Military campaign 1917. Russia in the First World War (1914–1917)

A. F. Kerensky (in a car) - Chairman of the Provisional Government of Russia in 1917

The Entente's strategic plans for 1917 were based on superiority in forces over the countries of the German bloc. At the beginning of the year, the armed forces of the Entente states numbered 21 million people, while the enemy had 10 million. Germany and Austria-Hungary intended to defend themselves on all land fronts. The Entente High Command intended to inflict a final defeat on them with coordinated blows.

The main provisions of this plan were agreed upon in November 1916 at the next inter-allied conference in Chantilly (40 km from Paris). After it, the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army ordered the front commanders to prepare their proposals for the upcoming offensive. In January - February a new conference took place in Petrograd, during which Russian government under pressure from the allies, it agreed to begin major offensive operations no later than May 1.

Two weeks after the allied delegations left Petrograd, a revolution began in Russia. Despite the growth of anti-war sentiment in the country, revolutionary ferment in the army and a decline in discipline among the troops, the Provisional Government set a course for continuing the war.

Meanwhile, preparations for the spring offensive were in full swing on the Western Front. At the suggestion of the French commander-in-chief, General R. J. Nivelle, the offensive was carried out on a 40-kilometer section of the front between Reims and Soissons.

The troops of the Russian Expeditionary Force, which arrived in France in 1916, took an active part in the battles.

For 27 days, the Allies tried to break through the German defenses, but they failed to do so, despite huge losses (over 345 thousand people). The failure of the offensive led to Nivelle's removal from his post. General A. Pétain became the new commander-in-chief in France.

Now the allies began to push Russia with even greater activity to intensify military operations on the Eastern Front, resorting to overt blackmail. In May, the Provisional Government was informed that if it could not organize an offensive in the near future, it would be left without the support of the Entente.

However, the Russian army increasingly lost its combat effectiveness. The provisional government was faced with a massive refusal of soldiers to continue the war.

According to some estimates, since the beginning of the February Revolution, 2 million people have deserted from the active Russian army. Cases of fraternization with the enemy at the front, refusal to carry out orders for regrouping, and to carry out engineering work related to the preparation of an offensive have become more frequent. There were frequent cases of reprisals against officers. The soldiers did not understand what they were fighting for.

On May 14, 1917, at a meeting of front commanders held at Russian Headquarters, it was recognized that the army was not able to conduct successful fighting. The commander of the Northern Front, General A. M. Dragomirov, stated that general mood armies - peace at all costs.

The most important factor influencing the mood of the troops was also the lack of food, fodder, and horses. The government's measures to democratize the army, in particular the “Declaration of the Rights of Military Personnel,” published by Minister of War A.F. Kerensky, caused a sharply negative reaction from the generals. The Declaration gave military personnel equal rights with the civilian population, granting soldiers the right to freely express their political and religious views and belong to political parties.

At the end of July, speaking at a meeting at Headquarters about the reasons for the disintegration of the army, General A.I. Denikin said: “I heard that Bolshevism destroyed the army. I reject this... The army was destroyed by others who carried out the recent military legislation that destroyed the army.” Nevertheless, preparations for the offensive, which became the last for the Russian army, continued. The main strike group was concentrated on the Southwestern Front (commander-in-chief General A.E. Gutor). Here we managed to achieve three-fold superiority over the enemy in the areas of the proposed breakthrough. The operation began on June 29. After two days of artillery preparation, Russian troops, especially the 8th Army under the command of General L. G. Kornilov, were able to achieve some tactical success. However, the German command transferred reserves to the dangerous area and organized a counterattack. As a result, the front rolled back east beyond the line from which the offensive began. On the Northern Front in September, the Germans struck in the Baltic states and occupied Riga and then the Moonsund Islands. This created a direct threat to Petrograd.

On November 7 (October 25), 1917, an armed uprising took place in Petrograd. The provisional government was overthrown, and power passed to the Bolshevik-led Council of People's Commissars.

