Russian Imperial Military
The armed forces of the Russian Empire fought in every major European war from the Great Northern War (1700-1721) to the First World War (1914-1918), and in a long series of campaigns across the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Pacific. At its peak in 1916, the Russian army numbered more than six million men on its books — a mobilisation without precedent in the country’s history. By February 1917, it was disintegrating.
The story of the Russian Imperial Military is not just a story of battles and campaigns. It is a story of how military needs shaped the Russian state and society: conscription took millions of young men from peasant households, military service provided careers for nobles and commoners alike, and the demand for rifles, uniforms, ships, and railways drove the development of Russian industry. The military was at the heart of the imperial system, and the collapse of the military in 1917 was both cause and consequence of the political revolution.
The military before Peter the Great
Before the reforms of Peter the Great, Russia was a military state in many respects, but its armed forces were organized very differently from those of Western Europe. The core of the Muscovite military was the pomestnaya konnitsa, a cavalry force made up of nobles who held land in exchange for military service. These service nobles, or pomeshchiki, were required to provide themselves with horses, weapons, and armor, and to appear in the field when summoned. Below them were the streltsy, a semi-professional corps of infantry armed with firearms, and various other units including Cossack hosts, Tatar cavalry, and foreign mercenaries.
This system was poorly suited to the demands of large-scale, sustained warfare. The pomestnaya konnitsa was effective in raids and short campaigns, but it was difficult to keep in the field for long periods, and its quality varied enormously. The streltsy were the closest thing Russia had to a regular infantry, but they were not well disciplined, and they were deeply involved in Moscow politics, including the mutinies that brought Sophia to power in 1682.
The wars of the late seventeenth century, particularly the long and largely unsuccessful campaigns against the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire in the 1670s and 1680s, made clear that Russia would have to reform its military if it was to compete with the great powers of Europe. The beginning of the Great Northern War in 1700, in which the young Peter I suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Narva at the hands of the Swedes, made this even more obvious. The military reform that followed was one of the central achievements of Peter’s reign.
Peter the Great’s military reforms
Peter the Great’s military reforms transformed the Russian army from a feudal levy into a modern regular force. The central innovation was the introduction of conscription, which began in 1705 and was based on a system of recruitment from the state and court peasants, with one man to be provided for every twenty or thirty households. The conscripted men, or rekruty, served for life, although this was later reduced to a fixed term of service. The conscripts were organized into regiments along European lines, with standard uniforms, weapons, drill, and discipline.
Peter also established a network of military schools, including the Artillery and Engineering School in Moscow and the Naval Academy in St. Petersburg, to provide trained officers. The Table of Ranks of 1722 organized military service into fourteen grades, with corresponding civil equivalents, and provided a path for talented commoners and foreigners to enter the nobility. Many foreign officers, including Scots, Germans, and French, served in the Russian army during the eighteenth century, especially in the early years before a sufficient number of native Russian officers had been trained.
The Great Northern War (1700-1721) was the proving ground for Peter’s military reforms. Although Russia suffered a humiliating defeat at Narva in 1700, the army was reorganized and reformed in the years that followed, and by the time of the decisive Russian victory at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, the Russian army was a force to be reckoned with. The war ended with the Treaty of Nystad in 1721, by which Russia gained access to the Baltic Sea and much of the Swedish Empire’s former eastern territories.
Peter the Great also laid the foundations of the Russian Navy, which had not existed in any significant form before his reign. The new Russian fleet, built in shipyards at St. Petersburg, Voronezh, and other locations, won its first decisive victory over the Swedes at the Battle of Gangut in 1714 and played an important role in the Russian conquest of the Finnish coast. Peter is generally considered the founder of the Russian Navy, and his naval reforms, like his army reforms, were modeled on the most advanced European examples of the time.
The Imperial Russian Army in the eighteenth century
After Peter the Great, the Russian army continued to develop, with new patterns of organization, training, and doctrine. The War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) saw Russian troops fighting in central Europe alongside the Austrian and French armies, often with distinction. The most celebrated Russian commanders of the eighteenth century were Pyotr Rumyantsev, who defeated the Ottoman Empire in the war of 1768-1774, and Alexander Suvorov, who served in the Seven Years’ War, the Polish uprisings, and the Italian and Swiss campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars.
Suvorov is famous for his emphasis on speed, mobility, and the bayonet. He trained his troops in rapid maneuver and aggressive close combat, and he developed a series of tactical principles that emphasized the attack. His victories at Kinburn (1787), Rymnik (1789), and Ismail (1790) against the Ottomans were celebrated throughout Europe. Another important figure was Mikhail Kutuzov, who would later command the Russian forces against Napoleon.
The eighteenth century also saw the development of the Russian officer corps, which was largely made up of the nobility. Military service was a key avenue of social advancement, and noble families competed fiercely for places in the prestigious Guards regiments, which were often based in St. Petersburg and served as a sort of finishing school for the imperial elite. The Guards were also politically important: palace coups and the making and unmaking of emperors often involved the Guards, and their support was an important factor in determining who sat on the Russian throne.
The Napoleonic Wars
The great military challenge of the early nineteenth century was the struggle against Napoleon Bonaparte. Russia joined the Third Coalition against France in 1805, and the Russian army suffered a series of reverses in the campaigns of 1805-1807, including the disastrous defeats at Austerlitz and Friedland. These defeats led to the Treaties of Tilsit, by which Russia and France became nominal allies and divided Europe between them.
