott,” July 1917, p. 3, Hoover Institution. 39. Herwig, 334. 40. Lincoln, Passage, 409.

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

305

41. Constantini, 8–10. 42. Ibid. 43. Commissar’s telegram, n. d., 2–4 July 1917, Upravlenie voennogo komissara 8-I armii, f. 2138, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 48–49, RGVIA. 44. Rapport Col Tabouis, 15 July 1917, opinion de Maleyssie, 1, 16 N3180, Vincennes. 45. Telegram of army commander, n. d., July 1–3 (?), 1917, f. 2138, op. 1, d. 3, l. 48, RGVIA. 46. O-U Letzten Krieg, 6: 247. 47. From one of my many conversations with Mr. Eugene Reichardt, a hussar on the Southwest Front during the offensive. 48. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 1014. 49. Disp. B3, 10 July 1917, p. 10 (6) ?, WO 106/1093, British National Archives. 50. See Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution. 51. L. S. Gaponenko, ed., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii v 1917 g. (Moscow: Izdat. “Nauka,” 1968), 157. 52. Constantini, 10. The Battle of Smorgon in the northern front included for the first time an all-female battalion, the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death, which acquitted itself quite well. See Jamie H. Cockfield, “Russias Amazons,” 80–84. 53. Zaionchkovsky, Kampaniia 1917 goda, 7: 74, cited in Feldman, 539. 54. Denikin, Russian Turmoil, 271. 55. Telegram, 16 July 1917, p. 4, dos. 1, 16N3181, Vincennes. 56. Torrey, 35. 57. Chugaev, ed., Rev. dvizhenie . . .: Iiulskii drisis, no. 232, p. 298. 58. Ibid. 59. Prince, “Southwest Front,” p. 7, box 1, Prince papers, Hoover. 60. Grand Quart. Gen. (Brusilov to), 15 July 1917, p. 9, dos. 1, 16N3181, Vincennes. 61. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 990. 62. Farborough, 283. 63. Kerensky, Russia, 281; Farmborough, 281. 64. Golder, 433. 65. Article in Rech’, no. 160, 24 July 1917, reprinted in Golder, 428. 66. Ibid. 67. Herwig, 334–35. 68. Farmborough, 287. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid. 73. “Iz dnevnika . . . Selivacheva,” KA, 10 (1925), 147. 74. Lt. Rostkovsky, ? October 1917, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 1507, p. 17, RGVIA. 75. “Iz dnivnika . . . Selivacheva,” KA, 10 (1925), 139. 76. N. Bukhbinder ed., “Na fronte v preoktiabr’skie dni,” p. 10, in Feldman, 314. 77. A. L. Sidorov et al., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, 372–74, in Feldman, 296.

306

Chapter 8

78. Ibid. 79. Tseretelli, Vospominaniia, 2: 65, cited in Feldman, 298. 80. Slavik, ed., “Iz dnevnika generala M. V. Alekseev,” p. 21, in Feldman, 298. 81. Krasnaia letopis’, VI, p. 16–17, in Feldman, 310. 82. Zankevich to Foch, 19 July 1917, p. 32, d. 1, 16N3181, Vincennes. 83. Ibid., 29 July 1917, p. 85. 84. Chugaev, ed., Rev. dvizhenie, 299. 85. N. Bukhbinder, ed., “Na Fronte v preoktiabr’skie dni,” p. 11, in Feldman, 314. 86. Ibid., 12–13 in Feldman, 314. 87. Rech’, no. 162, 13 July (OS), 1917, p. 1, in Browder and Kerensky, 2: 972. 88. Herval, 79–80; Pavl Miliukov, Istoriia vtoroi russkaoi revoliutsii (Sophia, 1921), 1: 60–61, cited in Leonid I. Strakhovsky, “Was there a Kornilov Rebellion?” Slavonic and East European Review, 33, no. 81 (1955), 376; Gaponenko, ed., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, 200. 89. Rech’, no. 161, 25 July 1917, cited in Golder, 429. 90. Rostunov, 183. 91. Chugaev, ed., Rev. dviznen v Rossii: Iiulskii krisis, doc. 232, p. 298, cited in Rostunov, 184. 92. Iz dnevnik in “Nekotorii zametki,” p. 22–23, box 1, Alekseev papers, Hoover. 93. Trotsky, 631. 94. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 981. 95. Izvestiia, no. 116, 26 July 1917, in Golder, 429–30. 96. Chugaev, ed., Rev. dvizhenie, 300; Abraham Asher, “The Kornilov Affair: A History and an Interpretation” (Unpublished PhD dissertation in the Department of History of Indiana University, 1967), 27. 97. Chugaev, ed., 2: 982. 98. Ibid., 302–3. 99. Ibid., 439. 100. Ibid., no. 239, p. 302–3. 101. Report on mood of soldiers, 5 August 1917 (o.s.), Ibid., no. 389, p. 439. 102. Kerensky, Russia, 294. 103. Cruttwell, 428. 104. Sokolov, 90. 105. Rapport to Paris, dos. 1, p. 121, 16N3181, Vincennes. 106. Russkoe slovo interview, 22 July/4 August 1917, no. 166, p. 2, cited in Katkov, Kornilov, 36. 107. Hoffmann, 1: 188. 108. Ibid., 192. 109. Ibid., 195. 110. Katkov, Kornilov, 31–32. 111. Michael T. Florinsky, Russia: A History and an Interpretation (Toronto, 1969), 2. 1417. 112. Brusilov, SN, 315; 1963 Russ. Ed., 281. 113. Pascal, 176. 114. Kerensky, Catastrophe, 92.

Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917

307

115. Denikin, Turmoil, 297. 116. Ibid., 285–86. 117. Ibid. 118. Feldman, 543. French military sources in Russia recognized the relief given them in the West and added that Austrian troops had been withdrawn form Italy as well. L’Avis du Representant, 26 July 1917, p. 71, dos. 1, 16N3181, Vincennes. 119. Ibid. 120. Kerensky, Russia, 277. 121. C.M.F. to War, 22 July 1917, no. 3288, d. 1, 16N3181, Vincennes. 122. Pascal, 160. 123. Figes, 409. 124. Browder and Kerensky, 3: 1739; Lockhart, 182–83 tells of the mood for a separate peace. 125. Lukomskii, “Iz vosp.,” Archive Russkoi Revoliutsii, 2 (1921), 42. Gurko did come to Mogilev, but he did not try to attend any of the meetings. 126. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 989; Denikin, Turmoil, 281. 127. Trotsky, 632. 128. Lukomskii, “Iz vosp.,” Arkhive russkoi revoliutsii, 42–43. 129. Both Brusilov’s and Lukomsky’s accounts are much the same, although there is some difference between Brusilov’s Russian version and the English translation. Ibid.; Brusilov, SN, 318; Denikin, Turmoil, 282. 130. Denikin, Turmoil, 282. This work is only partially a memoir. Denikin often includes documentary materials that could not have come literally from his memory. 131. Knox, 667–68. 132. Abraham, 233–34; Heenan, 175 footnote; Lehovich, 104. 133. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 1002. 134. Ibid., 1002–3. 135. Ibid., 1001. 136. Ibid., 1007. 137. Ibid., 990. 138. Denikin, Turmoil, 282. 139. Lehovich, 105. 140. Denikin, Turmoil, 289–90. 141. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 992. 142. Ibid. 143. Brusilov, SN, 318. 144. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 1009–10. 145. Ibid, 632–33. 146. Brusilov, SN, 289–90; 1963 Russ. Ed., 262. 147. Chugaev, ed., 418. 148. Bukhbinder, “Na Fronte,” p. 31, cited in Ivanov, Kornilovshchina, 39, cited in Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come To Power (New York: Norton, 1976), 103. 149. Ibid. 150. Browder and Kerensky, 2: 998.

308

Chapter 8

151. The French military representative wired Paris that Kornilov had demanded the suppression of soldiers’ committees and wanted the death penalty restores along with military tribunals. No mention is made of commissars. CMF to War, 27 July 1917, p. 72, dos. 1, 16N3181, Vincennes. 152. Ibid. 153. Archer, art. cit., 236. 154. Denikin, Turmoil, 297. 155. Troysky, 634. 156. Farmborough, 298. 157. Janin, “Au GQG russe,” Le Monde Slave, 164. 158. Denikin, Turmoil, 297. 159. Ibid. 160. Denikin, Turmoil, 209; Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks, 97; Polovtsoff, 303; Lev Trotsky, “Kerensky and Kornilov,” Saturday Evening Post, 205, no. 9 (August 27 1932), 68, cited in Asher, diss., 18; Trotsky, 252; Ronald Clark, Lenin: The Man behind the Mask (London: Faber & Faber, 1988), 250; Brusilov’s biographer Semanov in his B:DP, 278 attributes it to Brusilov. 161. Janin, 164. 162. Heenan, 85. 163. Knox, 667. 164. Noulens to MFA, 31 July 1917, p. 93, dos. 1, 16N3181, Vincennes. 165. Denikin, Turmoil, 302. 166. “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia,” KA, 22 (1927), 8. 167. Knox, 628–29. 168. Mayzel, 107–8. 169. “Iz dnevnika,” KA, 10 (1925), 154. 170. Kerensky to Brusilov, 19 July 1917, f. 162, op. 1, d. 5, l. 142, RGVIA. 171. Lehovich, 110. 172. Brusilov, SN, 319; 1963 Russ. Ed., 281. 173. Semanov, B:DP, 273–74. 174. “Brusilov and Kornilov,” Literary Digest, 55 (August 18, 1917), 49. 175. Brusilov, SN, 318–19; 1963 Russ. Ed., 280. 176. Russkoe slovo, 22 July 1917, p. 2, no. 166, cited in Katkov, Kornilov, 36. 177. White, art. cit., 196. 178. Sokolov, 91. 179. Ibid. 180. RGVIA, f. 2003, op. 1, d. 7, l. 483–84, cited in Sokolov, 90. 181. Brusilov, SN, 327; 1963 Russ. Ed., 286.

Chapter 9

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

Brusilov left Stavka in the night of August 2, 1917, arriving in Moscow the next morning. Waiting for him at the Moscow station were correspondents of the press. Kerensky was apparently in the station, and Brusilov did a careful pas de deux to avoid encountering him. He also was very careful not to say anything offensive to the reporters about Kerensky and Kornilov because he felt that to do so would only hurt the army. Instead he praised the Russian soldier, calling him “an excellent warrior,” who under proper discipline could take the enemy. To restore this discipline will take time, he noted, but he optimistically added that it will happen. “The army will be resurrected. Russia and History will judge me.”1 Despite the recent failure of the offensive, he was everywhere greeted with ovations. Deputations with ikons visited his home. Patrons gave him standing ovations in theaters. He was elected to committees and was made President of the Moscow chapter of Union of St. George Cavaliers. The soldiers of the Moscow garrison, though drunk with their new-found freedom, still made a car available to him at all times, and the army cast a bronze medal in his image with the inscription “Supreme Commander General A. A. Brusilov.”2 Brusilov returned to live in the apartment no. 8 in Dom 4, Mansurovskii Pereulok in the Ostrozhenka district of Moscow. One source indicates that he had bought the apartment in 1916, but whether he did or not, it had been in effect his home and would remain so for the duration of his life. Still now, for the first time in over three years, he could rest, drink tea in a real drawing room, and walk to church at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior,3 a cathedral which was to be destroyed by Stalin and rebuilt again after the fall of the Soviet Union. With them in this apartment lived Elena, and they were later joined by Rostia.4 As was the case everywhere he lived, there were frequent 309

310

Chapter 9

guests, many of whom were military figures with whom he relived the war experiences and later those of the Revolution. Very soon after he returned to Moscow, however, the criticism began. A major blast came from the Rightist paper Utro Russii. In an August 1 article written by one I. Metropolskii entitled “The Tragedy of General Brusilov,” the author attacked him for helping overthrow tsarism by sending a telegram calling for Nicholas’s abdication, not bothering to mention that every other front commander, including the tsar’s cousin Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich, had done so. He was also taken to task for aping the actions of the Left, mentioning a story of his refusing to shake hands with an officer but doing so with a soldier. The article, by contrast, praised General Kornilov, a man of “iron will” and someone who was not a pessimist, implying that Brusilov was.5 This latter charge was a curious one, since Brusilov’s public utterances about the war and the future of the army were always very upbeat. He had reserved his pessimism for his private thoughts. The “Iron General” did not take the criticism lightly. By letter, he countered that he had no criticism of General Kornilov, but he could not accept the unfair criticism heaped on himself. He denounced the author’s Mondaymorning quarter backing and pointed out that he was never interviewed by the author for the article. In a rare burst of self-praise, he wrote, “My actions during three years of war belong to history, and no one can now change them. From the established facts in documents, it is clearly evident that I command the highest qualities and abilities.” He noted that he had never played to the press, and he “loudly and strongly” denied being a pessimist. He reiterated for the umpteenth time his love for the Russian soldier, but he added that Russia was passing through a “sick period,” and his actions as a commander were based on the “medicine” he felt was needed at the time. He noted that the famous incident of his having shaken hands with a private to the exclusion of the officer was wrongly represented, and he gave his side. “I myself seek nothing,” he concluded with one of his career-long refrains: “and ask [to be given] only one medal–Truth, and I think that I have to want the truth, so that Russia [would] know that I never deserved dismissal . . . that I never up to the last minute of my life . . . would not leave the army and the Russian soldier. I am not a deserter [his italics].”6 Shortly afterward, he gave an interview to Russkoe slovo, some of which we have already quoted. He continued his defense in the same vein. Stating how on taking over the supreme commander’s position, he found the army “in a desperate state of anarchy and disintegration,” and he had immediately called the government’s attention to the state of affairs. “I wholeheartedly sympathized with Kerensky’s effort to induce into the army a discipline founded on the men’s awareness of their duty as citizens,” but he added that he had never privately supported the offensive but felt that it would bring out

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

311

into the open the condition of the army, a statement, the reader will remember, contradicted one of his earlier statements. He continued, saying that he had never once thought of relinquishing his post because his experience and “intimate contact with the army” would be a catalyst to “assist the army to rise again.” Given his beliefs and his work, his removal was “quite unexpected” and it had “surprised and deeply offended me.”7 Kornilov, meanwhile, had taken command only under the promise of being allowed to implement “reforms,” which were a code name for nothing short of restoring pre-revolutionary discipline. In a meeting with Kerensky on August 3, shortly after he assumed overall command, he stressed the need to rebuild the fighting ability of the army, and to accomplish this task, the provisional government first had to restore discipline by backing the officers in the abolition of “soldiers’ rights” and putting an end to the soldiers’ committees. The death penalty, which technically had been restored, if not universally enforced, had given some measure, temporarily at least, of stability to the Southwest Front, but it had to be widely implemented everywhere and rigorously enforced to be effective.8 “The commanding officer must have power,” Kornilov told Kerensky, “and the soldiers must obey their commanding officer.”9 What Kornilov told Kerensky was essentially the same opinions made by Brusilov, when he had met with Kerensky and the others on July 30,10 suggestions that probably helped precipitate his dismissal. Everyone knew the problem; the question was who would be able to implement the cure. To restore order in the army at present would have meant brutal suppression of units by force, with large numbers being killed. Desperation, indeed, was in the air. The chaos in the army and society had increasingly made the conservative classes search for a deliverer, and it is not surprising that Brusilov was approached to support such a movement. The government had summoned for late August the Moscow State Conference to bolster support for the Second Coalition of the provisional government as a warm-up for the constituent assembly to be elected later in the fall. Invited was everyone who had ever served in a Duma, a zemstvo (elected local government), or any person of particular note in prerevolutionary Russia. The prominent member of the Kadet Party N. I. Astrov visited Brusilov to encourage him to attend, but he also hinted to a more sinister use of the conference. In his conversation with Brusilov, Astrov asked casually how the general would consider a “break with power?” Brusilov asked if he was referring to a civil uprising? “Yes,” Astrov replied cautiously, “this expression more closely mirrors the essence of affairs.” Brusilov asked with a frankly ironic tone with what authority were the conspirators planning to use to fulfill this action. Astrov replied State Conference would become an authority which would add a legal air to any attempted

312

Chapter 9

takeover. Brusilov’s face must have shown some displeasure, for Astrov asked, “You have some doubts, I see?” Brusilov was slow to reply, but when he did, he threw cold water on Astrov’s plans. “You see,” Brusilov replied, “I hold the opinion that to resort to the seizure of power at the present moment is inadmissible.” When Astrov asked why, Brusilov replied, “I have the honor of occupying the presidency of the Union of St. George Cavaliers in Moscow, [and] I well know the mood of the members of the Soviet, and I must assure you that they will not all stand for a military takeover. In Moscow, no one would support a coup, even the Moscow Junker and Cossack units.” He also added that there were not enough reliable forces, since the people and the soldiers would oppose it. This sort of action was to Brusilov counterrevolutionary adventurism, and he would have no part of it.11 On August 19 at 2 p.m., a preliminary meeting to the Moscow State Conference12 convened at the University of Moscow in a cinema auditorium as a warm-up for the official conference commencing less than a week later. It assumed the title the Moscow Congress of Public Leaders, and it consisted largely of the more conservative elements in Russia that would later be the majority of the formal conference itself. It was attended by about 300 people. The Kadet party leaders Paul Miliukov and Vasilii Maklakov were there, as were Alekseev and Ruzskii. Brusilov likewise came. Although it met for four days, it seems to have done little except blast the evil effects of the Revolution and create an executive committee, on which Brusilov was not placed, to promote the program of stability until the second meeting would occur.13 Within a few days, the famous Moscow State Conference did formally assemble. Kerensky saw the conference as an invitation to all persons to rally behind the provisional government’s Second Coalition, formed after the “July Days.” Although Kornilov was invited, Kerensky tried to discourage his attending, but he arrived in Moscow anyway on August 26, the day after the Conference began, to an enthusiastic welcome at the train station from upper-class elements. He was received even more warmly by the assembled group when he spoke to some of them privately. He was doubtlessly encouraged to seize power. There is a newspaper report that Brusilov was at the Moscow State Conference,14 but one of his Soviet biographers states that he was not.15 It is likewise highly unlikely, however, that Brusilov had attended the early pre-conference but avoided the main event itself. It could, of course, have happened, but whether he was there or not, he played no prominent role. As for Kornilov, he received a thunderous ovation, which left Kerensky visibly rattled. What followed in the next several weeks is known as the Kornilovshchina, or the Kornilov Uprising. There are still aspects of the affair that are unclear, but apparently General Kornilov, collecting “loyal” units, decided to march

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

313

on Petrograd and crush the Soviet, which he saw as the source of all of the chaos, and probably overthrow the Provisional Government as well. With the Soviet gone, he could reestablish discipline in the army. It is not surprising that in such an adventure that Brusilov’s participation might be asked, and indeed it was. A group with the curious name of “The Union of those Fleeing from Captivity,” led by their president one Kryulov, a Captain Bernasovsky, and two other officers, came to him to ask him to lead the Moscow theater of the Kornilov uprising. Brusilov listened patiently but replied, “You are not the first to come to me with such a proposal, but I must tell you, as [I have told] all your predecessors, that I reject all these schemes of adventurism, at the head of which I, General Brusilov, cannot lead.” Calling these people “traitors” and “collections of up-risers,” he concluded the conversation with the words, “I advise you, Mr. Officers, to remain calm. The government exists which has custody of the power of the state.” With that the officers left.16 Given the mutual enmity between Brusilov and Kornilov, it is highly unlikely that Kornilov would himself have asked Brusilov’s help and even more unlikely that Brusilov would have given it. Kornilov certainly never made any effort to meet with Brusilov. Had Brusilov been involved, given his past history, Kornilov would have had to have known that he would not have been fully in command. In fact, none of them even mention him.17 After the event failed, Brusilov branded Kornilov a “traitor,”18 although he did also refer to him as “an honest Russian patriot,” which does not exactly sync, but then the reader is aware that Brusilov rarely failed to lace any criticism of anyone with some sort of a compliment. In this case, he branded the abortive coup as “unnecessary, irresponsible, and contributed to the ruin of many officers.” He also felt that the whole affair “opened the road to Bolshevism.”19 Whatever its effects, the attempted putsch certainly dealt a deathblow to the Provisional Government. Nadia, writing sometime after the Revolution, stated that “Each of them [Brusilov and Kornilov] sought to save [Russia] but in their own way.”20 After the affair, Kerensky and his body politic had no visible support on either the Left, Right, or in the Center. Everyone turned their attention to the Constituent Assembly, elections to which were to be held soon in the fall, for the salvation of Russia, except, of course, the Bolsheviks, who began planning a coup of their own. What occurred was an attempt to overthrow the provisional government and dispose of the tiresome Soviet.21 The evidence is clear that Kornilov was also given some encouragement for his actions from Kerensky, who by this time had no patience with the Soviet’s interference in his government and would happily have liked to see it silenced by Kornilov. One historian as made an excellent case that Kerensky encouraged Kornilov until he came to realize that Kornilov had no plans for Kerensky in any government that he