One of the first legislative acts of the new government was the Decree on Peace, adopted by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on November 8. The People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, headed by L. D. Trotsky, addressed all the warring parties with a note in which it proposed to begin peace negotiations. There was no response to this proposal. Germany, on the contrary, readily agreed to begin negotiations, which led to the signing of an armistice agreement for a period of 28 days on December 15. Two days later the agreement came into force. Five days later, peace negotiations began.

During these same days, on the Italian front, Austrian and German troops inflicted a serious defeat on the Italian army in the battle of Caporetto. The offensive launched on October 24 led to a breakthrough in a 60-kilometer area in the Plezzo-Tolmino area, after which Italian troops began to roll back. For the first time since the beginning of the war, a battle took place on Italian soil. The enemy managed to occupy an area of ​​about 14 thousand square meters. km. Five British and six French divisions were transferred to Italy to assist, helping to restore the defensive line. The Italian commander-in-chief L. Cadorna was removed from his post and replaced by General A. Diaz.

At the Battle of Caporetto, the Italian army suffered a severe defeat. The photograph shows killed Italian soldiers

During the Battle of Caporetto, the losses of the Italian army amounted to 11 thousand killed, 280 thousand prisoners and 429 thousand wounded. More than 350 thousand soldiers deserted from the front.

In Mesopotamia, the British managed to inflict Turkish army a serious defeat and capture Baghdad on March 10-11. The Russian expeditionary force of General Baratov also went on the offensive in mid-March, occupied Hamadan and the area of ​​​​the city of Kermanshah and established direct contact with British troops. In the Middle East, the British, using camel cavalry (camel corps), deprived the Turks of sources through maneuvering actions drinking water. By the end of 1917, they captured the territory of Palestine and stood on the borders of Syria.

In 1917, the Entente failed to fulfill its plan and defeat Germany and its allies.

Russia's withdrawal from the war significantly weakened the Entente, and the entry of the United States into the war in April 1917 (the Americans took part in hostilities mainly in 1918) only partially compensated for this loss.

At first 1917 Germany relied on “unrestricted submarine warfare,” hoping to turn the tide of events in its favor. This step accelerated the United States' move against it, despite the fact that President Wilson was re-elected in 1916 under the slogan “He kept us out of war.” By that time the United States already had close relations with the Entente powers and provided them with great material support. The last factor that predetermined the US entry into the war was the February Revolution in Russia. The Americans were confident that the young “Russian democracy” would redouble its efforts in the fight against German imperialism, and they would only have to reap the fruits of victory. The United States entered the war primarily in order to gain the right to participate in determining the post-war destinies of the world. They did not join the Entente, viewing its members as “jointly warring powers.” Later, the example of the United States was followed by China, Brazil and about a dozen other countries in Asia, America and even Africa.

1917 brought complete setbacks for the Allies. The offensive in France in the spring of 1917 floundered. The English offensive in the area of ​​Ypres was accompanied by huge losses, but had insignificant results. The June attempt to break through the Russian army also ended in failure, after which revolutionary Russia finally lost its importance as a serious military force. In October 1917, the Italian army suffered a catastrophic defeat at Caporetto. It was not so much a defeat as the collapse of the army, which entire regiments threw down their weapons and simply left their combat positions. Only in the Middle East did the Allies achieve success. In March 1917, British troops entered Baghdad, and in December - Jerusalem.

In January 1918, President Wilson issued his “Fourteen Points,” proposing terms for a peace settlement that were largely accepted in the subsequent restructuring of international relations.

