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Remembered Today:

From Russia with bullet Russians and others Shot at Dawn


John Gilinsky

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Does anyone have any information, sources, primary sources, citations, articles, books, websites, contacts in former Soviet Union or central and Eastern Europe who knows about, has researched -

Any invidiual, group or anyone who was 'Shot at Dawn' by Imperial Russia between August 1, 1914 to November,1917? The huge controversy over General Order No. 1 of the Provisional Government which explicitly abolished the "death penalty" in the army indicates to some extent that military executions of one's own soldiers must have occurred with some regularity, openeness and controversy within the army itself at least.

Anyone have the numbers, stats, individual names, when, why and where executed?

John

Toronto

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Er...uh...um....eh? NO ONE has ANYTHING whether it be official or not, collective or individual on this subject? I presume the lack of Western observers during the war, massive casualties detracting from interest of the fate of lowly soldiers shot at dawn, fluidity of the front lines at times also distracting interests of what happended at that village, mountain, encampment etc... when there was so much to be done to prepare for another attack or defense all contribute to a silence. Aren't there even any official general stats as to how many Imperial Russian soldiers and officers were executed during the war for military offences?

John

Toronto

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  • 2 weeks later...

Perhaps the silence is indicative of just how badly needed modern scholarship in this area really is! General Smirnov of the 2nd. Russian Army in 1915 issued a general order cautioning deserters and POWS that sanctions would be implemented against POW / deserter families adn that POWS themselves would be court-martialled when they returned to Russia. Moreover, the military would stop rations to the soldier's family and/or dependents as well. (Stone, page 168) This is a fascinating WWI presursor to the infamous Stalin Order dictating reprisals (which were indeed carried out) on similiar offences during WWII. Another reference (I think in Rutherford) states that troop trains would sometimes arrive near the front with only 50 per cent of their original complement, the rest having deserted in transit (during spring/summer 1916 on the SW front - Brusilov offensive preparations and operations).

John

Toronto

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  • 3 months later...

Does anyone have any information, sources, primary sources, citations, articles, books, websites, contacts in former Soviet Union or central and Eastern Europe who knows about, has researched -

Any invidiual, group or anyone who was 'Shot at Dawn' by Imperial Russia between August 1, 1914 to November,1917? The huge controversy over General Order No. 1 of the Provisional Government which explicitly abolished the "death penalty" in the army indicates to some extent that military executions of one's own soldiers must have occurred with some regularity, openeness and controversy within the army itself at least.

Anyone have the numbers, stats, individual names, when, why and where executed?

John

Toronto

Обобщающих материалов о смертной казни на Русском фронте за войну нет. Приходится собирать по крупицам по отдельным частям. Generalising materials about a death penalty on Russian front for war are not present. It is necessary to collect on particles by separate parts.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Обобщающих материалов о смертной казни на Русском фронте за войну нет. Приходится собирать по крупицам по отдельным частям. Generalising materials about a death penalty on Russian front for war are not present. It is necessary to collect on particles by separate parts.

Aleks can you please contact me directly using either or both Russian and/or English? I presume from the above posting that one must look at the judicial records kept by each Russian army in the field rather than the central administrative judicial brank records kept in Petrograd.

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Perhaps the silence is indicative of just how badly needed modern scholarship in this area really is! General Smirnov of the 2nd. Russian Army in 1915 issued a general order cautioning deserters and POWS that sanctions would be implemented against POW / deserter families adn that POWS themselves would be court-martialled when they returned to Russia. Moreover, the military would stop rations to the soldier's family and/or dependents as well. (Stone, page 168) This is a fascinating WWI presursor to the infamous Stalin Order dictating reprisals (which were indeed carried out) on similiar offences during WWII. Another reference (I think in Rutherford) states that troop trains would sometimes arrive near the front with only 50 per cent of their original complement, the rest having deserted in transit (during spring/summer 1916 on the SW front - Brusilov offensive preparations and operations).

John

Toronto

Something does not sound right, first, I do not think General Smirnov, a mere army commander, had the authority to decide such a policy, second, let us assume this order was indeed carried out, then I know there were more than 2 millions Russian POWs in WWI, not say anything about deserters, each of them come from a family of 4, so 8 million people would be court-martialled, cut off ration and deported ? Some of those family member could also served in military or had a job in the industry relates to war material, was it feasible?

