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Russia in World War I

Дата публикации: 04 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Imperial Russia →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1188907113


Was Imperial Russia doomed to defeat in World War I?

Viewpoint: Yes. Russia could not cope with the demands of modern warfare or the military might of Germany.

Viewpoint: No. Russia was much more resilient than has commonly been recognized and fought until its domestic political situation collapsed.

_____________________

Russia was one of the greatest losers of World War I (1914-1918). Its armies were defeated on the battlefield; much of its territory was occupied by enemies; both its reigning Romanov dynasty and the vaguely democratic government that replaced it were toppled by domestic political turmoil; authority fell into the hands of extremists, who presided over one of the most repressive regimes in history; and the price of peace was a massive loss of territory, population, and resources. Was Imperial Russia doomed to such terrible catastrophe?
Some scholars believe that it was. Despite the Russian Empire's economic and social advances in the decades before 1914, it remained underdeveloped and militarily weak in comparison with its main adversary, Germany. With superior technology and training, German armies not only inflicted huge defeats on the Russians but also simultaneously waged an aggressive campaign in Western Europe. Russia, facing major consequences from its low military and civilian morale, overtaxed infrastructure, and exhausted resources, could never have mounted effective resistance and should rightly be considered one of the conflict's most vulnerable powers.
Yet, others believe that in military terms Russia was not that far out of step with its adversaries. Despite its ultimate defeat in the war, it launched successful campaigns against Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, Germany's main allies, and held off some German attacks in the earlier stages of the war. Its supply problems were no more severe than those of the other combatants, all of which struggled to coordinate industry and orient it toward war production. Like its allies and competitors, moreover, Russia was capable of finding solutions. In terms of casualties, the Russians, who had the largest population and mobilized more men than any other power, did not suffer more on the battlefield, either in absolute or relative terms. The argument follows that it was not an inherent inferiority that imperiled Russia's ability to fight and remain competitive but rather the domestic political and social crises that had begun brewing before the war.



Viewpoint: Yes. Russia could not cope with the demands of modern warfare or the military might of Germany.

When Imperial Russia went to war in 1914, it was certain to lose. In almost every major category it lagged far behind its principal adversary, Germany, and for many reasons it was incapable of competing in a modern war. Ultimately, Russia's inability to fight in World War I (1914-1918) deprived its political leadership of legitimacy and precipitated the collapse of its expanding prewar economy and burgeoning civil society.

That Russia could not stand up to a modern European opponent should have come as no great surprise. No Russian army had won a major battle against a European power since the victories over Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812-1814. Although Russia won its wars against the Ottoman Empire (1828-1829 and 1877-1878) and against the native peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus throughout the nineteenth century, European powers could effectively scale back its victories by threatening military intervention. When Russia engaged modern industrial powers in direct combat, as it did when it battled the Ottomans' European allies in the Crimean War (1853-1856) and Japan (1904-1905), it suffered crushing defeats.

The defeat in the Crimean War directly spurred a long period of reform intended to modernize Russia and increase its military and economic competitiveness. Particularly in the years after 1890, under the leadership of its finance minister, Sergei Witte, the empire experienced rapid industrial growth, expanding international trade, and major improvements in infrastructure. Yet, the results of this long-term strategy were insufficient to help Russia in 1914, when its economy still ranked a distant fifth among the world's great powers. Since modern military prowess depended more than ever before on economic power and raw industrial strength, the numbers already doomed Russia on the battlefield.

This point was not lost on European strategic planners as they looked toward future conflict. Indeed, the Russian government's sponsorship of modernization and industrial growth in the decades before 1914 derived from its realization that it would remain hopelessly uncompetitive without them. Russia's unsuccessful war with Japan, which helped touch off a domestic political revolt, reinforced that perception. In addition to partial political modernization, in which Tsar Nicholas II conceded some power to an elected legislature and abridged the authoritarian strictures of his government, the Russian elite redoubled their efforts to modernize the economy and society, at least partly in preparation for a general European war. Petr Stolypin, who served as premier from 1906 to 1911, famously declared, "Give me twenty years of peace, and you will not recognize Russia!" He meant that avoiding war for the foreseeable future would give him time to expand Russia's industrial sector, increase literacy and primary education, and modernize the military and civilian infrastructure to the point where the empire could compete with its potential adversaries.