The collapse of the Russian army deprived the Entente of its main fighting force and created the threat of its defeat. On February 23, 1918, the Bolshevik government in Russia accepted the German peace terms, on the basis of which it was signed in March Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The surrender of Russia allowed Germany to transfer troops to the Western Front and deliver several powerful attacks on Allied positions. Now the Americans had to get involved in the war for real, and in May 1918 the first American units entered the battle on the French front. Up to 2 million American soldiers were transferred to Europe, half of whom took direct part in the fighting. Such powerful support allowed the Entente troops in the summer of 1918 to turn the tide of the war in their favor. In June, Paris was again under threat, stubborn battles began again on the Marne (“the second Marne”), but on July 18 the allies themselves launched a counteroffensive. The start of the Allied offensive near Amiens on August 8, 1918 became a “black day” for the German army. Material from the site

In September, the Allies achieved decisive success on the Balkan front, forcing Bulgaria to capitulate. A month later, Türkiye capitulated. At the same time, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy began, which was forced to surrender to the mercy of the victors. The November Revolution in Germany, which overthrew the monarchy, brought to power a new government, which was also forced to admit defeat. Truce of Compiegne, signed November 11, 1918, ended World War I.

By the end of 1916, the superiority of the Entente, both in the number of armed forces and in military equipment, especially in artillery, aviation and tanks. The Entente entered the military campaign of 1917 on all fronts with 425 divisions against 331 enemy divisions. However, differences in the military leadership and the self-interested goals of the Entente participants often paralyzed these advantages, which was clearly manifested in the inconsistency of the Entente command during major operations in 1916. Having switched to strategic defense, the Austro-German coalition, still far from defeated, confronted the world with the fact of a protracted, exhausting war.

And every month, every week of the war entailed new colossal casualties. By the end of 1916, both sides had lost about 6 million people killed and about 10 million people wounded and maimed. Under the influence of enormous human losses and hardships at the front and in the rear, all the warring countries experienced a chauvinistic frenzy in the first months of the war. Every year the anti-war movement grew in the rear and at the fronts.

The prolongation of the war inevitably affected, among other things, the morale of the Russian army. The patriotic upsurge of 1914 was lost long ago, and the exploitation of the idea of ​​“Slavic solidarity” also exhausted itself. Stories about German cruelties also did not have the desired effect. War fatigue was becoming more and more evident. Sitting in the trenches, the immobility of positional warfare, the absence of the simplest human conditions in the positions - all this was the background of the increasing frequency of soldier unrest.

To this we must add a protest against cane discipline, abuses by superiors, and embezzlement of the rear services. Both at the front and in the rear garrisons, cases of non-compliance with orders and expressions of sympathy for striking workers were increasingly observed. In August - September 1915, during a wave of strikes in Petrograd, many soldiers of the capital's garrison expressed solidarity with the workers, and demonstrations took place on a number of ships of the Baltic Fleet. In 1916, there was an uprising of soldiers at the Kremenchug distribution point, and at the same point in Gomel. In the summer of 1916, two Siberian regiments refused to go into battle. Cases of fraternization with enemy soldiers appeared. By the autumn of 1916, a significant part of the 10 million army was in a state of ferment.

The main obstacle to victory was now not material shortcomings (weapons and supplies, military equipment), but the internal state of society itself. Deep contradictions spanned layers. The main contradiction was between the tsarist-monarchist camp and the other two - liberal-bourgeois and revolutionary-democratic. The Tsar and the court camarilla grouped around him wanted to retain all their privileges, the liberal bourgeoisie wanted to gain access to government power, and the revolutionary-democratic camp, led by the Bolshevik Party, fought to overthrow the monarchy.

The broad masses of the population of all the warring countries were gripped by ferment. More and more workers demanded immediate peace and condemned chauvinism, protested against merciless exploitation, lack of food, clothing, fuel, and against the enrichment of the elite of society. The refusal of the ruling circles to satisfy these demands and the suppression of protests by force gradually led the masses to the conclusion that it was necessary to fight against military dictatorship and the entire existing system. Anti-war protests grew into a revolutionary movement.

In such a situation, anxiety grew in the ruling circles of both coalitions. Even the most extreme imperialists could not help but take into account the mood of the masses who yearned for peace. Therefore, maneuvers were undertaken with “peace” proposals in the hope that these proposals would be rejected by the enemy, and in this case all the blame for the continuation of the war could be blamed on him.

