Russian ordeal 1914-1917....

[John Gilinsky]

SMS Kaiser: A word of caution for Golovin: Golovin was an emigre researching and writing in the West without access to the Soviet controlled archives. Golovin did get cooperation from especially some former Imperial officer emigres but essentially he worked with what he took with him. His primary source materials were thus very very limited especially for the post-1915 period. His figures are working figures rationally extrapolated (this method is exactly how he arrived at his own stats btw) and are thus reasonably conjectural and NOT solid primary source backed up. Similar analogy would be estimating the casualties to the BEF from say Jan 1915 to mid-1917 based on 1914 solid figures and general military knowledge.

John

[phil andrade]

It might be instructive to approach the question of Russian military casualties in the Great War from another direction...by investigating German and Austro -Hungarian statistics.

One feature that really surprised me is information form the German War Graves establishment that indicates more than 400,000 graves in Poland from 1914-1918, in addition to more than 100,000 others in the territory of the former USSR. These, it should be noted, are only the dead that could be found. The implications of well over half a million German dead on the old Russian front, and what I can only assume is a comparable or greater number of Austrians, suggests Russian deaths in the order of two million.

Phil

[MartH]

I'm really interested in this thread, but most of my knowledge is to do with the Finnish War of Independence and subsequent actions. If you look at the Axis forum Soviet Sources need to be treated very carefully.

Could we also be aware that referring to them as Russians is doing a dis-service to the Ukrainians, Belarus, Polish, the Eastern provinces and the few Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Finnish. They were part of the Tsarist army, or the Russian Empire, in my youth I even saw one or two Finns who has served with the Tsarist army, and subsequently fought against Soviet Russia. They are turning in their graves for being called Russians, imagine calling Canadians who served in the Imperial forces 1914-1919; English.

[phil andrade]

imagine calling Canadians who served in the Imperial forces 1914-1919; English.

Many of them were first generation English- or, more accurately, British - emmigrants to Canada.

Phil

[phil andrade]

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

Do you think that you and I would carry sufficient clout to prevail upon them to do this, John ?....Mind you, with the centennial coming, now could be the time !

Phil

[MartH]

Many of them were first generation English- or, more accurately, British - emmigrants to Canada.

Phil

Ok I know, but you understand the direction of my post. And Scottish emigrants would not have liked being called English.

[phil andrade]

Do you think that it's arguable that Russia might improve its image in the eyes of the Western World if more details were forthcoming about the extent of her effort in the Great War ?

Phil

Ok I know, but you understand the direction of my post. And Scottish emigrants would not have liked being called English.

Yes, point taken...sorry if I came over as being "clever".

Phil

[John Gilinsky]

Phil: Definitely a BIG YES! (Hope I don't sound like that Simon C. guy on British TV! )

John

Toronto

[SMSKaiser]

Well, I always thought that those figures from PJA were that published by Golovin, I found them on a website long ago were it was stated that they came from him:

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

The other ones:

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.

indeed make more sense.

Soviet sources were really not worth taking them into account.

In Austria-Hungary's official history, it is said that the Soviet Union gave the number of 1 mio to 1,2 mio until May 1915, just consider that even Russian sources acknowledge 316,000 on East Prussia and 225,000 for Galicia in AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1914.

(with 650,000 from October 14-May 15, just under 100,000 per month, Russia would have had without doubt the best of all Armies during that time )

[phil andrade]

A little delving into some volumes on my book shelves has yielded me statistics for the Central Power's recorded casualties on the Eastern Front. These are for battle casualties only, and do not take into account the sick:

Austro- Hungarian:

Dead 311,297 Wounded 1,212,806 Missing 1,246,760 Total 2,770,863

German :

Dead 173,840 Wounded 1,151,153 Missing 143,818 Total 1,468,811

Combined totals 485,137 dead, 2,363,959 wounded and 1,390,578 missing, an aggregate of 4,239,674.