France, Russia's ally, also realized its need for development. Concerned about its own ability to defend against a German attack, France did all it could to promote Russia's modernization. Beginning in the 1890s, French loans provided much of the capital for Russia's public and private development in industry and infrastructure. After the Russo-Japanese War demonstrated Russia's military and economic weakness, the French made their annual loans increasingly conditional on projects of military significance, including railroads connecting the rest of the country to the German borderlands.

Russia's adversaries were also aware of the importance of its development. Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor until 1890, closed his country's financial markets to Russian borrowers because he realized that investment would only make Russia stronger. This move was a factor in driving Russia to form its alliance with France in 1892. As a result German military planners, confronted with a potential two-front conflict, began to believe that every mile of new Russian railroad track would reduce their battlefield advantage. Concluding that it would be better to fight the war sooner rather than later, they eventually estimated that a failure to attack Russia before 1916 would jeopardize their ability to win a war on two fronts. The sense that Russia's continuing economic development was closing a window of opportunity convinced many in the German leadership to advocate conflict in 1914.

The Russians, their allies, and their enemies all were right. Further development, Stolypin's "twenty years," was essential for Russia's military competitiveness. But it never happened. Stolypin had only five years in power before his assassination; his less effective successor had just three before his dismissal in 1914. Within a few weeks of Germany's declaration of war, this shortfall became painfully clear. Russia's initial and unexpected penetration into East Prussia in August 1914 ended in a costly rout at Tannenberg at the end of the month, and German reinforcements halted the Russian march into the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia in September. After inconclusive winter positioning, the Germans and Austrians checked a renewed Russian advance in Galicia in March 1915. A German attack in the spring and summer of that year forced the Russians out of their Polish territories, depriving the empire of a significant amount of its industrial base and railroad infrastructure. The Russians regained some ground in Galicia in a counteroffensive in the summer of 1916, but as soon as German reinforcements arrived, the attack ground to a halt.

Deficiencies in tactics and technology went a long way toward explaining these reverses. Many senior Russian commanders in 1914 were still enamored of dated tactics. The commander of the Northwestern Front, which included Russian forces deployed against Germany, insisted on concentrating men, artillery, and supplies in strategic fortresses, an idea that rendered them useless for ground operations and, as the mobile Germans could easily bypass and reduce these fortresses, superfluous in the war at large. Military modernizers had been consistently sidelined in the prewar years by a largely corrupt and geriatric high command that mistrusted them. The war minister, General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, proudly declared in 1913 that he had not read a military manual in twenty-five years. Emerging military technologies--including tanks, machine guns, aircraft, and telephone communications--were explored on a relatively small scale by the Russian military. While tanks and aircraft were of only marginal use elsewhere, the machine gun was one of the war's most decisive weapons. The telephone became essential for coordinating ground operations on the Western Front, but the Russians almost never used it, even at military headquarters after Tsar Nicholas II relocated there after assuming personal command of the army in August 1915. The cavalry, which all the other European powers had relegated mainly to ceremonial and supply roles, remained an essential component of the Russian military, even though horses could do little against German machine guns and artillery, and despite the challenges of moving horses and fodder around on already overtaxed railroads. One recent study of Russian military policy before World War I makes the point clearly with its title: Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914 (1992).

