273. Which way to go? (#2)
“Nowadays, more than before, extreme speed is required in preparing armies for war, which is used to be called mobilization. More than ever, unity and harmony are needed in the management and disposal of heterogeneous elements of military force.”
Milyutin, “Military Reforms of Alexander II”, 1882
“The positive results of the Milutin reforms were visible immediately (and created a halo of the "benevolent genius" of the Russian army). Negative results were revealed only gradually, decades later ...The regulation … introduced chaos of improvisation to the field administration of the troops, legitimized the "detachment system".”
Kersnovsky, “History of the Russian Army”, 1930s
“I’m a dog, I bite everyone, I don't let anyone sleep, and therefore the order is such no one else may have; when you are bosses, I advise you to be dogs too.”
Vannovsky to his subordinates
The naval debates were a child play comparing to those related to the army. The recent military reform was on its initial stages and managed to cause a heated debate even during the reign of AII so now, with Milyutin gone, everybody felt free to express his opinion. Situation was aggravated by the fact that the new Minister of War, Vannovsky was unwilling and most probably incapable to shape the debate.
His immediate contribution was to re-convert Mulyutin’s military gymnasiums back to the cadet and junker military schools: in these gymnasiums the students had been taught predominantly by the civilian teachers and the military aspect of the education was minimized and most of the graduates did not go to the military service. Which was in line with Milyutin’s idea of improving the general education in Russia but had little to do with preparing the officer cadres. The military curriculum was restored and the number of schools increased. A total of 16 junker schools were established (11 infantry, 2 cavalry, 2 mixed and 1 Cossack).
Other than that Vannovsky was mostly concentrating on fighting corruption and enforcing professionalism of the officers corps: “Sargent-major, where is my place?” was gone and the junior officers were forced to exercise the real command of their units (in the army of NI with its compact formations, only battalion and rarely company commanders had to act on their own, now it was down to a platoon level).
Outside his area of comfort, he was inclined to see how the debates will be received by AIII and then to act accordingly. Which was one more catch 22 situation because, unlike most of his predecessors, AIII did not imagine himself a military authority and expected a meaningful input from the professionals to make his decisions. And, as was correctly remarked by general Dragomirov, at the times of peace many people felt free to get engaged in all types of the fantasies and great schemas. Of course, he was too modest to explicitly include himself into this group.
As one of the most experienced Russian staff officers (prior to the Austro-Prussian War, Dragomirov was visiting France and Britain and wrote voluminous reports on the instructional and manoeuvre camps of these countries, in 1859, he was attached to the
headquartersof the
King of Sardinia Victor Emmanuel II during the campaign of
Magenta and
Solferino, and immediately upon his return to
Russia he was sent to the General Staff Academy as professor of
tactics) he was made a head of the General Staff Academy. A man of great merits, he also had great shortcomings, which made his influence on the army ultimately negative. Like Tolstoy he denied existence of the military science and emphasizing preeminence of the “spiritual” element he extended his logic to denial of the strategy as a science. All military affairs were reduced to tactics, and tactics - to "winning by the guts".
“
Dragomirov opposed the spirit to technology, not realizing that technology is not an enemy of the spirit, but his valuable ally and assistant, which allows you to save the forces and blood of the fighter. The Dragomirov school built all its tactical calculations on piles of human meat, flows of human blood - and these views, taught from the department by the Honored Professor, and then by the head of the Academy, had the most detrimental impact on the formation of a whole generation of officers of the General Staff.” [1]
The problem was that he was not some kind of a military imbecile. His teachings about the proper education and good treatment of the soldiers were right to the point making him quite popular among the younger generation of the Russian officers who were much more liberal than the older generation of the veterans of NI’s times. Then again, his good attitude toward the soldiers should not be exaggerated because all that “humane” stuff was serving one main purpose: to teach the “holy cattle” to die bravely on a battlefield. Not that he considered soldiers mentally quite equal human beings. Here is his system of the soldiers’ “mental development”:
- Teach little by little one, a lot - two thoughts at a time.
- Avoid bookish words.
- At the slightest opportunity to resort to example or, even better, to a show.