314

Chapter 9

would establish in his post-coup organization.22 Whatever the reasons for his actions, Kerensky turned on Kornilov, and foolishly as it turned out, rearmed the Bolshevik Red Guard, which had largely been disarmed during the “July Days.” In conjunction with the railroad unions and professional agitators, Kerensky was able to turn the whole affair into an episode of no great consequence, except to destroy the last shred of credibility he had with the bourgeois classes. Now he also had the additional problem of an armed Bolshevik force loose in the capital. Kornilov was arrested along with a number of officers and jailed in the small town of Bykhov, somewhat to the south of Mogilev. From there he escaped and made his way to the south, where he helped form the White Army. He died in 1918 in somewhat of a freak development when a Bolshevik shell happened to land on a house in which he was staying. Kerensky assembled a Directory and finally a Third Coalition, which was overwhelmingly socialist, with five or so Kadet members, none of whom were prominent members of the party. The elections for the long-promised Constituent Assembly had already been set for late in November, and most of Russian society, with the exception of the Bolshevik elements, was awaiting the elections to establish a legitimate government. Kerensky and his government were largely from this point onward ignored. While society tarried, however, the Bolsheviks plotted, hoping to implement Lenin’s proposal to telescope Marx’s two predicted revolutions into one. Brusilov at the time seems to have been making some sort of plans of his own. In August after his removal, one of his Soviet biographers, Sokolov, wrote that between Kornilov and the October Revolution two months later, Brusilov had busied himself trying to put together a force of officers to establish order in Moscow. There were about 40,000 officers in the city, and Brusilov tried to organize them into a disciplined unit. He was, according to Sokolov, soliciting funds from “rich people” to finance the whole affair. He met with little success because the officers, most of whom were monarchists, were not interested in fighting for the Provisional Government. They mistakenly believed, as did many in power, that the Bolsheviks were finished, and as Brusilov summed it up, they “did not believe me, did not go with me.”23 Sokolov also states that Brusilov was active in an organization called The Salvation of Russia and the Army. Ín speeches to which he called on the organization to “take to the streets with arms,” adding that only in this manner could “the so-called bourgeoisie play a role in affairs.”24 According to Sokolov, he tried to raise money for that cause as well, for the dubious objective of “buying” the soldiers of the Moscow garrison, but “everywhere he received masses of compliments but no money.”25 This type of behavior is contrary to all of Brusilov’s statements up until that time, and it is most likely a Sovietizing of his true behavior. Brusilov did call for the restoration of the army, but in no place

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

315

does he openly call for counterrevolutionary activity, certainly not against the provisional government, which he basically supported. Less than a month before the Bolshevik seizure of power, the Moscow Congress of Public Figures convened on October 12, and a number of patriotic organizations sent representatives. The tenor of this meeting expressed the need to establish a strong national government to stand up to the Soviet, and they heartily endorsed Kornilov’s failed efforts to strengthen the army. In this congress, Brusilov played a more prominent role as one of the principal speakers. Russkaia vedomosti reported his presence with the words, “As at the last congress . . . in the center sits the former Supreme Commander General Brusilov.”26 The meeting was chaired by the erstwhile Duma president Mikhail Rodzianko, who along with the prominent Kadet Party member A. A. Kizevetter, made speeches hostile to the Revolution. During the speech of Prince E. N. Trubetskoi, when he mentioned both men, there was a loud ovation for both of them. The disdain for Kerensky among this group and his August firing of Brusilov probably more than anything contributed to Brusilov’s momentary popularity, because he had certainly not been popular with this group before now. Alekseev, Brusilov, and Ruzskii spoke at the night session, in that order. Both Alekseev and Ruzskii criticized with great firmness the Revolution and Bolshevik influence in the army. Brusilov, on the other hand, took a more moderate tack. He began by discussing the disintegration of the army and how it had occurred because of a change in the mentality of the Russian soldier, which before the Revolution had been based on “Faith, the Tsar, and the Motherland.” This soldier had “put on clean underwear, prayed to God, and said: ‘I am going to my death to save the Motherland.’” This soldier, Brusilov reminded the audience, was not interested in politics nor events in the rear. If anything, Brusilov noted, it was the officer who was the revolutionary. What had happened to change the soldier, to split the Russian army into soldiers and officers? It lay, he felt, in the memories of the leftist parties of the 1905 Revolution, when the army had largely remained loyal to the regime. In the minds of the Left, the army must be destroyed “in order to save the Revolution.” There had arrived at the front, he reminded the congress, in the early days of the Revolution what Brusilov called “Cain’s Document,” the infamous General Order No. 1. Then delegates (presumably of the Soviet) slipped from Petrograd among the soldiers of the army. “Poison flowed like a river,” Brusilov told the crowd. “Salvation lies in the restoration of discipline,” he continued, “but of a genuine discipline and not some kind of democratic revolutionary discipline. . . . There has always been but one discipline—military discipline.” He attacked the concept of military committees, but he added that he did not favor their “complete and immediate destruction,” although he

316

Chapter 9

condemned them as “the bastard born as a result of the introduction of politics into the army.” Employing, whether consciously or not, Tolstoy’s historical theory of the “Sum Total of Human Wills,” he told his listeners that order and a strong government would not come into place until the “collective will of the Russian people” would demand it. Yet, he expressed the fear that at that time, there would appear “Minins” and “Pozharskys,” references to two military leaders out of Russia’s past in the so-called “Time of Troubles” in the seventeenth century. Noting that Russia had already had one recent Pozharsky, i.e., Kornilov, he expressed the opinion that he had not appeared at the right time, and no one had followed him. He predicted, nevertheless, that one would appear that would lead the Russian people, although he offered no predictions of when this messiah would come nor who he would be. He made the comparison of a Minin with a Napoleon, but suggested that Napoleon was a French creation “and let him remain there.” He concluded his speech with a call for unity “for all to whom the homeland is precious.”27 The Kadet N. V. Ustrialov, writing over a decade later in exile about what was certainly the same meeting, remembered Brusilov called here for what had become his pet project, an independent military force to “fight internal disorder.” According to Ustrialov, Brusilov openly criticized Kerensky, referring to him as “the guilty Comrade Kerensky,” something Brusilov is not likely to have done. With what must have been a play on the root meaning of Pozharsky, (i.e., fire), Brusilov restated his theme of a leader, the “fire” for which “already burns among us,” but which the people do not adhere, reflecting his own inability to rouse support for his independent military force mentioned earlier. Yet, optimistically he felt that “the will of the people will be—the Pozharsky will be found.”28 Semenov states that in another speech, delivered on October 29, the general stressed his personal Slavophilism in a support “of world-wide sense of Slavism in the past, present and the future.”29 The author states that a detailed account of the meeting has not been preserved, but “the general consensus” was that “the Russian [hence Slavic] people are the basis of the state.” The theme, not new to those knowledgeable of Brusilov, was so well received by the audience that he was unanimously elected honorary president of whatever society to which he was speaking.30 Brusilov’s actions and speech themes between Kornilov and the October Revolution were a puzzling mixture of ideas. He clearly condemned the disorder in the country, which would appeal to the assembled delegates of the organizations to which he spoke, but he never seems to have mentioned the Bolsheviks by name. He seems to have placed his feet in both camps, and the whole tenor of his language gives the impression that he might have been offering himself to Russia as the Minin of the Right Time, whom the people would follow. Brusilov was not without ambition (Sir Bernard Pares called

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

317

him “a self-seeker”),31 but he had never before shown any political inclinations. Perhaps by this point in the Revolution, he had come to think that he was the man of the hour and would be a moderate “soldier on horseback” that would be acceptable to all sides. Whatever he may have planned, events overtook him and all others, for within a few days, for the Bolsheviks struck. In the early hours of the rainy Wednesday morning of November 7, 1917, the Bolshevik Red Guard began seizing important places in Petrograd— major bridges, the telephone and telegraph exchanges, major government buildings—and they surrounded the Winter Palace, the seat of the provisional government. In its last hours, the only defenders of this hapless ghost of a government were some cadets from a local military school and a unit from the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death, all members of whom carried an arsenic tablet just in case of capture their virtue was about to be assaulted. Prime Minister Kerensky fled the city but what he was able to assemble were woefully inadequate, because with the Constituent Assembly elections but three weeks away, no one wanted to risk dying for the discredited Provisional Government. So innocuous did it seem at the time that after arresting the members of the Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks imprisoned them in the Petropavlovsky Fortress, but after spending one night in its grim cells, the Bolsheviks released the ministers after making each former minister promise not to oppose the Bolshevik regime, or so Soviet historiography and Soviet Intourist guides told it. Whereas the fall of the Provisional Government in the capital was relatively uneventful, the Moscow situation was different. The election returns to the Constituent Assembly a few weeks later show a larger bourgeois and Socialist Revolutionary vote than in Petrograd, hence there was greater opposition to the Bolshevik coup in there. A group called the White Guard invested the Kremlin, but fighting took place all over the city. The Bolshevik operations against them were directed by the Military Revolutionary Committee, supported by workers, soldiers not wanting to return to the front, and a majority of the Moscow garrison.32 Although there was serious fighting in Brusilov’s neighborhood, Brusilov himself took no part in it nor did he in the civil war that followed.33 An article published in Paris on General Brusilov after the Revolution quotes him as saying, “Governments change, but Russia remains. All of us must serve her with the specialty we have chosen.”34 He was to maintain this attitude throughout the struggle, preparing to serve Russia, whatever the government was. There was, however, another more stated reason for his neutrality. In the struggle for Moscow, Brusilov supposedly received a serious wound on November 15 at about 6:00 p.m. from a stray shell that came through the ceiling of his apartment.35 During the siege of the Kremlin, two French

318

Chapter 9

155-mm cannons were placed somewhere in the city, and the noted astronomer, P. K. Sternberg, directed the aiming of them with his telescope. Trying to direct shells on the Moscow Military District Headquarters, he managed accidentally to guide one that hit the Brusilov apartment, inflicting the serious wound,36 or so the story goes. Brusilov could hardly walk, but the injury was initially treated with iodine prescribed by Dr. T. S. Zatsepin, and his house was placed under protection of the Red Guard, by one account. By another, the anti-Bolshevik forces made a request for a safe conduct pass for him through the lines, which the Bolsheviks denied.37 His phone still worked and a group of officers called to say they would come and escort him to a neutral zone, but they never appeared. The Bolshevik V. P. Nogin also called and offered to transport him to a neutral zone where he could get medical attention, but he would only transport the general to safety, not his family, so the general refused.38 Brusilov was tormented with the pain, and finally with the intervention of M. V. Frunze, another Bolshevik military figure whose name likewise adorns a Muscovite metro station, he was taken to a surgery at Molchanovka, where he came under the care of the famous surgeon S. M. Rudnev, who X-rayed the wound and operated.39 Then he began a long period of recovery in the hospital in the village of Rudnev (by one account)40 followed by a stay in the village of Kolomenskoe, where he even had a car at his disposal. He was frequently invited to eat with the local peasants and the clergy, and they supplied his household with bread, milk, eggs, and vegetables.41 Exactly how long he remained there is unclear, but he seems to have returned to Moscow by the late spring of 1918, and he made a point of visiting Frunze on his return to thank him for his help. Nadia recorded that Frunze dismissed his thanks, saying, “You should be incomparably comfortable for your service. There is not service we cannot give you. And in case you need any help, or are mistreated, [tell us, for] we will not tolerate this disgrace.”42 During Brusilov’s convalescence, the Constituent Assembly elections took place, and the Bolsheviks lost to the Socialist Revolutionaries, who won a landslide majority of both the votes and seats. After meeting for only one day in January 1918, the first nationally elected democratic institution Russia had ever had, was closed by the Bolsheviks, and Russian democracy remained dormant for three quarters of a century. Centers of military opposition to the Bolsheviks began forming in the South under Kornilov and other generals, and by the summer of 1918, these units were supported by foreign interventionists who landed troops: Americans, French, British, Canadians, Italians, Japanese. The Russian Civil War was on. Not surprisingly, both Red and White commanders tried to persuade Brusilov to join their cause, but he never took sides. Part of the same delegation that had tried to enlist him in Kornilov’s cause contacted him again

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

319

while in the hospital. They brought with them a letter from a White leader in Novocherkassk asking him to join them on the Don. Brusilov read the letter and then placed it under his pillow, supposedly saying, “I’m not going anywhere.” Meanwhile, forget about the tri-colored banners [the old tsarist flag] and [recognize?] the unification under the Red.” One of the visitors remembered that she saw no further point to the conversation, adding, “I had decided that in Brusilov and his wife, I had found dangerous enemies.”43 Brusilov was not supporting Bolshevism, but he recognized the futility of opposing it at that time. Moreover, the idea of Russians killing Russians was repugnant concept to him. He stated many times in the years that followed that he was neither Red nor White, but on the side of the Russian people. One of his biographers quoted his saying, “From the Russian people I will not depart but stay with them.”44 Nadia summed his position in her rambling recollections written in the last year of her life: “My husband was neither a White general, not a Red general, [but] he was a Russian [my italics] general, defending Russia’s borders and the Russian people. He lived and he died for his native land, remaining a Christian and a nationalist to the end of this life.”45 When in 1918, young officers asked his advice on what they should do during the civil war, he repeatedly told them that governments would come and go, but Russia would remain. An officer should remain aloof during the civil strife that was developing and remain neutral until it could once again fight against any of Russia’s foreign foes.46 Brusilov’s reasons for his neutrality, like much of his reasoning after the February Revolution, are confusing and contradictory, but they seem sincere. There were likewise other factors as well. His health certainly would never have permitted his taking an active role, and the communists would have never allowed him to leave Moscow to play even a passive one for the Whites. Early prominent Great War historian Cruttwell wrote that many felt his neutrality was motivated by his resentment at the tepid support which he had received during his 1916 offensive,47 but if that was a factor, it was not likely a major one. Moreover, his dislike for Kornilov would never had permitted him to serve under or even beside him, and with Kornilov’s death, his replacement, General Denikin, was not a great improvement in his mind. The White armies were largely ghosts of the old Imperial army, with its injustice and its incompetent officers. It is not surprising that many of the best Imperial officers went over to the Bolsheviks without being forced to do so, about 8,000 shortly after October 1917. Trotsky actively recruited them, calling them “military specialists,” and in the later necessities, he actively conscripted them. By 1921, 75 percent of the senior Red officers had served as officers in the tsar’s army.48 Many of the old Imperial officers simply stayed on the sidelines as Brusilov did, unsure of what the position of a true Russian patriot should be.49

320

Chapter 9

Brusilov also probably noted the futility of it all, although for over a year after he left the hospital, it appeared that the White movement seemed to have a good chance of winning the political struggle. Simply put, he felt that he could play no role, and his neutrality was the first reason he gave the enemies of the Communists to hate him. Realizing this attitude, he said once to his wife in these stormy days, “To stop the wheel of history I haven’t the strength, and people do not forgive me for this.”50 British historian Orlando Figes feels that Brusilov was sympathetic to the Whites, but he knew that they could not win because part of their program was to remain in the war. He had seen first-hand that the Russian people wanted peace at any price, and that the traditional appeals to God and the Fatherland would not matter.51 Brusilov was finally released from the hospital in July 1918, and he was advised to go to Odessa to the home of his sister-in-law, but he remained in Moscow.52 With so much of the country disrupted, it would have been difficult to reach Odessa from Moscow anyway in the fall of 1918, with the Civil War becoming more intense, and the South’s being largely under control of the Whites. Moreover, the communists probably would not have let him out of their sight. He was potentially too valuable to the White cause, had he joined it. Brusilov was scarcely out of the hospital a month when the dreaded Cheka, the first Soviet secret police system, arrested him shortly after midnight on August 13, 1918, probably suspecting that he was a White sympathizer. Earlier that evening, they might have tested him. While walking in the street, he was approached by someone who offered him money to join the Whites. Whether or not he might have been sympathetic, he could easily see through this clumsy attempt at entrapment and refused. Anyone who knew him would certainly know that money would not have enticed him. The arresting police took his medals and awards, and he was taken away, although Nadia was told that he was not being arrested but taken into protective custody. He was driven to the infamous Lubianka prison, where at some point he had a conversation with Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the said Soviet secret police, who told him that R. N. Bruce Lockhart, the British consul general in Moscow, was planning a coup with the object of making the “too popular” General Brusilov the Russian dictator. When Brusilov told him that he had never even met Bruce Lockhardt, Dzerzhinsky replied, “All the same, we cannot take the risk. People would rally behind your name.” When Brusilov asked how he could expedite his release, Dzerzhinsky told him, “Write your memoirs on the former army and abuse the Old Regime.”53 Along with him, the police took Rostia, who shared a prison cell with him. Rostia felt certain that they had been arrested to be shot,54 but there was probably not much danger that the Bolsheviks would kill Brusilov as long as he remained neutral in the political struggle, because he was still a popular figure in the country. Alyosha Brusilov was not too concerned.

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

321

He told Nadia, “They won’t touch Father. They know how they revere him in the villages.”55 Ironically, he did meet Bruce Lockhardt in prison. The Bolsheviks, apparently acting on their fears of a Lockhardtian plot, arrested him as well, and he would encounter Brusilov on the exercise strolls they were allowed. Brusilov walked with difficulty with the aid of a cane. Bruce Lockhardt recorded in his diary that Brusilov looked “ill and haggard, and very old and that he had a sly foxy face,” a description we have seen used before. It apparently so amused the prison guards that they had such a prominent detainee under their care that on a pedestal on which once had stood a statue of Tsar Alexander II, they scrawled the words, “Here the Red Army soldiers of the 9th Lettish rifles had the honor of walking with Brusilov.” The word “honor” was highlighted by inverted commas.56 At the same time he was arrested, so was his brother Boris and other family members. Strict instructions were given to kill them if Brusilov joined the Whites. When Boris was arrested, he was sick in bed with the Spanish flu, which was raging at the time. He was taken from his sick bed and thrown into a prison cell, where he was denied any medicine or treatment of any kind. He died within a few days of his incarceration.57 Two of Brusilov’s prison letters to Nadia, written much more neatly than his letters from the front, survived his jail stay. The first, dated August 26, 1918, begins, “Kostia and I are sitting in the guardhouse in the Kremlin. Both [of us] are healthy and are calm.” He then asked her to send him “two sheets, two shirts . . . and two pairs of socks . . . [and] a piece of soap.” He then told his anxious wife, “We are getting up to one half pound of bread [a day?] and for lunch shchi [cabbage soup] and fish[,] and for dinner again shchi.” He continues with a description of the prison regime, and he concludes by sending his love to her and Lena.58 The second letter, written about three weeks later in pencil had quite a different tone. If he had been trying to spare Nadia any angst in the first, he did not hold back in the second: “My [word illegible] heart has broken and I am so tired. . . . My dear Nadeshenka, how I love you and how difficult it is for me to be without you! . . . I know that you are tormented.”59 The general was finally released in October (one account states that he was “pardoned”),60 but he remained under house arrest in his home on Mansureva. One person who claimed to have been close to Brusilov during these years wrote that during the spring, summer, and fall of 1919, he lived in a village outside of Moscow, where he would have died of starvation had the local Christian community and former soldiers not fed him.61 The writer may well have confused this time with the summer of 1918, but it was at this time that he learned that his favorite brother Boris had died on September 17 while incarcerated.62

322

Chapter 9

In these times, his interest in mysticism strengthened in 1918.63 He also had become very bitter and hostile to the Soviet regime. He even asked to be allowed to emigrate.64 The historian Figes writes that he had come to hate Bolshevism, calling it “the anti-Christ,” and he even came to rejoice when the White armies advanced,65 but his strong Russian nationalism and his slavophilic devotion would not let him enter the war. Bolshevism would one day disappear, he believed, and Russia would remain. After his death, someone quoted him in the émigré newspaper Rul’ as asking, “What is Bolshevism? It’s nonsense, a hard form of crust. Let the civil war, in which Europe only harms with its slovenly help, come to an end, today by us, tomorrow by you, and we ourselves will compare this with this poverty the two bills.”66 Life in late 1918 and 1919 was generally very hard for everyone in Russia, including the Brusilovs. They lived in the same Moscow apartment, but Nadia’s brother and sister Lena lived with them. “Bad times” was their lot, Nadia recorded in her memoir notes. “We were freezing and hungry. All energies were concentrated on getting bread and being of use to the country,” she wrote, but then added, “not the government.” Lena worked in some archive, and her brother worked in the institute Glavkozha, although Nadia never knew exactly what he did. Later he served in the Red Army, until he deserted to Kolchak and died somewhere in Siberia. Apparently her mother and father lived in Moscow but not with the Brusilovs. Her father died of starvation, but her mother was able to survive because Lena, who was served in the archive “very bad [preskvernyi] soup” and bread, buttressed with straw, would smuggle some soup out to her, while she herself went hungry.67 The new Soviet government not surprisingly began taking control of the army as soon as possible. At first, no one took their efforts too seriously, and much of the army’s work went on as before. Soon, however, the officer corps disintegrated, many going to what had been their homes, because they could not see the point of continuing.68 Only the most embittered had joined the Whites,69 but an army needs officers, so the Soviet government recruited tsarist officers. There was often the belief that all had to be pressed into Soviet service, and doubtlessly many were, but there were those who willingly if not enthusiastically joined. One British report on Soviet officer recruiting noted, “The higher commanders are furnished from renegade ex-General Staff officers of the Imperial Army.”70 Some joined enthusiastically, while others joined simply to get something to eat. By August of 1920, when the Polish War had started, 314,180 were already then in service.71 One soldier who entered the Bolsheviks’ service was Brusilov’s son, Alyosha. He had entered the Red Army, Nadia believed, to make the Bolsheviks leave his father alone, and he commanded for them the 1st cavalry regiment assigned to the 42nd Soviet Infantry Division.72 Historian Karen Patrone felt that he did so as well to escape his bad marriage,73 which must have been

