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Remembered Today:

Russian ordeal 1914-1917....


phil andrade

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I think it would be very advisable not to post such comments on a Public Forum such as the Great War Forum as the owners of this site would not wish to be drawn into any legal action, (should Mr. Victor Nitu be off a mind to take such action).

Dear Andrei,

I am trying to catch up with this thread, and make sense of it. However, please heed the advice given above. The GWF team will review the comments made and edit if felt necessary. However, please think carefully before posting any further comments about people who are not here to defend themselves.

In additon may I request that every effort is made to avoid sliding into more recent and controversial political discussions. I realise that the past can be viewed from the present and that it is often difficult to seperate the two, but the forum has a rule that political discussons are not allowed.

Kind regards,

Andy

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In 1917 Romania and Russia were a rather unimportant theatre for the Allied armies as it was in early 1916. The final strategic goal of our armies was to have the "back free" for their main adversaries in the west.

Many of the forces allocated to Romania by Germany and its allies were drawn away in 1917.

In numbers, for example Austria lost more than a million soldiers during 1916 on the Eastern front (about 500,000 of which recorded as sick, e.g. no combat casualties), compared to 570,000 in 1917 (of which 425,000 were recorded as sick).

As you can see there is a difference of 500,000 to 145,000 as real combat losses, and only a small amount of them ocurred on the Romanian front.

When you speak of the "success" of the peace treaty fpor Romania, you should not forget that the sole aim of thoses treaties was to annihilate Austria and Germany as major powers. Thus it was in British/French own interest to give such a huge territory to Romania.

It has not much to do with the countries performance in the war.

Well, apparently king Carol died during the war, and he was not the one to betray his Allies.

When the Romanian armies reentered the war, Austria-Hungary was nearing its final end, hundred-thousands of soldiers were captured in the final Italian offensive...who could have been there to defend the Bukowina?

H.M. King Carol of Romania died in September 1914,but not before leading and smashing the bulgarians in the Balkans War,hence the Treaty of Bucharest 1913.Romania entered the War in 1916.Also he was one the first to predict the desintegration of the austro-hungarian Empire in the following years.

Andrei

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Can we all please focus on the topic thread originator's main question: the divergence betweel black and white or polar opposite images and myths of IMPERIAL RUSSIA's overall war efforts and their effectivenesses and such myth's substantial effectiveness to aid or hinder the Allies winning the war on the EASTERN FRONT(s)? While Rumania's efforts may be neglected for several of the same reasons that we have all neglected the Russian armed forces and Russia's efforts in the war the focus in this thread should be on Russia NOT Rumania please.

Thanks all,

John

An interested party (interested as well in Rumania's war efforts, etc...)

Toronto

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One early example of at least how the Germans thought of their adversaries was the battle of warsaw in october 1914.

After their defeat in the first campaign in August-September 1914, the Austrians threatened Germany with the possibility of further retreat, thereby leave the important industrial area of Silesia without its flank guard in Northern Galicia.

Germany was forced to reinforce their Allies. Most of the VIII. German Army was afterwards transferred to Silesia via Cracow.

The troops left in East Prussia were very few, mostly reserve, Landwehr and Landsturm.

The I. and II. Russian armies had been defeated, but were refilled soon, and the X. Russian Army joined them, too.

With the withdrawal of the bulk of the VIII. Army, the remaining troops faced the same, if not worse rate of strength of about 1:3 as they had faced in August.

In August, however, the threat to East Prussia had been the cause for two Army corps from the west to be transferred to the Eastern theatre, as the German nobility had a great influence on the emperor to "save" their land possessions.

The reason for this new behaviour was clear, nobody in the German authorities had any respect in Russian fighting strength anymore, they thought the few troops left as sufficient to repel any Russian new offensive.

The question for us now is, was this lack of respect due to the very bad leadership of General Rennenkampf, or of the Russian bad performance overall?

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A characteristic of the Russian performance 1914-1917 is that it vacillated from dismal to superb. Take the example of Lake Naroch in March 1916, for example, and then compare it with the collosal success of Brusilov three moths later.

There was, of course, the pattern of Russian superiority over the Austrians countered by German ascendancy over the Russians - another "caricature" - but even this varied. In early 1917 the Russians achieved a significant success against the Germans in the Baltic sector - something we seldom hear about.