- To take not everything from what has to be transferred, but in order of importance, to apply to soldier's life and service.
Eventually, he was moved from from the Academy to command the Kiev Military District (as an internationally popular figure he could not be just fired or transferred to some insignificant position) and an interesting metamorphosis happened: on the earlier stage of his career as a division commander he was encouraging initiative of his subordinates but when he eventually became commander of the Kiev Military District he started suppressing any such initiative. Putting all his attention to the individual upbringing of a soldier ("holy gray cattle"), Dragomirov completely overlooked the officer, moreover, deliberately ignored and humiliating the officers (his favorite ironically contemptuous "gas-pa-din officer!"). Deliberate belittling, humiliating the officer’s authority, Dragomirov thought to create popularity both among soldiers and in civilian society and in this he was successful but authority of the officers in the troops under his command was seriously shaken.
Anyway, service in the
staff of the Kiev district was a trampoline for the future careers of quite a few generals of a questionable quality due to the “name recognition” of their boss.
In OTL he was fighting tooth and nail against the magazine rifles and his significant “contribution” was a delayed introduction of the machine guns in the Russian army. Not to be forgotten, he successfully insisted on the Russian field artillery not having the protective shields because they are “lowering artillerymen spirit” - the results were high losses of the artillery crews during the RJW. And “students” of his school who by 1914 grew up in the ranks, demonstrated all faults of his teaching by the huge losses due to the idiotic tactics.
To be fair, so far his tactical teachings were reasonably within a mainstream defined by the experience of the recent Austro-Prussian War. The danger was long-term sticking to what is going to be obsolete in a near future.
As a head of the Academy he was replaced by general Leer, the greatest military-scientific mind of the Russian army. He was a strong defender of the strategy, which Dragomirov tended to neglect, and probably was a founder of the strategic theory in Russia. However, he emphasized the subordination of the theory to practice, seeing the meaning of science in the regulation of creativity. At his insistence, field trips of officers of the General Staff were introduced, which extremely widened their horizons in a practical direction. As a matter of principle, he was warning against sending troops to the theater of war piecemeal because “
it is better to have too many troops rather than too few.”
The issues of the general military organization were a complete mess.
With the formation of military districts, and then gubernia and uezd military departments, the practice of drawing up mobilization plans began, which ensured the relatively rapid mobilization and deployment of the army in case of war. Now mobilization could be carried out in 30-40 days, previously it took from 3 to 6 months. It was also positive that in wartime district offices could be turned into army headquarters or allocated personnel for their formation.
On the other hand, Milyutin’s decentralization soon began to have a negative impact. The headquarters of the districts, which often managed 8-10 infantry and 2-4 cavalry divisions, were overloaded with work. The position of brigadier was also not superfluous, as it was thought and in 1871 it was restored. In 1872, the Guards Corps was restored. In 1873, 7 corps (numbered from 7 to 12 and Caucasian) formed, 2 infantry and 1 cavalry division each. The corps were called "army corps" rather than "infantry corps" as before. In total, the army corps had 24 battalions, 18 squadrons and Cossack hundreds and 108 guns. In 1874 9 more corps had been formed (Grenadiers, 1 - 6, 13, 14) and later 2 more (2nd Caucasian and 15).
It was argued that the military districts are a bureaucratic rather than military institution that will be disastrous in the case of a war. Actually,
as implemented by Milyutin’s Reform, this was probably a correct conclusion. The military district was an assembly of the divisions and other units with no supporting structure for the corps and army level (Dragomirov
liked this). Commander of the district and his staff
had to be primary administrative figures because their main concern was to provide well-being of these units at the peacetime. And a good peacetime administrator is not necessarily a good frontline commander capable of making the fast decisions and taking responsibility. If at the time of a war these people are going to be converted into the field commanders, who will keep things running in the districts? The Prussians were lucky to finish the war fast but what if it was not? The obvious remedy would be to upgrade the reform by adding the permanent peace time corps and army level commanding and staff cadres to the military districts.
Then, of course, within the reform there was no provisions for the permanent staffs of the corps and army levels so these officers would have to come from the existing units leaving them short of the qualified officers.