The indication here is that, in terms of officially recorded casualties, the Germans and Austro Hungarians suffered roughly 60% of the loss they inflicted on the Russians. There is no doubt that the Austrian figure is very incomplete. In both German and Austrian tabulations the dead allude only to those who were killed in action and registered : if we allow for the missing who had also been killed, and for the wounded who died, hundreds of thousands more would be added to the dead, producing a total more than double that initially reported. The Russians, incidentally, counted more than 1.7 million Austro Hungarian prisoners of war, and 150,000 + Germans.

Phil

[phil andrade]

Well, I always thought that those figures from PJA were that published by Golovin, I found them on a website long ago were it was stated that they came from him:

It must be acknowledged that Golovin's figures are notional rather than official compilations...but they do have the right "feel" about them...don't they ?

Phil

[SMSKaiser]

It must be acknowledged that Golovin's figures are notional rather than official compilations...but they do have the right "feel" about them...don't they ?

Phil

I think so, yes. They are higher than Austro-German, contributing to the "myth", our topic. One cannot they they are too high, as those already horrific numbers are yet still imaginable.

Austro- Hungarian:

Dead 311,297 Wounded 1,212,806 Missing 1,246,760 Total 2,770,863

May I ask where they are from?

I have an overview of the total Austrian reported losses, divided into theatres (apart from 1915 with about 1,9 mio for the Eastern front, and 1916 with about 1,4 mio for the Eastern front) uploaded on my website:

http://freenet-homepage.de/warships-of-the...rianlosses2.htm

[SMSKaiser]

Just translated the table into english:

http://freenet-homepage.de/warships-of-the...trianlosses.htm

[phil andrade]

Just translated the table into english:

http://freenet-homepage.de/warships-of-the...trianlosses.htm

Thank you very much. These tables really do help me.

As for the figures I posted, they come from my collection of Purnell's History of The First World War, Volume 7, Number 15, in the chapter titled Austria- Hungary Concedes Defeat.

It is an elaborate graphic tabulation, showing losses broken down into different fronts, and different categories, with time periods following sequentially to July 31 1915, July 31 1916, July 31 1917 and finishing with totals up to Sept 30 1918.

The totals are apportioned as follows:

Dead Russian Front 311, 297 Balkan Front 39,557 Italian Front 145,155 Western Front 3,201

Total 499,210

Wounded Russian Front 1,202,06 Balkan Front 146,332 Italian Front 591,852 Western Front 1,305

Total 1,952,293

Missing Russian Front 1,246,760 Balkan Front 87,750 Italian Front 226,444 Western Front 4,077

Total 1,565,031

Sick Russian Front 1,602,852 Balkan Front 359,459 Italian Front 1,482,220 Western Front 88,578

Total 3,353,109

There is a footnote at the bottom of the table, explaining that the 499,210 deaths occurred in the line or front line hospitals; and that an additional 334,366 died in base hospitals.

The caption for the table is AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN MILITARY CASUALTIES 1914-1918 and the ensuing text reads .... " The figures reproduced below are derived from official sources dating back to the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. All mortality figures since the end of the First World War, however, have put the figures of Austro-Hungarian dead consistently about one-third higher than those in this chart. This apparent discrepancy can possibly be explained by the fact that the situation in Austria-Hungary was so chaotic by the end of the war that it was virtually impossible to keep accurate casualty returns"

The most striking feature of the table is the preponderance of the loss that fell in the first year of fighting, especially on the Russian Front, where, by July 31 1915, there had been 203,542 deaths ( about two thirds of the total for that front for the entire war), 766,935 wounded (63%) and 637,043 missing (51%). We often read about how the early months of the war produced the most terrible casualties....well, the Austro-Hungarians furnished us with the most extreme example.

Phil

[John Gilinsky]

Gentlemen, gentlemen, please! What we all need are the academics to go into the archives + and come up with reasoned out stats or figures including analytical research into those "mysterious" "missing." What is a few hundred thousand eh? Let us not get into tendentious quibbles over long ago published stats that even their authors admitted were incomplete at the time. The whole social historical significance of how we today view conflicting casualty stats from contemporary or near contemporary (latter say 1920s - 1930's) accounts whether official or not is interesting in itself as to the impact of numerical literacy or mathematical alliance with our view of societies. Thus when we talk of how horrible the Eastern Front(s) are we invariably bring up the massive casualties generally. Look at the millions of POWS alone. How did societies in turmoil, war, revoultion and anarchy deal with their POWS and what social significance does this have for how states view their own citizens in war as well as the citizens of other nations? How do states today view Eastern Front WWI war graves and cemeteries? Again this directly impacts on the topic's original intention: the ORDEAL of the Eastern Front: real or imagined?