Phil

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I think we have to be aware or the vastness of Russia and the many different types of people in their army. If you read Mannerheim: The Years of Preparation , by J. E. O. Screen , and Mannerheim: The Finnish Years it gives a fascinating insight to the Russian Army, both in it as a serving officer in the period mentioned, training before, and as an adversary in the Second World War.

With respect to the Baltic and the Germans, this is where they thought about and practiced their tactical doctrines resulting in the Hutier, which in many ways is a German compliment on how good sections of te Russian army could be.

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The "success" of Brusilov in my eyes is one of the great controversials of the Great War.

Apart from the great strategic pressure upon Germany and Austria, who where forced to abandon their own offensives in Tyrol and at Verdun, The Russian offensive achieved no breakthrough.

Despite all the Russian losses in 1914 and 1915, even on their highest estimate, Russia still fielded many more soldiers than Austria and Germany (in the East). As the poor Russian industrial capacity was greatly improved during the first two years of the war, the Russians had more ammunition and technical equipment than in the previous years.

The estimated casuatly figures are varying; While Germany and Austria had, according to the very reliable casualty reports (as they came directly from the field armies, it is just unrealistic to suppose them to be faked), the Central Powers lost between 800,000 and 900,000 during the acampaign from June-September (I have no exact figure for Austrian September losses, they may have been betwenn 150,000 and 200,000 at the absolute maximum).

Russian figures also vary a lot; mostly they range from 1 to alomost 2 millions. No tactical success in my eyes at all. No strategic breakthrough.

Thus the only chance to make it a victory is to consider its impact on the whole Entente strategic position (as I said above, as a desicive aid for the western powers).

When previously in this thread came up the argument that, "of course Russia was not able to break through the line, because of the technical advantage of the defensive technologies available to Austria and Germany", from my point of view there is no evidence to call the 1916 summer campaign a Russian victory.

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In a war when "successes" and "victories" were measured in the military field tactical blinkers of how many yards or meters, men and guns were captured or destroyed the Brusilov offensive was a "spectacular" success. Of course the Allied propaganda played this up to the hilt and their respective governments with political leaders desperate for "great victories" (read breakthroughs) loved it. Thus the generation of historical myths in part. Critcizing the Brusilov offensive therefore as NOT a great success misses the point of the effect of morale. If the Brusilov offensive was so great why in just over 6 months later did the Russians face a regime collapse and revolution? The answser of course lies in multiple effects not least of which is the POST-Brusilov events of continuing stalemate, growing German strength, the effect of the victim of their own "success" by raising artifically false or misleading hopes fuelled by their own propaganda in part and desperate wishfull thinking by both generals and politicians for that quick or at least decisive field victory to end the war or at least hostilities in their part of the world (Eastern Front). The Brusilov offensive is significant as exemplifying what happens when very significant and important military field victories are a more serious long term detrimental effect by such delusions, false hopes and demoralizations. Again the overall effects on civilians, civilian morale and the home fronts need to be counted in at least as much as the actual tactical field successes achieved. We all know that this recognition NEVER happened so that a huge hole (one of many of course) is what we are left with when fairly considering the significance of the Brusilov offensive in particular and the "caricature" overall of just how unsuccessful or successful Russian war efforts were during the war.

John

Toronto

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The estimated casuatly figures are varying; While Germany and Austria had, according to the very reliable casualty reports (as they came directly from the field armies, it is just unrealistic to suppose them to be faked), the Central Powers lost between 800,000 and 900,000 during the acampaign from June-September (I have no exact figure for Austrian September losses, they may have been betwenn 150,000 and 200,000 at the absolute maximum).

Russian figures also vary a lot; mostly they range from 1 to alomost 2 millions. No tactical success in my eyes at all. No strategic breakthrough.

Thus the only chance to make it a victory is to consider its impact on the whole Entente strategic position (as I said above, as a desicive aid for the western powers).

Here are some statistics. The German source "sanitatsbericht" gives battle casualties on the Russian Front between June and September 1916 as 207,333, of whom 61,465 were killed or missing/prisoners and 145,868 were wounded. Austro-Hungarian losses were at least three times as high as that, of whom two thirds were prisoners. According to Norman Stones's history, page 261, as of early July "...Brusilov's own losses had been high - 5,000 officers lost [ dead, presumably?], 60,000 men killed, 370,000 wounded, 60,000 missing..." . That aggregate of roughly half a million is shocking, especially if it occurred in just a few weeks. Moreover, it alludes to Brusilov's front alone...presumably there were other fronts to the North to be reckoned with too. As to what Russian casualties were in the fighting through the rest of the summer....? Set against this must be counted 450,000 prisoners taken between June and September (90% + of them Austro-Hungarian), and what surely must have been a terrifying experience for the Central Powers. Incidentally, here is an interesting anecdote related by Stone on page 260 which serves to remind us that we must not stereotyppe the image of this war...." A German counter-attack failed, the three reserve divisions (Kraewel) being largely wasted and the Russians being treated even to the unusual spectacle of German troops fleeing, having to be sabred back, by Austrian generals, to their front lines."