So on December 12, 1916, the Kaiser’s government of Germany invited the Entente countries to begin “peace” negotiations. At the same time, the German “peace” proposal was designed to create a split in the Entente camp and to support those layers within the Entente countries that were inclined to achieve peace with Germany without a “crushing blow” to Germany by force of arms. Since Germany’s “peace” proposal did not contain any specific conditions and completely hushed up the question of the fate of the territories of Russia, Belgium, France, Serbia, and Romania occupied by Austro-German troops, this gave the Entente a reason to respond to this and subsequent proposals with specific demands for the liberation of Germany of all occupied territories, as well as the division of Turkey, the “reorganization” of Europe based on the “national principle,” which actually meant the Entente’s refusal to enter into peace negotiations with Germany and its allies.

German propaganda noisily announced to the whole world that the Entente countries were to blame for the continuation of the war and that they were forcing Germany to take “defensive measures” through merciless “unrestricted submarine warfare.”

In February 1917, the bourgeois-democratic revolution won in Russia, and a movement for a revolutionary way out of the imperialist war developed widely in the country.

In response to the unrestricted submarine war on the part of Germany, which began in February 1917, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with the latter, and on April 6, declaring war on Germany, entered the war in order to influence its results in its favor.

Even before the arrival of American soldiers, Entente troops launched an offensive on the Western Front on April 16, 1917. But the attacks of the Anglo-French troops, following one after another on April 16-19, were unsuccessful. The French and British lost more than 200 thousand killed in four days of fighting. In this battle, 5 thousand Russian soldiers from the 3rd Russian brigade, sent from Russia to help the allies, died. Almost all 132 British tanks participating in the battle were knocked out or destroyed.

In preparing for this military operation, the Entente command persistently demanded that the Russian Provisional Government launch an offensive on the Eastern Front. However, prepare in revolutionary Russia such an offensive was not easy. Nevertheless, the head of the Provisional Government, Kerensky, began intensively preparing an offensive, hoping, in case of success, to raise the prestige of the bourgeois Provisional Government, and in case of failure, to blame the Bolsheviks.

The Russian offensive in the Lvov direction, launched on July 1, 1917, initially developed successfully, but soon the German army, reinforced by 11 divisions transferred from the Western Front, launched a counteroffensive and threw the Russian troops far beyond their original positions.

Thus, in 1917, on all European fronts, despite the Entente’s superiority in manpower and military equipment, its troops failed to achieve decisive success in any of the offensives undertaken. Revolutionary situation in Russia and the lack of necessary coordination in military operations within the coalition thwarted the implementation of the Entente’s strategic plans, designed for the complete defeat of the Austro-German bloc in 1917. And at the beginning of September 1917, the German army launched an offensive on the northern sector of the Eastern Front with the aim of capturing Riga and the Riga coast.

The Germans’ choice of the moment to attack near Riga was not accidental. This was the time when the Russian reactionary military elite, preparing a counter-revolutionary coup in the country, decided to rely on the German military. At a state meeting convened in Moscow in August, General Kornilov expressed his “assumption” about the imminent fall of Riga and the opening of roads to Petrograd, the cradle of the Russian revolution. This served as a signal for the German army to attack Riga. Despite the fact that there was every opportunity to hold Riga, it was surrendered to the Germans by order of the military command. Clearing the way for the Germans to revolutionary Petrograd, Kornilov began his open counter-revolutionary rebellion. Kornilov was defeated by revolutionary workers and soldiers under the leadership of the Bolsheviks.

The 1917 campaign was characterized by further attempts by the warring parties to overcome the positional impasse, this time through the massive use of artillery, tanks and aircraft.

The saturation of troops with technical means of combat significantly complicated the offensive battle; it became in the full sense a combined arms battle, the success of which was achieved by the coordinated actions of all branches of the military.

During the campaign operation, there was a gradual transition from dense rifle chains to group formations of troops. The core of these formations were tanks, escort guns and machine guns. Unlike rifle chains, groups could maneuver on the battlefield, destroy or bypass the firing points and strongholds of the defender, and advance at a faster pace.