The alliance with Napoleon was deeply unpopular in Russia, and the two powers soon came into conflict again. In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with an army of more than 600,000 men, the largest European army ever assembled at that point. The Russian strategy of strategic retreat, combined with a refusal to give Napoleon a decisive battle, slowly drained the Grande Armée of strength. The burning of Moscow and the early onset of winter destroyed the morale and discipline of the French forces, and the retreat from Moscow in October 1812 became one of the greatest military disasters in history.
The Russian campaign of 1812 was followed by the European campaigns of 1813-1814, in which Russian troops under commanders such as Barclay de Tolly and Wittgenstein, fighting alongside the allied Army of Silesia under the Prussian general Blücher, played a decisive role in the defeat of Napoleon. The Russian army pursued the French across Europe and entered Paris in March 1814, and again in 1815 after the Hundred Days. Russia’s role in the defeat of Napoleon gave it enormous prestige in Europe, and Tsar Alexander I played a central role in the Congress of Vienna that reshaped the post-war European order.
The nineteenth century: wars and reforms
The Russian army fought a number of important wars during the nineteenth century. The wars against the Ottoman Empire in 1828-1829 and 1877-1878 extended Russian influence in the Balkans, although the latter war revealed serious problems in military supply and organization. The Crimean War of 1853-1856, fought against an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain, and Sardinia, was a major disaster for Russia. The fall of Sevastopol in 1855, after a long siege, exposed the backwardness of the Russian military and the inadequate state of military industry, transportation, and supply.
The Crimean War prompted a series of military reforms under Alexander II. These included the introduction of a new breech-loading rifle, the Berdan, the establishment of military districts, the expansion of the railways, and the reorganization of the officer corps. The minister of war Dmitry Milyutin oversaw a comprehensive reform of the army that brought it closer to European models and increased its effectiveness.
The late nineteenth century also saw Russian expansion in Central Asia and the Far East, with the conquest of the Central Asian khanates and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, however, ended in a humiliating Russian defeat. The Russian fleet sent to relieve the besieged port of Port Arthur was destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, and the war ended with the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905. The defeat, along with the outbreak of the 1905 Revolution, prompted further military reforms, including the establishment of a General Staff and the reorganization of the army and navy.
World War I and the collapse
The Russian Empire entered the First World War in August 1914 as a military power with one of the largest armies in the world. The initial campaigns in East Prussia, Galicia, and the Caucasus were marked by both promise and disaster. The Russian army’s invasion of East Prussia in August 1914 led to the early battles of Gumbinnen and Tannenberg, where the Second Army was effectively destroyed by the German Eighth Army. The Russian casualties in East Prussia in 1914 were over 250,000, but the invasion at least drew German forces away from the Western Front and may have contributed to the Allied victory at the First Battle of the Marne.
In the south, the Russian army had greater success. The campaigns in Galicia in 1914 led to the fall of the Galician capital Lemberg and the capture of large numbers of Austrian prisoners, although the fortress of Przemyśl held out for many months before finally falling in March 1915. The Russian army also fought in the Caucasus, with mixed results, and on the Romanian front after Romania’s entry into the war in 1916.
By 1915, however, the strain of war was beginning to show. The Germans launched a major offensive in May 1915 that resulted in the “Great Retreat” of the Russian army, with the loss of Poland, Lithuania, and much of Belarus. By the end of 1915, the Russian front had been pushed back several hundred kilometers, and Russian casualties had reached staggering levels. The situation was exacerbated by poor military leadership, inadequate supply, and the spread of revolutionary ideas among the soldiers.
The year 1916 saw some recovery. The Brusilov Offensive of June-September 1916 was one of the most successful Russian operations of the war, and the Russian army made important gains in Galicia and Bukovina. However, the offensive was not followed up effectively, and the losses were not replaced. By early 1917, the Russian army was on the verge of collapse, with widespread desertion, low morale, and a growing shortage of rifles, ammunition, and food.
The February Revolution of 1917 began as a mutiny in the Petrograd garrison, and the military collapse was both a cause and a consequence of the political revolution. After the abdication of Nicholas II, the army continued to disintegrate. The Provisional Government attempted to continue the war, but the Bolsheviks called for an end to the war, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 ended Russia’s participation in the conflict. The Russian army, which had numbered more than six million men in 1916, effectively ceased to exist as a coherent fighting force.
Themes in Russian military history
Four patterns recur across two centuries of Russian military history.
The military and the state. From Peter the Great onward, the army was a central instrument of state power, used externally in wars of expansion and defence and internally as a guarantee of autocratic order. The imperial family, the nobility, and the political elite were closely tied to the officer corps, and many of the most important figures in Russian political life had military careers.
Conscription and social change. The conscription system removed millions of young men from peasant households, exposed them to new ideas and skills, and in the late imperial period often brought them into contact with revolutionary ideas. The army was an engine of social change: it taught literacy to a substantial fraction of each male cohort, gave technical training to many, and offered a path of social mobility for the talented.
Adapting to new enemies and new technologies. The Russian Empire faced a different enemy in each generation — Sweden in the early 18th century, the Ottoman Empire throughout, France in 1812, Britain and France in the Crimea, Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914, Japan in 1904-1905. The military had to adapt to changing technologies from pike-and-shot to rifled artillery to industrialised warfare. The failures to adapt quickly enough, especially in 1854-1855 and in 1914-1915, were an important factor in Russian military disasters.
Victory, defeat, and national memory. The great Russian victories — Poltava, Borodino, the taking of Paris in 1814, the siege of Sevastopol, Shipka, the Brusilov Offensive — became central to Russian national identity. The great defeats — Narva, Austerlitz, the Crimean War, Tsushima, the Great Retreat of 1915, the collapse of 1917 — left a deep mark on Russian political culture, a sense of humiliation that would resurface in the politics of the twentieth century.