Did you refer earlier to Russia being a "helpless giant" ? Vulnerable she certainly was, but "helpless" ??

Phil

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Thank you for the figures from the sanitätsbericht. I just had the rough number of 200,000.

However we may assume that not all of these "happened" against Brussilows troops, some may have been in the North, too.

The Austrian ones from June to August were 613,587 total (30,245 dead only; 327,388 POW);

With the German numbers we come to 820,920.

Assuming that Austria lost 138,000 in August, with the minor fighting in September there cannot be more than 200,000 Austrian losses;

Giving a total of 900,000 - 1,000,000. (I miscalculated by 100,000 in my previous post).

Alright, lets say the Russians lost 500,000 during June, when Central Powers losses where about 300,000; only one third of their casualties during that summer-fall.

Accordingly when we multiply the Russian figure by three we get 1,5 millions...up to 2 millions when you consider that in its later stages, the Russian offensive became rather unsuccessful and Russian losses increased. Do you agree?

Well, Norman's anecdote I find very interesting, as usually there is the opinion in most sources known to me that the Russian attack made no serious impress on the German Armies at all. If its true and applies to the bulk of the German troops engaged, it would really throw a different light on the whole matter.

Im sorry that I do not understand to what your last point is referring (english is not my mother tongue :lol: ). Do you refer to this anecdote?

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I do not get ANY impression of Russia not being that helpless giant during the war.

This is what you had written earlier. My point is that while Russia was a giant, she was not helpless : vulnerable - yes ; helpless - no.

Your suggestions about Russian losses June-October 1916 are reasonable. There is an estimate for the whole of 1916, which is 2,404,000, including 344,000 taken prisoner : if that's close, we can attribute more than two thirds to the Brusilov Offensive...just guesswork, but not too far off, I reckon.

The figures I quoted from Stone's book ( about half a million) were, I see in another source, suffered by Brusilov's armies up until mid August - not early July as Stone had implied.

There is another Russian estimate that breaks down the casualties into seasonal periods. It attributes 1,200,000 killed and wounded and 212,000 prisoners to the the six "summer" months of 1916. I think that these figures were estimated by General Golovin.

The proportion of dead in the Austrian figure you give is small : only about 5% of the total casualties. Surely many of the missing were dead, too; and then large numbers of wounded died. The same goes for the Russian figures - they show 261,096 killed in action for the whole of 1916 : the real number must have been at least double that.

Nearly two and a half million Russians were taken prisoner in the whole war, roughly one and a half million by the Germans and one million by the Austro - Hungarians. But the Russians captured nearly two million, of whom fewer than ten per cent were German.

Russia made a huge effort in the war... her achievements should not be underrated. She defeated the Austrians and the Turks, but the Germans proved their Nemesis. Here is a recollection of a German soldier, who fought on both the Eastern and the Western Fronts:

"....we had acquired a boundless admiration for the sheer courage of the Russian infantrymen....In my opinion, the Russian foot-soldier was the best we had encountered till then, fearless, tough, resolute and with an utter contempt for death." [ Stephen Westman, " Surgeon with the Kaiser's Army"].

Phil

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Phil: Westman's quote is part of the mythologizing of the masses of uneducated Russian peasantry's bravery. Obedience not only in the military in wartime but in peacetime throughout the church and the autocracy was built into the peasants and the vast majority of Russians (and the 50 per cent of the population of the Russian Empire who were NOT Russian in 1914). The continuing mass frontal assaults were common on ALL fronts given the nature of the terrain, the limitations of the application of the newer technologies and poor leadership along with pre-existing socializations such as the obedience factor (of practically all the belligerents involved of course not just Russia). Hence the negative stereotyping of the blundering Russian command and its officers is fairly unfair given the overall context of the war. Russia did have capable and even good officers. It is just that due to the mass size of her armed forces and the sheer geography she did not have nearly enough good officers and even simply the sheer numbers of minimally trained officers. Russia's officer to man ratio by the end of 1916 and beginning of 1917 must have been one of the lowest if not the lowest in all of the armies. Again this fact contributes again to the "giant with the feet of clay."