Behind the lines Russia's war effort was for the most part a bleak endeavor. No combatant power expected World War I to last as long as it did, and all experienced military and civilian shortages of various kinds, but in Russia they were especially acute. The army was so dramatically undersupplied that as many as one-third of its soldiers went into battle unarmed and supplied only with the unpromising instructions to pick up weapons from fallen comrades to continue the attack. German and Ottoman control of strategic waterways placed major limitations on Russia's ability to import foreign military matériel. Even supplies that could get through to the northern ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, or to Vladivostok on the Pacific, had to wait for months on the faraway docks before they could be moved across Siberia or the Russian north to the front. French loans, on which Russia had been so dependent before 1914, disappeared as France found itself in the fight of its life and had to borrow heavily from the United States and Britain for its own needs. American finance, which became essential for Britain as well as France, was not made available to Russia. Although domestic industry partly succeeded in making up for shortfalls in weapons production, one expert has calculated that by April 1915 Russian artillery units could fire only two shells per day. When Nicholas II took personal command of the army in August 1915, his near permanent absence from the capital, Petrograd, hindered the coordination of government ministries and left increasing amounts of authority in the hands of Empress Alexandra and her favorites, most of whom were dubious nonentities of limited competence.

Exhausted and strained beyond endurance, by winter 1916-1917 the Russian infrastructure could neither supply the front adequately nor transport a sufficient amount of food to urban centers. When the supply of bread in Petrograd began to run low in February 1917, several days of demonstrations and rioting caused the tsarist government to lose control of the city. The troops in its garrison defected to the demonstrators. In early March, Nicholas II, warned that the army would longer support him, abdicated in favor of a provisional government formed by members of the legislature to which he had delegated limited powers, a group that uneasily shared authority with a spontaneously assembled body of workers' and soldiers' deputies, the Petrograd Soviet (council). Like their tsarist predecessors, however, these authorities were also incapable of fighting the war to a successful conclusion. Crisis followed crisis through 1917, and the authority of the new government ebbed. By November of that year the radical Bolshevik Party--promising bread, land, and freedom--seized control of the capital in a coup d'état. As the new government swiftly became a brutal dictatorship, one of its first acts was to sign an armistice with Germany, followed by the harsh peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. Both the communist dictatorship and the punitive peace were the sad fate of a nation doomed to defeat in World War I.

-- Paul Du Quenoy, Georgetown University


Viewpoint: No. Russia was much more resilient than has commonly been recognized and fought until its domestic political situation collapsed.

It is always difficult when examining the past to separate the end result from what was actually happening as the events were occurring. One prime example of this situation is World War I (1914-1918) and Russia's role in it. Russia had military plans and capabilities that matched those of the other Great Powers. What led to its defeat was a combination of the course of the war and its effect on the internal situation of the empire. While it is often hard to separate the domestic and foreign aspects of war in the twentieth century, Russia was defeated mainly by pressures within the Russian Empire. This defeat was not preordained. Rather, the new type of war unleashed on Europe was one where all of society was mustered in order to succeed. Russia fell because it was not able to hold up under all of these pressures.

Russia had adequate military plans for the war that everyone in Europe believed was imminent. By the fall of 1913 Russia had completed work on Mobilization Order #20, a comprehensive set of war plans that called for rapid advances into both German and Austro-Hungarian territory, supplemented by a network of strategic fortresses. Because of the lack of time to implement it (moving divisions to their new locations, logistical problems, and so on) before the outbreak of hostilities on 1 August 1914, however, Russia was forced to implement Mobilization Order #19, which had been completed and accepted by the monarchy on 1 May 1912 and was intended to focus on one enemy at a time. Nevertheless, both of these Mobilization Orders were the full equivalent of either the Joffre Plan (Plan XVII) in France or the Schlieffen Plan in Germany. All four plans envisioned quick offensive maneuvers intended to knock out enemy forces in a few weeks. In many ways the Russian and French military plans were more current than the German plans. Field Marshall Joseph Joffre became the French chief of staff in 1911 and drew up his plans shortly thereafter. This preparation occurred at the same time the Russian General Staff was writing Mobilization Order #19. The German plan was written and revised by the chief of the German general staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, between his appointment in 1891 and retirement in 1906, and it was subsequently modified and substantially weakened by his timid successor, Count Helmuth von Moltke. At the start of the war Germany was operating with a weakened plan originally conceived more than two decades before the conflict broke out, while the Russians and the French were organizing under two- or three-year-old military plans.