The growth of the technical equipment of the troops created the preconditions for breaking through the positional front. IN in some cases the troops managed to break through the enemy’s defenses to the entire tactical depth. However, in general, the problem of breaking through the positional front was not solved, since the attacker could not develop tactical success to an operational scale.

The development of means and methods of conducting an offensive led to further improvement of defense. The depth of defense of the divisions increased to 10-12 km. In addition to the main positions, they began to build forward, cutoff and rear positions. There has been a transition from rigid defense to maneuver of forces and means when repelling an enemy offensive.

Annotation. The article is devoted to the 1917 campaign on the Russian front of the First World War in the totality of its military operations. It is noted that in the campaign the enemy was dealt a serious blow - even in a situation of loss of combat effectiveness, the revolutionary Russian army continued to hold off significant enemy forces against itself and inflict losses on them.

Summary . The article focuses on the campaign of 1917 in the Russian Front during the First World War together with combat operations included in its area. It is noted that the campaign delivered against the enemy a serious blow, and even in the situation of loss of combat capability the revolutionized Russian army continued to hold significant enemy forces and inflicted losses among them.

WORLD WAR I

OLEYNIKOV Alexey Vladimirovich- Professor of the Department of History of Russia at Astrakhan State University, Doctor of Historical Sciences

(Astrakhan. E-mail: [email protected])

1917 CAMPAIGN ON THE RUSSIAN FRONT OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

A version of the plan for the summer campaign of 1917 (the last for the Russian army) was developed at the end of 1916. In November, the Headquarters requested the corresponding considerations of the front commanders, and at a meeting held on December 17 and 18, they adopted this plan. The main blow was to be delivered by the Southwestern Front with the 11th and 7th armies in the direction of Lviv, and the auxiliary blow with the 8th Army in the direction of Kalushch - Bolekhov. On the Romanian Front, the 4th and 6th Russian armies, together with the 1st and 2nd Romanian armies, were to defeat the enemy in the Focsani region and occupy Dobruja, and the 9th Russian army was to pin down the enemy in the Carpathians. To the North and Western fronts was entrusted with the task of delivering auxiliary strikes in areas chosen by their commanders.

The plan was not destined to come true in full due to the February Revolution of 1917, which marked the beginning of the destruction state system Russia. Instead of a powerful spring offensive, the Russian army began to decompose, leading it to its final death a year later. Both enemies and allies of Russia noted that for the first time during the entire period of the war, in the winter of 1917, its army was very strong in material terms. The weakening and subsequent death of the Russian Front allowed the Germans to fight in the west for an extra year.

Without touching upon the fact of the monarch’s cowardly abdication of the throne (given the unconditional monarchical mood of the troops and most of the population), the role of the highest Russian generals and the “public” in these events, it should be noted that this was the beginning of the death of the organized Russian armed forces. It was laid down by legislative decisions and practical actions of the new government (the symbiosis of the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet) and was expressed in the adoption of Order No. 1, which abolished the very principles of military organization on which any army rests; in the removal of a large number of senior military commanders (143 people, among them generals V.N. Gorbatovsky, V.V. Sakharov, V.E. Flug, etc.), which disorganized the highest echelon of military command and control, and a series of movements and appointments began (in nine months of 1917, six supreme commanders-in-chief of the Russian army were replaced), as well as in the introduction of elective principles in the army. All these circumstances and the establishment of the institution of commissars of the Provisional Government led to dual power and chaos. Fraternization began at the front, which took the form of barter with the enemy (on the part of war-weary Russian soldiers) and was a conductor of the subversive activities of the German-Austrian intelligence services to decompose and undermine the combat effectiveness of the Russian army.

In March 1917, fraternization already took place in 165 of the 220 infantry divisions. The fight against them was carried out exclusively on the initiative of senior front-line commanders. Field Marshal P. Hindenburg, chief of the German field general staff, wrote: “Our situation on the eastern front is becoming more and more like an armistice, although without a written agreement. The Russian infantry is gradually declaring almost everywhere that it will no longer fight. But she still... remains in the trenches. In those places where mutual relations take too obvious a form of friendly relations, artillery is fired from time to time, which is still subordinate to the commanders.”1 At the same time, fraternization also had a negative impact on the combat effectiveness of the Austro-German troops.

