The Russian Turmoil; Memoirs: Military, Social, and Political

by Anton Ivanovich Denikin

After three days’ respite, a violent battle was resumed on the front of the 11th Army on both sides of the railway line on the front Batkuv-Koniuchi. By that time the threatened German regiments were reinforced, and stubborn fighting ensued. The 11th Army captured several lines, but suffered heavy losses. The trenches changed hands several times after a hand-to-hand battle, and great efforts had to be made in order to break the resistance of the enemy, who had been reinforced and had recovered. This action practically signified the end of the advance of the 7th and 11th Armies. The impetus was spent and the troops began once more to sit in the trenches, the monotony of this pastime being only broken in places by local skirmishes, Austro-German counter-attacks, and intermittent gunfire. Meanwhile preparations for the advance began on June 23rd in Kornilov’s Army. On June 25th his troops broke through General Kirchbach’s positions west of Stanislavov and reached the line of Jesupol-Lyssetz. After a stubborn and sanguinary battle Kirchbach’s troops, utterly defeated, ran and dragged along in their headlong flight the German division which had been sent to reinforce them. On the 27th General Cheremissov’s right column captured Galitch, some of his troops crossed the Dniester. On the 28th the left column overcame the stubborn resistance of the Austro-Germans and captured Kalush. In the next two or three days, the 8th Army was in action on the river Lomnitza and finally established itself on the banks of the river and in front of it. In the course of this brilliant operation Kornilov’s Army broke through the 3rd Austrian Army on a front of over twenty miles and captured 150 officers, 10,000 men, and about 100 guns. The capture of Lomnitza opened to Kornilov the road to Dolina-Stryi and to the communications of Botmer’s Army. German Headquarters described the position of the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front as critical.

General Bohm-Ermolli meanwhile was concentrating all his reserves in the direction of Zlochev, the point to which the German divisions were likewise sent which had been taken from the Western European Front. Some of the reserves had to be sent, however, across the Dniester against the 8th Russian Army. They arrived on July 2nd, reinforced the shattered ranks of the 3rd Austrian Army, and from that day positional battles began on the Lomnitza, with varying success, and occasionally stubborn fighting. The concentration of the German shock troops between the Upper Sereth and the railway line Tarnopol-Zlochev was completed on July 5th. On the next day, after strong artillery preparations, this group attacked our 11th Army, broke our front and moved swiftly towards Kamenetz-Podolsk, pursuing the Army Corps of the 11th Army who were fleeing in panic. The Army Headquarters, the Stavka and the Press, losing all perspective, blamed the 607th Mlynov Regiment as the chief cause of the catastrophe. The demoralised, worthless regiment had left the trenches of their own accord and opened the front. It was, of course, a very sad occurrence, but it would be naïve to describe it even as an excuse. For as early as on the 9th of July the Committees and Commissars of the 11th Army were telegraphing to the Provisional Government: “The truth and nothing but the truth about the events.” “The German offensive on the front of the 11th Army, which began on July 6th, is growing into an immeasurable calamity which threatens perhaps the very existence of Revolutionary Russia. The spirit of the troops, that were prompted to advance by the heroic efforts of the minority, has undergone a decisive and fatal change. The impetus of the advance was soon spent. Most of the units are in a condition of increasing disruption. There is not a shadow of discipline or obedience; persuasion is likewise powerless and is answered by threats and sometimes by shootings. Cases have occurred when orders to advance immediately to reinforce the line were debated for hours at meetings, and reinforcements were twenty-four hours late. Some units arbitrarily leave the trenches without even waiting for the enemy to advance.... For hundreds of miles strings of deserters—healthy, strong men who thoroughly realise their impunity—are to be seen moving along with rifles or without.... The country should know the whole truth. It will shudder and will find the strength to fall with all its might upon all those whose cowardice is ruining and bartering Russia and the Revolution.”

The Stavka wrote: “In spite of its enormous numerical and technical superiority, the 11th Army was retreating uninterruptedly. On the 8th of July it had already reached the Serenth, never halting at the very strong fortified position to the West of the river, which had been our starting point in the glorious advance of 1916. Bohm-Ermolli had detached some of his forces for the pursuit of the Russian troops in the direction of Tarnapol and had moved his main forces southwards between the Serenth and the Strypa, threatening to cut off the communication of the 7th Army, to throw them into the Dniester and, perhaps, cut off the retreat of the 8th Army. On July 9th the Austro-Germans had already reached Mikulinze, a distance of one march south of Tarnapol.... The Armies of General Selivatchev and Cheremissov (who had succeeded General Kornilov upon the latter’s appointment on July 7th to the High Command of the South-Western Front) were in great difficulty. They could not hope to resist the enemy by manœuvring, and all that was left to them was to escape the enemy’s blows by forced marches. The 7th Army was in particularly dire straits, as it was retreating under the double pressure of the Army Corps of General Botmer, who was conducting a frontal attack, and of the troops of Bohm-Ermolli, striking from the north against the denuded right flank. The 8th Army had to march over one hundred miles under pressure from the enemy.

On July 10th the Austro-Germans advanced to the line Mikulinze-Podgaitze-Stanilavov. On the 11th the Germans occupied Tarnapol, abandoned without fighting by the 1st Guards Army Corps. On the next day they broke through our position on the rivers Gniezno and Sereth, South of Trembovlia, and developed their advance in the Eastern and South-Eastern directions. On the same day, pursuing the 7th and 8th Armies, the enemy occupied the line from the Sereth to Monsaterjisko-Tlumatch.

