Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914 (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian & East European Studies)

by Bruce W. Menning

Release Date: December, 1999

Edition: Paperback

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This book examines the changes in organisation of the Russian Imperial Army from the period just after the Crimean War till the eve of the First World War.

Over that time tremendous changes occurred. During the Crimean War the Russians used mainly smooth bore muzzle loading weapons, firing black powder. Artillery was as rudimentary. Armies were reasonably small and a war would be decided by single battles fought over a day.

Over the next fifty years tremendous changes took place. Infantry were issued with rifled weapons that were breech loaded. This increased the fire rate and range of such weapons. In addition recoil springs were invented for artillery. This combined with breach loading meant that artillery could fire accurately and rapidly at distant targets. In addition the development of the railroad meant that huge armies could be put into the field and supplied for long periods of time.

These changes in weaponry led immense changes in the nature of battles. Because of the increased lethality of weapons battlefields became more dispersed. Instead of a battle taking place on a defined field of a few miles with closely packed infantry armies were more thinly spread over immense fronts. Battles instead of taking a day lasted months. This in turn meant that the modern armies had to be supplied with huge amounts of ammunition as well as food.

In the First World War the Russian armies in the end were defeated. However that was due not so much to the structure of the army but other things. The inability of the Russian state to be able to produce sufficient munitions for a long war and the fact that the state itself fell apart in 1917. The reality is that on the whole the Russians were able to build a reasonably efficient army in the period covered by the book.

Th book is fascinating and in addition to looking at issues around the development of the army it gives a history of two imporant wars. The Russo Turkish War and the Russo Japanese War. A must read for people interested in the subject.

A Good Analyis of the Tsarist Army in Transition

This is a very military-academic study of how the Tsarist Russian army evolved from the Crimean War, through the 1877 Russo-Turkish War and Russo-Japanese War to become the military that went into World War One. One big disappointment is that the author stops at August 1914 without analyzing the first month of the war. He points out Russian deficiencies but fails to show how they were able to defeat Austrians in Galicia but lose at Tannenburg. Although the emphasis here is on doctrine, technology and force structure issues, there are excellent chapters on operations in 1877-8 and 1904-5. There are definitely similarities with Russia's current military troubles: political and social instability, economic weaknesses, technological changes that threaten to leave Russia's military behind, uncertain threat environment and lackluster military leadership. The Russian army made several key mistakes in terms of force structure, some of which are currently being repeated: they made the army too big for peacetime, but it was low quality and had few reserves. Not enough was spent on civilian infrastructure, such as railroads and industry. Officer education was woefully inadequate. Training exercises were more like parades than tactical problems. On the other hand, the individual Russian soldier fought well in both wars and the army made good choices on simple, robust weapons like the 1891 Mosin-Nagant rifle, the 76.2mm field gun and the Maxim machine-gun. Although only briefly mentioned in the book, it is apparent upon reflection that the Russian Navy was a waste of resources then, as now. Fully 25% of the military budget went to support a fleet that was annihilated in 1905 and inactive in 1914-7. This money would have been better spent building up an air force. The maps are hard to read and insufficient to follow major battles.