Desertion became common in the Russian army. If before the February Revolution total number deserters amounted to 195 thousand people (an average of 6.3 thousand per month), then in March-August 1917 it increased five times, and in the period from June 15 to July 1 - six times2. In most cases, these were “registered deserters”: for example, the average incidence in March compared to February increased by 2.5 times, although there were no epidemics at the front, etc.

The opportunity itself seemed amazing that year active actions Russian army. Its “catastrophe” (from the destruction of discipline to the decline in controllability) was also recorded by the Germans, declaring that the Russian troops “are no longer the same.” A participant in the battles in Bukovina, the commander of the I Army Corps of the 7th Army, Austrian General A. Kraus, also noted the spread of revolutionary sentiments in the enemy army3. As a result, “the state of the Russian army in the spring of 1917 was fundamentally different from before. Previously, at the start of an operation on one front or another, there was no doubt about the combat effectiveness of the troops, and the main difficulty was the poor logistical support for combat operations. By May 1917 the situation had changed. For the first time during the war, logistics, including heavy artillery, shells, etc., did not cause any particular concern, but the combat effectiveness of the troops, who did not want to fight anymore, also for the first time during the war could not be considered satisfactory.”4

In accordance with the plans developed by the Imperial Headquarters, as well as thanks to the efforts of the Minister of War and Navy A.F. Kerensky in the summer of 1917, a major offensive operation was carried out, the key role in which was assigned to the armies of the Southwestern Front. The timing of the offensive was repeatedly postponed, as a result of which the enemy was misled.

The main blow was delivered by the 11th and 7th armies: the first advanced on Lvov, the second on Bobrki through Březany, enveloping the troops of the 2nd Austro-Hungarian and South German armies on both sides. The 8th Army was tasked with attacking along the Carpathian ridge towards Kalush and Bolechów, pushing back the 3rd Austro-Hungarian Army across the river. Stryi. The special army was to pin down the army group of Colonel General A. von Linsingen.

We prepared thoroughly for the offensive: in a strip 100 miles long we managed to concentrate 52 infantry and 8 cavalry divisions with the support of 1114 guns. The massing of forces and assets was significant: up to 2-2.5 divisions and 30-35 guns per mile of the front. Russian artillery was a formidable force in quantitative and qualitative terms. Artillery control was completely centralized, and in preparation for the offensive they used latest methods intelligence. In breakthrough areas, Russian troops outnumbered the enemy in men by three times, and in artillery by two.

The troops of the Southwestern Front numbered over 1 million people, had about 7 thousand machine guns, 2.2 thousand bomb throwers, 568 mortars, 3.5 thousand guns, 226 airplanes. The enemy forces - the 7th Austro-Hungarian Army, the army groups of E. von Böhm-Ermolli (2nd Austro-Hungarian, South German armies of Count F. von Bothmer) and A. von Linsingen - numbered over 300 thousand personnel , had more than 4 thousand machine guns, 2.7 thousand guns, 226 airplanes.

Five Russian armored trains and 26 armored cars confronted four enemy armored trains. The elite Turkish XV Army Corps (as part of the South German Army) acted on the enemy’s side, and the Czechoslovak Rifle Brigade (in the 7th Army) acted on the Russian side. The classic superiority of the advancing Russian troops over the enemy 3: 1 would have taken place if all formations and units of the Southwestern Front had approximately equal combat effectiveness, but the combat qualities of the majority of Russian corps and divisions were rapidly approaching zero.

The command of the Southwestern Front had to different ways to raise the combat readiness and efficiency of the troops - shock units were formed from officers and the best soldiers, the battle formations of the troops were saturated with equipment. In fact, for the first time during the war, the consumption of ammunition was not limited, and the actions of the artillery (as well as the cavalry, the least decayed branch of the military) were responsible for a significant volume of tasks performed.

Structurally, the operation included the following stages: 1) Tarnopol breakthrough on June 16-30; 2) counter-offensive of the Austrians and Germans on July 1-15.