On the 12th July, seeing that the position was desperate, the Commander-in-Chief issued orders for a retreat from the Sereth, and by the 21st the Armies of the South-Western Front, having cleared Galicia and Bukovina, reached the Russian frontier. Their retreat was marked by fires, violence, murders and plunder. A few units, however, fought the enemy stubbornly and covered the retreat of the maddened mob of deserters by sacrificing their lives. Among them were Russian officers, whose bodies covered the battlefields. The Armies were retreating in disorder; the same Armies that, only a year ago, had captured Lutsk, Brody-Stanislavov, Chernovetz in their triumphal progress ... were retreating before the same Austro-German troops that only a year ago had been completely defeated and had strewn with fugitives the plains of Volynia, Galicia and Bukovina, leaving hundreds of thousands of prisoners in our hands. We shall never forget that in Brussilov’s advance of 1916, the 7th, 8th, 9th and 11th Armies took 420,000 prisoners, 600 guns, 2,500,000 machine guns, etc. Our Allies are not likely to forget this either; they know full well that the loud echo of the Galician battle sounded on the Somme and at Goritza.

The Commissars Savinkov and Filonenko telegraphed to the Provisional Government: “There is no choice; the traitors must be executed.... Capital punishment must be meted out to all those who refuse to sacrifice their lives for their country....”

In the beginning of July, after the Russian advance had ostensibly failed, it was decided at Hindenburg’s Headquarters to undertake a new extensive operation against the Roumanian front by a simultaneous advance of the 3rd and 7th Austrian Armies across Bukovina into Moldavia and of the Right group of General Mackensen on the Lower Sereth. The objective was to seize Moldavia and Bessarabia. But on July 11th the Russian Army of General Ragosa and the Roumanian Army of General Averesco took the offensive between the rivers Susitsa and Putna against the 9th Austrian Army. The attack was successful, the enemy positions were captured, the Armies moved forward several miles, took 2,000 prisoners and over 60 guns, but the operation was not developed. Owing to the natural conditions of the theatre of war and to the direction in which the operation was undertaken, it was more akin to a demonstration in order to relieve the South-Western Front. Also the troops of the 4th Russian Army soon lost all impetus for the advance. In July and until August 4th, the troops of the Archduke Joseph and of Mackensen attacked in several directions and gained local successes, but without any appreciable result. Although the Russian divisions repeatedly disobeyed orders and occasionally left the trenches during the battle, yet the condition of the Roumanian Front was somewhat better than that of the other Front, owing to its distance from Petrograd, to the presence of disciplined Roumanian troops and to the natural conditions of the country. For these reasons we were able to keep that Front somewhat longer. This circumstance, together with the apparent weakness of the Austrian Armies, especially the 3rd and the 7th, and the complete dislocation of the communications of Bohm-Ermolli’s group and of the Archduke Joseph’s left wing—caused Hindenburg’s Headquarters indefinitely to postpone the operation, and a period of calm ensued along the entire South-Western Front. On the Roumanian Front local actions were fought until the end of August. At the same time, German divisions began to move from the Sbrucz northwards in the direction of Riga. Hindenburg’s plan was to deal the Russian Army local blows, without straining his own resources or spending large reserves, so urgently needed, on the Western-European Front. By these tactics he intended to contribute to the natural course of the collapse of the Russian front, for it was upon this collapse that the Central Powers based all their calculations in regard to operations and even in regard to the possibility of continuing the campaign in 1918.

Our efforts at advancing on other Fronts also ended in complete failure. On the 7th of July operations began on the Western Front, which I commanded. The details will be given in the next chapter. Of this operation Ludendorf wrote: “Of all the attacks directed against the former Eastern front of General Eichhorn, the attacks of July 9th, South of Smorgom, and at Krevo were particularly fierce.... For several days the position was extremely difficult until our reserves and our gunfire restored the front. The Russians left our trenches; they were no longer the Russians of the old days.”

On the Northern Front, in the 5th Army, everything was over in one day. The Stavka wrote: “South-West of the Dvinsk our troops, after strong artillery preparation, captured the German position across the railway Dvinsk-Vilna. Subsequently, entire divisions, without pressure from the enemy, deliberately retreated to their own trenches.” The Stavka noted the heroic behaviour of several units, the prowess of the officers and the tremendous losses which the latter had suffered. This fact, however unimportant from the strategical point of view, deserves to be specially noted. As a matter of fact, the 5th Army was commanded by General Danilov (afterwards a member of the Bolshevik Delegation at Brest-Litovsk. He served in 1920 in the Russian Army in the Crimea). He enjoyed exceptional prestige with the Revolutionary Democracy. According to Stankevitch, the Commissar of the Northern Front, Danilov “was the only General who had remained, in spite of the Revolution, full master in the Army and had succeeded in so dealing with the new institutions—the Commissars and the Committees—that they strengthened his authority instead of weakening it.... He knew how to make use of these elements, and he overcame all obstacles in a spirit of complete self-control and firmness. In the 5th Army everyone was working, learning and being educated.... As the best and the most cultured elements of the Army were working to that end.” This is a striking proof of the fact that even when the Commanding Officer becomes thoroughly familiar with Revolutionary institutions, this does not serve as a guarantee of the fighting capacity of his troops.