John

Toronto

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Much has been said and written, John, about Russia'a lack of a middle class. Even today its cited as a reason for certain problems that have made life so hard for so many millions of Russian people. It might be argued, I suppose, that this effect was amplified in the experience of the military, especially when fightng against a society as technologically - and, in some ways, socially - advanced as Germany's.

Phil

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I agree absolutely Phil. The "reforms" of post-1905 : "liberalization", representative government through specifically the Duma, constitutional reform, educational funding and reforms were less than a decade old. They did have some positive influences on Russia's fighting effectiveness but they also had negative effects of showing many Russians the diverse ways to view the world including their own. Political polarization through inexperienced politicians of whatever political stripe helped in turn to polarize and thus isolate many Russians from one another in a time of grave national crisis. This is part of the lack of the middle class that western liberal states had possessed for generations since approximately the French Revolutionary wars and Napoleonic reforms where critical state subsidized and thus controlled admittedly "free" education and "merit" helped to materially generate such middle class stability organs in such societies. Russia on the other hand had only an incipient middle class vastly outnumbered by the essentially illiterate peasant masses.

John

Toronto

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Just seen this on the net:

155,000 officers in Russian Army 1914 to presumably late spring or early summer 1917 (possibly only early 1917?) NO dates given

of whom 90,000 were killed or died of their wounds.

Overall mobilization was at least 12 million officers and men.

Anyone good at stats and especially comparative ones?

John

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Just seen this on the net:

155,000 officers in Russian Army 1914 to presumably late spring or early summer 1917 (possibly only early 1917?) NO dates given

of whom 90,000 were killed or died of their wounds.

Overall mobilization was at least 12 million officers and men.

Anyone good at stats and especially comparative ones?

John

The figure of 90,000 officers alludes to those who were killed or wounded. For killed and died of wounds, the figure would be about 30,000, assuming one dead for every two wounded. It's approximate, not exact, and should be compared with the overall estimated total of 5,500,000 killed or wounded in action for all ranks of the Russian army. There were, in addition, 17,000 officers taken prisoner, from a grand total of 2,417,000 Russian PoWs.

The implication here is that, in killed and wounded, there was one officer casualty for every 60 enlisted men. In PoWs the ratio was one officer for every 140 men.

The French lost one officer killed for every 36 men; the Germans, one officer for every 33 men, the British one officer for every 18 men. The figures are rather misleading, in so far as the Germans and French maintained a far smaller contingent of officers in relation to enlisted men : the proportionate death rate among German officers was higher than that among the British. It should also be noted that officers who were hit in battle were more likely to be killed outright than their other rank counterparts. In killed, for example, the British lost one officer for every 18 men, but in overall casualties it was more like one to every 24.

It's clear that the Russians maintained exceptionally small numbers of officers in relative terms, and that their loss was irreplaceable.

Phil

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Even liberally rounding(!) the figure to 200,000 officers with 100,000 as casualties (fatal) in the war amongst 12 million one still gets essentially 1 officer for every 120 men or even more. Imagine French, British, German and American armies on the Western Front with such an officer to man ratio! In essence especially after the summer of 1916 and the huge casualties suffered in the successful Brusilov offensive one could argue that the Russian front lines were mobs of ill-trained, hungry and ill-equipped uniformed mobs with barely any officers and especially experienced ones. Such a situation where essentially the men could decide how to run the war which in essence ALL the soldiers of the war did impelled unilateral actions as to whether to advance or protect one's own skin when NO authority figures (read officers) were typically around. Leaving aside the substantial detriment to combat effectiveness in the front lines, this paltry officer to man ratio in the Russian army had dire consequences when fervent political agitations were stirred up by a even just a small number of "Bolos."

John

Toronto

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I have an "official" statement from St. Petersburg in one of my sources, which says:

until August 1915, Officers: 43,224 dead, 161,443 wounded, 18,605 missing in action.

Ever heard about something like this from Russia?

I saw some of this official Russian officers casualty figures in Conard von Hötzendorffs books, too, but I do not have them avaiable at the moment.

Lets just say (like in the source "kritische Betrachtung unserer Armee im Weltkriege") a ration of men to Offc of 1 to 20, this would give about 4 mio ranks by that date, even higher than the figures of General Golovin (3,4 mio for 1914-15).