On June 18, after a two-day artillery preparation that leveled the enemy trenches, the 11th and 7th Russian armies went on the offensive. In the area of ​​actual enemy fire, it was carried out mainly by shock units, while the rest of the infantry reluctantly followed them. In the first two days, the Russians achieved tactical success: two or three lines of enemy trenches were captured. “The Russian offensive in Eastern Galicia,” noted Infantry General E. Ludendorff, “was accompanied by a large consumption of military supplies”5. But soon the progress slowed down: the troops began to discuss orders and hold rallies. The Russian shock units that went forward without the support of the main mass of troops mostly died, and they included the best soldiers and officers of Russia.

Attempts to resume the offensive, including the introduction of the Guards Corps into battle on June 20, did not yield results. Thus, according to a soldier of the Finnish regiment, “the artillery preparation for the attack was carried out brilliantly. The enemy's wire fences were swept away, and our regiment, with minor losses, broke into the first line of dilapidated German trenches. The second and third lines of defense were taken in battle. The counterattack was costly for the Germans. About two hundred corpses of tall German youths and young men... lay in different positions, buried in the ground. Behind the third line, our chains lay down and demanded a change, since even at the meeting one of the guards delegates said that the guards would replace us as soon as we broke through the German defense lines. All the efforts of the generals to push us into a further offensive ended in nothing. The 6th Finnish Regiment stated that it had fulfilled its condition and was waiting for the guard to be relieved. Since the shift was postponed, the soldiers and the soldiers’ part of the regimental committee allocated a delegation to a part of the Guards Corps.

Imagine our embitterment and rage when we learned that the soldiers of the Guards Corps had no intention of attacking... since in fact the entire corps was led by one of the Bolshevik-minded divisional committees.”6<…>

Read the full version of the article in the paper version of the Military Historical Journal and on the website of the Scientific Electronic Libraryhttp: www. library. ru

NOTES

1 Hindenburg P. Memories. Pg., 1922. P. 47.

2 Kavtaradze A.G. June offensive of the Russian army in 1917 // Military history. magazine. 1967. No. 5. P. 112.

3 Krauss A. Die Ursachen unserer Niederlage; Erinnerungen und Urteile aus dem Weltkrieg. Munchen, 1921. S. 216.

4 Kavtaradze A.G. Decree. op. P. 114.

5 Ludendorff E. My memories of the war of 1914-1918. M.; Minsk: Ast-Harvest, 2005. P. 434.

6 History Civil War in USSR. M., 1935. T. 1. P. 140.

Causes of the First World War which started in July(according to the new calendar - in August) 1914, there was economic and military-political rivalry between two groups of states - the bloc of Central Powers led by Germany and Austria-Hungary and Entente led by England, France and Russia (finally formed by 1907). Of main importance were Germany’s desire to redistribute colonies already divided by other powers in Asia and Africa, dominance of the seas and on the European continent, and the struggle of Austria-Hungary for dominance on the Balkan Peninsula.

Germany and its allies acted as aggressors and started the war. Russia's goals in this war were mainly defensive: to put a limit to German expansion in Europe and Austrian expansion in the Balkans, the peoples of which it traditionally patronized. But along the way, Russia also pursued aggressive goals - to seize the straits from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean (Bosporus and Dardanelles) and Constantinople, which were under Turkish rule (this was the long-standing dream of the Russian emperors).

Features The First World War, which fundamentally distinguished it from the wars of the past (including pan-European ones), were:

1. This was the first in history total a war that caused a general mobilization of the male population and millions of casualties (a total of 10 million killed, including 2 million Russians).

2. For the first time in history, the war caused the complete subordination of the interests of the rear to the front and put the entire economy of the warring countries at its service.

3. A specifically military feature was positional the nature of trench warfare stretching over thousands of kilometers front line (on the Russian front - from the Baltic to the Black Sea). It appeared consequence enormous density of continuous fronts of multimillion-strong armies Without technical means of breakthrough (in World War II, tanks became such means). As a result, bloody battles were fought for years almost in the same border positions without any special victories or defeats, which depressingly affected the morale of the troops and had far-reaching consequences, as we will discuss below.