Similar problem was with the idea of building-up the units during mobilization: brigade will become a division, division - a corps. This was good on a paper but these promoted commanders did not have experience of commanding a bigger unit and neither did their staff officers or their subordinates who had to be promoted above their level of expertise. And where are you going to get the junior officers from if almost half of the people with high education had been exempt from the military service at a peacetime and could not be considered the immediately useful cadres even if they mobilized during a war?
Then there was a vocal group arguing that the whole system is just producing a lot of the badly prepared reserve soldiers while at the same time decreasing a size of a high-quality army and killing its spirit. They were basically proposing something like the French model: a relatively small professional army backed up in the case of war a badly prepared “opolchenie” that would not have any organizational structure, competent officers and non-coms, etc.
There was a proposal to create the
reserve troops, which will have the command structure (most of the officers and non-coms) and stored weapons, uniforms and equipment but in the peacetime not the full numbers and during mobilization will expand their size to the required numbers. The drawback was that these units will have to be given some time to shape up. The proposal also implied Prussian-style territorial formation of the units located within the military district while Milyutin’s reform was closer to the French method of staffing the units by the people arbitrary assigned from various regions because even in the European Russia the troops had to be disproportionally concentrated closer to the western borders. Taking into an account the huge size of the Russian Empire and still inadequate communications, mobilization based on this system would be a complete nightmare. In a peacetime they would amount to approximately 10% of the army and in wartime - up to 30%. This was seemingly neatly addressing issue of the 2nd echelon but not something beyond it, however, at that time nobody (seemingly anywhere in Europe) was seriously looking beyond that level. [2]
The alternative was system of so-called “hidden cadres”. 140 first-echelon regiments would have an additional 19 officers and 262 lower ranks, of which a second-echelon would be deployed during mobilization. If the framework of the 1st system size of the reserve regiment related to the mobilized reserve as 1 to 4-8, and in the 2nd as 1 to 16. Which significantly worsened the quality of the secondary units and require the longer post-mobilization training but would save money. There was also an additional problem with the high level assignments within this system. [3]
A significant figure was the Chief of the General Staff, General Obruchev, whose name should be associated with all positive developments the military area during this period. Regardless his reputation of being a liberal and close association with Milyutin AIII liked and trusted him. He was responsible for construction of the strategic roads, border fortifications, creation of the new corps units [4], etc. Under his influence system of the
reserve troops was adopted.
The Engineer troops had been augmented by the railroad, telegraph and, later, aerial battalions and companies. Under his command the General Staff [5] became the “brain center” of the Ministry of War (not surprisingly, with Vannovsky being generally occupied with the subjects he knew and liked trusting Obruchev to deal with the rest). Later Obruchev presented Vannovsky with a project modifying General Staff’s functions. Its essence was to turn the General Staff into a body capable of performing the work of "the highest strategic order regarding the distribution of troops in theaters of war, the formation of armies, drawing up plans for their concentration and initial actions, preparing field management in border districts, organizing the collection of information about the enemy, etc." Obruchev believed that after the reorganization of the General Staff, the latter should take a leading position in the ministry, and his chief, "as the closest employee of the Minister of War on all major issues related to the structure of the armed forces and the defense of the state," should become a deputy Minister of War with the right to report directly to the emperor. However, Vannovsky was reluctant to allow such an elevation of his subordinate and tabled the proposal.
The military district system resulted in the uneven training of troops. In different districts, the troops were trained differently, depending on the views of the commanders of the troops. In the same district, the training system changed with each new commander. If this latter was an artilleryman, he was only interested in his brigades, providing infantry and cavalry commanders to train troops as they like. A sapper was appointed - and the fascination with "grave digging" began: the construction of field fortifications, self-digging without end with complete disregard for everything else in the world. Sapper was replaced by an infantryman - the "fortification" was immediately abolished, and all training was reduced to knocking out an "super-excellent" percentage of hits at shooting ranges. Finally, a representative of the Dragomirov school appeared, proclaimed that "bullet is a fool, bayonet is good!" And the thick chains smartly marching under the drum began to win brilliant and crushing victories over the designated enemy.