John

Toronto

[phil andrade]

John, Are you suggesting that our statistical analyses are too detailed, and that we're "losing the plot" in our pursuit of tendentious figures ?

I, for one, am delighted to learn about these old compilations, because they allow us to understand how well, or, indeed, how badly, the belligerent societes were able to keep a track of the effects of the fighting on their armies and resources.

There are general conclusions that might be drawn. For example, the opening of the Soviet archives have allowed research into their casualties in WW2. These make interesting comparisons with the experience of 1914-1917.

Between 1941-1945 34.7 million personel served in the Soviet military, of whom 6.3 million - about one in six - were killed in battle or died from wounds. In the Great War, about 15.5 million served in the Russian armies, of whom - if Golovin is right - just over one in ten were killed in battle. Here we have a striking comment on how much more heavily the ordeal of war between 1941-1945 bore on the population of Russia than it had 25 years earlier. This is not to play down the horrors of 1914-1917 ; rather it points toward the increasing "totality" of warfare, a process inaugurated by the Great War and carried to a merciless conclusion at places such as Stalingrad.

The frightful discipline that was imposed on Soviet soldiers in WW2 was, apparently, far less a factor in the earlier war, when fifty per cent more Russian soldiers surrendered than were killed in battle. In WW2, despite the monstrous haul of prisoners in the early months, the Soviet loss in killed exceeded the number taken prisoner. The nature of Stalin's rule was apparent here - "Not One Step Back!" and thousands of summary executions.

The tragedy of the Great War for Russia was , I'm tempted to suggest, because it extinguished the growth of liberal democracy. The reforms of Stolypin were transforming society, and well might we wonder how far along the road Russia might have advanced but for the tragedy of 1914.

Phil

[John Gilinsky]

You imply Phil what of course with each passing year away from the war becomes self-apparent: people of all backgrounds and qualifications really start rewriting history according to how THEIR contemporaries view, research and write about such "stats" or "figures." We need to go to the massive archival materials AND do very extensive field research (amongst other things) to really get a firm grip on what actually happened. Arguing over long since published figures doesn't really focus on sufficent historiographical methods nor really utilize what in THEORY we can now do. Of course, money and time work against us all but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

John

Toronto

[MartH]

John, Do you know if the 1914-1917 archives still exist? My understanding researching Official Histories is that most of the records where destroyed during the Civil War. Sorry....

[John Gilinsky]

MartH and others: COMPLETELY wrong! The majority and possibly even vast majority of central state military archives including unit down to battalion size survived the period 1917 to 1922. It was what the Soviets did through sheer neglect of most archives dated 1905 to 1917 inclusive that has resulted in some damage and even losses (especially post-Soviet) due in part to thefts (selling original archival documents now on the Russian black market and even open market perhaps due to the huge upswing in Russia itself in its Imperial past). Still the bulk of the records do survive. In fact you can access online 1990's and later Russian state archival guides to WWI period naval and military records held by the central state historical archives (naval and military) so that you can get a fairly good grasp of the scope and fonds or record groups if you were to visit St. Petersburg and/or Moscow.

John

Toronto

[MartH]

John, I am interested, accepted/printed wisdom was that they had been destroyed. Can you please post the link to the Archives.

[razu]

you could do the calculus by :comparing the mortality in War years and the average mortality in non War years and get close to the figure.As Romanians did and reached the figure of 800 000 dead,which would represent the loss of human lives provoked by the War.

Andrei

[John Gilinsky]

MartH: Simply purusing the online pages of the following 2001 Moscow published guidebook will be a real eyeopener for you and many others,viz.:

http://guides.eastview.com/browse/guidebook.html?bid=140

Note especially Section 5 which is just on WWI including the major front commands etc....