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

323

bad indeed. In the fighting south of Orel, a Red cavalry force which young Brusilov commanded was captured near the Sosna River. Initial reports went out that Brusilov himself had been captured. It was announced in Voennaia pravda on December 20, 1919, that he had been wounded and captured in the fighting in October around Orel in Denikin’s nearly successful drive toward Moscow, and that he had been tried and shot by the Whites.74 At his inquest, the presiding White officers had even refused to shake his hand. This gesture so angered the young Brusilov, the newspaper report goes, that he declined to answer the questions at the inquest. The court condemned him to death, and he was executed on the banks of the Sosna River within the hearing of Red artillery fire.75 Nadia believed that he had been killed by the Whites, but she wrote he was killed by what she calls “White soldiers, generals or bandits— it’s not known who (her italics).”76 Brusilov himself even became convinced that Denikin had killed him.77 Two different individuals who purported to be eye-witnesses tell a different story. One Civil War veteran living in Italy, Vladimir Pavlovich Zasetskii, wrote a letter to the editor of Vozrozhdenie in response to an article entitled “How the Son of General Brusilov was Shot” stating that Alyosha had joined the Whites voluntarily.78 Several days later, another letter appeared in the same paper from someone from the 1st Orlov regiment, who also claimed to have been an eye-witness. He wrote that Alyosha had voluntarily [author’s italics] surrendered with his regiment and had been treated well and was even invited to breakfast with the staff of the army that “captured” him. He served with the Whites about a month, when he contracted typhus and was evacuated to a hospital in Rostov, where he died. The author stated that his account could be verified by members of the Markovtsy (members of the unit led by one Markov).79 The story has a true ring to it. The witnesses would hardly have had any reason to fabricate this story, especially given the fact that Brusilov was so unpopular in the White émigré community. What irrational local commanders might do can often have no basis in reason, but the Whites would have been very foolish to kill Brusilov’s son and would have been highly unlikely to have done so, especially after several days of thought during which an inquest one account stated was held. He would be much more useful to them alive, and to kill him might only drive the elder Brusilov into the Civil War on the side of the Reds. Moreover, for the Reds to be able to say that the Whites had killed him would be a great propaganda weapon for them. They would hardly have known firsthand that they had in any case, but whatever had really happened to his son in the Orel offensive, Brusilov and his wife believed for the remainder of their lives that the Whites had shot him. However Alyosha met his death, it for some strange reason laid a mass of guilt on Brusilov père.80

324

Chapter 9

By 1920, the White movement was in its final death throes, although a few embers of it flickered in the form of Baron P. N. Vrangel’s forces in the South, and there were still some foreign troops in the Far East and the Caucasus. Brusilov had of course survived, but a number of his army associates had not. Ruzskii had, like Brusilov, not taken sides in the Civil War, but in September 1918, he was arrested taken in the Caucasus by the Cheka as hostages. He was later hacked to death with sabers in Piatigorsk. A similar fate befell Radko-Dmitriev.81 Kaledin, who had commanded the VIII Army in the 1916 Offensive, led the Don Cossack army in January 1918, and after the defeat of the White movement, he shot himself.82 Whereas Brusilov’s hatred of the Bolsheviks had not been sufficient to bring him into the Civil War in any fashion, Poland’s invasion of Russia in 1920 was more than his Russian-Slavic nationalism could bear. Poland had been displeased with the small Polish nation created by the Curzon Line at the Paris Peace Conference, because when Poland had begun to shrink because of the imperialism of its neighbors in the seventeenth century, its borders reached in effect to the Sea of Azov. The Paris Peace Conference’s Curzon Line as the eastern border of the Polish nation, drawn on ethnic considerations, was far short of Polish national expectations for the resurrected state. More real, however, were Polish fears of Soviet domination as Soviet forces assisted Communist insurgents in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, with a clear intention of doing so in Poland at the first opportunity. A British report on the internal situation in Russia at the time noted that the Poles planned to send troops to Grodno and Vilna, two cities to which they laid claim, “to defend these areas against the Bolsheviks,” adding with typical British understatement that their interest “does not appear to have been actuated by entirely disinterested motives.”83 Forming a league with the deposed Ukrainian dictator Simon Petliura, and while American relief efforts were feeding a million-and-a-half Polish children, Marshal Joseph Pilsudsky launched an imperialistic war against Red Russia on April 25, 1920, driving largely into former “Polish” Ukrainian territories. By May 8, the Ukrainian city of Kiev had fallen to the Polish–Ukrainian forces. Kiev was historically the birthplace of the Russian nation. The Russians had been converted to Christianity there. Brusilov’s family had in the past fought the Poles in Ukraine and had received land grants there for their service against them. Much of the Iron General’s military service had been in Ukraine during the war as he had commanded the Southwest Front. Making it worse were Baron Wrangel’s activities to the south and west of the Polish invasion, trying to take advantage of the plight of Soviet forces in the area. There was in reality little Polish-Wrangel cooperation,84 probably because each knew that the success of either would eventually bring the two sides into conflict, but to Brusilov, the White general’s actions

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

325

appeared so and were, therefore, especially “inexcusable” in this incidence because he saw them as “placing their class interests above those of the Russian Empire [sic].”85 Therefore, aged sixty-seven and in poor health, Brusilov unhesitatingly rose to the defense of his native land. On May 1, 1920, Brusilov wrote a letter to N. I. Rattel on the All-Russian Staff, in which he offered “to gather a meeting of people of practical military experience for the detailed discussion of the present situation of Russia and with the ultimate goal of ridding [Russia] of the foreign threat.”86 In a telegram to someone (it is unclear to whom) shortly after the fall of Kiev to the Poles, he outlined his position. He noted that Russia must first protect “our freedom from a foreign enemy” and called for the “unity . . . of our great Russia.”87 Understandably, the Soviet government was eager to enlist the popular general’s support, even if it was not for action against the Whites. On May 2, he was made the chair of a committee called the Special Conference under the Supreme Command of All Defenses of the Republic, more casually the Special Military Council (sometimes called the Military-Legislative Council of the Revolutionary Military Council, or Revvoensovet),88 which was to be only an advisory body, but one of great propaganda value as well. Its members would not be engaged in leading troops or would not take active roles at the front, but they would advise on technical problems and would recruit former tsarist officers to the cause.89 Included on the council were Polivanov, Zaionchkovsky, Klembovsky, and Gutor.90 One observer dismissed the “Special Convocation” as “general castoffs of the Great War,” while others saw the utilization of these generals as a Bolshevik turn to the political right. This same observer wrote, “I don’t think so; it is more likely a matter of using the generals as puppets; and for the generals, it is a golden opportunity to get on rations.” Out of this association, however, the Moscovite diarist Ilia Got’e felt that the Bolsheviks were getting an aura of respectability, “behind which it is easier for them to conduct their policy.”91 There is little evidence about the motives of the others, but for Brusilov, there is ample proof that his reasons were nationalistic. Russia was being invaded by a foreign power that was attacking the Motherland at a time when the nation and its people had been exhausted by a terrible civil war. Brusilov’s life might not have been great at this point nor his food abundant, but had he been willing to sell himself for a better life, he could easily have done so to the Bolsheviks during the civil war. He had suffered from the cold, hunger, and inadequate medical attention rather than join the Bolsheviks for relief, so he was hardly likely to do that now, when the enemy was an external one. There is no question that the Soviet government was delighted “to exploit his influential name,” as Got’e put it,92 but Brusilov’s actions here clearly are not motivated by self-interest.

326

Chapter 9

The most valuable action of the former commander-in-chief was a ringing appeal for all former officers to rally to the defense of not the fledgling Soviet regime, but to Holy Russia. It appeared in Pravda and other publications on May 30, 1920, and it found itself abroad as well. Addressing the readers as “Your old commander-in-chief,” Brusilov played on their homesickness, noting how “difficult it is for you to live abroad away from your family and native land.” He then added that now he could help them. He offered these officers, whether they had fought for the White cause or not, an amnesty to return and fight for “our long-suffering Russia.” He remonstrated mildly with those who left, reminding them that “I did not leave our native land; I remained in Russia,” but then he returned to his oft-quoted theme: “When your mother is sick, you don’t leave.” Having hopefully made them now feel guilty, he played on the terrible times through which the country had recently passed and was still passing, but optimistically predicted that “a great future awaits her [Russia].” Reminding them that he had remained neutral in the Civil War and “did not spill his brothers’ blood,” he gave them a bitter dose of reality that “returning to the old days is not going to happen,” adding, “You do not know your children; they have grown up out of their diapers [rubashenok]” [with] “a strong faith and love of the Homeland” and with a loyalty “to the new state which is now protected by the Red Army.” He spoke of a love of the Russian people for one another and called for unity, inviting all of the officers to return home, or if still in Russia to return to the army.93 If anyone ever recorded the number of officers who joined the Red Army because of Brusilov’s appeal, these records are lost to history. Yet undoubtedly, Brusilov’s actions obtained the release of thousands from Soviet prisons and camps.94 Sadly, many survived only to die later in Stalin’s gulags in the 1930s. Other appeals followed. In another call that appeared on June 7, Brusilov stated that “the Russian people,” not the Soviet authorities, had freed all nationalities “to build their lives according to their own wishes,” but this new freedom was threatened by the Poles who “suddenly want to take from us the land settled by Russian populations,” not mentioning the fact that the majority of these territories had only a minority of ethnic Russians. These areas were Latvia, Belorussiia, Ukraine, and New Russia (the Black Sea littoral). “In this critical and historic moment of our national life, We, your old military comrades [his italics], appeal to your feeling of love and devotion to your country and summon you with the genuine request to forget all insults . . . and voluntarily go with full cooperation and will into the Red Army at the front or in the rear . . . to serve not from fear but from conviction.” He called on all to put aside “selfish feeling of the class struggle” and to come to the assistance “of the native Russian people and embrace their Mother Russia.” It was signed “A. A. Brusilov, President of the Special Conference under the Supreme Command.”95 His various appeals were accompanied by an appeal

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

327

by Lenin offering a pardon for all former White officers who would fight against Poland and Wrangel.96 It is possibly safe to say that Brusilov’s actions took place in part because he felt that the Soviet system would not last, but for the present, it was the only government that could organize the country for the defense against the Polish invasion. Many years later, he was still stressing “devotion to one’s country” that made him work for the Soviets, and in an article he wrote in 1924, he repeated by now his ad nauseam theme: “To die bravely for one’s country is the greatest sacrifice of love to one’s country, to one’s Motherland.”97 His old subordinate and famous White general Denikin never saw it that way. To him Brusilov was “losing his honor and virtue . . . [by] entering the service of the enemies of the Russian people.”98 Many observers, however, did not understand his devotion, which they saw not as a love for Mother Russia but desertion to the brigands that had seized power there. The French newspaper Le Matin wrote after Brusilov’s death that his partnership with the Bolsheviks “is enveloped in mystery that had not been penetrated to this day.”99 No argument that he never fought against the Whites and that his summons was a call to serve Mother Russia, not the Soviets, ever made an impression to these people. To them he was and always would be a traitor. Moreover, they were impervious to the facts in the case. Obshchee Delo, an émigré newspaper, reported that “their efficient and treacherous force made itself felt at critical moments on Kolchak, and Denikin, and Wrangel,” ignoring the fact that at the time of Brusilov’s call to arms, the Reds controlled all of Siberia, Kolchak had been shot, and Denikin had turned his forces over to Wrangel, who did not have a ghost of a chance of succeeding. Yet to the editors of Obshchee Delo, the arguments about devotion of these generals “shall not free them either from our scorn or from the judgement of History.”100 Brusilov was called “the Red General” by the émigré community, and rumors circulated that he had been bribed with all sorts of things, millions of roubles, a Kremlin apartment, etc.,101 all of which is not true. Even Brusilov himself had had pangs of conscience about it, given the way he had come to feel about the Bolsheviks. The decision was “the hardest moment of my life,” he wrote a few years before his death. Even at home he faced silent recriminations. “At the time there was a deathly silence in the house,” he remembered later. “The family walked about on tiptoes and talked in whispers. My wife and [her] sister had tears in their eyes.”102 Not surprisingly, Trotsky was eager to make as much as possible of Brusilov’s support of the Soviet army. Professor David Stone of Kansas State University, while researching Trotsky’s actions during these years, encountered a letter supposedly by Brusilov to Vrangel’s army stating that he was now the commander-in-chief of the Red Army and was therefore ordering them to come under his leadership and join the fight against the Polish invasion.

328

Chapter 9

Brusilov may well have written a letter to Vrangel’s army suggesting that they join the fight, but he would never have claimed, even with Trotsky’s permission, that he was the leader of the Red Army. Vrangel does not mention any such letter in his memoirs, and although it was in Soviet archives, it is possible that it was not ever sent. If it was, it would not have been given wide circulation among the detritus of the White movement for fear that it might influence the White soldiers to follow the popular general.103 Brusilov’s rally to the defense of Russia did not find favor with the general Russian White community either. Probably embittered because he had remained neutral in the Civil War, making him suspect in itself, the émigré community felt that this action merely confirmed it. To them he was a traitor to the “real” Russia, and when the editor of Obshchee delo, comprised a roll of tsarist generals who had “sold out” to the III International, as the journal put it, Brusilov’s name headed the list.104 They were all accused of actively preparing the Soviet armies to defeat the Whites despite the fact that Brusilov himself did not enter Soviet service until the White movement was little more than a few dying coals among the ashes of a doomed cause, and then clearly calling on former tsarist officers to rally to the defeat of the Polish invasion, not to crush the remains of the White forces. One Burtsev, the editor, accused them all of whipping the “rag-tag Red Army” into shape, and he concluded with the promise that when “lawful” government would be restored to Russia by the White Movement, each general on the list would be hanged. Curiously, in accounting what each had done to salvage the Red Army, Brusilov was not mentioned as working for the Reds.105 In reality, many non-communist Russians in Russia felt about Brusilov as the White émigrés did. The hate mail flowed into the apartment on Mansurevsky condemning Brusilov for serving the Soviets “when Cheka jails are full of Russian officers.”106 One woman who was a wife of an imprisoned officer wrote in a similar vein in a typed and unsigned letter that if Brusilov wanted former tsarist officers, why did he not check “the prisons and camps where you will find millions of them, whose mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, brothers, fathers and friends are shedding tears for them.” Hoping that the arrival of the Poles would free these imprisoned officers, the author concluded that “if they are not shot first by the powers that be,” the author concluded, “So, General, give freedom to our officers[,] and then make them a place in the Red Army for the defense of ‘Mother-Russia,’ not for evil, heartless, untruthful, independent stepmothers.”107 Later living in the West, Nadia bought a pamphlet entitled Remembrance of the Tsarist Martyrs, sold to aid Russian émigrés, only to find that it was largely an attack on her husband, branding him “an ambitious careerist without depth and proper analytical qualities.”108 Nadia spent the remainder of her life defending her husband, and her writing, both published and unpublished,

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

329

endlessly stressed the fact that he was neither a White nor Red general, but a “Russian general, defending Russian borders and the Russian people.”109 Once when answering the accusation that her husband had been a “Bolshevik and a communist,” she declared “My husband served Russia under the tsarist government, served also under the Bolsheviks, but he served not the government but his country [italics hers], as earlier so also now.”110 Nadia had, of course, gotten this line from her husband who the reader is aware repeatedly spoke it himself. Just before his death, in a conversation with the editors of Giornale d’Italia in Moscow, he repeated his position and reiterated that it had brought him much criticism. Stating that he was a soldier, and as a soldier, he was always obligated to do his duty “according to my soldier’s heart,” he concluded, “I am a man of honor, devoted to the tsar, to the country, to the [imperial] family. Yet, the tsar has disappeared and the throne has collapsed. Where is the tsar? . . . The emperor no longer exists, but Russia survives. Even the present regime will [eventually] disappear, but . . . [now it] represents Russia.” Then he stressed the point that he had made so often: “In the moment of peril, I offered myself to collaborate in order to save Russia from foreigners. I am a soldier.”111 Without the former tsarist officers both during the Civil War and during the Polish invasion, however, the Red army could not have functioned. There was simply not enough trained military personnel with leftist credentials to have formed and led an army. Many in the Civil War were forced to serve, with their families being held hostage to insure their loyalty. Others served then and after the Polish War because soldiering was the only career for which they had been trained, and their families had to eat. ARA supervisor J. Rives Childs had many of the former officers come to him seeking employment. In the diary he wrote in 1922, “Of course, the world knows of Brusilov and of the part he played in the campaign against Poland, but I doubt if the outside world has any realization of the extent to which the higher ranks in the present Red Army are occupied by old officers [of the Imperial Army].”112 The hatred of him continued, however, and was not confined only to Russian émigrés. As late as 1925, at some sort of meeting, a peasant shouted out at the speaker, “You won’t pay the peasant invalid who lost his leg defending your revolution even a rouble[,] but you’ve found 300 a month for the tsarist General Brusilov. . . . Where is justice? . . . Kerensky’s government was better for us.”113 After the Polish War, the Soviets gave Brusilov first a job in the Peoples’ Commissariat of Agriculture, where he worked for the army on increasing the stock of horses fit for cavalry use, but he was soon appointed the Chief Inspector of Cavalry.114 The job was probably largely a sinecure in partial payment for his service to the Soviets at the crucial time. Brusilov, in his new position, always avoided politics, and although he worked in high circles, he

330

Chapter 9

never met Lenin, and according to his wife, was not interested in meeting him.115 He, too, had his problems with the Soviet government. They refused to publish some of his writings and ignored his efforts to help some of his arrested former tsarist associates.116 He likewise tangled with some of the representatives on the Soviet military history establishment, and these conflicts resulted in a feud with his former subordinate A. M. Zaionchkovsky, who held a favored place writing military history for the Soviets in the 1920s largely due to his former association with Brusilov. Nadia recorded that she and Brusilov encountered Zaionchkovsky on the street one day in November 1925. When Brusilov greeted him, the former subordinate turned white in horror and shame. Nadia felt that he had somehow stabbed her husband in the back, but even he, on Brusilov’s death, wrote a public tribute to him.117 In the 1920s like always, the Brusilovs’ home was full of visitors. Some came by to ask for favors, others just to cry on their shoulders and reminisce about old times. Often they brought gifts like fresh fruit, and sometimes former soldiers sent him food, even from abroad. One friend in Berlin wrote, “I am sending 50 packets of soup, 25 cubes of bouillon, 14 pieces of chocolate, 5 packets of vegetables.”118 Once to a visitor at the Brusilovs’ table, the general commented that the fish served was a gift from one of his former soldiers. “My soldiers have not forgotten me,” he commented. “They found some fish and brought them [to me].” Yet Brusilov tried not to rely on the help of others. One old priest remembered seeing the aged, ill general on the street bent over carrying a soldier’s sack on his back. The priest offered to carry it for him, only to discover that the “old soldier” was General Brusilov. “I am carrying my [own] ration,” he replied, “so that I am not a burden to others.”119 Pleas to the Iron General for help were frequent, some of which were ludicrous. One night a Jew “of small stature” showed up at the Brusilov’s apartment. Making the point of how important Brusilov was, he noted that if he, Brusilov, would convert to Judaism, the Jews in Russia could raise much more money from America. Brusilov turned pale at the request. Nadia was so shocked that her legs gave out from under her, and she sat on the sofa. When Brusilov tactfully said “No” to the request, the man expressed surprise, adding that a lot of Jews had served under him. This caused Brusilov to reply, “I never made the distinction between a good Russian soldier and a good Jewish soldier.”120 Times were genuinely hard for the Brusilovs despite his relatively favorable position under the Soviet regime, and frequently he did not receive his pension or his salary on schedule and was reduced to selling things out of his apartment. The diarist Got’e became acquainted with Brusilov in the 1920s and recorded his having to sell some of his furniture to get along. Got’e was in a position to help and did so, but in his diary he wrote, “If I had been told five years ago, amid the thunder of the VIII Army’s successes and later in

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

331

1916 and the successes of the Southwestern Front, that I would have someday be doing small favors for Brusilov, I would not have believed it.”121 Others did as well. In the days of famine, when most people thought only of themselves and their families, “the simple Russian soldier remembered their father commander and forgot himself.”122 In the early 1920s, Brusilov’s health first began seriously to decline, and until the end of his life, Nadia remembered, “He frequently in this time was sick.”123 His poverty did not permit them to heat their apartment adequately, and the cold contributed to his already bad bronchitis. Some nights he would not sleep at all for his coughing. He lost his appetite and seems to have fallen into a depression, losing interest in almost everything. The only activity he did with any enthusiasm was to go to church. In this low period, he even sought the help of a hypnotist to overcome his depressions.124 On September 5, 1923, he attached to a report on the cavalry the request to be relieved from his position and to be allowed to retire. “In view of my advanced age and ill health,” he wrote, “I am asking to be freed from the duty of Inspector of Cavalry . . . if you find it possible.” The letter was returned to him with a note attached stating that “Only RVSP [Revvoensovet?] can release you.”125 He was finally formally retired in 1924 when Budenny wanted to purge the army of all former tsarist officers now that a crowd of Communist-indoctrinated younger men were coming through the pipeline.126 At the time of his departure, he had served in the Russian military for over fifty years. Brusilov was given a pension of 300 roubles a month, a sum on which he could at that time live, if it was paid, but his and Nadia’s generosity with their less fortunate friends led them to give much of it away, leaving them always in desperate straits. He had been given a car and driver by the Soviet government, but since there was never any gasoline to be had, it was a useless perk, and his wife had to take a taxi or a tram to do her shopping.127 In 1924, Brusilov and Nadia were amazingly allowed to go to Czechoslovakia for medical treatment for his various illnesses, spending most of his time in the spa town of Carlsbad.128 He was allowed to leave because of the intervention again of his former benefactor Frunze. When Frunze died, Brusilov’s health prevented his going to the funeral, but the grateful general wrote to the Revvoensovet a letter asking that it be forwarded to Frunze’s family. “I will always remember the kind relationship and attention of Mikhail Vasilovich to me and to my family. My deep gratitude to him demands that I express my heartfelt condolences and sympathy not only to his widow but also to you [the committee], his closest co-workers and colleagues. A Brusilov.”129 It was also in Carlsbad apparently that he began to work on his memoirs. In all the years he was in service, he had never kept a diary, so all of his recollections had to be resurrected from memory. He dictated his thoughts and