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I have an "official" statement from St. Petersburg in one of my sources, which says:

until August 1915, Officers: 43,224 dead, 161,443 wounded, 18,605 missing in action.

Ever heard about something like this from Russia?

I saw some of this official Russian officers casualty figures in Conard von Hötzendorffs books, too, but I do not have them avaiable at the moment.

Lets just say (like in the source "kritische Betrachtung unserer Armee im Weltkriege") a ration of men to Offc of 1 to 20, this would give about 4 mio ranks by that date, even higher than the figures of General Golovin (3,4 mio for 1914-15).

Those figures are huge ...almost outrageous, I would say. Had I not seen them, I would refuse to believe them : bearing in mind that they are for officers only.

Golovin, who as a staff officer had acess to data and knew whereof he spoke, conjectured that 5,500,000 Russians were killed or wounded in action, and attributed a 30% fatality rate, resulting in 1,650,000 battle deaths, of whom 1,300,000 were killed in action and 350,000 died of wounds. This has the ring of authenticity about it, and complies with evidence from more exact figures yielded up by other armies, regarding proportions of killed to wounded, and mortality rates among wounded etc. etc.

Your sources impress me : would you please share some more information with me ?

Perhaps I could PM you ?

Phil

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Of course the numbers of Golovin seem almost correct due to his access to the Russian stuff, but I always wondered how Russia could suffer only 3,4 mio casualties in 1914-1915, while Germany and Austria.Hungary combined lost around 4,2 mio.

During that time, while their own losses were of course heavy, the Allied Central Powers dealt many decisive blows to the Russian Army, not counting the Ottoman effort, small as it might be.

I have been working on my own estimate of Russian casualty figures for that period for a while now, but as my studies take a lot of my free time i have not finished it yet.

Well, of course you might PM me, but maybe we could also publish things like that in this here, as in my opinion it gives a lot to the issue.

EDIT: I just found the numbers of General Conrad with some research in the Internet:

In Conrad von Hötzendorff, Aus meiner Dienstzeit Band 5, he states that Russia lost according to a secure source by September 13, 1914: 53 Generals, 2313 Offz, 584,317 men.

I am curious about how exact these figures are, however they COULD be exact.

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The only official Russian statistics that I have available give a total of 7,036,087, broken down :

Killed in action 626,440

Died of wounds 17,174 - a preposterously low figure...I would guess that apertains to officers only

Wounded 2,754,202

Missing 3,638,271

These are apportioned, year by year:

1914-15 Killed 312,607 died of wounds 4,967 wounded 1,537,849 missing 1,547,590 total 3,403,013

1916 Killed 261,096 died of wounds 8,687 wounded 995,106 missing 1,172,448 total 2,437,337

1917 Killed 52,737 died of wounds 3,520 wounded 221,247 missing 918,233 total 1,195,737

These are the most authoratitive stats we have, but they must be adjusted to reflect the fact that many of the 3.6 million missing were dead, and that the number who died from wounds was surely numbered in hundreds of thousands, and that non battle deaths from disease, accident and while prisoners of war are not included.

Golovin, I reckon, probably adjusted these figures by applying a formula based on the experience of the French armies, and reconfigured them thus : killed in action, 1,300,000; wounded in action, 4,200,000, of whom 350,000 ( 8.3%) died from wounds, and a figure of 2,417,000 for prisoners, based on reports of Russian PoWs in German and Austro-Hungarian reports. He went further than this, and assessed them by period as follows :

Summer and Winter 1914-15 1,210,000 killed or wounded, 764,000 prisoners, a total of 1,974,000

Summer 1915 1,410,000 killed or wounded and 976,000 prisoners, a total of 2,386,000. The aggregate for the first full twelve months of war would now be in the order of four million, far more in accordance with what you suggest, SMSKaiser.

Winter 1915-16 850,000 killed and wounded and 156,000 prisoners, a total of 1,006,000

Summer 1916 1,200,000 killed and wounded and 212,000 prisoners, a total of 1,412,000

Winter 1916-17 660,000 killed and wounded and 96,000 prisoners, a total of 756,000

Summer 1917 170,000 killed and wounded and 213,000 prisoners, a total of 383,000

With the exception of the first compilation, for Summer and Winter 1914-15, these time periods are six months apiece, which indicates an average monthly loss of about 400,000 in the peak of the German onslaught in 1915.

