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Title: The Russian Army 1914-18 (Men-At-Arms, 364) by Nik Cornish, Andrei Karachtchouk, Osprey Publishing ISBN: 1-84176-303-9 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: November, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great reference!
Comment: This is a very good addition to Osprey's Men-at-Arms series. The book will provide you with a short introduction to the Russian efforts during the Great War, and so will probably disappoint the reader who is looking for a good account of the battles and strategies of the Imperial Russian Army. And here comes the good part: it's a terrific uniform reference to the modeller/miniature wargamer! The book discusses the uniforms, certain insignias, unit distinctions (shoulder boards, etc.) and unit organisations of the last Czarist army in great detail that I'm sure you'll need not look elsewhere. The highlight of this book is of course the colour plates---they are simply incredible! I just cannot recommend this book highly enough---buy it!
Rating: 3
Summary: A Quick Look at the Tsarist Army
Comment: This Osprey Men-at-Arms title makes an attempt to fill the long-neglected gap in First World War history covering the Tsarist Army. While many books evoke the image of a huge faceless Russian steamroller, few provide much details on exactly what this army looked like. This title makes modest progress in that regard and as such, deserves a place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the First World War.
The Russian Army begins with an introduction covering Russia's strategic position and a chronology of the major events on the Eastern Front in 1914-1918. A 4 ½ page section covers the organization of the army, particularly infantry, cavalry, Cossack and artillery units. An interesting 3-page section covers elite units such as the Guards Corps, the St. George's Battalions, the "Death" Battalions and the "Savage" Division. A brief section also discusses non-Russian units. A rather dull 7-page section then covers uniforms and personal equipment. Tactics and weapons are discussed in the last 7 pages. As usual, the eight pages of color plates in the center of this thin volume are excellent. The same cannot be said for the photographs, which are rather bland posed shots.
Overall, this volume is decent but not great. There are nuggets of useful information, such as the belated Russian effort to form a heavy artillery corps - known by the Russian acronym TAON - in 1917. Since massed artillery was a Soviet specialty in the Second World War, it is interesting to see antecedents in the Tsarist army. The fact that the paucity of infantry training facilities caused the Tsarist army to station reserve battalions in the major urban areas like St Petersburg and that these under-utilized conscripts provided the fodder for Revolution in 1917 is also interesting. However, the sections on doctrine and tactics are far too short even for a volume this size (the chronology would have been a good place to make cuts). There is no real effort to address the pre-war doctrine and the author should have consulted Bruce W. Menning's excellent Bayonets before Bullets: the Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914. The impact of the disastrous defeat in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War and the impetus for post-war reform is almost totally ignored. Once the war began, the author ignores the enforced doctrinal shift from maneuver warfare to positional warfare; how did the Russian army adapt to trench warfare? Nor are the big campaigns discussed much, except for the successful Brusilov offensive. Instead, the reader is presented with a fairly vapid account of the Tsarist army that scarcely touches upon the impact of early disasters like Tannenberg or the gradual rot from revolutionary ideology. Nor is there even an order of battle provided for any phase of the war or mention of casualties. One might think that the fact that Tsarist Russia mobilized about 12 million men and that 1.7 million died in the war would be far more interesting to readers than giving virtually useless information on cavalry breeches stripes or tunic piping and lace. The author introduces interesting information on the organization of the Guards units for example, and then says very little else about them. Certainly the biggest sin of this volume is its failure to address the disintegration of the Tsarist army in 1917, except in passing. Since this volume is a stand-alone coverage of the subject, unlike others in the Men-at-Arms series, these omissions will not be rectified in other following volumes.
Rating: 5
Summary: Quite a Bit Better Than the Average in This Series
Comment: What a difference both a knowledgeable author and a talented illustrator make together! Though the sum total of efforts since about 1990 have been quite satisfactory, some of the earlier works, and unfortunately some more recent, have suffered from insufficient knowledge of the subject, even though the illustrations were well done, the items were misidentified in them.
All in all, starting from a base of personal ignorance of the Russian military system of about one and an awareness of the conduct of the war about five, I now have an overall seven which is passing but no honors! But in time, if I go on this book will have set me on the right path to knowledge. Now if I had only spent my career reading Russian instead of Spanish and French.:-)
Just some of the revelations in this work are the appalling lack of a modern tactical system even in the face of the slaughter in the Russo Japanese War, the huge lack of an industrial base and the consequent paucity of heavy artillery, and lack of modern mobile mechanized transports, necessitating the transfer of the Armored Car Squadrons of the British Royal Naval Air Service and those of the Belgians to the east after the Western Front became impassible for such units.
But the real drag on the Russian Army was the archaic social structure in which high rank was an entitlement of birth, rather than the result of merit, and the lack of opportunity for both peasants and workers to rise, or for the middle class to lead and serve usefully. None of this could be fixed by developing an arms industry nor by simply importing modern technology without a support base to maintain it. Even then they misused their field communications and sent all their orders in the clear so that the German SIGINT troops listened in and the outnumbered German Army was able to win the battle of Tannenberg.
The Russian government had been so paranoid, xenophobic, and fearful of their neighbors that they laid the national railway system in broad guage so that all freight trains had to be unloaded at the border with Germany and Finland and the goods and materials carried across and reloaded and all passenger cars had to be lifted by hydraulics or mechanicals and wider trucks and running gear put under them.
Even in the face of all this the Russian Army held on and even ran successful offensives in the south against Austria Hungary and Romania but the people were fed up, the Russian Navy mutinied and the Czarate fell to the Kerensky regime which in turn fell to the Bolsheviks. And we all know what happened then.
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Title: Austro Hungarian Forces in World War I: 1914-16 by Peter Jung, Darko Pavlovic ISBN: 1841765945 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Italian Army of World War I (Men at Arms, 387) by David Nicolle, Raffaele Ruggeri ISBN: 1841763985 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Armies in the Balkans 1914-18 (Men-At-Arms, 356) by Nigel, Phd Thomas, Dusan Babac, Darko Pavlovic ISBN: 184176194X Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: July, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Russian Civil War (2): White Armies (Men-At-Arms Series, No 305) by Mikhail Khvostov, Andrei Karachtchouk ISBN: 1855326566 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Austro-Hungarian Forces in World War I (2) 1916-18 by Peter Jung, Darko Pavlovic ISBN: 1841765953 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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