332

Chapter 9

recollections to Nadia, who served as his amanuensis. His wife remembered his saying that he wrote his memoirs not for his own personal gratification but to honor the gallant dead. The work was largely devoid of politics, except for an occasional tweet of the tsarist regime, probably necessitated by his Soviet editor. In his introduction, he wrote that the object of the book is “to set down my own personal impressions of the great events in which I was either an actor or a spectator.” He also hoped “to help to elucidate a number of obscurities.” It was to be a simple record “of what had distressed or pleased or absorbed me most.”130 Nadia later remembered that he told her, “My memoirs are necessary for the Russia of the future, but not for the contemporary political babblers.”131 After his death, Nadia asked the Soviet government to allow her to go abroad to promote what had been dictated in Carlsbad. Nadia had apparently laced the manuscript with some of her own additions, but one of his quotes does ring true: “Let Russia know how I loved her and that I gloried in her name.”132 It sounds like the language of Nadia as well, but the idea was vintage Brusilov. His memoirs, first published in the Soviet Union, do contain some political twists. He was critical of the Empress (probably to satisfy a Soviet editor) implying that she was giving secrets to the Germans and hated him as well—two things her letters to her husband show not to be true. He surprisingly praised Nicholas II as a decent but ineffectual man. He called General Dukhonin “a very capable man” who had “met such a tragic end [when he was beaten to death by his soldiers].”133 Their sojourn in Carlsbad was in many ways a pleasant time for them because Brusilov drew lots of attention here because the Czechs had been the major Slavic force to desert to the Russians, and many units had fought under his command. He was feted by the press and the government as well, and there were strong suggestions that he not return to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, return he did, for the same reason that he had never left in the first place nor took sides in the Civil War. His “mother” was still sick, and he could not leave his mother. For this attitude, the Soviet people still loved him.134 His stay in the west likewise afforded him the opportunity to making contact with his nephew Heinz Hagenmeister, who was living in Paris and was working for a French bank. Heinz had gotten Brusilov’s address from his sister and wrote immediately, hoping that he would receive it before returning to the Soviet Union. He informed Brusilov of the activities of all the family members, all of whom seemed to have escaped to the West. He inquired about Brusilov’s and his wife’s health and promised at a later time to send a picture of his wife, a Russian, “with whom I am very happy.”135 One aspect of his Czech visit was not very pleasant: His hostile reception by the Russian émigré community.136 They had a close friend in Carlsbad, a “kind old man Kren” with whom they socialized. Once when they were

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

333

invited to his house, Nadia learned that a Russian prince and a count would also be there, so she declined the invitation without telling Brusilov because she did not know how they would treat her husband. Conversely, she also feared that on returning to Russia, their having had contact with White émigrés might cause them a problem.137 Coming back to the Soviet Union from Carlsbad in the summer of 1925, Brusilov was in better health, but in the fall, his foot troubled him again. Moreover, his left arm and shoulder, which he had injured in the RussoTurkish War, began causing him problems. After some treatment, his foot improved but his shoulder did not. Their visits to the doctor in the foul weather had to be made by bus, and frequently there were long waits before the doctor could see him. He caught a cold which took a terrible toll on him, and he remained in bed for three weeks. He was unable to take his usual strolls, and his strength left him. In March, he seemed to have recovered somewhat, at least enough to accompany Nadia and Lena on a shopping trip along Ostrozhenka to Il’insky Pereulok. At some point, Brusilov seemed winded and suggested that they return home. Suspecting only that his foot was bothering him, Nadia told him to start returning home by himself, and she would purchase a lemon she was seeking and catch up with him. When she arrived at the house, however, he was not there. Frightened, she retraced her steps and found him sitting at the gate of a house on a footstool on Ostrozhenka around Durnovo Pereulok. He was ashen white. Nadia had apparently passed him on the other side of the street and had not noticed him. She immediately realized it was an attack of angina. She finally got him home and gave him a dose of nitroglycerine. With the help of her sister, she put his feet in hot water and then a Dr. Tskhvetadze, who lived in their building, helped her gain admittance for him into a hospital.138 In the hospital, Brusilov was attended by E. V. Linter, also a famous physician, and later by Dr. O. L. Krenig, another well-known doctor, who rarely left his bedside. The two physicians brought in a Professor Konchalovsky, a noted specialist, who told Nadia that the situation was not hopeless, but then added, “I do not know if he will live or die, but I know how to pray for him.”139 Krenig was called out of town, but he promised Nadia that he would return in several days. On Friday, Brusilov’s priest visited, and Brusilov asked him to hear his last confession. Brusilov said, “I think that still my people need me.” He began to ramble, bringing up the death of his brother Boris in prison in 1918 as well as Nadia’s brother Rostia, who had died in 1924 of heart failure. They tried to change the subject, but he continued to return to his rambles about “my poor, poor Boris” and how he had died in prison “without any help, without any care.” By Sunday he was somewhat better, and he was able to eat an egg and a roll and drink some coffee. Nadia and Lena waited on him, as did the

334

Chapter 9

entire hospital staff. At one point, he joked, “Mobilize everything, my dear women.” They were joined in their ministrations by Nadia’s niece Nadezhda Federovna Yakhontova, who stayed with her aunt during the sleepless nights. Toward evening of March 16, his breathing became labored, and he complained of being hot. His temperature was taken at 38.1o C,140 and Nadia began to lose hope that he would survive. Weakened, he turned to her and said, “To love more than I loved you was not possible.” He then turned to Lena and taking her hand, he said, “You, my wonder, are my true friend, and you have comforted me much in life.” He then rambled on about officers who had served under him, and said at one point how he would like to have a cigarette, which was forbidden to him. Brusilov’s pulse weakened. Family and friends gathered around, including his nieces Olga and Elena Brusilova. Night fell. Nadia noticed a strange disturbed look in his eyes. He took her hand in his and said, “If I do not die tonight, I will be surprised.” to which Nadia quickly added, “My dear, you will then be surprised.” At 2:00 a.m. there appeared a somewhat new expression in his eyes, and he said, “It would be good to die,” and then he added, “It will be.” He then turned and strangely looked at a picture at his bedside of his first wife Anna Nikolaevna, an odd item to have taken to the hospital. She had died, the reader will remember, in 1907. Nadia held his “dear sweet head” on her chest. The time passed in silence until about 3:00 a.m. Nadia later wrote, “I don’t remember the precise moment he died, when suddenly he took a deep breath. “Alyosha, don’t abandon me,” she remembered his calling out. She summoned her sister and a doctor, who took his pulse and said that there was none.141 Brusilov apparently died about 3:30 a.m. on March 17, 1926, from the combination of his weakening heart and pneumonia, having been a loyal son of Russia for seventy-three years.142 An announcement appeared the next day in the local papers, which read, “Nadezhda Vladimirovna Brusilova with great sorrow announces the death of her husband ALEKSEI ALEKSEEVICH BRUSILOV on the previous night of March 16–17. Concerning the day of the funeral, call 4-91-79.143 The next day after his death, a delegation from the Revvoensovet appeared at Nadia’s apartment and presented from the military council a large metal wreath of white and red roses with a red ribbon on which was written in gold letters: “To the honorable Representative of the Old Generation, given for his military experience in service of the USSR and the Red Army—A. A. Brusilov.” The next day at his grave they sent two wreaths of living white flowers adorned with the St. George ribbons.144 On March 19, a military escort consisting of a company of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and an artillery battery escorted the family to the small neighborhood church, the Church Uspenie Presviatoi Bogorodintsy, in the Ostrozhenka district, where they held the funeral service, which was

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

335

conducted by priests from the two neighborhood churches, the Church of the Resurrection and the Church of the Uspenie, which Brusilov usually attended, as well as some of the clergy from the Church of St.Trifon. The church was not surprisingly too small to contain the crowd, and a large number had to stand in the courtyard outside. Some actually fought to gain entrance. The mounted police pushed and shoved the crowd, which contained many peasants who had come from the villages of Kolomenskoe, Beliaevka, and Diakovennyi. One attendee was there with tears in his eyes. He could only mumble, “My leader, my teacher.” A delegation from the military academy appeared with a wreath of white flowers, and there were several official figures there, but no major personage came from the Kremlin. A. I. Egorov represented the Revvoensovet. The most prominent person in attendance was the famous cavalry leader S. M. Budenny. There assembled were a true mixture of the Tsarist and Soviet world. The music was both Chopin’s and Beethoven’s funeral marches, but the funeral was a religious one, which surprised some people, who tactlessly asked Nadia why he had had one. Her reply, as she remembered it, was “I only assert that for my husband and me faith in God our Jesus Christ is a great light and only hope.”145 The main eulogy was given by General A. I. Snesareev, a general in the Red Army and a professor in the military academy in Moscow, but then speaker after speaker followed extolling Brusilov’s battlefield heroics and his personal virtues, with one noting that he “had given us a shining example which will guide and sustain us for all days to come.”146 Some peasants carried the coffin to the Brusilov apartment, where the Iron General lay in state. There it awaited a military escort, which appeared at 8:00 p.m. At this point, the “soviet” part of the funeral began. To escort the body. Nadia and her family went by car to the Novo-devichi Cemetery, where Brusilov was to be laid to rest in the central part of the monastery near Rostia, not in the more familiar cemetery known to tourists today. The tombstone placed there strangely had inscribed on it, “For the faith, the Tsar, and the Fatherland.” Today his grave is shaded by a small but thick grove of birch trees, which have grown out of the grave plot. They laid another wreath on which was inscribed, “To the honorable representative of the old generation, who had shared his military experience in the service of the USSR and the Red Army.” At the cemetery, both Egorov and Budenny spoke, in the name of communism. Egorov noted that “Today we are burying one of the shining commanders, one from the old generals who joined the October Revolution.” Not to be outdone in the twisting of history, Budenny told the crowd that Brusilov “was one of those who proved to the workers and peasants of the USSR that they are going to work together to create the Revolution.”147 Although no major Soviet figure attended his internment, the Kremlin broke with established tradition and paid for the funeral. The account states

336

Chapter 9

that Frunze, the commissar of war, sent a wreath, but Frunze had died the year before, so it must refer to the one the Revvoensovet sent made of metal leaves and china flowers on which was a ribbon with the inscription, “To A. A. Brusilov, from the Revolutionary Military Soviet SSSR.” A wreath also arrived from the military Akademy RKKA with the inscription “To the oldest military worker A. A. Brusilov.” To Nadia, the absence of any important personage was a big disappointment, but then she was always more sensitive to slights to her husband than he was. She recorded in her memoir that Trotsky and Kamenev would not allow anyone to come because of Brusilov’s popularity,148 but this supposition is probably not true. She had obviously forgotten, if she had ever known, that at the time of her husband’s death, both Trotsky and Kamenev were locked in a life and death struggle with Stalin for power, and attendance at Brusilov’s funeral was probably not uppermost in their minds.149 The funeral was in any case a large event. Many people sent and brought flowers. His eulogies sound like those found in the anthologies of medieval Russian writings of heroic princes and military leaders of bygone years. They often heralded his victory over the Austrians and his great trophies of victory, and there were frequent references to how he was loved by his soldiers.150 Several public officials made public statements, among them Voroshilov, who lauded Brusilov in Pravda for not immigrating “to the countries of the enemies of the workers and peasants.” He praised him for comprehending the “socialist landslide” that was the Revolution and bringing with him “the bright aura of the old army.” He also praised him for understanding “the significance of the social transformation that was occurring [with the revolution].”151 Someone, it is unclear who, praised him publicly as well, especially for not having his name “on the [shameful] list of émigrés.”152 Kerensky, whose name indeed headed that “shameful list,” told George Suarez of Le Figaro in Paris, “I have spent whole days at his side, and I can testify not only to his valor in war, but of his exceptional facility to penetrate to the spirit of the masses,”153 explaining that all chiefs do not have “this psychology,” which results often in “bureaucrats [in the] place of true soldiers.” Then he said, “Do you know what this name Brusilov signifies? 400,000 POWs, 40,000 square kilometers of territory liberated, thousands of pieces of artillery captured and the salvation of the Italian front! Such is the result of his offensive in 1916.”154 In another source, Nadia read that Kerensky said, “When B. chose, he chose finally [bezpovorotno], once and forever,” and he called him “an august leader,” adding that this quality was why he “went over to the Bolsheviks” at the time of the Polish invasion.155 The Soviet press was equally laudatory, if somewhat restrained. They published Voroshilov’s quote mentioned above, and Pravda even noted that Brusilov rather early understood the rottenness of the tsarist system. They

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

337

praised him stating that he had made “energetic efforts” to encourage the former tsar to abdicate, and it also incorrectly noted that after the October Revolution, “Brusilov became loyal to the citizens of the Soviet Republic.”156 The Red Gazette described him as a “gigantic figure,” describing him physically as a “steel spring.” The paper spoke of his energy but said nothing of his politics. Calling him a “real leader,” the journal praised him, in that he “conquered the hearts of his soldiers, simultaneously demanding and receiving from them the highest efforts.”157 Brusilov was praised in the foreign press as well. In addition to the interview in Figaro mentioned above, the London Times printed an article on him in March 18, 1926. The Czech newspaper Prager Presse on March 26 lauded him with the same vigor of the Russian press. Calling him “one of those rare really honest and important people who always acted in agreement with his convictions,” it added that “he died with a faith in Russia, which always was deeply within his soul.” It concluded with a rather glaring inaccuracy that must have drawn attention in the Russian émigré community in Prague: “He died with no one hating him.”158 Less enthusiastically, Cheshke Slovo dismissively told its readers that he had died at about 3 a.m. of lung problems during an epidemic of flu.159 Another newspaper in Prague publishing in German called him “ein hervoragender Mann [an outstanding man].”160 The widow also received a flood of correspondence from everywhere. Typical was one Easter letter which began with the traditional greeting: “Christ is Risen!” and then noting sadly that this was the first Easter “without dear Aleksei.”161 Late in April after Brusilov passed away, Nadia decided to make a trip to Kiev and Odessa to visit friends and relations and touch base with “her native places.” From Kiev she passed through Vinnitsa, where her memories “brought many bitter tears.” The remainder of the travels was no more pleasant. Many of her friends and relations had died, and this compounded her grief, so the trip did not give her any relief from what she called her “Moscow grief.” She and her sister both decided that for them both Kiev and Odessa in its post-revolutionary state had “become for us a total graveyard and dread.”162 Returning to Moscow, Nadia and Lena continued to live on Mansurovskii Pereulok but in the summer of 1926, Lena became ill and it was difficult getting the necessary medicines for her. In February of the next year, Nadia wrote A. S. Eiukidze, the secretary of the VtsIK, informing him of her sister’s illness and telling him that she had had to sell her furniture to live and her pension was inadequate to meet expenses. Given these conditions, she asked to be allowed to take her sister to Carlsbad in May for treatment, buttressing her case with, “We free citizens have the right to travel.” He apparently did not answer her, so she wrote a second letter in which she included her own health problems, playing on his sympathy by concluding with, “I well

338

Chapter 9

understand that you don’t care if two old women are in great suffering.” She concluded by begging him to reply.163 Apparently no answer came from the second request either, so on March 15, 1927, she wrote to Voroshilov. Her letter was similar to the one to Eiukidze, but more of the same, and in this one she invoked often her husband’s name.164 This time her entreaty worked, and although the dates are somewhat confusing, she seems to have left Russia in June of that year, because her notes speak of being in Prague and Paris later that year.165 At some point during these attempts to leave, Nadia and Lena also seem to have gone to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, which provided a better climate, but they were still unable to get the proper drugs for her sister’s “complicated and rare disease.” Finally, she found a Dr. Kleman, who testified that she needed treatment that was not available in Russia, which may have bolstered her case.166 The West was not all that she had hoped, however. Her notes seem to become a little irrational at times as she saw revolution everywhere, and she once expressed horror that both Thomas Masarik and Edward Benes, two prominent Czech leaders, were masons, a group long associated in Russian with revolutionary intentions. She seems to have been back in Moscow in 1928, because in a letter to “Dear Friends,” she complains of the bad food situation, noting that there is no bread in the villages, “not even black bread,” and prices were high. Lena had recently paid 75 kopecks for a funt (about a pound) of rice and 50 kopecks for a pound of kasha.167 At some point in the early 1930s, she left Russia again for good as was indicated by the fact that in departing she took her husband’s papers and correspondence with her, a clear sign that she did not plan to return. It is incredible in itself that she was allowed to leave in the first place, but especially amazing that they permitted her to take her husband’s letters with her. These letters and other things were eventually given to the Russian Exile Archive in Prague, where her niece typed copies of their personal correspondence. Despite her permanent departure, the Soviet government paid her 3,000 roubles for his memoirs, which were first published in 1929. They were a best seller, and 5,000 copies sold in 1929 alone.168 On returning to Prague, Nadia seems to have found it more pleasant than in the earlier visits. From the Czech capital, she could easily visit Paris, where she seems to have spent some time. She was frequently asked why she did not return home, but her reply was always that life there in the West was good, and she could not accept the suppression of the Church by the Soviet government. Nadia also somehow rationalized that she could better help her countrymen in the West by living there. She wrote in her memoir notes that she lost her Soviet pension, but added, “They [the Soviets] are using it [her pension] there, and I am happy to help them.” If she had returned to the Soviet

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

339

Union, she probably would not have gotten it back, she felt, concluding the thought with, “So be it.” She somehow obtained a pension from the Czech government, and she and Lena could live well on it combined with Lena’s salary from a position she obtained at the Theosophical Society.169 Living in Prague, nevertheless, she returned to her literary endeavors, and the most important one was the selling of her husband’s memoirs to foreign publishers. Among one of the more surprising of her publishers was Gosizdat, the Soviet state publishing house, which sent her a contract when she was residing for a time at the Hotel de Grand Vatel in Cap d’Antibes on the Riviera. For the first 10,000 copies, she was to get “200 roubles for each printed page, for the second 10,000 she would receive 10 roubles per page,”170 a most unusual royalty agreement, although at this time the Soviet government probably was not aware that she would not return. While in France, Nadia asked the prominent French general A. Niessel to help her sell her husband’s memoirs to a French publisher, and he agreed to do so, but told her that “in the present crisis,” that is, the worldwide depression, the chance of selling it was minimal.171 General Niessel did indeed find a publisher. The royalty checks were made out to him, but he always deposited them to her Parisian account without taking a commission.172 At one point, she had a total of 7,341 ff. 90 centimes, in the bank, although Niessel wrote of a deduction of 3091 ff. 90. centimes, which he labels “advance for the English editor,” leaving her with 4250 ff.173 Nadia made such a sufficient amount on an English edition of her husband’s memoirs that she had to pay 6 s.8 d. in income tax to the British crown.174 Nadia spent 1930–1931 in Cap d’Antibes, and she seems to have been spending lots of time in Paris by 1933,175 although 1935 also found her traveling in Italy. After this time she seems, from her rambling recollections and her correspondence, to have been spending most of her time in Prague. She complains often of her declining health, and her handwriting becomes very shaky and uncertain, and at times it is virtually illegible. In 1936, she wrote, “I have not written anything for a long time; my hands are too weak. I am very sick.”176 Having written many articles for newspapers and journals since her emigration to the West, she had finally retired from writing by 1935, although she did come out of retirement to write a hostile polemic about Alexander Guchkov, when he passed away in 1936.177 Not surprisingly, to the end of her life, her writings, most of which went unpublished, defended her husband, repeating the familiar theme of how he had remained loyal to Russia, not to the current government. She also frequently lamented the plight of the Russian nation. When in Italy, she had learned that Mussolini had observed that Italians would always remember the 400,000 dead of the Great War (it was really closer to 600,000), she bitterly wrote in her diary, “Who and when mourns for our millions who died? And

340

Chapter 9

what became of our victory? Terrible to remember, better not to think of it. Better to laugh.”178 Like many others, Nadia was horrified at Stalin’s Chistka of the 1930s. “From appearance, all the world has gone crazy,” she wrote in her diary, “and our Russia, as always surpasses everyone. Stalin gorges himself on the blood of his comrades. . . . It is good that we never personally knew him.”179 Had she remained in Russia, she would have most likely been one of his victims. Nadia Brusilova herself was spared a holocaust as bad as Stalin’s Chistka by her death in 1938, a good time to leave Czechoslovakia. One wonders what would have become of her had she lived until the German takeover that came later in the same year of her death, or had she lived until the Russian invasion in 1945. Most assuredly both sides would have tried to use her for propaganda purposes. If death ever comes at a good time, hers did. Brusilov’s great victories continued to be of value to the Soviet government long after his death. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Soviet Russians believed their anti-communist platform made Germany a major threat to the Russian nation. The Soviets became the only real champion of “Collective Security” against the Nazi menace, and they mobilized Brusilov’s memory as a warning to the Germans. By the late 1930s, a number of hagiographic biographies and document collections were published by the Soviet government, all clearly designed to remind the Germans of his great victories in the Great War against the Central Powers. Even after the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Brusilov continued to appear in biographies and document collections, this time more as an encouragement to the Russians to press on in a time like Brusilov had when he told his soldiers that at that present time, “No one in Russia has the right to be tired.” All were not pleased at this praise of Brusilov’s activities under tsarism. A. M Pankratova, a prominent historian of elementary history books in the war years and after, wrote the Central Committee’s Agitation and Propaganda Department to complain that making a hero of a tsarist general was confusing school children because he had been a supporter of the regime that Lenin had destroyed.180 Pankratova must have felt her views confirmed when in 1946, among the materials brought from Prague was supposedly a memoir written by Brusilov when he was there in 1925. This unknown set of memoirs was highly critical of the Soviet Union and Communism. It also noted that Brusilov wanted to emigrate. Despite the fact that these memoirs were supposedly written when in Prague, where he was free never to return to Russia but did, no effort was then made to authenticate the memoir, but Stalin learned of them in 1948 when the Cold War was becoming intense. Immediately Brusilov was declared one of Stalin’s non-persons and his name was expunged from history books. After the “Thaw” began with the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party and Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret de-Stalinization speech,”

