THE EASTERN FRONT

CZAR TAKES COMMAND OF THE RUSSIAN ARMY – September 1915

Acknowledgements

The Great Retreat (Map): greatwarproject.org Eastern Front: slideplayer In Command: slideplayer Rasputin: cartoon c1916 artist unknown Rodzianko: First World War.com Swallows and Amazons: (detail) imdb.com Bulgaria (detail): storymaps.arcis.com.

    As we have seen, in May, Russia faced a series of disasters. German and Austro-Hungarian forces had driven the Russians out of Galicia and the Polish Salient, and begun an invasion of Lithuania in the north. The Russians had fallen back along the entire Eastern Front. In September, Czar Nicholas II, alarmed at what came to be known as “the Great Retreat”, took over personal command of the Russian army from his uncle, Grand Duke Nicholas (a popular figure, but generally considered an incompetent leader). By then, it must be said, the Russian front line was stabilizing (albeit some 300 miles to the east!), but there remained a pressing need to restore the resolve of the country’s fighting forces. However, in the corridors of power and at military headquarters, there was real concern that the Czar was not the man – far from the man – to rally his faltering troops. The Great Retreat had added to the dangerous political and social unrest already spreading among the Russian people. There were anti-war protests, and a mass of Bolshevik anti-war propaganda at work amongst the lower ranks of the army. All this was undermining the rule of the Czar ….. the very man setting out to save the nation. The smallest defeat would be seen as a personal failure of the Czar himself.

     When the war broke out in August 1914 there were no problems over recruitment. Thousands volunteered for service. The Russians lived up to their reputation of defending their mother land, but after their initial success – notably the invasion of East Prussia – the empire’s military shortcomings quickly came to the surface and disillusionment set in. The Russian soldier was given the minimum of basic training, and many were sent to the front lacking the most basic equipment. At one stage General Alexei Brusilov wrote to the Czar: “In recent battles a third of the men had no rifles. These poor devils had to wait patiently until their comrades fell before their eyes and they could pick up their weapons. The army is drowning in its own blood." The Czar wrote to his wife Alexandra, “Again that cursed question of shortage of artillery and rifle ammunition – it stands in the way of an energetic advance”. And on the battlefield, the wounded had little chance of survival. It is said that there was a surgeon for every 10,000 men. In 1916 alone, two million Russian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded. The only commodity that was in good supply at the front was holy water, sprinkled over the troops who were about to go into battle! The Czar’s catchphrase, “War till victory is complete” rang hollow in the ears of those who were at the sharp end of a bloody and seemingly endless conflict. Nor was such hardship confined to the battlefield. So many men were called-up, that farms across the entire country could not produce the usual amount of food. The price of basic food rocketed by 400 percent, some peasants starved to death, and there was serious unrest in Russia’s major cities, particularly Petrograd and Moscow. In addition, there was a serious shortage of fuel, and matters on the home front were made worse by the loss of Poland’s industrial and agricultural output.

    CzarxNicholas II, coming to the throne in 1894, was a divine autocrat. He derived his authority from God, and he was thereby obliged to preserve his absolute power at all cost. He was the benevolent “father” of the state, and he made it clear from the beginning of his reign that there was no real place for democracy in Russa. He rebuked elected representatives. Any notions that they could be involved in government affairs were “senseless dreams”. But, in effect, he proved to be a weak and ineffectual leader. He is particularly remembered for leading his country into a disastrous war with Japan in 1904, and, the following year, condoning the massacre of a peaceful demonstration of workers in St. Petersburg. Such was the public outcry against this incident – known as “Bloody Sunday” and seen as the beginning of the violent stage of the Russian Revolution – that he was forced to grant some limited constitutional reforms. And his decision to take command of his army was a disaster for three major reasons. Firstly, he now became personally responsible for any set back, public disorder, or defeat on the battlefield ….. and a selection of these was on its way! Secondly, he had no experience of leading troops and little knowledge, if any, of military strategy. Thirdly, his departure from Petrograd to work at Stavka, the Russian military headquarters at Mogilev (now in Belarus), meant that the Czarine Alexandra was left alone to conduct the war at home, aided – or rather dominated – by a religious charlatan named Grigori Rasputin.

    Alexandraxwas totally loyal to her husband and the nation, but the fact that she was a German-born princess did not help her cause. Nor did her close acquaintance with this strange, mystical faith healer named Grigori Rasputin. He become a close member of the royal couple as from 1906 when he succeeded in easing the suffering of their haemophiliac son Alexei. Over the next decade he became a powerful influence not only in the affairs of the royal family, but also on the political stage. As personal advisor to the Czarine, he was able to replace senior appointments with friends who were invariably corrupt and incompetent. He was eventually murdered – brutally – in December 1916, but by then the damage to the Czar’s rule had been done. As we shall see, he was forced to abdicate after the February Revolution of 1917, and for him, and his family, worse was to follow.

    Incidentally, amongxthe political and military leaders who were strongly opposed to the Czar taking control of the army was the President of the State Duma, Mikhail Rodzianko. He wrote a very long and impassioned letter to his majesty “on bended knees”. His sacred majesty, he pleaded, the last refuge and symbol of his people, should “not be dragged into the stress and storm of the ordeals that have come to us” but “shine radiantly as a torch”, instilling much needed confidence and leading his country to victory. His taking command of the army would be “a realization of the hopelessness of the situation and of the chaos which has invaded the administration”. His entreaties fell on deaf ears, as we know, but his letter graphically describes the dire situation of Russia at this time, and it must go down in history as one of the most fervent pleas ever written! (August 25th 1915). ……

    ……  The Englishxauthor Arthur Ransome, who gained literary fame in 1929 with his children’s adventure story Swallows and Amazons, was a war correspondent in the First World War and visited Russia a number of times. The front-line troops, he observed, were fighting without enough weapons to go round. They were ill-armed and ill-supplied, and faced a grim future.

    It was against this unsettled background, with Russia’s future precariously in the balance, that the Eastern Front was suddenly and dramatically expanded by Bulgaria’s decision to enter the war in support of the Central Powers. As we shall see, in October 1916 the Bulgarian army, alongside troops from Germany and Austria-Hungary, invaded Serbia, overwhelmed the entire Serbian army, and drove it into exile. A small contingent of Franco-British forces attempted to support the Serbs via the Greek port of Salonika – the only route open to the Allies – but it was defeated and pushed back to the Greek border.

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