The Russian Third Army in the First World War

The Russian Third Army was one of the field armies that Russia put into the field against Austria-Hungary in the first days of the war. In 1914, under Nikolai Ruzsky, it took Lviv, and under Radko Dimitriev it besieged Przemyśl and came up to Kraków. In May 1915 it was the army that took the German blow at Gorlice, which began the Great Retreat of the Russian army. It then fell back through the Lublin region and Polesie, in 1916 it fought once more on the Stokhid, and until the end of the war it held a quiet sector of the front.

Ruzsky and Lviv (1914)

The army’s command was formed in July 1914 at the headquarters of the Kiev Military District. At the start of the war it had four corps, the IX, X, XI and XXI, and three cavalry divisions, and it belonged to the South-Western Front of General Nikolai Ivanov. Together with the Eighth Army it was to strike at Lviv from Volhynia and Podolia, while the main Austro-Hungarian forces marched north into the Lublin region.

In the Battle of Galicia the two armies defeated the weaker Austro-Hungarian Third Army on the Złota and Gniła Lipa. Russian critics, among them Nikolai Golovin, later accused Ruzsky of halting his right wing on the crucial days and giving the enemy breathing space. The Austrians did not defend Lviv, however, and on 3 September units of the Third Army entered the city. The conqueror of Lviv became a hero in Russia.

A few days later Ruzsky’s army, marching west from Lviv, collided with the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army, which had been turned back from Komarów. In the battle at Rawa Ruska its corps fanned out and for several days made frontal attacks on fortified positions. Russian historians charged the army command and Ruzsky himself with serious mistakes, but when corps of the Fifth Army came down from the north onto the Austrians’ rear, the enemy had to fall back behind the San. In September Ruzsky took over the North-Western Front, and Dimitriev took over the Third Army.

Przemyśl, Kraków and the Carpathians (1914–1915)

The Bulgarian general in Russian service wanted to take Przemyśl before relief arrived. The group of Dmitry Shcherbachev closed the ring around the fortress, but the assault on the forts on 5–8 October, made without heavy artillery, brought nothing but heavy losses. A few days later the Russians raised the siege and fell back behind the San.

In November, after the retreat of the Central Powers, Dimitriev’s army marched west from Tarnów. Some of its corps were moved across the Vistula to help the Ninth Army at Kraków, and the rest approached the fortress from the south-east and took Wieliczka. At the beginning of December Conrad struck from the mountains at its flank and rear. After the Battle of Limanowa the Third Army fell back behind the Dunajec.

In the winter its left wing fought in the Low Beskids in the Winter Battle in the Carpathians, losing tens of thousands of men to sickness and frostbite. In the spring of 1915 the army held the front from the Vistula near Tarnów to the Łupków Pass. The line was long, the trenches shallow, and the artillery short of shells. According to Russian accounts, on the front of seven corps the army had only 4 heavy guns.

Gorlice and the Great Retreat (1915)

On 2 May 1915 the new German Eleventh Army of August von Mackensen attacked at Gorlice. By Russian estimates the attackers had a threefold superiority in men and a sixfold one in artillery on this sector. The front broke on the first day, and on 5 May Dimitriev ordered a retreat behind the Wisłoka.

The high command forbade any withdrawal, so the army fought on one line after another and each time lost thousands of prisoners. According to German and Austrian communiqués their number had passed 140 thousand by the middle of May. A British officer with the Russian army, Captain Neilson, reported in the second half of May that its losses had passed a hundred thousand men, and that in some divisions of the X Corps only a thousand soldiers were left.

On 10 May Dimitriev took the army back behind the San, but there too the enemy got across. Two of its corps were handed over to Brusilov. The army commander was blamed. At the beginning of June General Leonid Lesh took over the Third Army, and the army itself was placed under the North-Western Front.

In the summer Lesh fought on the defensive in the Lublin region. At the beginning of July the Austrians broke through his positions at Kraśnik, but Russian reserves stopped them a dozen or so kilometres further on. In the middle of the month the Germans broke into his front at Krasnystaw, even though Lesh had been given the Guard to help him. Russian studies estimate the army’s losses in this fighting at 25–30 thousand men. At the end of August the Third Army abandoned Brest-Litovsk, and in September, after the loss of Pinsk, the front came to a halt in the marshes of Polesie.

Kostiuchnówka and the end (1916–1918)

Through the winter the army stood on the Western Front. At the end of June 1916, during the Brusilov Offensive, it was handed over to the South-Western Front. On 4 July its left wing attacked towards Hołuzja and Manevychi. At Kostiuchnówka it was held up for three days by the brigades of the Polish Legions, which lost about 2 thousand men in this fighting. By 14 July, however, the troops of Lesh and Kaledin had reached the Stokhid. They did not take Kovel, although the Third Army tried again, without success, to attack on that river.

After this fighting the army was given back to the Western Front, where it saw no more major action until the end of the war. After the February Revolution a commissar of the Provisional Government appeared at its headquarters. Lesh commanded until August 1917, and then four generals followed one another within three months. After the Bolshevik coup a sub-lieutenant, Sergei Anuchin, took command of the army. At the end of 1917 its headquarters was at Polotsk. The army was disbanded in February and March 1918.