Golovin had to conjecture here, and based his calculation on the assumption that the ratio of wounded to killed was about 3.25 to 1, and that about one in twelve of the wounded died. presumably reflecting the French and, maybe, the German experience.

About 40 years ago I found a very comprehensive series of estimates made by Colonel Knox, a British officer who was attached as observer to the Russian army. I was not sufficiently interested at that time to take note, and I've never been able to find that source again, but he made his own estimate of abbout 1.81 million Russian military dead from all causes. Again, he had to use the official source to extrapolate from by applying estimates based on other armies' experiences.

There are very varying estimates for Russia's military death roll in the Great War, ranging from 1.7 million to over 3 million.

Phil

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What we really badly badly need is someone or even different people living in Moscow and/or St. Petersburg with access to both official military records and official military medical / pension records to do an exhaustive search through the extant WWI records (considerable - most central records for the military were NOT lost or destroyed). This would of course take years and subsequent events of course(!:(() overshadow 1914 to 1917! The Soviets in the late 1980s published an excellent survey of their casualties from circa 1918 to early 1980s that was even translated into English and published in London, England. Again, the sheer passage of time, commonality of names, illiteracy of the masses of those who suffered the most: frontline infantry made up overwhelmingly of such illiterate or semi-literate peasants means that these sufferers on the Eastern Front MAY remain perpetually anonymous. One hopes not. The archives are fundamentally there I believe: it requires time, money AND political interest and will. Hopefully some Russian, Ukrainian, Polish or other grad students or professors or even a non-governemntal historical society dedicated to WWI (which according to my purusal of the Russian internet alone MAY already be established or in the future established dedicated just to WWI) will undertake such a mammoth trans-national co-operative task: identifying individual casualties of all types and nationalities on the Eastern Fronts.

John

Toronto

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There is, I think, enough hard evidence in those official statistics that I posted to give us an idea of the general order of magnitude of the total casualties : seven million were officially compiled, and it could well be that there were another ten or twelve per cent in addition that were never tabulated. In the case of Germany, about 6.5 million were recorded by the end of 1918, but it took another 15 years before the total was finally established at just over 7 million...and so I'd expect that a similar upward adjustment would be appropriate for the Russian figure : more than that, perhaps, because the turmoil in Russia was much greater than it had been in Germany.

The principal problem with the Russian casualty figures is that more than half of them are classified as "missing", and while we may be sure that the majority of these were prisoners, we can be certain that a significant proportion of them were also dead. It would be very hard to investigate the fate of so many missing from a war that was fought a lifetime ago, in a society that was torn asunder by defeat, revolution and civil war.

A recent scholar of Russian history - I think his name is Pipes, but I'm not sure - cited an estimate based on modern research which placed Russian military combat fatalities at just 1.3 million, of whom 900,000 were killed on the field and 400,000 died from wounds. To my mind, that seems too low a figure. Golovin's 1.65 milllion strikes me as more realistic : add on to this deaths from disease etc, and the total would rise to roughly two million, very similar to the military total suffered by the Germans, who also officially accounted for 7 million casualties.

There is also very wide divergence about the losses suffered by the Austro- Hungarian armies, with figures ranging betwen one and one and a half million. Many of these were suffered against the Italians and the Serbs and Romanians, but surely the majority were lost fighting the Russians. Deaths from non battle casues accounted for a much higher per centage in the armies of the Dual Monarchy than they did in those of the Germans, French and British.

It's my belief that the actual combat fatalities suffered by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians in the fighting against the Russians can not have been less than one million, in which case those of the Russians, being at least fifty per cent higher, must have exceeded a million and a half. Supposition and guesswork on my part, that's all.

Phil

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Phil: We all wish to be accurate. Hence my previous post to this thread. I fervently desire and hope that someone in Russia or elsewhere extensively uses Russian and other archives and dbs primary source materials verifying identifications and disposition of such war time casualties. For example, state pension records, criminal police, Ministry of the Interior police prison, Russian Red Cross, gubernia or state/provincial archival records say for local or regional war charities or state sponsored veterans assistance, etc... need to be searched, collated and databased. Of course this is a HUGE project. The Russian Ministry of Defense should both internally and externally (eg. University researchers, genealogists in Russia and elsewhere, Museum staff...) diligently do this NOW or in the near future in order to both establish and re-establish the HUGE efforts of Russia and Russians during 1914 to 1918.

John

Toronto

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