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

341

historians were for the first time in decades allowed to challenge Stalin’s pronouncements. A panel of historians analyzed the manuscript and came to the conclusion that it had been written by his wife, whose own writings in exile took a strong anti-Soviet flavor. The result was that Brusilov was rehabilitated. An article in Izvestiia in September 1962, announced his return to the galaxy of great Russian military leaders. Calling the newly discovered memoir a forgery, the author of the article “The Truth about General Brusilov,” G. Belov, Head of the Main Archive Division, told his readers that “All who knew him knew he was loyal to Soviet Power . . . and a patriot.” The archivists and historians decided that the “memoir” was cobbled together from some notes that Brusilov may had dictated with the White Russian antiSoviet flavor added by his wife and other editors. With this action, Brusilov was rehabilitated in Soviet historiography. Sadly he never has been by the Russian émigré community in the West.181 Rostunov states that the manuscript was written in his wife’s hand,182 while Brusilov’s memoirs stated that it was typed. Had it been in Nadia’s hand, it could have been dictated to her by her husband. At any rate, it is highly unlikely that he wrote them since he would have been highly unlikely to have returned to the Soviet Union in 1925 if he had felt that strongly.183 Since the Russian Empire left the war before its conclusion and was therefore not represented at the Paris Peace Conference, Russia’s enormous role in the conflict has been largely forgotten. When Winston Churchill wrote a history of the war on the Eastern Front, he correctly entitled it The Unknown War. Indeed, the West has largely forgotten, or chosen to ignore the contribution of, the Russian nation in both world wars. A wealthy American woman told Prince A. Lobanov-Rostovsky, “I did not know that Russia had been in the war. I guess you Russians didn’t do very much, did you?”184 Without Russian participation, with its enormous sacrifices, the Allies would have most assuredly lost the Great War and would have possibly lost the Second. At the very minimum, it would have taken years longer to defeat the Germans and the Japanese than it did. Moreover, just as the Russian significance has been forgotten, so had the role of Russia’s greatest general in that war, and possibly in all wars. Some great leaders command with a charisma. Their mere presence demands devotion from those who follow. The Russian Iron General, however, was not charismatic in the Hollywood sense. His looks did not impress the observer. Yet as his reputation grew, the image of his leadership built a charismatic following. His soldiers felt his stern discipline but a discipline he likewise applied to himself. The mere fact that he maintained a trim physique until the end of his life spoke of that discipline. What is more, his soldiers knew that he loved them. They knew it because of the stories of his personally ordering that a soldier’s torn boots be replaced, or the sudden care of their

342

Chapter 9

immediate superiors who had been indifferent to their personal hygiene to see to it suddenly that they would get their monthly bath. His successes on the battlefield contributed to their devotion, victories that came from bold, daring, but never reckless actions that were lacking in other commanders, and by the careful planning and preparedness that were his hallmark. He was also often in the thick of battle, near the front, in the trenches, involved in interaction with his soldiers. Many of the Russian troops had never seen the generals who commanded them. Every one of Brusilov’s men had seen him, at the front, inspecting the trenches, talking to his men, ordering the correction of some terrible problem. And what is more, he had never lost faith in his soldiers. On this point, he told a reporter of the London Times, “My faith in the Russian forces and in the Russian people has never wavered.” Herein lies the reason that Brusilov never took sides in the Civil War nor chose to leave his native land after the Communist takeover. He had faith in the Russian people that they would one day abandon the Soviet system. It took six-and-a-half decades after his death, but they eventually did.

NOTES 1. Semanov, B: DD, 275–76. 2. Sokolov, 92. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Pis’mo Generala A. A. Brusilova, n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 7–8, GARF; Brusilov to Utro Rossii, August 1, 1917, f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, l. 15–17, RGVIA. 6. Ibid.; see this also in B to editor, n. d., f. 5962, op. 1, d. 21-A, ll. 367–370, GARF. 7. Russkoe Slovo, July 22/August 4, 1917, no. 166, p. 2, cited in Katkov, Kornilov, 36. 8. Katkov, Kornilov, 53. 9. M. V. Alekseev’s diaries, “Iz dnevnika Generala M. V. Alekseeva,” Russkii Istoricheskii Arkhiv v Prague, collection 1 (Prague, 1929), 40, 44, cited in Katkov, Kornilov, 52–53. 10. Ibid. 11. Semanov, B: DP, 277–78. 12. See my article, “State Conference in Moscow,” Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, 37 (1984), 108–11. 13. Abraham Ascher, “The Kornilov Affair: A History and Interpretation” (Unpublished PhD Dissertation in the Department of History of Indiana University, 1967), 48–49. 14. D. A., Chugaev, ed., Rev. Dvizhenie: razgrom Kornilovskogo miatezha, no. 366, p. 364. 15. Semanov, B: DP, 276–77.

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

343

16. Nesterovich-Berg, V bor’be bolshevikami (Paris, 1931), cited in Sokolov, 94 and Below, 49. 17. “Zagovor Gen. Kornilova,” March 9, 1937, unknown newspaper clipping, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 11, l. 1, GARF; Below, 49; Ascher, “The Kornilov Affair,” Russian Review, 12, no. 4 (October 1953), 286–300. 18. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963), 10. 19. Sokolov, 93. 20. Nadia’s untitled notes, n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, ll. 311–12, GARF. 21. Probably the best single monograph is George Katkov’s The Kornilov Revolt. 22. White, 187–205, esp. 205. 23. Brusilov, Ukaz. Soch., no. 2, p. 27, cited in Sokolov, 95. 24. Sokolov, 93. 25. Ibid., 93. 26. Russkaia vedomosti, no. 234, October 13, 1917, p. 5, published in B and K, 3: 1746. 27. B and K, 3: 1749–51. 28. N. V. Ustrialov, Perelom (Belgrad, 1921), p. 32, cited in Sokolov, 94–95. 29. Semenov, B: DP, 282–83. 30. Ibid. 31. Pares, Russian Memoirs, 570. 32. Sokolov, 95–96. 33. Brusilov, SN, 326; Russ. 1963 Ed., 285. 34. A. Levitsky, “General Brusilov,” Voennaia byl’, no. 89 (Paris), p. 34, cited in Jones, “The Officers,” 223. 35. Figes, 549; Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star (New York: St. Martin’s, 1972), 135; untitled notes of NB, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 189, GARF. 36. Sokolov, 96. 37. Ibid., 97. 38. Ibid. 39. Untitled notes of NB, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 90, GARF; Sokolov, 97. 40. Copy of letter of V. P. Zasetzskii in Vozrozhdenie in “Moscellaneous,” box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 41. Untitled notes by NB, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 27, GARF. 42. Ibid., 90. 43. Nesterovich-Berg, 100, cited in Below, 50. 44. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, l. 50, RGVIA. 45. “Ne dlia pechati,” “Nina’s writings,” October 1, 1936, box 1, Brusilov Papers, Bakhmetev Archive; a somewhat similar explanation is given in a draft of an article Nina wrote, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 46-A, GARF. 46. Jones, “The Officers and the Soviets,” in D. R. Jones, ed., Soviet Armed Forces Review Annual, 1: 177–78; 181 in Taylor, 134. 47. Cruttwell, 285. 48. Kavtaradze, Voennye, 175–78; Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 23–26; cited in Figes, 590–91. 49. Jones, “The Officers,” 223.

344

Chapter 9

50. Nadia’s untitled memoir notes, September 1, 1934, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22-A, l. 52, GARF. 51. Figes, 549–50. 52. Below, 50, he apparently moved from his old apartment due to the damage to one on the same street, because in 1920 on a list of officers which included Brusilov, his address is still given to Mansurovskii, but dom 6, not 4, and apartment 3, not 8. Adressa I nomera telefonov . . . ., n. d. f. 5972, op. 3, d. 167, l. 5, GARF. 53. RGVIA, f. 162, op. 1, d. 18, l. 145–43, cited in Figes, 645. 54. Vosp. of NB, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22-A, l. 106, GARF. 55. Ibid., l. 287. 56. Lockhart, 332–33. 57. Figes, 645n. 58. B to N, August 26, 1918, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 233–34, GARF. 59. Ibid., September 15, 1918, l. 235. 60. “Konchina Generala Brusilova,” f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 379, GARF. 61. Copy of a letter of V. P. Zasetzskii in Vozrozhdenie, “miscellaneous,” box 1, Brusilov Papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 62. A. Brusilov’s announcement, September 23, 1918, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 69, l. 231, GARF. 63. Notes of unknown authorship, probably written in early 1917, but may have been later, f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, l. 110, RGVIA. 64. RGVIA, f. 162, op. 1, d. 18, l. 142–43, RGVIA, cited in Figes, 645. 65. Figes, 696–97. 66. Clipping from Rul’, n. d., f. 5972, op.; 1, d. 11, l. 4, GARF. 67. Nadia’s memoir notes, b, d, m f, 5972, op. 1, d. 22-A, l. 1–5, GARF. 68. Jones, “The Officer,” 214, 221. 69. Drozdovsky, 70, cited in Jones, “The Officer,” 223. 70. Br. Gen. Staff, Appreciation of the Internal Situation in Russia, December 1, 1919, p. 21, WO 106/6240, British National Archives. 71. Jones, “The Officers,” 207. 72. N. E. Kakurin, Russko-Pol’skaia Kampaniia, 1917–1920 gg. (brochure) (Moscow, 1922), 475–76, cited in Davis, 141. 73. Petrone, 67. 74. Belov, 54. 75. Clipping from Vozrozhdenie, November 8, 1932, F. 5972, op. 1, d. 14, l. 2, GARF. 76. Nadia’s memoir notes, n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 287, GARF. 77. Petrone, 67. 78. Copy of a letter of V. P. Zasetslkii in Vozrozhdenie, folder entitled “Miscellaneous,” box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 79. Unidentified letter in Vozrozhdenie, November 14, 1932, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 14, l. 5, GARF. 80. Figes, 697. 81. Sokolov, 93; Bonch-Bruevich states that they were shot. Bonch-Bruevich, 36. 82. Sokolov, 93.

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

345

83. “Appreciation of the Internal Situation in Russia,” 12 January 1919, WO106/6240, p. 12, British National Archives. 84. Davis, 259. 85. Figes, 698. 86. Below, 50. 87. Brusilov to?, May 14, 1920, f. 162, op. 1, d. 4, l. 13–13a, RGVIA. 88. Petrone, 61. 89. Chamberlin, 2: 302. 90. Addresy i nomera telefonov . . . ., n. d. f. 5972, op. 3, d. 167, l. 5, GARF. 91. Got’e, 357. 92. Ibid., 358. 93. “Dorogie druzhei,” f. 5972, op. 3, d. 169, GARF; Vozzvanie, f. 5972, 21-A, l. 19, GARF; Below, 52, Pravda, May 28 and 30, 1920, cited in Davies, 135; copy in B, Vosp. (1963), 12; Izventiia, no. 116 (963), May 30, 1920, in f. 5972, op. 3, d. 171, GARF. 94. Memoir notes of NB, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 21, GARF. 95. Clipping from Voennoe delo, June 7, 1920, fl. 5962, op. 3, d. 171, l. 1, GARF. 96. Brusilov, Vosp. (1963), 12. 97. Untitled article, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 5, l. 2, GARF. 98. Lincoln, Red Victory, 84, quotes Denikin,’s Ocherki russkoi smuty (Paris; Berlin, 1921–25), 2: 198. 99. Undated clipping from Matin, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 12, GARF. 100. Bonch-Bruevich, 316. 101. Figes, 696. 102. Ibid. 103. I am indebted to Professor David Stone of the Naval War College for sharing this document with me. It can be found in F. 33987, op. 1, d. 329, l. 90a, RGVIA. 104. M. D. Bonch-Bruevich, Vsia vlast’ Sovetam (Moscow, 1957), p. 318 in Brusilov, Vosp. (1963), ii (Introduction). 105. Ibid. 106. Figes, 696. It is unclear where the author got this quote. 107. Unsigned typed letter to Brusilov, n. d. f. 5972, op. 3, d. 170, GARF. 108. Nadia’s memoir notes, November 21, 1934, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22-A, l. 68, GARF. 109. Ibid., October 1, 1936, l. 139. 110. Ibid. 111. In Le Temps, March 30, 1926, but in hard notes in F. 5972, op. 1, d. 12, GARF. 112. Childs, “Red Days in Russia,” p. 199, box 15, Childs papers. 113. David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2002), 20, in Petrone, 120. 114. Figes, 817. 115. Nadia’s memoir notes, n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 252, GARF. 116. F. 5972, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 2–5, d. 21-A, ll. 331, 336 in Petrone, 220–22. 117. Memoir notes, n. d. f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, ll. 224–25, GARf.

346

Chapter 9

118. Alellaeff-Alexandrovsky to NB, February 4, 1922, f. 162, op. 1, d. 8, l. 177, RGVIA. 119. Eulogy of Brusilov, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l. 87, RGVIA. 120. Untitled memoir notes, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 81, GARF. 121. Got’e, 345–46. 122. Ibid. 123. “Iz moei zapiskoi . . ., January 1936, minor manuscripts,” box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 124. Ibid., 24–25. 125. Rapport, September 5, 1923, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 175, l. 90, GARF. 126. Figes, 817. 127. Untitle memoir notes of NB, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, ll. 25–26, GARF. 128. See NB’s notes, folder “Gazety Dni,” box 1, p. 81, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 129. Newspaper clipping, n. d. f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 407, GARF; see also op. 3, d. 80, l. 89, cited in Belov, 54. 130. Brusilov, SN, v. 131. Memoir notes of NB, folder “Gazety Dni,” box 1, p. 81, Brusilov Papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 132. Ibid. 133. This reference to Dukhonin appears in the English translation of his memoirs but does not appear in the Russian one that I mainly used (1963 ed.), p. 234; Russian 1963 ed., 223. 134. Materialy o Brusilove, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l. 126, RGVIA. 135. H de Gegenmeister to B, June 11, 1925, f. 5962, op. 3, d. 62, GARF. 136. Nadia continued to receive this treatment after her husband’s death when he went to the West. Memoir notes, n. d., perhaps 1934. 137. Ibid. 138. Nadia’s notes, f. 5962, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 90, ll. 189–90, GARF. 139. Ibid. 140. Memoir notes of NB, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 192, GARF. 141. Ibid., 195–96. 142. Untitled clipping, n. d., F. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 419, GARF; Izvestiia, September 13, 1916, p. 4, clipping in “Printed Materials,” box 1, brusilov Collection, Bakhmetev Archive. 143. Untitled clipping, n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 419, GARF. 144. “Georgievskiia lenty na grob Brusilova,” n. d. f. 5972, op. 1, d. 2-A, l. 379, GARF. 145. Nadia’s memoir notes, n. d., f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, ll. 251, GARF. 146. “Pokhorony,” by N. I. Brusilova, in “Memoir writings,” box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 147. Semenov, B: DP, 316; See Sokolov, 157; see also, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 12, l. 42, GARF in Petrone, 62. 148. Nadia’s memoir notes, F. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 204, GARF.

When Your Mother Is Sick, 1917–1926

347

149. There are varying accounts of what was said and what was written on the wreaths. See Nasha Zhizhn, March 20, 1926, clipping in GARF, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 12, l. 42, in Petrone, 62. 150. Eulogy of father Vladimir Kudrin, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, ll. 86–87, RGVIA. 151. “B na Kavkaze,” Otkliki, p. 505, f. 162, op. 1, d. 11, RGVIA. 152. Nadia’s memoir notes, f. 5962, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 203, GARF. 153. Le Figaro, April 9, 1962, clipping in F. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 243, GARF. 154. Nadia’s memoir notes, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 243, GARF. 155. Below, 54. 156. Misc. Clipping, Krasnaia gazeta, no. 66, March 19, 1926, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l. 85, RGVIA; also found in F. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 145, RGVIA. 157. Trans. of Prager Presse article, March 26, 1926, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l. 15–16, RGVIA. 158. Newspaper translations in “Materaly Brusilova,” f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l. 123, RGVIA. 159. It is probably in the Prager Brief, a Russian-German-language newspaper in Prague, in Vyrezki, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 12, GARF. 160. Nadia’s memoir notes, n. d. (1926), f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, ll. 326–29, GARF. 161. Ibid. 162. Zaiavlenie N. B. Brusilova, November 15, 1929, f. 162, op. 1, d. 12, l. 131, RGVIA. 163. Ibid. 164. Nadia’s memoir notes, n. d. (1926?), f. 5972, op. 1, d. 21-A, l. 65, GARF. 165. NB to Dear Friends, November 26, 1928, box 1, p. 5, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 166. Petrone, 221. 167. Sokolov, 158. 168. Nadia’s memoir notes (1934?), f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22-A, l. 42, GARF. 169. See p. 6 of the contract in “Perepiska N. V. Brusilova,” 1928–31, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 63, passim, GARf. 170. A. Niessel to NB, July 28, 1932, f. 5972, op. 3, d. 275, GARF. 171. See their correspondence, f. 5962, op. 3, d. 275, GARF. 172. Niessel to NB, June 6, 1930, f. 5962, op. 3, d. 271, GARF. 173. Niessel’s receipt in f. 5972, op. 3, d. 275, GARF and his letter explaining it dated December 15, 1930. 174. See Vospominaniia N. V. Brusilovoi o belikoi Velikom Kniaze Aleksandre Mikhailoviche: in the Mikhail Stankevich collection, Bakhmetev Archive, Columbia University, New York City. 175. No title, February 19, 1936, box 1, Brusilov papers, Bakhmetev. 176. Typescript of an article, f. 50962, op. 3, d. 48, l. 1, GARF. 177. Nadia’s memoir notes, f. 5972, op. 1, d. 22-A, l. 119, GARF. 178. “Iz moei zapiskoi,” January 1937, in “Minor Manuscripts,” box 1, brusilov papers, Bakhmetev Archive. 179. Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 127, in Petrone, 224.

348

Chapter 9

180. See “Pravda o Generale Brusilove,” Izvestiia, September 13, 1962, p. 4; a copy of this article can be found in his papers at Columbia, box 1, folder “Printed Material;” see also in his memoirs, page 14 of the introduction. 181. Rostunov, 10. 182. For a good account of how his place in Soviet history was jerked around, see Karen Petrone’s The Great War in Russian Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), esp. pages 283–84; 220, 223, 264, 268, 222–23. The Russians cannot seem to have gotten enough of Brusilov since then. There have been editions of his memoirs published in 1962, 1983, 2001, and 2014. 183. Lobanov-Rostovsky, 381. 184. Below, 43.

Bibliography

ARCHIVAL SOURCES Charlottesville, Virginia. Manuscripts Division. The Alderman Library J. Rives Childs Papers London. House of Lords Record Office David Lloyd George Papers London. Lambeth War Museum Archives Col. A. C. Bromhead Papers Capt. G. H. MacCaw Papers Lt. J. R. Parsons Papers Sir Richard Phillimore (Admiral) Papers Sir Henry Wilson Papers London. British National Archives WO [War Office] 106 1023. August–December 1916; operations of the Guard Army 1037. Discipline in the Russian Army 1039. Discipline, September 1917 1054. 1915 February–March 1915. Southwest Front 1055. 1915 March–April. German offensive 1060. 1915 May–June. Knox’s dispatch 1064. 1915 July. Knox, General situation 1065. July 1915. Situation in southern Poland 1067. August–September 1915. Mackensen’s advance 1074. April 1916. Southwest Front 1075. April 1916. Russian March Offensive 1080. June–July 1916. Railways

349

350

Bibliography

1082. July–September 1916. Western Front 1083. August–October 1916. Operations of the Guard Army on the Stokhod 1084. September–October 1916. IX Army advance 1093. July 1917. The Southwest Front 1121. March 1915. Russian Advance into the Carpathians 1136. June–July 1915. Fighting in Galicia 1137. 1916. Reports on the Russian Army (Bernard Pares) 1454. December 6, 1915. Conference at Chantilly 1470. Short History of the Russian Events 6240. 1919. Situation in Russia Moscow. Arkhivy vneshnei politiki Russii (AVPR) Russkoe Posol’stvo v Parizhe (1898) Moscow. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Russkoi Federatsy (GARF) F. 5972. General A. A. Brusilov Collection Moscow. Russkii Gosudarstvennyi Voenno-Istoricheskii Arkhiv (RGVIA) F. 318. Petrogradskaia gimnasiia voennogo vedomstvo F. 162. General A. A. Brusilov Collection F. 800. Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv F. 2003. General-kvartirmeister stavki F. 2067. Shtab glavnokommandushchego armiiami iugo-zapadnogo fronta F. 2070. Upravlennie nachalnika voennykh soobshchenii armii iugo-zapadnogo fronta F. 2083. Upravlenie voennogo komissara Vremennogo Pravitel’stvo armii iugozapadnogo fronta 1917 g. F. 2138. Uprablenie voennogo komissara 8-i armii F. 3509. 2-ia Gvardeiskaia Kavaleriiskaia diviziia New York. Bakhmetev Archive. Columbia University Brusilov (Aleksei and Nadezhda) Collection Pronin, Vasilii M. Collection Stankevich, Michail S. Collection Washburn, Stanley Collection Paris. Chateau Vincennes. Les Archives de l’Armée de Terre 4N Conseil supérieur de Guerre (C. S. G.) 5N Cabinet du Ministre 6N Fonds Particulaires 7N Etat-Major de l’Armée 10N Ministère de l’Armement 16N Graned Quartier Général Paris. Les Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères Correspondence Generale: Russie (nouvelle series) Papiers Maurice Paléologue

Bibliography

351

Stanford, California. The Hoover Institution Alekseev, General Mikhail V. Collection Arkhangel’skii, Aleksei P. Collection Bennigsen, Adam P., Graf Collection Dolgourouky, Princess Barbara Collection Dukes, Sir Paul Collection Golovin, General N. N. Collection Gniessen, Vladimir F. Collection Krassovskii, Vitol’d Collection Levitsky, Eugene L. Collection Lukomskii, Aleksandr S. Collection Mertrego, Dmitri F. Collection Nirod, Feodor M. Collection Odintsov, Gleb N. Collection Osobyi zhurnal soveta ministrov 1916–1917 Pantiukhov, Olge I. Collection Prince, Eugene Collection Rodzianko, Mikhail Collection Rozenshil’d-Paulin, Anatoli Collection Rudneff, Ilya A. Collection Russia. Voennoe ministerstvo. Kratkii otchet o deiatel’nost voennago Ministerstvo za 1916 god Russiian, Viktor N. Collection Solski, Waclaw Collection Uperov, Vasilii V. Collection Verstraete, Maurice Collection Vinogradov, Igor Collection

PRINTED MATERIALS AND SOURCES Abraham, R. Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Akhun, M. I. “Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v armii nakanune burzhuaznodemokraticheskoi revoliutsii.” Istoricheskii zhurnal (1937). Andolenko, S. P. Histoirie de l’armee russe. Paris: Flamarion, 1967. Andreev, Leonid. The Confessions of a Little Man during Great Days. London: Duckworth, 1917. Anet, Claude [Jean Schoepher]. Through the Russian Revolution: Notes of an Eyewitness from 12th March–30 May. London: Hutchinson, 1917. Arefin, S. “Razval armii.” Belyi arkhiv, 2–3 (1928). Ascher, Abraham. “The Kornilov Affair.” Russian Review, 12, no. 4 (October 1953), 235–52.

