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.
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