given to this; it was found necessary to discard it and to carry out mobilization by the somewhat out-of-date plan of 1910.
As every war is usually preceded by a more or less lengthy period of political complications, then, in order to safeguard mobilization, a declaration was previously prepared, called the " period preparatory to war," during which each unit and command was required to over- haul its mobilization scheme and complete any deficiencies, and to recall all ranks on leave or on detachment. This was proclaimed on July 26 1914.
There were in Russia in 1914 the following permanent fortresses or forts: (a) Land: Kovno, Olita, Osovets, Lomza, fortifications on the river Narev, Zegrzh, Novogeorgievsk, Warsaw, Ivangorod, Brest-Litovsk, Kars, Kushk; (b) Maritime: Kronstadt, Viborg, Sveaborg, Libava, Ochakov, Sevastopol, Kerch, Batum, Vladivostok, Nikolayevsk-on-Amur. Modern developments in military engineer- ing had made all these fortresses very antiquated. The profiles of the fortifications were weak and could not withstand the power of the modern gun ; camouflage practically did not exist. The artillery was of the most varied and of extremely antiquated types and ammunition was limited. In a condition such as this, the fortresses could not be a support for manoeuvre in the field, nor for that matter for operations at sea ; on the contrary, they themselves needed the support of a living force. They demanded considerable num- bers for their garrisons, and so further weakened the army in the field. Of the land fortresses, those of foremost significance were held to be the fortresses of Kovno, Osovets and Brest-Litovsk.
In 1914 the quicker mobilization and concentration of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies made it impossible to carry out the strategic deployment of the main forces of the Russian army on the Vistula. Thus, all the forts and fortifications on the river just men- tioned, as well as on the Narev, were, to a certain extent, cut off. Their position, combined with the scarcity of means for reconstruc- tion, as well as with the difficulty of carrying on defence from such a populous point as Warsaw and the necessity of providing large forces as garrisons, compelled the abandonment of reconstruction. An exception was made only in the case of Novogeorgievsk, which seemed to have future possibilities as a means of enhancing freedom of manoeuvre on both flanks of the Vistula.
In the case of the maritime fortresses, attention was practically concentrated on Kronstadt, Sevastopol and Vladivostok; Kerch and Libava were suppressed. _
In respect of railways Russia was very deficient, notwithstanding the fact that in the years immediately preceding the war several new lines were built, of which the most important, from a military point of view, was the new double-track line Bologoe Sedlets. Taking the data of 1913, the density of railway lines in European Russia (l km. per 100 sq.km.) was only one-twelfth of what it was in Great Britain. The amount of double-track lines was also small, altogether about 25 % of the whole, when in other European states the percentage was as high as fifty. Rolling stock was likewise limited; to every kilometre there were hardly above 7 carriages, while in other countries of Western Europe it was twice and three times as much.
Macadam roads were sufficiently frequent in the main frontier regions adjacent to Germany, but away from those regions com- mon roads only were available. The front adjoining Austria- Hungary had no macadam roads at all.
The war with Japan had to a large extent used up the military stores that Russia possessed and the provision of new technical resources of war such as heavy artillery, means of communication, motor-cars, wire, machine-guns, air craft involved the assignment of fresh large credits, and the manufacture of the necessary stores had to be spread over a number of years. Moreover, as industry in Russia was in a poor state of development orders had to be placed abroad and the execution of these was complicated by questions of financial procedure. This state of things resulted in the army, at the beginning of the war, being poorly supplied both with technical resources and reserves of armament. In certain respects the latter were not up to the recognized pre-war standards, low as these some- times were (e.g. 1,000 rounds in reserve per light gun and per rifle).
In the beginning of 1914 the War Ministry had brought before the Legislature a bill for the allocation of credits for the further development of the armed forces, the so-called " great programme." The bill provided for the further strengthening of the cadres in the infantry and artillery, the supply of the army with heavy artillery in a larger proportion and the creation of new units which would be formed into two new corps. The bill was passed, but the advent of the war prevented its provisions from being actually carried out.
(Y. D.)
It is not possible to follow put in detail the development of the Russian army after the mobilization of 1914. The strength of the armies of the N.W., W., and S.W. " fronts, at different periods, is given by Gen. von Falkenhayn as follows ' :
Combatants only
Mid Sept. 1914 ' . 950,ooo
End Dec. 1914 1,688,000
End Jan. 1915 1,843,000
End April 1915 1,767,000
End May 1916 2,240,000
The last date may be considered as the high-water mark of Russia's military effort. In spite of the enormous losses in men, material and territory of the campaign of May-Sept. 1915 Russia placed in the field for the combined Allied offensive of 1916 half a million more combatants than at any previous date.
