Russians enter Dobruja

On 27 August 1916, the day on which Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary, the first Russian detachment crossed the Danube at Isaccea and entered Dobruja. So states the American historian Glenn Torrey, a scholar of the Romanian front. Russian studies likewise write that the corps entered Romania on 14 August by the Julian calendar, that is, 27 August by ours. The British chronology of the war places the crossing earlier, under 25 August. The movement then went on for many days. The American minister in Bucharest, Charles Vopicka, reported to Washington that the Romanians had agreed to let the Russians pass through their country around 1 September.

Two divisions instead of an army

Russian help for Dobruja had been provided for in the military convention that Romania signed with the Entente on 17 August: on mobilisation Russia was to send two infantry divisions and a cavalry division there. This was much less than the Romanians had wanted. As early as the winter they had demanded some 200,000 Russian soldiers to shield Dobruja from the Bulgarians. At the head of the new 47th Corps was placed General Andrei Zayonchkovsky. In his later strategic study he admitted that instead of the planned 50,000 soldiers Russia sent barely 30,000 to Dobruja: the 61st Infantry Division, the 3rd Cavalry Division and the Serbian Volunteer Division. The Romanian historian Constantin Kirițescu put the strength of the corps at just under 42,000 men in 28 battalions and 24 squadrons, with a dozen or so batteries of artillery.

Kirițescu also quotes the account of General Aleksei Brusilov, who appointed Zayonchkovsky to the command. The general is said to have refused and demanded at least four good divisions. The Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander, General Mikhail Alekseyev, did not accept his resignation and assured him that in Dobruja he would meet no serious resistance. According to Kirițescu, the offended Zayonchkovsky telegraphed the Tsar that the troops entrusted to him were bones thrown to Romania to tempt it into the war.

Serbs from Odessa

The most unusual part of the corps was the Serbian division. It began to be formed in the spring of 1916 in Odessa, on the initiative of Nikola Pašić’s government, from prisoners taken by the Russians from the Austro-Hungarian army. They were mainly Serbs from the Habsburg monarchy, but also Croats and Slovenes, who had volunteered to fight against their former state. They were commanded by officers of the Serbian army, and by mid-August the division numbered nearly 18,000 men.

The crossing

According to Kirițescu, the Russian cavalry crossed the Danube at Isaccea on a pontoon bridge that the Romanians had brought there from Tutrakan (Turtucaia), while the infantry crossed the river at Cernavodă, where the Bucharest–Constanța railway crosses the Danube. The corps assembled slowly around Medgidia, far behind the Romanian divisions guarding the border with Bulgaria. The Russians were then to advance on Bazargic, that is, Dobrich. The Austrian official history, citing the Romanian general Gheorghe Dabija, states that the next objective was to be Varna, the future base of an expedition via Burgas against Constantinople. Zayonchkovsky later wrote that the whole Romanian war plan rested on the mistaken assumption that Bulgaria would not declare war on Romania.

These hopes were quickly dispelled. On 1 September the Bulgarian 3rd Army crossed the Dobruja border, and in the first days of September heavy fighting took place near Dobrich, in which the Serbian division suffered severe losses. After nine days of the campaign the Russo-Romanian forces had been pushed back 50–90 kilometres from the border.