352

Bibliography

———. “The Kornikov Affair: A History and an Interpretation.” Unpublished PhD. Dissertation in the Department of History of Indiana University, 1967. Atkinson, R. O. “Watching the Russian Army Die.” Harpers, 137 (October 1918), 618–31. Bark, Peter A. “The Last Days of the Russsian Monarchy–Nicholas II at Army Headquarters.” Russian Review, 16, no. 3 (July 1957), 35–44. Barshukov, Evgenii. Russkaia artilleriia v mirovoi voine. 2 vols. Moscow, 1938–39. ———. Podgotovka russkoi armii k voine v artilleriiskom otnoshenii. Moscow, 1926. Bazarevskii, A. Nastuplenie operatsiia 9-i ruskoi armii. Iiun’ 1016 goda. Moscow, Gos. Voen. Izd., 1937. De Basily, Nicholas. Diplomat of Imperial Russia, 1903–1917. Stanford, CA: Hoover, Inst. Press, 1973. ———. The Abdication of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press, 1984. Bellamy, Christopher D. The Red God of War. London: Brassey’s, 1986. Belov, G. “Russkii polkovodets A. A. Brusilov.” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 10 (1962), 41–55. Benvenutti, F. The Bolsheviks Rule the Red Army, 1918–1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Bezobrazov, Vladimir M. Diary of the Commander of the Russian Imperial Guard, 1914–1917. Boynton Beach, FL: Dramco Publishers, 1994. Bidou, Henry. “L’Offensive Broussiloff, juin-séptembre 1916.” Revue des Deux Mondes, 38 (March 1, 1917), 136–81. Blair, Dorian and David, C. H. Russian Hazard: The Adventures of a British Secret Service Agent in Russia. London, 1937. Boldyrev, V. G. “Iz dnevnika V. G. Boldyreva.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 23, no. 4 (1927), 250–73. “Bol’shevizatsiia fronta v pred’iiul’skii dni 1917 g.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 58 (1933), 86–100. Bonch-Bruevich, M. From Tsarist General to Red Army Commander. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966. Botcharksy, Sophie and Pier, Florida. They Knew How to Die. London: Davies, 1931. Boyd, John. “The Origins of Order No. 1.” Soviet Studies, 19, no. 3 (1968), 359–429. ———. The Other First World War: The Blood-Soaked Russian Fronts, 1914–1922. Stroud: The History Press, 2014. ———. Red October. Stroud: The History Press, 2017. Bradley, J. F. N. “The Russian Secret Service in the First World War.” Soviet Studies, 20, no. 2 (October 1968), 242–48. Brown, Malcolm. The Imperial War Museum Book of the First World War: A Great Conflict Recalled. London: Sedgwick and Jackson, 1991. Brusilov, A. A. “Provyv avstro-germanskogo fronta v 1916 godu.” Voina i revoliutsiia, nos. 4 and 5 (1927). ———. Moi vospominaniia. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001. ———. Moi vospominaniia. Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo ministerstva oborony SSSR, 1963. ———. Moi vompominaniia. Moscow: Beche, 2014.

Bibliography

353

———. A Soldier’s Notebook. New Haven, CT: Greenwood, 1971. Brusilova, Nadejda, “In Great Russia.” The Constructive Quarterly, 5 (June 3, 1917), 383–92. “Brussiloff and Korniloff.” Literary Digest, 55 (August 18, 1917), 44–50. Buat, General Edmund. Hindenburg et Ludendorff Strategies. Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1923. Bubnov, A. V tsarskoi stavke: vospominaniia admiraloa Bubnova. New York: Chekhov, 1955. Buchanan, Sir George. My Mission to Russia and Other Diplomatic Memoirs. 2 vols. London: Cassell, 1923. Budyonny, Semyon. The Path of Valor. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972. Bunyan, J. and Fisher, H., eds. The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1918: Documents and Materials. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961. Bushnell, John. Mutiny Amid Repression: Russian Soldiers in the Revolution of 1905–1906. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. ———. “The Tsarist Officer Corps, 1881–1914.” American Historical Review, 86, no. 4 (October 1981), 753–80. Buttar, Prit. The Collision of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front in 1914. Oxford: Osprey, 2014. ———. Russia’s Last Gasp: The Eastern Front, 1916–1917. Oxford: Osprey, 2016. “Campaigning with the Russians.” World’s Work, 29 (November 1914), 38–40. “A Certain M. Brussiloff.” Literary Digest, 53 (July 1, 1916), 38. Chamberlin, William H. The Russian Revolution, 1917–1921. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1935. Cherkassov, P. V., ed. Mirovaia voina 1914–1918. “Lutskii proryv.” Moscow: Vizschii voennii Redaktsionii Sovet, 1924. Chernov, Viktor. The Great Russian Revolution. New York: Yale, 1936. “Chistka komsostava tsarskoi armii v 1906 g.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 50–51 (1932), 211–25. Churchill, Winston. The Unknown War: The Eastern Front. New York: Scribner’s, 1931. Clark, Alan. Suicide of Empires. London: American Heritage Press, 1971. Clark, Ronald. Lenin: The Man behind the Mask. London: Faber and Faber, 1988. Cockfield, Jamie H. White Crow. New York: Praeger, 2005. ———. With Snow on Their Boots. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. The Complete Wartime Correspondence of Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra (April-1914–March 1917). Edited by Joseph T. Fuhrmann. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Conrad von Hötzendorf, Franz. Graf. Private Aufzeichnungen: erste Veröffentlichungen aus den Papieren des k. u. k. Generalstabs-chefs. Vienna: Amalthea, 1977. Constantini, Col. Aimé. Les Operations de l’été 1917 sur le Front Orientale. Paris: Imprimerie National, 1948. Cornish, Nik. The Russian Army, 1914–1918. Oxford: Osprey, 2001. Craig, Gordon A. World War I: A Turning Point in Modern History. New York: Knopf, 1967. Crawford, Rosemary and Crawford, Donald. Michael and Natasha. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1997.

354

Bibliography

Cruttwell, C. R. M. F. A History of the Great War, 1914–1918. London: Clarendon Press, 1936. Czernin von und zu Chudenitz and Ottokar Theobald Otto Maria, Graf. In the World War. New York: Harper, 1920. Danilov, General Yuri. La Russie dans la guerre mondiale. Paris: Payot, 1927. ———. “Les premières opérations de l’Armée russe en 1914.” Revue Militaire Français (April–June 1923), 145–66; 289–305. Davies, Norman. White Eagle, Red Star; The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–1920. New York: St. Martin’s, 1972. Denikin, Anton I. The Career of a Tsarist Officer: Memoirs, 1872–1916. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975. ———. The Russian Turmoil. London: Hutchinson, 1922. Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954. Doughty, Robert A. Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. Dubinsky, V. “Revoliutsionnoe dvzhenie v armii vo pervoi mirovoi voiny.” Kransyi arkhiv, 4 (1923), 417–24. Dupuy, Trevor N. 1914: The Battles in the East. New York: Watts, 1967. Durkota, Alan, Darcey, Thomas, and Kulikov, Victor. The Imperial Russian Air Service. Mountain View, CA: Flying Machine Press, 1995. Dziubinskii, V. “Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v voiskakh vo vremia mirovoi roiny.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 14 (1923). Emets, V. A. “Petrogradskaia konferentsiia 1917 g. i Frantsiia.” Istoricheskie zapiski, 83 (1969), 23–37. “Epizody iz voevykh deistvii russkoi aviatsii, 1914–1917 gg.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 96 (1939), 121–47. Erickson, John. The Russian Imperial/Soviet General Staff. College Station Papers No. 3. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981. Farmborough, Florence. With the Armies of the Tsar. New York: Stein and Day, 1975. Farrar, L. L., Jr. “This Unfathomable Sphinx: German Efforts during the 1916 to Conclude a Separate Peace with Russia.” New Review of East European History, 15, no. 1/2 (June 1975), 65–90. Feldman, Robert S. Between War and Revolution: The Russian General Staff, February–July 1917. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1968. Feldman, Robert. “The Russian General Staff and the June 1917 Offensive.” Soviet Studies, 19, no. 4 (April 1968), 526–43. Ferro, Marc. “The Russian Soldier in 1917.” Slavic Review, 30, no. 3 (September 1971), 483–512. ———. “Le Soldat russe en 1917.” Annales, 26, no. 1 (1971), 14–39. “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia 1917 goda.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 21, no. 2 (1927), 3–78; 22, no. 3 (1927), 3–70. Figes, Orlando. A People’s Tragedy. New York: Penguin, 1998. Francis, David R. Russia From the American Embassy. New York: Scribner’s, 1922.

Bibliography

355

François, Hermann von. Gorlice 1915: Der Karpathendurchbruch und die Befreiung von Galizien. Leipzig: Verlag von K. F. Koehler, 1922. Frenkin, M. Russkaia armiia i revoliutsiia 1917–1918. Munich: Lagos, 1978. Galaktionov, M. “Brusilov kak polkovedets.” Krasnaia zvezda, no. 207 (September 2, 1943), n. pp. Galantai, Jozsef. Hungary in the First World War. Budapest: Akademiai Kudo, 1989. Gaponenko, L. S., ed. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii v 1917 g. Moscow: Izdat. “Nauka,” 1968. ———. Oktiab’skaia revoliutsiia i armiia. Moscow: Adademiia nauk, 1973. Gareev, M. A. M. V. Frunze: Military Theorist. Washington, DC: Pergamon, 1988. Gatrell, Peter. Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900–1914: The Last Argument of Tsarism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. Russia’s First World War; A Social and Economic History. London: Pearson Longman, 2005. Gavrilov, L. M., ed. Voiskovye komitety deistvuiushchei armii, mart 1917 g.-mart 1918 g. Moscow: Izd-vo Nauka, 1982. ———. Soldatskie komiteti v Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow: Nauka, 1983. George, Mark and Sheppard, Vic. “Russia’s Air Forces in War and Revolution.” Cross and Cockade Journal GB, 17, no. 4 (1985), 145–53; 18, no. 2 (1987), 49–54. Gilbert, Martin. The First World War: A Complete History. New York: Henry Holt, 1994. Gleason, William E. Alexander Guchkov and the End of the Russian Empire. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983. Glezer, D. “Na fronte v 1917 godu.” Krasnaia letopis’, 6 (1923). Golder, Frank. Documents in Russian History, 1914–1917. New York: The Century Co., 1927. Golovin, General Nikolai N. “The Great Battle of Galicia (1914).” Slavonic and East European Review, 5 (June 1926), 25–47. ———. The Russian Army in the World War. Stanford, CA: Carnegie Foundation, 1931. ———. The Russian Army in World War I. New Haven, CT: Yale, 1931. ———. “The Russian War Plan of 1914.” Slavonic and East European Review, 14 (April, 1936), 564–894; (July 1936), 70–90. ———. “Brusilov’s Offensive.” Slavonic Review, 13, no. 39 (1935–1936), 571–96. Golovine, Gen. “Les Pertes de l’armée russe.” Revue d’Historie de la Guerre Mondiale, no. 1 (1928), 48–56. Got’e, Iurii V. Time of Troubles: Moscow, July 8, 1917 to July 23, 1922. Edited by Terrence Emmons. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Gourko, G. Memories and Impressions of War and Revolution in Russia, 1917–1917. London, 1918. Graham, Stephen. Russia in the World: A Study of the War. New York: Macmillan, 1915. Guchkov, Aleksandr I. Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov rasskazyvaet. Moscow: Too Redaktsiia zhurnala “Voprosy istorii,” 1993. ———. “Vospominaniia.” Poslednye novosty (August–Septermber 1936). Gurko, Vladimir I. Features and Figures of the Past. Edited by J. E. Wallace et al. New York: Russell and Russell, 1970.

356

Bibliography

Gurko, General Vasilii. War and Revolution in Russia. New York: Macmillan, 1919. ———. Memories and Impressions of War and Revolution in Russia, 1914–1917. London: Murry, 1918. Hagen, Mark von. Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. ———. War in a European Borderland: Occupation and Occupation Plans in Galicia and Ukraine, 1914–1918. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. Hanbury-Williams, Sir John. The Emperor Nicholas II as I Knew Him. New York: Dutton, 1924. Heenan, L. C. Russian Democracy’s Fatal Blunder: The Summer Offensive of 1917. New York: Praeger, 1987. Hellman, Ben. Poets of Hope and Despair: The Russian Symbolists in War and Revolution. Helsinki: Institute For Russian and East European Studies, 1995. Herwig, Holger H. The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914– 1918. London: Arnold, 1997. Higham, Robin and Showalter, Dennis E. Researching World War I. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. Hindenburg, Paul von. Out of My Past. London, 1920. Hoffmann, M. von. War Diaries and Other Papers. London: Martin Secker, 1929. Holquist, Peter. Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. ———. “The Role of Personality in the First (1914–1915) Russian Occupation of Galicia and Bukovina.” In Anti-Jewish Violence, edited by Johathan Dekel-Chen et al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Hubatsch, Walter. Germany and the Central Powers in the World War, 1914–1918. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1963. Ignatiev, A. A. A Subaltern in Old Russia. Translated by Ivor Montagu. London: Hutcheson, 1944. “Iiulskii dni 1917 g.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 57 (1933), 140–42. Ivanov, A. “Volnenie v 1916 g. v 181-om zapasnon pekhotnom polku.” Krasnaia letopis’, 10 (1924). Ivanov, N. I. “Pis’ma generala N. I. Ivanova A. I. Guchkovu.” Russkii invalid (March 23, 1917). “Iz dnevnika A. N. Kuropotkina.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 20 (1927), 56–77. “Iz dnevnika Gen. V. I. Selivacheva.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 9 (1925), 104–32; 10 (1925), 138–74. “Iz dnevnika Gen. V. G. Boldyreva.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 23 (1927), 250–73. “Iz dokumentov Krasnoi armii.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 81 (1937), 147–52. “Iz ofitsenskikh pisem c fronta v 1917 g.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 50–51 (1932), 194–210. “Iz perepiska S. M. i N. M. Romanovykh v 1917 g.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 53 (1932), 139–50. Jahn, Hubertus F. Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War I. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Janin, Général M. “Au G. Q. G. Russe.” Le Monde Slave, no. 1 (January), no. 2 (February, May 1927).

Bibliography

357

Jerabek, Rudolf. Die Brussilowoffensive 1916. Ein Wendepunkt der Koalitionskriegführung der Mittelmächte. Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades an der geistwissenshaf-lichen Fakultät des Universität Wien, 1982 (in the library collection of the Austrian State Archive, War Archive). Johnston, Charles. “Brusiloff: Man and General.” Atlantic Monthly, 118 (September 1916), 409–16. ———. “Forces Behind the Russian Offensive.” North American Review, 204 (July 1916), 49–56. ———. “General Brusilov’s Achievements.” New York Times Current History: The European War, 8 (July–September, 1916), 612–15. ———. “Leaders of Russia’s Armies.” Review of Reviews, 51 (January 1915), 65–70. ———. “Leaders of the Russian Invasion.” Collier’s, 54 (October 3, 1914), 21–22. Jones, David R. “The Imperial Army in World War I, 1914–1917.” In The Military History of Tsarist Russia, edited by Frederick W. Kagan and Robin Higham. New York: Palgrave, 2002. ———. “The Imperial Russian Life Guards Grenedier Regiment, 1906–1917.” Military Affairs, 33, no. 2 (October 1969), 289–301. ———. Mobility and Advanced Units in Russia and Soviet Military Thought and Practice, 1870–1985. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1985. ———. “The Officers and the October Revolution.” Soviet Studies, 28, no. 2 (April 1976), 207–23. ———. Russian Diaspora, 1917–1941. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2000. Jukes, Geoffrey. Carpathian Disaster: The Death of an Army. New York: Ballantine, 1971. Jung, Peter. The Austro-Hungarian Forces in World War I, 1914–1916. Oxford: Osprey, 2003. Kakurin, N. E. Razlozhenie armii v 1917 g. Moscow and Leningrad: Gos. Izdat., 1923. Katkov, George. The Kornilov Affair. London: Longman, 1980. Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Knopf, 1999. Keep, John L. H. “The Military Style of the Romanov Rulers.” War and Society, 1, no. 2 (September 1983), 61–84. Kenez, Peter. “Changes in the Social Composition of the Officer Corps during World War I.” Russian Review (October 1972), 369–75. ———. “A Profile of the Pre-revolutionary Officer Corps.” California Slavic Studies, 7 (1973), 121–58. ———. “The Russian Officer Corps before the Revolution: The Military Mind.” Russian Review, 31 (1972), 226–36. Kennett, Lee. The First Air War, 1914–1918. New York: The Free Press, 1991. Kerensky, Alexander F. The Catastrophe: Kerensky’s Own Story on the Russian Revolution. New York: Appleton, 1927. ———. Prelude to Bolshevism: The Kornilov Uprising. London: Unwin, 1919. ———. Russia and History’s Turning Point. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965. Kettle, Michael. The Allies and the Russian Collapse: March 1917–March 1918. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981.

358

Bibliography

Kitchen, Martin. The Silent Dictatorship: Politics of the German High Command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 1916–1918. London: Croonheln, 1976. Kirchberger, Joe H. The First World War: An Eyewitness History. New York: Facts on File, 1992. Kiubomov, I. “Fevral’ na zapadnom fronte i Minskii sovdep.” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 17, no. 5 (1923). Klembovskii, V. M. Stratergicheskii ocherk voiny 1914–1918 gg. Moscow: Vyshii redaktsion Soviet, 1920. Klimarx, Robert A. “The Imperial Air Forces in World War I.” Airpower Historian, 10, no. 3 (July 1963), 90–95. Knox, Major-General Alfred W. F. Knox. With the Russian Army, 1914–1917. New York: Arno Press, 1971. Komissia po issledovaniiu i ispol’zovaniiu oryta voiny 1914–1918 gg. Strategicheskii ocherk voiny 1914–1918 gg. Chast 5. Sostavil V. N. Klemsovskii. Moscow: Gos. Typ, 1920. Kondzerovski, V. Vospominaniia. Paris: Voenno-istoricheskaia bibliotheka, 1967. “Konferentsiia soiuznikov v Petrograde v 1917 godu.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 20 (1927), 39–55. Krasnov, P. N. “Pamiati Imperatorskoi russkoi armii.” Russkaia letopis’, 5 (1923), 5–64. ———. Vospominaniia o russkoi imperatorskoi armii. Moscow: Airis-Press, 2006. Krylenko, N. “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia i staroia armiia.” Proletarskaia revoliutskiia, 61–62, nos. 2–3 (1927). Kulikov, Viktor. “Chronicle of the Operations of the 1st Corps of the Imperial Russian Air Service, 1914–1917.” Over the Front Journal USA, 10, no. 2 (1995), 149–61. Kuropatkin, S. “Russian Officer of To-day.” Outlook, 108 (October 21, 1914), 414–15. Kuzentsov, F. E. Brusilov proryv. Moscow, 1944. Kuz’mina, T. F. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie soldatskikh mass tsentra Rossii nakanune Oktiabria: po materialam moskovskogo voennogo okruga. Moscow, 1978. Kuznetsov, B. I. “General Brusilov.” Trudy akademii, no. 8 (1943). La Grande Guerre/ Etat-major Russie. Les Operations . . . en Galicie et en Pologne. Translated by Russian by Edouard Chapouilly. Paris: Gavarezelle, 1926. La Guerre polono-soviétique de 1919–1920. Paris: Institut et Études Slaves, 1973. Lambert, Dean W. “The Deterioration of the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War, August 1914-March 1917.” Unpublished PhD. Dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1975. Lange, Christian L. Russia, the Revolution and the War. Washington, DC: The Endowment, 1917. Lehovich, Dimitry V. White Against Red: The Life of General Anton Denikin. New York: Norton, 1974. Lemke, Mikhail. 250 Dnei v tsarskoi sthavvke. 25 sent. 1915–2 iulia 1916 g. 3 vols. Leningrad: Gos. Izdat., 1920. Letters of the Tsar to the Tsariitsa, 1914–1917. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1973. Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar, 1914–1917. Westport, CT: Hyperion, 1979.