The favorite type of fire was shooting with volleys - by platoon and the whole company (however, and command "battalion, fire!" was not uncommon). Volley fire was widely used in Caucasian and Turkestan campaigns and it was effective against the brave but undisciplined opponents and (with Dragomirov’s blessing) it was cultivated as a demonstration unit’s good training and spirit. The accuracy of such a "decorative" fire was, of course, insignificant.
Not that education to the individual accurate fire (a good part of Dragomirov’s credo) was problem free. It was not uncommon for the officers during the practice to inch their way close to the targets of their platoon and, if the results were not good, to “improve” them by shooting at the targets from their revolvers at point blank range.
At the insistence of General Obruchev, large bilateral maneuvers began to be carried out periodically (approximately every two years), in which large masses of troops from different districts took part.
The corps structure was standardized but neither Obruchev nor Vannovsky were immune from the “special detachment” disease, which came from the Caucasus and Turkestan experience. Fighting on these theaters obviously involved deployment of the small ad hoc units which would not be typical for a major European war. However, the experience was there, it was widespread and now it was legitimized in the field instructions allowing cannibalizing the corps by arbitrary taking the officers and small units out of them and making the “special detachments” directly subordinated to the army staff.
One more important thing was abolishing (at least for a while) positions of the
inspector-generals of various branches. This position was usually held by the Grand Dukes who tended to consider their branch from a proprietary perspective and to act independently from the Ministry of War, creating a duplicate line of command with a resulting confusion. Some of them, if they had a serious military education, could be quite useful by proposing valid innovations but most were just considered their position as a sinecure.
In 1867, field artillery got rifled breech-loading guns.
Berdan rifles (with the metal cartridges) No. 1 (1868) and No. 2 (1870) were adopted by infantry, cavalry and Cossack troops. A wire telegraph appeared in the army. In 1871, the army received a 4.2-line Smith-Wesson revolver. In 1867, a new military judicial charter was approved, and the Main Military Court was formed. The term of service in the army was 15 years - 6 years of active service and 9 years of stay in reserve. After this term, conscripts were enlisted in the State Militia (opolchenie), as well as those released from conscription. Later time the active service was cut to 5 years. There were numerous exemptions based upon family situation, education and ethnicity (population of the former Khanates and Northern Caucasus was exempt, except for those volunteering to the service).
For those who received primary education, the period of active service was reduced to 4 years, who graduated from the city school - to 3 years, the gymnasium - to a year and a half, and those who had higher education - to six months. As a result, Milyutin pursued a good goal - to help public education. However, it turned out that the most intellectually valuable element was the worst used (served only 6 months), which did not affect the army in the best way denying it the most promising candidates to the officer cadres.
Eventually, this problem was partially fixed by changing the rules: those with the education above primary had to serve 3 years with “volunteer” status (did not have to leave in the barracks and were free from the non-military duties). After 6 months they were getting a right to pass exam to a military school and if admitted, study here for 1 year and then serve the remaining 1.5 years as the junior officers with a right to retire afterwards or to continue service.
The Cossacks had been serving based upon their own rules. Their regiments were included into the cavalry divisions and they became a separate branch of the regular troops.
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[1] Kersnovsky
[2] System existed between 1878 and 1910
[3] In case somebody has illusions about general brainpower of NIIs regime, this system was adopted in 1910. Of course, in 1914 many, if not most, of these units had been sent to front immediately after mobilization without any training. “
Thus, on August 6, 1914, in East Prussia, units of the 56th Second Echelon Infantry Division were sent directly from the trains into battle. Having come under fire, the infantrymen distraught with fear, throwing their rifles and all equipment on the way, and often even boots, by a disorderly crowd, that had lost all their military appearance, sought to slip to the east, for the Neman, who for some reason seemed to be their salvation.” The main fault was not with the soldiers or officers but with the people who were responsible for an overall organization and screwed up. Even the 56th division after it got some experience in the minor engagement, got a very good fighting reputation.
[4] As in OTL, the corps structure within the military districts organization was restored in the early 1870s.
[5] Strictly speaking, this was “Main Staff” which later incorporated “General Staff”.
): a very good chief of staff and really liked commander of a military district but not very good Minister of War and terrible army commander.