4. The war was of an imperialist nature - a war between the leading powers for colonies - sources of raw materials and markets.

In a relationship armed forces In Russia, the bitter lessons of the Russo-Japanese War were taken into account: radical reforms were carried out to technically modernize the army and especially the navy (in particular, submarines, aircraft, machine guns appeared), their reorganization, improvement of combat training and command personnel. However, it took a short time to complete preparations for war 8 years of reforms did not have time. As the war progressed, there soon became a shortage of weapons and ammunition. Only with the help industrial mobilization for the needs of the front already during the war, in which the Russians played an active role bourgeoisie and the organizations it created (military-industrial committees, the Zemstvo-City Union), and military supplies from the allies, by 1916 the army was armed “to the teeth” (which Soviet historiography preferred to remain silent about).

Hostilities, unprecedented in terms of the scale of human casualties, went with varying success - most successfully against the Austrians and Turks, less successfully against the Germans (the largest victory was the Brusilov breakthrough in 1916; the best military leaders of the army were generals M.V. Alekseev and A.A. Brusilov, fleet - Admiral A.V. Kolchak). Russia ripped off German plan“lightning war”, forced Germany to fight on two fronts - in the west of Europe and against itself, drawing 1/3 of the German and 2/3 of the Austro-Hungarian armies, and thereby saved Paris and all of France in 1914 and Italy - in 1916

The fatal circumstance for Russia was the maturation political crisis during the war, the causes and at the same time symptoms of which become:

1. The deterioration of life in the rear under the influence of the unprecedented hardships of the war, since the fall of 1916 - ruble inflation, the food crisis and rationing.

2. Misunderstanding by the masses of the people goals an unheard of bloody and protracted war along the borders, Consequently lack of effective propaganda on the part of the authorities, and this revealed its inertia (in Western countries the war was accompanied by skillful patriotic indoctrination of the population). It even happened split revolutionary parties into 3 groups in relation to the war: "defencists"– patriots who were ready to put aside scores with the authorities until victory (mostly these were the Socialist Revolutionaries), pacifists(mostly Mensheviks) and "defeatists"(The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, were a party that advocated the defeat of Russia in the war in order to speed up the revolution.

3. As a result The first and second circumstances are a gradual transition from the initial patriotic upsurge to dull discontent.

4. The growth of the economic power of the bourgeoisie during the war, and Consequently– her ambitions and claims to a share of power, since it was she who made the main contribution to the organization of the defense industry, while the government showed itself to be rather incompetent in this matter.

5. The political degradation of the tsarist regime after the death of Stolypin, the main signs of which were: a) the actual rise to power on the eve of the war of the reactionary and obscurantist court camarilla led by the wife of Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna; b) “Rasputinism” - a huge influence acquired on royal family who treated the sick heir with a psychic, a semi-literate rogue from Siberian peasants G. Rasputin, who disgraced the Tsar throughout Russia with drunken revelry, debauchery and bribes, for which he influenced the appointment of ministers through the Empress; c) corruption scandals (in particular, the case of War Minister Sukhomlinov); d) government leapfrog.

The results became moral discredit and complete isolation of power, its loss of the remnants of authority and the formation of a national opposition. Its main spokesman was the so-called Duma, which had emerged by 1916 and received a majority in the Duma. Progressive block from all moderate-monarchist and liberal parties. The bloc's main demand for power was the formation of a “government of trust”, responsible to the Duma (and not just to the Tsar). But the authorities did not make concessions. The Rasputin bacchanalia caused a particularly negative public response. In December 1916, a group of monarchists led by Prince F. Yusupov and the leader of the Black Hundreds V. Purishkevich, trying to save Nicholas II and the dynasty from the abyss, killed Rasputin (one of the Grand Dukes, the Tsar’s cousin, took part in the murder). But although this caused general rejoicing, it was too late.