Who Was Dmitry Milyutin?
Count Dmitry Alekseyevich Milyutin (28 July 1816 – 25 January 1912) was the longest-serving minister of war in Russian imperial history, holding the office from 1861 to 1881 under Tsar Alexander II. He was the principal architect of the military reforms that replaced the old lifetime conscription with a short-term, universal service obligation in 1874, reorganised the army on a system of military districts, and brought the Russian military closer to European standards after the disasters of the Crimean War. His brother, Yakov Milyutin, was a key associate of the Emancipation of the Serfs.
Early career
Milyutin graduated from the Imperial Nicholas General Staff Academy in 1835 and served in the Caucasian War and the Hungarian campaign of 1849. In 1856, as a lieutenant general, he was a member of the special committee on military reform set up in the wake of the Crimean War, and in 1860 he became head of the Main Staff of the War Ministry. In 1861, Alexander II appointed him minister of war, a post he was to hold for twenty years.
The military reforms
The military reforms of 1861-1874 were the most thorough reorganisation of the Russian armed forces between the Petrine revolution and the early 20th century. The keystone was the Statute on Universal Military Service of 1 January 1874, which ended the old system under which recruits served for twenty-five years and most of them were drawn from the peasantry. Under the new statute, all men of military age were liable for service, the active term was reduced to six years (with nine years in the reserve), and exemption by payment of a commutation fee was abolished.
The reform was accompanied by a major reorganisation of the army into 15 military districts, each under a military governor responsible for mobilisation, training, and supply. The officer corps was restructured, the corps of military judges created, and the system of military schools reformed. Milyutin also oversaw the introduction of the Berdan breech-loading rifle in the 1870s, the construction of a network of strategic railways, and the modernisation of fortresses along the western frontier.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878
The reforms were tested in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, the first major Russian campaign under the new system. The performance of the army was mixed: mobilisation was smoother than it would have been under the old system, but the army was still marked by poor staff work, inadequate logistics, and the heavy losses of the sieges of Pleven and Shipka. The war ended with the Treaty of San Stefano and, after revision at the Congress of Berlin, with limited Russian gains in Bessarabia and the autonomy of Bulgaria.
Dismissal and later years
Milyutin was forced out of office in 1881 by Alexander III, who considered him too closely associated with the policies of his father. He spent the rest of his life in retirement, writing his memoirs and continuing to advise the government on military matters. He died in 1912, having outlived nearly all of his contemporaries from the Great Reforms.
The legacy of Milyutin
Milyutin’s reforms, like the Great Reforms of which they were a part, were the subject of intense debate in late imperial Russia. Conservatives saw the dilution of the old recruitment system as a weakening of the army; liberals saw it as the modernisation of an institution that could not otherwise survive the pressures of 20th-century warfare. The reformed army he built fought in the Russo-Turkish War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the First World War. The system of military districts he created lasted in modified form until 1918.