Brusilov takes command of the South-Western Front

The British chronology of the war records under 4 April 1916 that General Aleksei Brusilov took command of the southern Russian armies, that is, of the South-Western Front. The date falls in the days when Brusilov was taking over the post. The appointment was signed on 17 March by the Julian calendar then used in Russia, that is, 30 March by the Gregorian. According to the general’s memoirs, he arrived by special train at front headquarters in Berdichev on 23 March (5 April) and immediately began to exercise his duties. He replaced General Nikolai Ivanov, who had commanded the front since the beginning of the war. Ivanov was transferred to Stavka, where he was to remain attached to the Tsar’s person as adjutant-general.

Who the new commander was

Brusilov was 62. He was born in 1853 in Tiflis, today’s Tbilisi, graduated from the elite Page Corps and as a dragoon officer fought in the Caucasus in the war with Turkey of 1877–1878. He then served for more than twenty years at the Officer Cavalry School in St Petersburg, in 1902–1906 as its commandant. He was regarded as one of the best experts on horsemanship in Russia. Before the war he commanded a guards cavalry division and army corps in the Warsaw and Kiev military districts.

From the first days of the war he commanded the Eighth Army. In 1914 he led it through Galicia, on the Złota Lipa and at Gródek, and in the winter of 1914–1915 fought in the Carpathians. In the spring of 1915, after the breakthrough at Gorlice, he withdrew the army in good order to Volhynia, and in September briefly retook Lutsk. He was demanding and severe, but was considered one of the ablest Russian army commanders. As his successor in the Eighth Army he wanted to appoint the chief of staff of the front, General Vladislav Klembovsky. The Tsar, however, “strongly” recommended General Aleksei Kaledin to him, and Brusilov gave way, which, as he wrote, he later regretted.

Ivanov’s tears

The change at the head of the front was part of a wider reshuffle. In the same days Tsar Nicholas II dismissed the war minister Polivanov. The South-Western Front’s offensive on the Strypa at the turn of 1915 and 1916 had ended in failure, and Ivanov himself believed that his troops were not capable of attacking. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, who thought highly of Ivanov, had since the autumn of 1915 been urging her husband in letters to bring him from the front to Stavka or to entrust him with the war ministry. The transfer to Stavka was thus a compromise. According to Brusilov, Ivanov’s staff even asked that the new commander not hurry to arrive. Brusilov recalled that when he reported to Ivanov’s railway carriage on the evening of his arrival, the general burst into tears and kept repeating that he did not understand why he had been removed. He also assured his successor that the front could only defend itself.

Brusilov was of the opposite opinion. A few days later he met the Tsar at Kamianets-Podilskyi, where Nicholas II had come to review the troops. According to the general’s memoirs, he declared that his armies, after several months of rest and preparation, would be ready to attack by 1 May (by the Julian calendar), and asked for freedom of action. If, however, the view prevailed that the front could only defend itself, he asked to be relieved. The Tsar, who disliked such firm declarations, did not object, but told him to repeat this at the council of war.

Prelude to the conference at Mogilev

The conference met at Stavka in Mogilev on 1 April by the Julian calendar, that is, 14 April. The Chief of Staff to the Supreme Commander, General Mikhail Alekseyev, presented a plan in which the main summer blow was to be struck by the Western Front towards Vilna. The commanders of the Western and Northern Fronts, Generals Aleksei Evert and Aleksei Kuropatkin, fresh from the defeat at Lake Naroch, doubted that an offensive could succeed. According to Brusilov’s account, he alone asked for permission to attack. He received it, although his front was assigned only a supporting role. In June 1916 it was his armies that broke through the Austro-Hungarian front in the offensive that went down in history as the Brusilov offensive.