Mogilev in the First World War

Mogilev, a provincial capital on the Dnieper in what is now eastern Belarus, lay far from the front during the first year of the war. In August 1915, during the Great Retreat, the Stavka, the headquarters of the Russian army’s commander-in-chief, was moved there. For a year and a half Tsar Nicholas II, who had taken over the command himself, lived here, and in 1917 the town witnessed the fall of the monarchy, the Kornilov affair and the break-up of the old army. The Stavka remained in Mogilev until February 1918.

The Stavka on the Dnieper (1915)

From the start of the war the headquarters of Grand Duke Nicholas had stood at Baranovichi, an important railway junction. In the summer of 1915, when Kovno and Brest-Litovsk fell, the front came close to it too. On 21 August 1915 the Stavka moved to Mogilev; Russian sources, which count by the Julian calendar, give the date as 8 August. The staff took over the local administration building, and the Tsar lived in the governor’s house.

On 5 September the Tsar arrived in Mogilev and took over the supreme command in person. The Grand Duke left for the Caucasus, and General Mikhail Alekseyev became chief of staff. According to the historian Sofya Anisimova, the Tsar left most military decisions to him, and Alekseyev became the army’s de facto commander. Political acts also came out of Mogilev: in October the Tsar signed the manifesto on the war with Bulgaria here.

The Tsar at headquarters (1915–1917)

Nicholas II spent most of his time in Mogilev, far from the capital. His ministers had warned that from now on he would be personally answerable for every defeat, and in Petrograd the influence of the Empress and of Grigori Rasputin over appointments grew. Personnel decisions were also taken at headquarters: in November 1916 the Tsar received the prime minister, Boris Stürmer, here and decided to dismiss him.

Campaigns were planned here. On 14 April 1916 Alekseyev presented a plan for a summer offensive towards Vilna at a conference of front commanders. The commanders of the Western and Northern Fronts doubted it would succeed, and only General Aleksei Brusilov asked for permission to attack. He was granted it, and in June his armies broke the Austro-Hungarian front in the offensive that went down in history under his name.

The revolution and the Stavka (1917)

When on 12 March 1917 the garrison mutinied in Petrograd, the Tsar was in Mogilev. Early on 13 March the imperial trains set off for Tsarskoye Selo, but never reached it. On 15 March at Pskov Nicholas II gave up the throne, and on the evening of 16 March, back in Mogilev, he learned that his brother too had declined the crown. Grand Duke Nicholas, reappointed commander-in-chief, arrived here on 24 March, but the Provisional Government did not allow him to take up the post.

From then on the Stavka became the arena of the generals’ quarrels with the revolution. On 20 May Alekseyev told a congress of officers in Mogilev that “Russia is perishing”, and he soon lost his post to Brusilov. After the collapse of the July Kerensky Offensive, on 29 July, the prime minister, Alexander Kerensky, heard bitter accusations from the generals here and staked everything on Lavr Kornilov. In September the expedition against Petrograd set out from Mogilev, and on 14 September Alekseyev arrested Kornilov and his associates in the town.

The end of the Stavka (1917–1918)

After the Bolshevik seizure of power the acting commander-in-chief, General Nikolai Dukhonin, refused to carry out Lenin’s order to offer the enemy an armistice. On 1 December the Allied military missions left Mogilev, and on 3 December the new commander-in-chief, Nikolai Krylenko, entered the town with a force of sailors. Dukhonin was arrested, and a mob of soldiers and sailors killed him on the platform.

The Bolshevik Stavka did not stay in the town for long. According to Anisimova, it was moved to Oryol on 26 February 1918 and disbanded on 16 March, after the Peace of Brest-Litovsk. During Operation Faustschlag the Germans reached Mogilev by early March. At the end of the month the Belarusian People’s Republic listed the Mogilev region among its lands, and in May the I Polish Corps fought the Bolsheviks near the town. In 1919 the Red Army took Mogilev and incorporated it into the Byelorussian SSR.