Mobilization Order #19 was important in understanding Russian military strategy--both offensive and defensive. One of the most important aspects of this plan was that it actually consisted of two separate plans: one to fight Austria-Hungary (Plan A) and another to fight Germany (Plan G). Plan A focused on a strong offense against Austria-Hungary across the Carpathian Mountains, while troops stationed along the East Prussian border would focus on holding the border. Plan G was operationally the opposite of Plan A: the troops along the Austria- Hungary border would hold the line against attack, while the bulk of the Russian forces attacked Germany. In the end, even though the more ambitious Mobilization Order #20 could not be implemented, having these dual strategies within the military planning proved beneficial to Russia because there was no joint strategy and planning between the Central Powers.

When Russia made the decision to mobilize on 31 July 1914, its leaders focused initially on Plan G and marched into East Prussia. They quickly suffered two major defeats at the hands of Germans: the Battle of Tannenberg (26-30 August) and the Battle of the Masurian Lakes (6-15 September). By December the Germans had captured the industrial city of Lodz in Russian Poland. The front was not just a story of defeat after defeat for the Russians, however. During the winter months Russian forces in Poland successfully defended Warsaw against German attacks and held a stable front. Bringing Plan A into operation, the Russians successfully captured Lemberg (Lvov), the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, in September. When Austro-Hungarian forces launched an offensive in the Carpathians in January 1915, they were defeated by weather and a Russian counteroffensive. In March 1915 the Russians captured the Galician fortress of Przemysl, taking 120,000 Austrian prisoners. The Russians bested the Austro-Hungarian forces throughout the entire war, and Germany constantly had to divert troops from other fronts to aid its beleaguered allies. After the fall of Przemysl the Austrian general staff worried that the Russians had imminent plans to march into Hungary. In the spring of 1916 the Russians launched another huge offensive under General Aleksei Brusilov against Austria and made important gains. Given these successes, it was entirely possible that Russia could have beaten Austria-Hungary if it were not also fighting the Germans. Indeed, part of the diplomatic rationale for Berlin's involvement in World War I was that it knew that Austria--its oldest and only reliable ally--could not stand up to the Russians and their Serbian clients alone. At the same time, Russia was also successful in fighting the Ottomans in the Caucasus, capturing a series of Turkish fortresses. Since Russia had not lost to the Turks in any military engagement since the eighteenth century, it is likely that it would have defeated them, too, had Germany not been in the war. Although Russian Poland fell to the Germans over the summer of 1915, Russia's other successes should not be discounted.

The Russians were defeated by the Germans, but many of the reasons for this result were not because of poor battlefield performance. Most had to do with the economic situation within Russia. There are many accounts of how backward economic development inside the Russian Empire limited its military strength. First, there was a short supply of money. Russia had a weak domestic tax base; its revenue-yielding foreign trade dried up because the Germans and Turks controlled the Baltic and Black Sea egresses used by Russian shipping; and its traditional foreign-capital markets in France were taken over by the desperate French war effort. The war caused the highest inflation experienced by any combatant power, while real wages declined faster than anywhere else. Second, the transportation system within Russia was minimal in comparison to that of Germany and the other major powers. The Russian Empire was much larger than any of the Central Powers and had a much lower population density, but its railway development was smaller in absolute as well as relative terms when compared to its adversaries. Third, Russia faced a chronic shortage of guns and other military equipment. Rampant corruption in the War Ministry prevented an effective allocation of resources before the war. Russia's smaller industrial base was uncompetitive with Germany's, but Russia was nevertheless able to stockpile a relatively impressive supply of arms by 1916, relying on assistance from the Western allies and dramatically increased domestic production.