ALSO: Section 7.5 on individual battalions does clearly show the dearth of continuous and full records for many if not most of the units but there is still plenty for WWI. Many battalion's records would have been lost due to sheer abandonment. Battalion, regimental, brigade or divisional headquarters in the field that would have had some records to be sure would have been both wilfully and inadvertenly destroyed in the upheavals of 1917 - 1918.

Hope you enjoy!

John

Toronto

[phil andrade]

you could do the calculus by :comparing the mortality in War years and the average mortality in non War years and get close to the figure.As Romanians did and reached the figure of 800 000 dead,which would represent the loss of human lives provoked by the War.

Andrei

This is what might be called the net population deficit, when a notional comparison is made by studying the different death rates and birth rates from before, during and after war. In the case of Metropolitan France, it was assessed at about 3 million, which is rather more than double the total of soldiers who were actually killed. There is a controversial claim that 817,000 German civilians died as a direct result of hardship and deprivation caused by blockade : this is rather contentious because it is based on these notional birth and death rates. In recent times a Polish statesman has used this formula to claim that his nation's demographic loss was so severe in WW2 that extra voting power in the EU should be given to Poland to compensate it. An interesting and startling excercise in calculating the demographic effects of warfare in the twentieth century on Russian and Soviet society has revealed statistics that are incredible. These were based on calculating the male deficit. In 1913, there had been about 1 million fewer males than females in Russia. Ten years later, the figure increased to six million, indicating how World War, Revolution, Civil War and other events had increased the male deficit by about five million. This tendency was enhanced by the horrors of collectivisation and purges in the inter war years. But, most outrageous of all, the male population deficit increased by 13,600,000 between 1941 and 1945. This does not suggest that 13.6 million Soviet fighting men died in WW2 - although some commentators have made the mistake of assuming that this is so. What it indicates is that - even away from the battlefield - the horrors and hardships of total war bore more heavily on Russian men than they did on women. Massacre of civilians and deportation of slave labour was excercised more rigorously against males than it was against females. It seems that in conflict the eradication of the enemy's male stock is the principal aim : and this applies to human beings just as it does to lions and chimpanzees.

By way of an edit, as an afterthought, I will ask this : is it feasible to argue that the Russian soldier of 1914 was better cared for, better led and protected than his counterpart in 1941 ? The caricature of the Russian Front in the Great War might need significant revision in this regard, too.

Phil

[Pete1052]

Perhaps it's a stereotype, but I always heard that the boundary between Finland and Russia has Nordic supermen on one side and Asiatic hordes on the other.

[phil andrade]

You imply Phil what of course with each passing year away from the war becomes self-apparent: people of all backgrounds and qualifications really start rewriting history according to how THEIR contemporaries view, research and write about such "stats" or "figures." We need to go to the massive archival materials AND do very extensive field research (amongst other things) to really get a firm grip on what actually happened. Arguing over long since published figures doesn't really focus on sufficent historiographical methods nor really utilize what in THEORY we can now do. Of course, money and time work against us all but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

John

Toronto

Colonel -General G.F.Kivrosheev is regarded by historians as the best source for Soviet casualty statistics in the Twentieth Century. His remit is thereby confined to the experience of the Red Army, commencing with the Civil War in 1918, but he did venture an estimate into the experience of the Great War, and, in 2001, provided the following reckoning for the casualties suffered by the Russians in the fighting of 1914-1917, which is cited in the footnotes to a Wickepedia article on World War One casualties:

Killed in action 1,200,000

Missing in action 439,369

Died from wounds 240,000

Died from gas 11,000

Died from disease 155,000

Died while pow 190,000

Died accidents etc 19,000

Total deaths 2,264,369, of which 1,890,369 were a direct result of combat.

This is a huge figure, exceeding the estimate of Golovin, and compounded by additional numbers of wounded - 3,749,000 - and prisoners : 3,342,000.

This must be acknowledged as an authoratitive source, although I have to say that the extraordinary precision for the number missing contrasts with general figures for the other categories, and arouses my suspicion on that account. The number of prisoners counted by the Central Powers was in the order of 2,500,000, so I'm also circumspect about the figure given by this source.

Still....this is an interesting and pertinent aspect for us to consider if further research is to be commissioned into the archives.

Phil