Russia in the First World War

Russia fought Germany and Austria-Hungary on the Eastern Front and Turkey in the Caucasus. Germany declared war on it on 1 August 1914. The Russian army lost at Tannenberg in 1914 and at Gorlice in 1915, but for long stretches of the war it was successful: it took Eastern Galicia, eastern Anatolia and northern Persia. The war exhausted the state and in 1917 brought about the fall of tsarism, and the Bolsheviks took Russia out of the war: they signed an armistice with the Central Powers on 15 December 1917 and peace at Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918.

The road to war

For years Russia had been Germany’s partner, but in 1890 Berlin did not renew the Reinsurance Treaty. On 4 January 1894 the Franco-Russian alliance came into force, and in 1907 Russia came to terms with Britain in the Anglo-Russian Convention. In the Balkans St Petersburg was a rival of Austria-Hungary: in 1908 the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina set off a crisis, and Russia, weakened after the war with Japan, had to give way to Germany in 1909 and remembered the humiliation.

Entering the war

On 28 July 1914 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. On 29 July Russia ordered partial mobilisation against Austria-Hungary, and on 30 July Tsar Nicholas II, persuaded by the Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov, agreed to general mobilisation. Its first day was 31 July. On 1 August Germany declared war on Russia, and on 6 August Austria-Hungary did the same.

In 1914 Russia was the most populous state in Europe: it had 175 million inhabitants, an army of 1.3 million men and almost 5 million reservists. Almost all the parties that had challenged the autocracy since the creation of the Duma in 1906 proclaimed a “sacred union” with the monarch. The Duma went into voluntary recess and left the conduct of the war to the army and the government. The Tsar’s uncle, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, became commander-in-chief. On 2 November the Tsar issued a manifesto on war with Turkey, which was to open Russia’s way to the Straits.

The Eastern Front, 1914–1916

Russia had promised France a quick attack on Germany and kept its word. On 20 August 1914 the Russian 1st Army repulsed the Germans at Gumbinnen, but at the end of August the 2nd Army of Alexander Samsonov was encircled and destroyed at Tannenberg, and in September, at the Masurian Lakes, the Germans drove the 1st Army out of East Prussia.

In the south the Russians defeated the main forces of Austria-Hungary in the Battle of Galicia and on 3 September entered Lviv. In the autumn they stopped the Germans at Warsaw and Dęblin, and on 22 March 1915 Przemyśl capitulated, with some 120,000 men going into captivity.

On 2 May 1915 German and Austro-Hungarian troops broke through the front at Gorlice. The Great Retreat began: on 5 August the Germans entered Warsaw, on 17 August they took Kovno, and on 20 August Novogeorgievsk capitulated with more than 80,000 soldiers. In the summer of 1915 the Russians lost the whole of Congress Poland.

On 5 September 1915 the Tsar took supreme command himself and sent the Grand Duke to the Caucasus. In the Caucasus the Russians had been winning victories for some time: in the winter of 1914 they routed the Turks at Sarikamish, on 16 February 1916 they took Erzurum, and in April Trebizond.

On 4 June 1916 Aleksei Brusilov broke through the Austro-Hungarian front in Volhynia and Bukovina. The Brusilov Offensive brought hundreds of thousands of prisoners and the recovery of a large part of Galicia, but the Russians did not take Kovel, and the attack bogged down in the marshes. It is regarded as Russia’s greatest victory of the war: in the first two months it cost the Russians half a million men, but it drew Central Powers forces away from the Western Front and persuaded Romania to enter the war.

The home front and revolution

The general staff had counted on a short war, and the reserve of 7 million shells was soon exhausted. Production grew, to 1.9 million shells a month in 1916, but by December 1915 the rouble had lost 20 per cent of its value.

Retreating in 1915, the army used scorched-earth tactics, and by 1917 the number of internal refugees exceeded 6 million. The defeats broke the “sacred union”: in the Duma the Progressive Bloc was formed, demanding changes in the conduct of the war and a share in power for representatives of society, but the Tsar rejected its demands and dissolved the Duma. In the early hours of 30 December 1916 aristocratic conspirators killed Grigori Rasputin, the favourite of the imperial couple.

On 12 March 1917 the Petrograd garrison went over to the strikers and the Tsar’s authority in the capital collapsed. Russia used the Julian calendar, 13 days behind, which is why this upheaval was called the February Revolution. On 15 March Nicholas II abdicated, and power passed to the Provisional Government, which tried to revive the war effort.

In July the Kerensky Offensive, the last Russian offensive of the war, quickly petered out, and desertion reached epidemic proportions. In September Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky dismissed the commander-in-chief after the Kornilov affair. On 7 November 1917 the Bolsheviks seized Petrograd and overthrew the Provisional Government.

During the war Russia had to take a position on the Polish question. On 14 August 1914 Grand Duke Nicholas promised the Poles the unification of the Polish lands under the Tsar’s sceptre and autonomy, and on 25 December 1916 Nicholas II included among the aims of the war the creation of a free Poland from all three partitions. On 30 March 1917 the Provisional Government recognised the right of the Poles to an independent state. According to various estimates, between 1.2 and 2 million Poles served in the Russian army. On 25 January 1918 the I Polish Corps of General Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki went into battle against the Bolsheviks.

Leaving the war and the cost

On 21 November 1917 the government of Vladimir Lenin proposed an armistice to the enemy. On 5 December a temporary ceasefire was signed at Brest-Litovsk, and on 15 December an armistice along the whole front from the Baltic to the Black Sea, which in practice took Russia out of the war.

The peace talks dragged on: on 10 February 1918 Leon Trotsky announced that Russia was leaving the war but would not sign an annexationist peace. On 18 February the Germans launched Operation Faustschlag and almost without fighting occupied Livonia, Estonia, Belarus and part of Ukraine. Lenin gave way, and on 3 March 1918 Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, losing Poland, Lithuania, Courland, Livonia, Estonia, Finland and Ukraine.

The end of the war with the Central Powers did not bring Russia peace. In May 1918 the Czechoslovak Legion revolted, and Russia sank into civil war. On the night of 16–17 July 1918 in Yekaterinburg the Bolsheviks murdered the former Tsar and his family.

During the war between 12 million (according to the US War Department) and 15.38 million men (according to Grigori Krivosheev) were called up into the Russian army. Between 1.7 million soldiers, according to 1918 data, and 2.25 million, according to Krivosheev, who includes the missing presumed dead, were killed or died. According to the US War Department 4,950,000 Russian soldiers were wounded and 2,500,000 were taken prisoner or went missing.