Despite these limitations, Russia was still able to mobilize more than 12 million soldiers over the course of the war. Only Germany, which mobilized 11 million soldiers, was able to come close to matching its actual numbers of soldiers in the field. The casualty figures were even more telling. Russia lost about 1.8 million dead, compared to more than 2 million for Germany, 1.1 million for Austria-Hungary, and more than 325,000 for the Ottoman Empire. While one must remember that the Central Powers also had to fight Russia's allies in other theaters, it is important to note that Russia lost only half as many men as they did in the field. In proportional terms 11.5 percent of Russia's mobilized troops were killed. This figure was by no means insignificant, but for Austria-Hungary it was 12.2 percent, for Germany it was 15.4 percent, and for the Ottoman Empire it was an enormous 26.8 percent. Russia lost a huge number of men to enemy captivity--3.5 million between 1914 and 1917--but the Germans, Austrians, and Turks together also had more than 3 million men taken prisoner over the course of the war. Russia's high rate of capitulation, moreover, had much to do with the apathy that its undersupplied soldiers felt about defending a country devastated by domestic political dissension, a situation that likewise came to cause mass surrenders of German, Austrian, and Turkish troops in the last year of the war.

Russia's utility in the field was recognized by its allies. The Treaty of London, signed on 5 September 1914 by Russia, Great Britain, and France, stated that there would be no separate peace. In war aims talks held in the first months of the war, Western diplomats gave Russia substantial territorial concessions--including the strategically important and long-contentious Turkish Straits--in the hope that these prospective gains would keep Russia in the war. Even after the collapse of the Russian monarchy in February 1917, Allied missions continued to urge the Provisional Government that succeeded it to remain in the war.

Aside from the domestic limitations listed above, Russia was in a difficult political situation as it fought the war. Russia was fighting for two separate goals at the same time: to maintain its Great Power status and to maintain the monarchy. German diplomatic pressure had already forced Russia to back down from protecting its Serbian client twice during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), and Russia had been forced to swallow Austria-Hungary's enhanced position after its annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. If Russia could not stand up to other powers, then it would lose its position in world politics. It was also felt that if Russia lost the war, the monarchy would be forced to take the blame and would fall. Russia experienced the same initial enthusiasm for the war that every other European country went through. Where there had previously been dissent and even strikes, there was near unanimous support for the war and the monarchy, even among dissident socialists. Widespread strikes only started to return in mid to late 1915, following military defeats. Even so, there were only about 100,000 individuals who went on strike at that time. By the end of 1916, as the situation got worse, there were massive strikes all over the country, but these increasingly had to do with short supplies of food. In Petrograd (the renamed St. Petersburg) more than 250,000 individuals participated in strikes at the end of 1916. The war effort had put a strain on Russia's economy and society. It was a new type of war that, because of the large number of troops as well as military goods necessary to fight it, meant that all of society, not just the soldiers on the front lines, had to participate in the war effort. Military supplies had precedence over civilian goods and food. Military defeats created refugees, led to the loss of agricultural land, reduced the production of civilian goods (even as the supply of military goods was increasing), and seriously impacted the country's transportation network. These factors fed the discontent of workers and citizens of the Russian Empire. By February 1917 there was only a few days' supply of bread left in the capital. Peaceful demonstrations against the war, aided by warm weather, grew. The ineffective government failed to counter them until it was too late, and within just a few days the tsarist regime had vanished. The Provisional Government that followed was determined to keep the country in the war, but the same problems on the home front weakened its tenuous position just as they had weakened the tsarist regime.

Russia was able to hold its own in the field in World War I, not only until the domestic political order collapsed but also for several months thereafter. Even after the monarchy fell, the Provisional Government was able to launch an attack into Galicia in July 1917, an offensive that was not tactically unsound. However, this attack also failed in the end because the domestic situation did not permit the government to focus fully on the war effort. There was a larger war brewing within Russia. Domestic problems within the Russian Empire were the key to its defeat in World War I. However, neither victory nor defeat was preordained in this new type of war that involved all of society, not just the political and military elite. No one was prepared for it, and only the last parties standing could win. Russia was just one of the first to fall.