Bibliography

359

Levin, S. Brusilovskii proriv. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1941. Levitskii, A. “General Brusilov.” Voennaia byl’, no. 89, 34. Lincoln, W. Bruce. Passage Through Armageddon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986. ———. Red Victory. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. Linke, Horst. Das zarische Russland und der Erste Weltkrieg. Munich: Fink, 1982. Littauer, Vladimir S. Russian Hussar. Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing Co., 1993. Litvinov, A. I. Maiskii proryv IX armii v 1916 godu. Petrograd: Voennoeizdatel’stvo, 1923. Lloyd George, David. War Memoirs. 5 vols. London: Odhams, 1936. Lobanov-Rostovskii, Andrei. The Grinding Mill. New York: Macmillan, 1935. Ludendorff, General Eric. My War Memories 1914–1918. 2 vols. London: Hutchinson, 1923. Luckett, Richard. The White Guards. London: Longman, 1971. Lukomskii, Alexander S. Memoirs of the Russian Revolution. 2 vols. London: Unwin, 1922. ———. “Dokumenty ko vospominaniiam Gen. Lukomskago.” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, 2 (1921), 14–44. Lyons, Marvin. The Russian Imperial Army. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1968. Macdonald, Lyn. 1914–1918: Voices and Images of the Great War. London: Joseph, 1988. Macnaughton, S. My War Experiences in two Continents. London: John Murray, 1919. Manikovskii, A. A. Voevoe snabzhenie russkoi armii v mirovuiu voiny. Moscow, 1937. Mannerheim, Baron C. G. Memoirs. London: Cassell, 1953. Mannherz, Julia. Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012. Marsengo, Général Maurice. Héros sans Gloire: souvenirs d’un membre de la mission itialienne près du GQG russe, 1914–1917. Translated by Fernand Hayward. Paris: Plon, 1935. Martinov, E. I. Tsarskaia armiia v fevral’skom perevorotu. Leningrad, 1927. ———. “Konferentsiia soiuzov v Petrograde v 1917 godu.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 20 (1927), 39–55. “Materiali relating to the Prepardness for World War.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 64 (1934), 85–129. Mavrodin, V. Brusilov. Moscow, 1944. Maylunas, Andrei and Mironenko, Sergei. A Livelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra, Their Own Story. Translated by Darya Galy. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Mayzel, Matitiahu. Generals and Revolutionaries. Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1979. Mc Cormick, Robert R. With the Russian Army. New York: Macmillan, 1915. McNeal, Robert H. Tsar and Cossack, 1855–1914. London: Macmillan, 1987. Melot, Lt. Col. Henry. La Mission du général Pau aux Balkans et en Russie tzarist, 9 février- 11 avril 1915. Paris: Payot, 1931. Menning, Bruce W. Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861– 1914. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

360

Bibliography

———. “Mukden to Tannenberg: Defeat to Defeat, 1905–1914.” In The Military History of Tsarist Russia, edited by Frederick W. Kogan and Robert Higham. New York: St. Martin’s/Palgrave, 2002. ———. Reforming the Tsar’s Army. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Messner, Prof. E. Lutskii proryv. New York: Vseslavianskoe izdatelstvo, 1968. Miller, Viktor I. Soldatskie komitety russkoi armii v 1917 g. Moscow: Izvo. “Nauka,” 1974. Mints, I. I., ed. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii v 1917 godu: sbornik statei. Moscow: Gposizdat, 1981. Mirovaia voina 1914–1918. Lutskii proryv. Edited by P. V. Cherkasov. New York: Vseslavanskoeizdatel’stvo, 1968. Morgan, G. “Russian Offensive.” New Republic, 7 (July 1, 1916), 223–24. Morrow, John H. The Great War in the Air. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1993. Mosier, John. The Myth about the Great War. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Mosier, John. The Myth of the Great War. New York: Perennial (HarperCollins), 2001. “Moskovskii voennyi revoliutsionnyi komitet.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 23 (1927), 64–148. Mott, Col. T. Bentley. Twenty Years as Military Attache. New York: Oxford University Press, 1931. Muratov, Kh. I. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii v 1917 g. Moscow, 1958. ———. Pervyi sovetskii glavkoverkh. Moscow, 1958. Nadezhnyi. Boi-i pekh. Divizii pod Lutskom v iiule 1916 goda. Leningrad, 1926. Nastuplenie iugozapadnogo fronta vi 1916 g. Sbornik dokumentov mirovoi voiny na russkom fronte. Moscow, 1924. Neilson, Keith. Strategy and Supply: The Anglo-Russian Alliance, 1914–1917. London: Allen & Unwin, 1984. Nekolaieff, A. M., “The February Revolution and the Russian Army,” Russian Review, 6, (1940), 17–25. Nelipovich, S. G. Brusilovskii proryv. Moscow, 2006. Nevsky, V. “Verkhovnyi Command during the First Days of the Revolution.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 5 (1924), 213–40. ———. “The Supreme Command during the First Days of the Revolution.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 5 (1924), 213–40. Neznamov, A. “Dva proryva.” Voenno-istoricheskii sbornik, 4 (1921), 105–31. Nicholas II. “Dnevnik Nikolaia Romanova.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 20, no. 1 (1927), 123–52. Nicholas Mikhailovich, Grand Duke. La Fin du tsarism: Lettres inédites à Frédéric Masson (1914–1918). Paris: Payot, 1968. The Nicky-Sunny Letters; Correspondence of the Tsar and Tsaritsa, 1914–1917. Hattiesburg, MS: Academic International, 1970. Niessel, General Albert. “La Décomposition de l’Armée russe par la Révolution 1917.” Revue des deux mondes, 57 (January 15, 1940), 314–21. ———. Le Triomphe des Bolsheviks et la paix de Brest-Litovsk: souvenirs, 1917– 1918. Paris: Plon, 1940. Nikolaieff, A. M. “The February Revolution and the Russian Army.” Russian Review, y, no. 1 (1946), 17–25.

Bibliography

361

Noulens, Joseph. Mon Ambassade en Russie soviétique (1917–1919). 2 vols. Paris: Plon, 1933. Novotny, Frantisek, ed. Propaganda, documenty o zakaze ruske fronty v gode 1917. Prague: Cesky etenai, 1922. “Oktiabr’ na fronte.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 23 (1927), 149–94. “Oktiabr’skii perevorot i Stavka.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 8 (1925), 153–75. Olcen, Mehemet. Vetluga Memoir: A Turkish POW in Russia. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995. Oldenburg, S. S. The Last Tsar. 4 vols. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1978. Os’kin, Maksim. Krakh konnogo blitskriega. Moscow: EKSMO, 2009. Osobyi zhurnal soveta ministrov 1916. Osterreich-Ungarns Letzter Krieg, 1914–1918. 7 vols. Vienna: Verlag Militärwissenschaftlichen Mitterlungen, 1930. Padenie tsarskogo rezhima: Stenographicheskii otchety. 7 vols. Moscow and Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1924–27. Padenie tsarskogo rezhima. 7 vols. Leningrad and Moscow: Gosizdat, 1924–27. Paleologue, Maurice. An Ambassador’s Memoirs. 3 vols. Translated by F. A. Holt. New York: Octagon, 1972. Pares, Sir Bernard. Day by Day with the Russian Army. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915. ———. The Fall of the Russian Monarchy. New York: Vintage Books, 1961. ———. My Russian Memoirs. London: J. Cape, 1931. Pascal, Pierre. Mon Journal de Russie a la Mission Militaire Francaise, 1916–1918. Lausanne: l’Age d’Homme, 1975. “Perepiski V. A. Sukhomlinova c N. N. Ianushkevichom, 1909–1915 gg.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 1 (1922), 209–72; 2 (1922), 130–75; 3 (1923), 29–74. Petrone, Karen. The Great War in Russian Memory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Pingaud, Albert, “La Mission de M. Doumergue en Russie en 1917.” Revue l’Historie de la guerre mondiale, 15, no. 4 (1937), 339–52. Pipes, Richard. The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1990. Pireiko, A. Na fronte imperialisticheskoi voiny. Moscow: Izdo. Starii Bolshevik, 1935. Pisarev, Iu A. Pervaia mirovaia voina. Moscow: Nauka, 1994. “Pis’ma soldat vo vremeni mirovoi voiny (1915–1917).” Krasnyi arkhiv, 65–66 (1934), 118–63. Polivanov, A. A. Iz dnevnikov i vospominanii po dolzhnosti voennogo ministva i ego pomoshchnika, 1907–1916. Moscow: Vysshii voennii redaktsionnyi sovet, 1924. Polovtsov, General P. A. Glory and Downfall. London: Bell and Sons, 1935. Price, Morgan Philips. My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution. Westport, CT: Hyperion, 1981. ———. Despatches from the Revolution in Russia, 1915–1918. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. ———. My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution. London: Allen and Unwin, 1921.

362

Bibliography

“Proval popytki Stavki podavit’ Fevral’skuiu revoliutsiiu 1917 goda v Petrograde.” Voprosy arkhivovedeniia, no. 1 (1962). Prusin, Alexander V. Nationalizing a Borderland: Ethnicity and Anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005. Rabinowitch, Alexander. The Bolsheviks Come to Power. New York: Norton, 1976. ———. Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968. Ray, Oliver Allen. “The Imperial Russian Army Officer.” Political Science Quarterly, 76, no. 4 (December 1961), 575–90. Reese, Roger, ed. The Russian Imperial Army, 1796–1917. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Regele, Oskar. Feldmarschall Conrad; Auftrag und Erfülling, 1906–1918. Vienna: Herold, 1955. Repington, Charles à Court. The First World War. London: Gregg Revivals, 1991. “Revoliutsionnaia propaganda v armii v 1916–1917 gg.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 17 (1926), 36–50. “Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v voiskakh vo vremia mirovoi voiny.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 4 (1923), 417–24. Revoliutwsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii v 1917 gody: sbornik statei. Moscow: Izd. “Nauka,” 1981. Rich, David Alan. The Tsar’s Colonels: Professionalism, Strategy, and Subversion in Late Imperial Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Robien, Louis de. Journal d’un diplomate en Russie, 1917–1918. Paris: Michel, 1967. Robinson, Paul. “Courts of Honor in the Late Imperial Russian Army.” Slavonic and East European Review, 84, no. 4 (2006), 708–28. ———. Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholaevich: Supreme Commander of the Russian Army. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014. Rossiia. Shtab vekhovnago glavnokomanduiushchago upravlenie. General-kvartirmeistera. Soobshcheniia shtaba verkhovnago glavnokomanduiushchago. 1916 god. Rostunov, Ivan I. Le Général Broussilov. Moscow: Ed. Militaires, 1964. ———. General Brusilov. Moscow: Voen. Izd-vo, 1964. ———. Istoriia pervoi mirovoi voiny: 1914–1918 gg. Moscow: Voen. Izd-vo, 1975. Rozhdestvenskii, M. Lutskii proryv. Moscow, 1938. Ruffkey, David L. “The Brusilov Offensive.” History in Dispute: World War I, 8: 200–208. Ruhl, Arthur. White Nights and other Russian Impressions. New York: Scribner’s, 1917. Russia. Chrezvichainaia sledstvennaia komissia. La Chute du Regime Tsarist. Paris: Payot, 1927. Russia. Stab verkhovnogo glavno komanduiushchego. Russian Emigré Archives. Edited by A. Pronin. Fresno: Faculty Press, 1973. “Russkaia armiia nakanune revoliutsii.” Byloe, 7, no. 1 (1918). Rutherford, Ward. The Russian Army in World War I. London: Gordon Cremonesi, 1975. ———. The Tsar’s War, 1914–1917. Cambridge: Ian Faulkner, 1992. Salisbury, Harrison. Black Night, White Snow: Russia’s Revolution (1905–1917). Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978.

Bibliography

363

Samoilo, A. Dve zhizni. Moscow and Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1968. Sanborn, Josh. “The Decision of the New Government antagonized the proponents of the slogan ‘Land, Peace, [and] Bread.’” History in Dispute, 8 (2000), 171–79. ———. Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David and Bruce W. Menning, eds. Reforming the Tsar’s Army. Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution. Cambridge and Washington, DC: Cambridge University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004. Schindler, John R. Isonzo: The Forgotten Sacrifice of the Great War. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001. Schlotheim, Ludwig E. “Die kaiserlich deutsch Südarmee in den Kampfen währen der Brussilow-Offensive.” Münchener Historische Abhandlungen, 9 (1936), 1–87. Screen, J. E. O. Mannerheim: The Years of Preparation. London: Hurst, 1970. Semanov, S. Brusilov. Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1980. ———. General Brusilov: Dokumental’noe povestvovanie. Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1986. Senin, A. S. Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov. Moscow: Skriptoryi, 1996. Sergeyev-Tsensky, S. Brusilov’s Breakthrough: A Novel of the First World War. Translated by Helen Altschuler. Westport, CT: Hyperion, 1978. Sevost’ianov, G. N., ed. Delo generala L. G. Kornilov. 2 vols. Moscow: Izd. “Maternik,” 2003. Shavelskii. G. Vospominaniia poslednego protopresvitera russkoi armii i flot. New York, 1954. Shklovskii, Viktor. A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917–1922. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984. Shklovskii, Viktor. A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917–1922. Translated by Richard Sheldon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970. Shliapnikov, Aleksandr. Semnadtsityi god. Moscow and Leningrad, 1923–31. Sidorov, A. L., ed. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v armii i na flote v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny, 1914-fevral’ 1917 gg. Moscow: Nauka, 1966. Sokolov, IU. V. Kransaia zvezda ili krest? Zhizn’ i sud’ba generala Brusilova. Moscow: Rossiia molodaia, 1994. Sondhaus, Lawrence. Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf: Architect of the Apocalypse. Boston: Humanities Press, 2000. Spears, Brigadier General E. L. Prelude to Victory. London: Cane, 1939. Spiridovich, A. I. Velikaia voina i fevral’skaia revoliutsiia. 3 vols. New York: Vseslavianskoe iz-vo, 1960–1962. Stankevich, V. B. Vospominaniia, 1914–1919 gg. Moscow: Rossiiskii gos. Gum. Universitet, 1994. “Stavka i ministerstvo inostrannykh del.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 27 (1928), 2–57; 28 (1927), 3–58; 29 (1928), 1–54; 30 (1928), 5–45. Steinberg, John. “Russia Leaves the War.” Relevance: Quarterly Journal of the Great War Society 11, no. 1 (Winter, 2002), 14–20. Steinberg, Mark D. Voices of the Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.

364

Bibliography

Stone, David R. A Military History of Russia. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006. ———. The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914–1917. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015. Stone, Norman. The Eastern Front, 1914–1917. New York: Scribner’s, 1975. ———. “Organizing an Economy for War: The Russian Shell Shortage, 1914–1917.” In War, Economy and the Military Mind, edited by A. Wheatcroft and Geoffrey Best. London: Croom, Helm, 1976. Strakhovsky, Leonid I. “Was there a Kornilov Rebellion?” Slavonic and East European Review, 33, no. 81 (1955), 372–95. Strategicheskii Ocherk voiny 1914–1918 gg. Part 5. Moscow: no publisher given, 1920. Stubbs, Kevin D. Race to the Front: The Material Foundations of Coalition Strategy in the Great War. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. Sukhomlinov, Vladimir. Vospominaniia Sukhomlinova. Moscow and Leningrad: Gos. Izdat, 1926. Sukiennicki, Wiktor. East Central Europe during World War I: From Foreign Domination to National Independence. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984. “Taktika vysshego komandovaniia v Fevral’skuiu revoliutsiiu.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 35 (1929), 212–15. Talenskii, N. “Brusilov kak komanduiuschii frontom.” Krasnaia zvezda, no. 22 (28 January 1943). Taylor, Brian D. Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Thompson, Donald C. Donald Thompson in Russia. New York: Century, 1918. The Times History of the Great War. 22 vols. London: The Times, 1914–1918. Torrey, Glenn. The Revolutionary Russian Army and Romania, 1917. Pittsburg: The Center for Russian and East European Studies, 1995. Triska, Jan F. The Great War’s Forgotten Front: A Soldier’s Diary and a Son’s Reflections. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1998. Trotsky, Leon. The History of the Russian Revolution. 3 vols. in 1. New York: Pluto Press, 1977. Tsentrarkhiv. 1917 god v dokumentakh i materialakh. Unnumbered volume. Razlozhenie armii v 1917 god v dokumentakh i materialrakh. Edited by M. N. Pokrovskii i Ia. A. Yakovlev. Moscow and Leningrad, 1925. Tunstall, Graydon. Blood in the Snow. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008. Turner, L. C. F. “The Russian Mobilization of 1914.” The Journal of Contemporary History, 3, 65–88. Tyrkova-Williams, Adriana. From Liberty to Brest-Litovsk: The First Year of the Russian Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1919. United States. Special Diplomatic Mission to Russia. Boston: Marshall Jones, 1918. “Uvol’nenie N. N. Romanova ot golzhnosti vekhovnogo glavnokomanduiushchego.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 10 (1925), 342–43. Vandervelde, Emile. Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution. London: Allen and Unwin, 1918.

Bibliography

365

Verkhovskii, A. I. Na trudnom perevale. Moscow, 1959. Vertskinskii, E. A. God revoliutsii: vospominaniia ofitsera general’nago shtaba za 1917–1918 goda. Tallinn, 1929. Vetoshnik, L. V. Colonel. Brusilovskii proryv. Moscow: Voennyi izdat., 1940. “V tsarksoi armii nakanune fevral’skoi burzhuazno-demokraticheskoi revoliutsii.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 81 (1937), 105–20. “Verkhovnoe komandovanie v pervyi dni revoliutsii.” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, 16 (1925), 279–90. “Verkhovnoe komandovanie v pervyi dni revoliutsii.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 5 (1924), 213–40. Verkhovskii, A. I. Na trudnom perevale. Moscow, 1959. ———. Rossiia na Golgofe: iz pokhodnago dvevnika, 1914–1918. Petrograd, 1918. Vertsinskii, E. A. God revoliutsii: vospominaniia ofitysera general’nago shtaba za 1917–1918 goda. Tallin, 1929. Vetoshnikov, L. V. Brusilovskii proryv. Operativno-stratigesheskii. Moscow: Voennyi izdat, 1940. Vinogradov, V. A. Pervaia mirovaia voina: ukazatel’. Moscow: INION RAN, 1994. Vrangel, P. N. “Zapiski noiabr 1916-noiabr 1920.” Beloe delo, 5 (1928). Wade, Rex. The Russian Search for Peace, February-October 1917. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969. Warner, Oliver. Marshal Mannerheim and the Finns. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967. Washburn, Stanley. “Alexei Brusilov.” 125 (June 2, 1920), 210. ———. Field Notes from the Russian Front. London: A. Melrose, 1915. ———. On the Russian Front in World War I. New York: Speller, 1982. ———. The Russian Advance. New York: Doubleday, 1917. ———. The Russian Campaign, April to August 1915, Being the Second Volution of “Field Notes.” New York: Scribner’s, 1915. ———. Victory in Defeat: The Agony of Warsaw and the Russian Retreat. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1916. Waters, W. H. H. Secret and Confidential: The Experiences of a Military Attache. London: Murray, 1926. Wettig, Gerhardt von. “Die rolle der russischen Armee in Revolutionären Machtkampf 1917.” Forschung zur ost-euroäischen Geschichte, 12 (1967). Whale, Winfred S. The Soul of Russia. London: Macmillan, 1916. White, J. D. “The Kornikov Affair: A Study of Counter-Revolution.” Soviet Studies, 20, no. 2 (1968), 187–205. Wildman, Allan K. The End of the Russian Imperial Army. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. ———. “The February Revolution and the Russian Army.” Soviet Studies, 22, 2–23. Wilfong, Peter T. “Rebuilding the Russian Army, 1904–1914: The Question of a Comprehensive Plan for National Defense.” Unpublished PhD. Dissertation at Indiana University, 1977. William II, German Emperor. The Kaiser’s Memoirs. Translated by T. R. Ybarra. New York and London: Harper, 1922. Wilton, Robert. Russia’s Agony. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1919.

366

Bibliography

Winogradsky, General Alexander. La Guerre dur le front oriental: en Russie-en Roumanie. Paris, 1926. Wrangel, P. N. From Serfdom to Bolshevism: The Memoirs of Baron N. Wrangel. London, 1927. Wright, J. Butler. Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolutionary Diary and Letters of J. Rutler Wright. Edited by William Thomas Allison. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. Yakovlev, N. N. 1 avgusta 1914 g. Moscow (?): Moskvitianin, 1993. Zaionchkovskii, Andrei M. Mirovaia voina 1914–1918 gg. Moscow, 1921. “Zapiski Generala A. M. Zaionchkovskii.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 58 (1933), 24–45. Zhilin, A. P. “Iz istoriii pogotovki nastuplenie russkoi armii letom 1917 goda.” Istoriia SSSR, 6 (1974), 163–69. “Zhizn’ soldat tsarskoi armii.” Krasnyi arkhiv, 98 (1940), 145–76. Zhuravlev, G. I. “Bor’ba soldatskikh mass protiv letnego nastuplenie na fronte (iun’iiul’ 1917g.).” Istoricheskii zapiski, 61 (1957).