The great Galician offensive was launched in June 1916. Its brilliant successes were won at very heavy cost, notably in the battles about Kovel. The effort died away into trench warfare. The Rumanian defeats stimulated a fresh spasm of activity in the winter of 1916-7, but the spring revolution of 1917 found the mass of the army, no less than the people at large, war-weary and dis- pirited by great sacrifices which seemingly brought peace no nearer. As is well known, the main contributory cause of the disasters of 1915 was shortage of ammunition, and it was only by the expenditure of lives instead of material that the Russian command was able to limit, as it did, the consequences of these disasters. What is less well known, but historically almost as important, is the fact that even in 1916 the material equipment of the fronts was at a low level. The victories of that year were won by the same methods as those which stemmed the tide of defeat in 1915 ruthless expenditure of lives. A great effort to remedy material deficiencies had indeed set in at the eleventh hour. Between July 1915 and the end of 1916, the ill- developed industries of Russia were revolutionized the Tula rifle factory, for instance, having an output in 1916 six times as great as its output in the year of the war with Japan, besides turning out 1,140 machine-guns per month. At one period the output of gas shell was comparable to that in Great Britain. Owing, however, to the immense extent of the front, even the utmost possible develop- ments of Russian industry would not have sufficed, and assistance from Great Britain and France was necessary to supplement it. This assistance, taken together with home output and the aid of America, as an ally, would probably have placed the Russian army on a satisfactory basis as regards equipment by the early autumn of 1917. But before the home effort could bear fruit and Allied assist- ance was available, the strain on the army had become too heavy. 2
In the conditions, the disintegration of the Russian army which followed the spring revolution of 1917 scarcely requires explanation. An iron discipline, far more inflexible than that of any army of West- ern or even Central Europe, had been strained to the utmost, when its foundations suddenly crumbled, and the chance of creating a new discipline, such as was created by Carnot in the French army of 1793-4, was let slip in the chaos of conflicting ideals and policies which constitutes the tragic history of 1917, both inside and outside Russia. The last effort of the old army, the Galician offensive of July I, for a moment shook the solidity of the Austro-German defence. But once more Germany was able to transfer troops (14 divisions) to the East, for the French offensive had collapsed and the moral of the French army was passing through a crisis which com- pelled inaction. This time the German command determined to finish matters in the East. First-quality divisions, employed on well-chosen parts of the front and using new methods of attack, closed the history of the eastern-front campaigns in the battles of the Sereth (July 19) and Riga (Sept. l).
During 1918 the final dissolution of the old army completed itself in the civil wars. The original military forces of the Soviet Govern- ment were a militia the so-called Red Guard; this was replaced gradually by a regular army. But neither the " Red Army " nor the armies raised by the different counter-revolutionary leaders, derive directly from the imperial army. Thousands, perhaps hun- dreds of thousands, of individual ex-officers and ex-soldiers figured in these new organizations and imparted to them the routine prac- tices, the uniforms, and many of the characteristic customs of the old army. But no organic continuity exists between old and new. The peace of Brest-Litovsk and the civil wars constitute not a new chapter but a new book in the history of Russian military institutions. No detailed information is available as to the losses of the Russian army from 1914 to the peace of Brest-Litovsk. The most probable estimates give 1 , 700,000 de'ad and 2, 500,000 prisoners as " definitive " losses, i.e. exclusive of wounded, but in the absenceof the data from which those estimates are built up, all that can be said is that Russia lost more heavily in men than any other belligerent on either side. (C. F. A.)
1 No information is available as to the total ration strength of the Russian armies at different periods of the war, nor of the combatant strength of the forces on the Caucasus-Persia front.
2 The contrast between Eastern and Western standards of arma- ment may be illustrated by comparing the French artillery strength at the battle of the Somme (July I 1916) and the Russian artillery strength at the battle of the Strypa (Yastoviet) on June 6 1916, both being deliberately prepared offensives against an entrenched front:
Somme
Frontage of VI. Army
10 m.
444 field guns
645 medium and heavy guns and howitzers
Strypa
Frontage of II. Corps
14 m.
1 60 field guns and howitzers
23 medium guns and howitzers