-- Brandon C. Schneider, Georgetown University


FIGHTING THE RUSSIANS

Austrian officer Octavian Taslauanu recounts in his memoirs an engagement with Russian forces in the Carpathian Mountains on 20 November 1914:

I had just put on my shirts again--I always wore two or three--when I heard a shout from all sides: "The Russians are on us!"

Private Torna came to our shelter to announce: "Sir, the Russians are breaking through our line on the top!"

I did not yet believe it, but, at any cost, I asked my friend Fothi to conduct the company to the trenches. Meanwhile I hastily put on my boots, took my rifle, and rejoined the company as it was emerging from the wood.

There I stopped. I could hardly believe my eyes. What was it I saw? Along the whole front, the Russians and our men were in contact, staring at, threatening (with bayonets fixed), shouting at, and, in places, blazing away at each other.

Among the junipers, near to the trench we had dug three days back, the Russians and our men were scrambling together, fighting and kicking, around a supply of bread intended for the 12th Company. This struggle of starving animals for food only lasted a few seconds. They all got up, each man having at least a fragment of bread, which he devoured voraciously.

With a rapid glance I counted the Russians. They were not more numerous than ourselves, and I saw them drag our men away one by one by pulling at the corners of their blankets--for our shepherds had turned their blankets into overcoats.

One or two of them, a little more knowing than the rest, unfastened these coverings and, with a shake of the shoulders, left them in the hands of the Russians. The latter, well content with their prize, went their way laughing, while our men came back to us. I thought to myself that, after all, it could not be much worse in Siberia than it was here.

Some of the Russians now tried to surround us. One raw young recruit came quite close up to us and raised his rifle at me. I held mine to the ready in response. It was a thrilling moment. I don't know what it was, but something in my look prevented him from firing, and I too refrained.

He took to his heels and fled. But the shock had been too much for me, and, like a savage, I yelled in a fury: "Disarm them!"

I threw myself on to the group nearest to us, and Fothi and I together wrenched the rifles out of the hands of the two Russian soldiers. They all surrendered forthwith like lambs. We took sixty of them. All our men wished to escort the prisoners.

I selected three as a guard, the third to walk behind and carry the Russian's rifle. I was obliged to have recourse to threats before I could induce them to enter the trench, and I then marched them off in file to the Commander-in-Chief.

And this is how bread, holy bread, reconciles men, not only in the form of Communion before the holy altar, but even on the field of battle. The peasants, who, in their own homes, whether in Russia or elsewhere, sweat blood in order to insure the ripening of the golden ear of corn which is to feed their masters, once they are on the battlefield forget the behests of these masters who have sent them forth to murder their fellows, and they make peace over a scrap of bread.

The bread which they have produced and harvested makes them brothers. After this scene not a single shot disturbed the forest, and those who had been able to preserve a whole loaf, quickly shared it brotherly fashion with the prisoners, the latter offering them tobacco in exchange. All this, of course, took place in front of our bivouacs in the heart of the forest.

I sent Fothi to the Major to ask for reinforcements, as I was expecting a second attack. The prisoners told me that the Russians had come about four hundred strong.

I did not have long to wait. An hour later, on the edge of the wood, a party of Russians appeared. They were standing with their rifles at the slope, beckoning to us to approach. One of our men left his party and came to tell us that the Russians wished to surrender, but that we ought to surround them.

It was no doubt a fresh ruse. A quarter of an hour before I had sent out a patrol of two men--a Rumanian and a Saxon--and they had not returned. The Rumanian had surrendered and the Saxon had been killed.

My reinforcements arrived, sixty men of the 10th Company, under Second Lieutenant Szollosy, the man who was always the best hand at cursing and belabouring our Rumanians. I sent his sergeant-major, a brutal and thoroughly repellent Saxon, together with twenty men, to the right to surround the Russians.

