Russia's Part in the World War

by C. M. Shumsky-Solomonov

7.) Through a period of three years of struggle against Germany, Austria and Turkey, Russia, having diverted the forces of the enemy, afforded the Allies a long period of quiet for the preparation and strengthening of the Allied Armies and for the systematic creation of a new 4 million British Army.

8.) Throughout this period of three years of struggle Russia compelled the enemy to spend on the Russian front such a stupendous amount of force, reserves and munitions as to hasten the inevitable fall of the enemy, and this immensely facilitated the delivery of the final, decisive blows by the Allies.

9.) Russia, incessantly drawing upon herself the forces of the enemy, did not give him the opportunity for one minute from the very beginning of the War to gather sufficient force for a decisive blow on the main, decisive front—in France. The role of Russia, therefore, was clearly apparent in the fact that she deprived Germany throughout the War of the possibility to win and rendered futile every effort of the enemy in this respect.

10.) Corresponding with the most important role that Russia played in the War are her enormous sacrifices in men, material and treasure. Her losses in men, amounting to 12,000,000, exceed several times the casualties of any of the Allies; are almost equal to the losses of all the Allies combined; exceed several times the total number of men mobilized by any one of the Allies....

11.) Russia's role in the recent war was so important and extraordinary that without Russia the very idea of a struggle with German militarism would have been impossible. Germany would have been able to crush any combination of the European Powers if Russia had not participated in such combination. Were it not for Russia, Germany would now dominate not only Europe, but probably the rest of the world as well.

12.) Russia's great role in the World War is so much the greater since she fought under extraordinary circumstances, lacking so indispensable an asset as a great network of railways, with a backward technique, industry, etc. In the hard first years of the War the Russian Armies, as we have seen, in extraordinary circumstances and frequently without arms and munitions, did everything possible, and, together with failures, had also their successes.

Ludendorf was able to achieve success on the Russian front only when the Germans outnumbered their adversaries by at least three to two. At Tannenberg the Germans had twice as many and, at certain stages, even three times as many men as the Russians. Against Rennenkampf Ludendorf had three men to every two of his enemy, and probably even as many as two to one, as Rennenkampf had suffered severe losses during the preceding days.

It is equally true that the Russians were able to defeat the Germans whenever they had even a small superiority of force. Near Warsaw the Russians had less than five men to every four Germans and they succeeded in defeating the latter and throwing them clear across all Poland.

It may seem strange that the Germans should have managed to have numerical superiority over the Russians all the time. Regrettable as it may be, it is nevertheless true, for the strength of an army is determined not by the number of its men, but by the number of bayonets (infantry), sabres (cavalry) and guns (artillery). The Russian Army consisted of millions, but bayonets and guns it had only for one-tenth of its number. In 1915 some Russian divisions numbered, instead of 20,000 bayonets, only a mere thousand, owing to disastrous losses. The only employment of infantry during those days was as a screen for the artillery, while the latter was quite useless for fighting purposes because it had no ammunition whatever. Under such conditions many of our corps often did not exceed the strength of a single regiment and some armies numbered no more effectives than a single division. We had plenty of men, but no arms and ammunition. Therefore, the Germans frequently surpassed us not in men, but in bayonets and guns.

The tragedy of the Russian situation lay in the cruel fact that Russia, while only one-tenth of her Armies were armed, was facing Germany and Austria, who were armed from head to foot. Not Ludendorf and not his ordinary military skill were the causes of Russia's failures in the first year of the War, but that simple and terrible truth which Brusilov once expressed in the following words: "The Russians had no shells with which to blast their way across barbed-wire entanglements before an attack; so it became necessary for them to break down the wires with the bodies of Russian soldiers, and to form a bridge across these dead bodies for the next attacking column."