WEBSITES “The Brusilov Offensives,” http://www.worldwar1.com/tlbruoff. “Why Brusilov Must Return,” http:​//222​.grea​tward​iffer​ent.c​om/Gr​eat_W​ar/Ru​ssian​ _Sold​ier-B​rusil​ov_Re​turn.​01.ht​m.

NEWSPAPERS Izvestiia Krasnaia zvezda Poslednye novosti Pravda Russkii invalid Smena Volia Rossii

Index

Abraham, Richard, 296 airforce (Russian), 45, 153 Alexander, Grand Duke, 153 Alexander I, tsar, 105 Alexander II, Tsar, 11, 15 Alexandra Romanova, tsarina, 153 Alexseev, General M. W., 3, 59, 60, 71, 107, 138, 139, 148, 155, 157, 183, 189, 193, 198, 226, 227, 234, 235, 251, 252, 254, 258, 260, 283, 295, 301, 315 All-Russian Army and Navy Officers’ Union, 259 All-Russian Central Committee for the Organization of a Voluntary Revolutionary Army, 251 All-Russian Congress of Officers of the Army and Fleet, 253 All-Russian Congress of Soviets, 266 All-Russian Land Union, 180, 191 Ardor, T., 257 army disintegration, 230 army food, 137, 282 Astrov, N. I., 9, 33, 311, 332 Avsharov, T., 33, 257 Bachkareva, Maria, 251 “Battalions of Death,” 250, 251

Beliaev, General Mikhail, 103 Below, Gen., 341 Berkman, Ivan Ivanovich, 13 Bezobrazov, Gen. Alexander, 195, 196, 197 Bismarck, Chancellor Otto von, 9 Böhm-Ermoli, General Eduoard, 173 Bolsheviks, 242, 249, 319 Bonch-Bruevich, General M. D., 58, 60, 66, 225, 243, 246 Boroevic, Svetozar von Bojna, 95 Bothmer, General Felix von, 143, 175 Breshko-Breskovsky, M., 137 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 292 Bruce Lockhart, R. N., 232, 321 Brüchmuller, Lt. Colonel Georg “Dürchbruch,” 125 Brudermann, Gen. Adolph, 67 Brusilov, Aleksei Alekseeich (Alyosha/ Liuk): relations with his father, 20–22, 112, 115, 116, 320, 321, 323, 334 Brusilov, Aleksei Nikholaevich, 10, 11, 26–28 Brusilov, Boris, 12, 13, 115, 227, 245, 257, 321 Brusilov, General Aleksei Alekseievich: anti-Germanism, 40; in Berlin,

367

368

Index

1914, 55; Caucasian ties, 16; chief inspector of cavalry, 329, 331; duel, 16; education, 14, 35; his birth and youth, 10–11; his broad-front tactics, 6; his death, 334; his fame, 111; his offensive, 165; Inspector of Cavalry, 331; Lena, 26, 105; love of his men, 7; medals and awards, 111, 113, 171, 192; obituaries, 337; personal life, 23; relationship Russo-Turkish War, 16–19; relationship with Nadia, 200–28; relations with the tsar, 167; and the Revolution, 241; spiritualism, 31; tactics in World War I, 43, 89 Brusilov, Lev, 13 Brusilov, Nikolai, 10 Brusilov, N. P., 10 Brusilov Offensive (1915), 115 Brusilov Offensive (1916), 165 Brusilov (Kerensky) offensive (1917), 277 Brusilova, Maria Louisa Antonovna, 10 Brusilova, Nadezhda (Nadia) (Zhelilkhovskaia), 22, 23, 24, 42, 55, 56, 64, 65, 77, 79, 99, 113–18, 186, 190, 200, 201, 225, 228, 268, 280, 227, 235, 265, 268, 280, 303, 313, 319, 320, 328, 329, 330, 338 Buchanan, Sir George, 103, 246 Budenny, Semeon, 231, 335 Burian, Istvan, 175, 195 Cadet (Kadet; Constitutional Democratic) Party, 207, 258, 311, 312 Cadorna, General Luigi, 148 Cathedral of Christ the Savior, 309 Cavalry School, 20, 28, 29, 35 Central Powers, 90, 93, 95, 104, 119, 138, 175, 246, 248, 266, 286, 292 Chantilly Conference (1916), 229

Chavchavadsky, Prince E. G., 17 Chekha, 320 Chernov, Victor, 228 Childs, J. Rives, 329 Chistka, 340 Churchill, Sir Winston, 4, 142, 179, 180, 260 Civil War (Russian), 21, 226, 231, 298, 320, 324, 328 Combined Arms Doctrine, 151 Committee of the Fronts of the Revolutionary Battalions, 245 Congress of Army Groups Committees, 246 Congress of Delegates of the Southwest Front, 245, 250 Congress of Soviets, 266 Conrad, Gen. von Hotzendorff, Franz, 63, 95, 118, 144, 149, 167, 171, 175, 179, 185, 188 Constituent Assembly (1919), 242, 294, 314, 317 Corps des Pages, ix, 2, 3, 12, 15, 19, 20 Council of War (1916), 139 Crimean War, 10 Cruttwell, C. R. M., 34, 61, 175, 244, 319 Curzon Line, 324 Czech (Slavic) desertions, 155, 169, 282 Danilov, 147 Declaration of Soldiers’ Rights, 252, 265 de LaGuiche, Marquis (General) Pierre, 142, 170 Denikin, General Anton, 60, 71, 73, 76, 94, 97, 98, 104, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 122, 138, 140, 141, 172, 209, 244, 244, 253, 261, 263, 264, 267, 280, 281, 297, 298, 302, 319, 327 Dieterikhs, General Mikhail, 140, 143 discipline, 242, 250, 279, 284 Dostoevsky, Fedor, 14 Dowager Empress, 235

Index

Dowling, Timothy, 209 Dragomirov, General Avraam, 247, 252 Dukhonin, Nicholas, 143 Duma Military Commission, 243 Dzerzhinsky, Felix, 320 Egorov, A. I., 335 Eisenhower, Gen. Dwight D., 198 Eiukidze, A. S., 337 Engel’hart, Col. Boris, 243 Enkel, Colonel, 148 Erdeli, General Ivan, 294 Evert, General A. E., 33, 60, 63, 116, 124, 140, 149, 156, 187, 181, 182, 183, 185, 189, 190, 191, 204, 208, 230 Fadeev, Andrei A., 21 Falkenhayn, General Eric von, 90, 95, 103, 180, 103, 207, 208, 285 Falls, Cyril, 186 Farmborough, Florence, 121, 137, 199, 204, 241, 286 February Revolution. See Revolution (February) Fife, Hamilton, 6 Figes, Orlando, 247, 320, 322 Figner, N. N., 9, 21 Filonenko, Capt. N. N., 299 “First Brusilov Offensive,” 111 Foch, General Ferdinand, 258, 288 Francis, Ambassador David R., 206 François, General Herman von, 93, 96 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 43, 55 Franz Joseph, Emperor, 70, 79, 207 Fredericks, Count Vladimir, 123, 224, 225 Friedrich, Archduke, 167, 173 Front Committee, 264 Frunze, M. V., 318, 331, 336 Gabotovsky, General Vladimir, 102 Gegenmeister, Arthur, 210

369

Gegenmeister, Henrietta Antonov, 10, 12 Gegenmeister, Karl Maksimovich, 10, 13, 20 General Order No. 1., 321, 242, 243, 248, 264, 283, 315, 248, 231, 242, 243, 248, 264, 283, 315 General Order No. 2, 2, 231, 243, 243, 248, 264, 283, 315 General Order No. 8, 244, 250. See also Declaration of Soldiers’ Rights General Order No. 114, 248 General Staff Academy, 3 Genshtabisty, 3 George Mikhailovich, Grand Duke, 224 Giliasovskii (poet), 234 Gillenschmidt, Col. (later General) Ia. F, 148, 170 Goldman, Lt., 260 Golovin, General Nikolai, 141, 208, 247 Gotte, Shay, 223, 225 Govotovsky, Gen. Vladimir, 102 Grabbe, Count, 155 Great Retreat, 106, 115, 120, 122, 137, 165, 182, 185 Group Linsengen, 248 Guard Army. See Special Army Guchkov, Alexander, 5, 122, 243, 243, 250, 251, 252, 264, 284 Gurko, General V. I., 3, 39, 198, 205, 226, 258 Gurko, I. A., 3, 198, 226 Gutor, General Aleksei, 246, 248, 255, 261, 267, 325 Haig, Gen. Douglas, 171, 187 Hanataux, Gabriel, 31 Hegenmeister, Heinz, 332 Hindenburg, General Eric von, 90, 188, 195, 20 Hoffman, Col./General Max von, 88, 125, 167, 180, 181, 192, 194, 201, 248, 278, 280, 292, 293 Hohenbom, Adolph Wild von, 103

370

Index

Holquist, Robert, 68 Ignatiev, A. A., 32 Ignatiev, Count N. N., 195 “Inspector of Cavalry,” 331 Iron Brigade (Denikin), 76, 109 “The Iron General,” 62, 105, 110, 113, 115, 190, 205, 277, 310, 341 Ivanov, General I. I., 95, 98, 99, 122, 136, 138, 141 Ivanov, General Nikolai, 3, 59, 97 Izvolsky, Ambassador Alexander, 20 Janin, General Maurice, 259, 266, 268, 278 Joffre, General Joseph, 101, 139, 171 Jones, David R., 232 Joseph Ferdinand, Archduke, 143, 170, 172, 173, 277 “July Days,” 294, 312, 314 Kaledin, General A. M., 60, 123, 142, 143, 145, 147–48, 166, 170–75, 178, 184, 185, 187, 197, 205, 324 Kamenev, Gen. Lev, 73 Kefaldola, 118 Kenez, Peter, 167 Kerensky, Alexander, 231, 243, 244, 245, 246, 250, 252, 246, 250, 253, 254, 262, 263, 266, 270, 279, 280, 285, 288, 291, 298, 300, 309, 312–17, 336 “Kerensky Offensive., 281, 293, 303 Khimetz, Lt. Col. V., 31 Khrushchev, Nikita, 341 Kisel, Adam, 11 Kizavetta, A. A., 315 Kleman, Dr., 338 Klembovsky, V. N, 123, 140, 143, 144, 196, 197, 289, 299, 325, 325 Knox, Col/Gen. Alfred, 58, 74, 94, 102, 103, 108, 122, 124, 125, 138, 142, 146, 147, 154, 178, 183, 192, 196, 206, 229, 259, 260 Kohn, Nathan, 172 Kokovtsev, Prime Minister, 40

Kolchak, Admiral Alexander, 4, 322 Konchalovsky, Prof., 328 Kornilov, Gen. Lavr, 3, 60, 72, 73, 250, 256, 260, 261, 282, 283, 285, 289, 293, 295, 300, 301, 301, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 318 Kornilovshchina, 312 Korsetstetten, 175 Krenig, Dr. O. L., 353 Krupp, 44, 112 Krymov, Gen. Konstantin, 145, 233 Kuropotlkin, Gen., 141, 182, 183, 187, 189, 190 Kutuzov, Gen. Mikhail, 1 Laguiche, Pierre, Marquis de la, 70, 89, 107, 122, 182 Lake Narocz offensive, 139, 140, 181 Lamnovsky, Gen., 60 Langlois, 78, 106, 122, 156, 181, 207, 223, 226, 256, 258, 259 Lechitsky, Gen. Platon, 142, 143, 192, 202 Lenin, Vladimir, 242, 258, 284, 288, 292, 293, 314 Lermantov, Mikhail, 16 Lesh, Gen. Leonid, 76, 100, 142, 175, 187, 193 Liddell-Hart, Basil, 174 Linsingen, Gen. Alexander von, 76, 174, 185, 201, 248 Lintner, Dr. E. V., 333 Liubimov, I. E., 264 Lloyd-George, David, 226 Lobanov-Rostovsky, Prince, 149, 341 Lochitsky, N. N., 135 Loris-Melikov, I. E., 17 Ludendorff, Gen. Eric von, 90, 146, 157, 165, 167, 168, 175, 190, 194, 199, 201, 218, 261, 293, 295, 296, 303 Lukomskii, Gen. A., 6, 105, 157, 192, 193, 199 L’vov, Prince Georgii., 38, 171, 191, 235, 252, 284

Index

MacCaw, Capt. G. H., 75 Mackensen, Gen. August von, 91, 95, 102 Maklakov, Vasilii, 312 Mannerheim, Carl, 48 Marengo, Maurice, 124, 172, 174, 179, 182, 183, 196, 224, 225 Marie, Grand Duchess, 2, 27 Marwitz, Gen. Georg von der, 180 Meiendorf, Col. Bogdan, 15 Miliukov, Paul, 2, 224, 250, 312 Minin, 316 Morodin, V. V., 5 Moscow Congress of Public Leaders (Figures), 312, 315 Moscow Industrial Committee, 200 Moscow Society of the History of Old Russia, 11 Moscow State Conference, 311, 312 Nabokov, Vladimir, 247 Narocz offensive, 120, 139, 140, 181, 191 Neilson, Capt. F., 79, 80 Nicholas II, tsar, 20, 41, 83, 106, 109, 112, 141, 153, 171, 176, 179, 186, 195, 197, 204, 206, 209, 234, 235, 262, 263, 332 Nicholas Cavalry School, 2 Nicholas Nicholaevich, Grand Duke, 7, 10, 16, 31, 33, 35, 56, 57, 59, 67, 78, 57, 77, 94, 95, 98, 106, 171, 310 Niessel, Albert, 247 Nikolai Mikhailovich, Grand Duke, 16, 61, 259 Nivelle Offensive, 266 Nogin, V. P., 318 Ogorednikov, Lt. General, 235 Paléologue, Maurice, 70, 73, 105, 140, 187 Palitsyn, Gen. F. F., 33

371

Pankratova, Anna, 340 Pares, Sir Bernard, 61, 72, 101, 105, 168, 187, 251 Paris Peace Conference, 1919, 324, 341 Pétain, Marshall Philippe, 4, 258, 288 Petliura, Simon, 324 Petrone, Karen, 297, 322 Petropavlovsky Fortress, 317 Pflanzer-Baltin, General Karl von, 71, 192, 143, 167, 176, 192, 277 Piehallo von Brlog, General Paul, 143, 179 Pilsudski, Marshal Joseph, 3, 24, 334 Plan 19A, 56 Plan 19G, 56 Pleve, General P. A., 60, 61 Pokrovsky, Major N. S., 14 Polish War, 329 Polivanov, General Aleksei, 104, 107, 108, 112, 113, 121, 122, 235 Popov, Major Mikhail A., 14, 15 “Pozharskys,” 316 Preobrazhensky Guards, 10 Princip, Gavrillo, 16, 55 Provisional Government, 243, 248, 250, 251, 253, 254, 284, 288, 291, 293, 295, 296, 298, 313, 314, 317 Przemysl, 57, 69, 95, 96, 98, 102 Putilov Works, 234 Radkevich, General, 189 Radko-Dmitriev, Radko Dmitrievich, 71, 79, 80, 81, 91, 92, 95, 100, 324 Ragusa, General A. F., 182 Rasputin, 121, 155, 205 Rattel, N. I., 325 Rech’, 258, 289 Red Army, 323, 326, 327, 328, 329, 335 “The Red General,” 327 Red Guard (Bolshevik), 294, 301, 314, 316, 317, 318 Remembrance of Tsarist Martyrs, 329 Renvoensonet, 331, 334

372

Index

Rervoensorst, 325, 335 Revolution (February), 5, 226, 231, 234, 241, 244, 245, 259, 265, 283, 284, 293, 298, 302, 310 Revolution (October), 314, 335 Rodzianko, Michael, 103, 204, 231, 233, 234, 283, 284, 293, 301, 315 Romania, 144, 176, 203, 229, 277, 284, 292, 296 Romanovsky, General. E. M., 261 Root, Elihu B., 269 Rudnev, S. M., 318 Rumcherod, 292 Russian Academy of Sciences, 11 Russian army shortages, 180 Russian artillery, 166 Russian desertions, 286, 292, 332 Russian Exile Archive (Prague), 338 Russian Land Unions, 191 Russo-Japanese War, 3, 5, 12, 13, 16, 22, 57, 333 Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878, 16, 17, 18 Ruzskii, General Nikolai V., 60, 65, 67, 70, 230, 231, 234, 245, 247, 255, 258, 295 Sakharov, General Nikolai., 77, 120, 138, 142, 146, 175, 202 Salvation of Russia and the Army, 314 Samsonov, General Alexander V., 77 Savich, General Sergei S., 97, 109 Savinkov, Boris, 261 Schlieffen Plan, 58 Second Coalition of the Provisional Government, 311, 312 Seeckt, General Hans von, 185 Selivachev, General, 286, 302 Selivanov, General Andrei, 10 Sergei Mikhailovich, Grand Duke, 140 Shamil, 11 Shcherbachev, General Dmitri, 93, 97, 98, 109, 119, 122, 168, 176, 252 shortages (army), 180 Shtiurmer, Prime Minister Boris, 206 Shuvaev, General Dmitri S., 123

Sikorsky, Igor, 44 Skalon, General Georgii A., 36, 38, 39, 40, 41 Skoda Works, 44 Slavs surrender, 168, 169 Smirnov, General Vladimir, 47 Snesareev, General A. I., 335 Socialist Revolutionary Party, 246, 288 “Soldiers’ Committees,” 243 Southwestern Front, 59, 101, 122, 123, 138, 140, 154, 183, 190, 231, 251, 255, 256, 259, 263, 282, 295 Soviet, 242, 257, 285 Special Army, 194, 195, 196, 189, 205, 207, 267 Special Conference of the Supreme Command, 326 Staff College, 3 Stalin, Joseph, 340 Stankevich, General V. B., 252 Stelnitsky, General, 108 Stembok, General Yuri I., 13 Sternberg, P. K., 318 Stone, David, 156, 327 Stone, Norman, 125, 149, 206 Südarmee, 143, 175, 186, 202, 277, 286 Sukharov, 176 Sukhomlinov, General S. A., 5, 6, 7, 29, 61, 74, 107, 270 Supreme Chair of the Committee of the Fronts of the Revolutionary Battalions, 245 Supreme Command of All, Defenses of the Republic, 325 Suvarov, General Alexander V., 1, 2, 4, 6 Tannenberg, Battle of, 41 Tarkhan-Muravov, I. M., 16 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 1 Tereshchenko, Foreign Minister M. I., 269, 295, 302 Tersztyasmsky, General Karl von, 170, 282 Third Coalition, 314 Tolstoy, Lev, 316

Index

Triska, Jan F., 169 Trotsky, Lev, 1, 122, 130, 138, 230, 246, 246, 288, 290, 302, 319, 327, 336 Trubetskoi, Prince E. N., 315 Tsarina Alexandra, 224 Tseretelli, Irakii, 287, 289 Tsurikov, Gen., 73 Turkan-Miorevet, I. M., 16 Union of St. George Cavaliers, 309, 312 Union of Those Fleeing from Captivity, 313 Ustrialov, N. V., 316 Utro Rossii, 310 Vandervelde, Emile, 107, 190, 207, 278, 279 Velichko, Gen. Constantine, 150 Verkhovsky, General. A. I., 294, 302 Verstraete, M., 108 Vestoshnikov, L., 151, 336 Victor Emannuel III, 149 Viviani, René, 117 Voroshilov, Kliment, 336 Vrangel, Baron P. N., 226, 324, 327, 328 Washburn, Stanley, 69, 80, 89, 92, 102, 139, 166, 188, 269, 301

373

weapons shortages, 36, 61, 70, 72, 74, 78, 90 Western Front Committee, 280, 284, 298, 295 White Movement, 324, 333–34 Wild von Hohenborm, Adolph, 103 William II, Kaiser, 32, 107 Wilson, President Woodrow, 269 Witte, Sergei, 22 Women’s Battalion of Death, 251 Wrangel, General Peter. See Vrangel, Peter Wright, Butler, 258 Yakhontov, Rostia, 63, 309, 320 Yakhontova, Nadezhda F., 334 Yanushkevich, N. N., 66, 74 Youssoupov, Prince Felix, 55 Zaionchkovsky, General A. M., 108, 109, 110, 154, 325, 330 Zankevich, General Alexander, 288 Zasetskii, Vladimir P., 323 Zatsepin, Dr. T. S., 318 Zazulich, Vera, 246 Zemgor, 225 Zhelikhovsky, Vera, 22 Zhelinsky, Ia. G., 139 Zhukov, Gen. Georgii, 233

About the Author

Jamie H. Cockfield (1945–present) was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He earned his BA and MA in nineteenth-century German diplomatic history from the University of South Carolina and his PhD in general Russian history, with a specialization in the reign of the last tsar, from the University of Virginia. He was a member of the history department at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia from 1972 to 2017. While there, he was department chair three times, faculty representative on the board of trustees, and member of the college executive committee and University House of Delegates. Dr. Cockfield has published Dollars and Diplomacy: Ambassador David Rowland Francis and the Fall of Tsarism, 1916–1917 (1981), With Snow on Their Boots: The Tragic Odyssey of the Russian Expeditionary Force in France during World War I (1998), White Crow: The Life and Times of the Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich Romanov, 1859–1919 (2005); Black Lebeda: The Russian Famine Diary of ARA Kazan District Supervisor J. Rives Childs, 1921–1923 (2010). He has written numerous articles and book reviews in both professional and popular journals and encyclopedias. He gained for Eugene Bullard, the first American Black military aviator, a posthumous commission in the U.S. Air Force and received a hand-written letter from General Colin Powell thanking him for what he had done. He appeared in a documentary about Bullard that appeared on French television.

375