I certainly doomed them to death. I reckoned that if the Russians wished to surrender they would not wait for us to surround them first. They would lay down their arms and give themselves up. On the other hand, if they did fire on our men, all who had gone out to the corner of the forest would fall victims. But calculations are all very fine; on the field of battle they are apt to be misleading.

Surrender was the last thing in the world that the Russians against whom our men were advancing with fixed bayonets had in mind.

I went over the top, clambering over the body of a man whose brains were sticking out of his head, and signed to them to surrender--they were at most 200 yards away.

But they still continued to call to us without attempting to move. I thereupon gave the command, "Fire!" and held my own rifle at the ready. At this point my calculations broke down. My Rumanians refused to fire, and, what was more, prevented me from firing either. One of them put his hand on my rifle and said "Don't fire, sir; if we fire, they will fire too. And why should Rumanians kill Rumanians?" (He was thinking of the Bessarabians.)

I accordingly refrained, but, beside myself with rage, tried to rejoin my right wing, where incredible things were happening.

The schoolmaster Catavei and Cizmas barred my way, exclaiming: "Stop, don't go and get yourself shot, too!"

Our men were advancing towards the Russians, and, with their arms at the slope, were shaking hands with them; and the fraternizing business started again.

"Surrender, and we will surrender, too. We're quite ready."

Our men were bringing in Russians, and vice versa. It was a touching sight.

I saw one of my Rumanians, towards Saliste, kiss a Russian and bring him back. Their arms were round each other's necks as though they were brothers. They were old friends, who had been shepherd boys together in Bessarabia.

We took ninety Russians as prisoners in this way; whilst they took thirty of our men.

But this was not the last of the adventures of that wonderful day.

I was afraid of a third attack. A Moldavian from Bessarabia, noticing what a handful we were, said to me: "If we had known there were so few of you we should have gone for you with sticks."

I again applied to the Major for reinforcements and a machine gun. As it happened, he had just called up a company of the 96th Infantry Regiment; they arrived almost immediately--125 men, under Lieutenant Petras--and went to lengthen our right wing.

As for me, the Major sent me to a bank on the left, to direct two machine guns where to fire in order to cut off the retreat of those Russians who had remained in the wood. I had hardly advanced a hundred yards before I heard a shout of "Hurrah!" in my sector.

I called out to the Major to find out what it meant, and went on. In a hollow I found a field officer--unfortunately, I have forgotten his name--who sent a lieutenant to accompany me to the machine guns.

But it was a Russian machine gun that welcomed us as soon as we reached the trenches. The bullets whizzed by, thick and fast. One grazed my leg, another came within a hand's-breadth of my head.

The Russians employ detachments of snipers, who creep into advanced positions and pick off officers only. Major Paternos had the fingers of his left hand shot off in his observation post. They are wonderful shots. I showed my respect for them by not leaving the trench until nightfall, when I returned to my sector.

Lieutenant Petras had attacked the Russians in the wood. That was the meaning of the cheers I had heard, of which the most patent result was the reduction of the relieving company of the 96ths to twenty-five men. Those who had entered the wood never returned, and had certainly fallen a prey to the Russians.

Once again I had escaped the dangers of that fateful day, which the Commander-in-Chief assured us, in a special Army Order, would be inscribed on the page of history.

Our scrap with the Russians may have been extremely comic, but at least we had held our positions--and that alone was a victory. We had been allotted the task of keeping the crest, from which, if they had been able to seize it, the Russians would have threatened our line in the rear and on the flank; and we had fulfilled it.

Source: Octavian Taslauanu, "Memoirs & Diaries: An Austrian Officer's Memoir of the Battle of the Carpathian Passes," in Source Records of the Great War, volume 3, edited by Charles F. Horne (Indianapolis: American Legion, 1930); First World War.Com http://www.firstworldwar.com/diaries/carpathianmemoir.htm


_____________________

FURTHER READINGS


References


Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (New York: Viking, 1997).

Bruce W. Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1990).

Norman Stone, The Eastern Front: 1914-1917 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975; New York: Scribners, 1975).

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 сентября 2007 года

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