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Astonishing to relate, I've just googled this topic, and, according to one source, there were no formal military executions of Russian soldiers 1914-1917 . !!

Phil (PJA)

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Astonishing to relate, I've just googled this topic, and, according to one source, there were no formal military executions of Russian soldiers 1914-1917 . !!

Phil (PJA)

Here there are data on executions in Russian army basically in the end of 1916:

Ахун М.И., Петров В.А.Царская армия в годы импералистической войны. Издательство всесоюзного общества политкаторжан и ссыльно-поселенцев. М., 1929;

Казаков М.И. Солдатский бунт // Вопросы истории. 1973. № 4. С. 207-209: http://www.august-1914.ru/kazakov.html

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Aleks can you please contact me directly using either or both Russian and/or English? I presume from the above posting that one must look at the judicial records kept by each Russian army in the field rather than the central administrative judicial brank records kept in Petrograd.

Привет, Джон! Дело было сложнее. Обобщающих сведений ни в материалах Ставки, ни фронтов, ни армий не обнаружено. Расстрелы производились по приговорам военно-полевых судов при мелких частях: полках, этапах, запасных батальонах. Но такой розыск сделать очень трудно.

Hi, John! Business was more difficult. Generalising data in Headquarters (Stavka) materials, neither fronts, nor armies it is not revealed. Executions were made on sentences of court-martials at small parts: regiments, stages, spare battalions. But such search to make very difficultly.

John, and how can I to contact directly to You?

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Outside your time period but there is a graphic account of the mutineers shot (tied to posts and machine-gunned by Russian troops with British machine gunners making sure that the Russian ones did the job)in Jones "A Air Fighters Scrapbook"

He was with the British Force in Russia in 1919 and observed the executions

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Thanks corisande. I presume that these are the captured POWS or demoralized Russians that the British organized in North Russia who mutinied in 1919. I am really interested in the period 1914 to say October 1917 inclusively. I am interested in comparing what transpired with the Western armies which there is now ample documentation on and what transpired in WW2 as well.

I do hope someone can pinpoint official orders or the like that give names, dates and details.

Tx

John

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi, John;

An interesting topic, one that I am interested in, but on which I frankly know little. I do remember a prior related discussion, and someone chimed in who seemed to be knowledgable, and gave the opinion that the Czarist military discipline process was actually rather lenient. I was surprised. True? I have no idea.

Bob Lembke

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Discipline in the Tsarist army was fragile, partly because of the legacy of the Revolution of 1905, when the army had been used in a policing role. Apparently, there had been 134 mutinies in the army in 1905- 06 alone.

Phil (PJA)

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Discipline in the Tsarist army was fragile, partly because of the legacy of the Revolution of 1905, when the army had been used in a policing role. Apparently, there had been 134 mutinies in the army in 1905- 06 alone.

Phil (PJA)

That could be what the poster was driving at, your term "fragile" is a good one; in some situations the officers may have felt it better to "turn the Nelson eye" to some situations, rather than risk a complete breakdown.

Bob

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Discipline in the Tsarist army was fragile, partly because of the legacy of the Revolution of 1905, when the army had been used in a policing role. Apparently, there had been 134 mutinies in the army in 1905- 06 alone.

Phil (PJA)

Morale was also badly affected by the disastrous performance of the old style aristocratic officer class in the Russo-Japanese war which led or at least contributed to the 1905 revolution.

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someone chimed in who seemed to be knowledgable, and gave the opinion that the Czarist military discipline process was actually rather lenient. I was surprised. True? I have no idea.

Bob Lembke

Well, Bob, perhaps you were right to be surprised.

John Peaty, writing about the application of the death penalty in the British Army in the Great War, compared the diciplinary records of the different belligerents and stated :

Of the armies during the Great War, the Russian Army was undoubtedly the most brutal .

Phil (PJA)

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Published English language sources, such as Norman Stone's seminal work on the Eastern Front from a generation ago, cite specific instances where senior Russian commanders ordered their own artillery to fire on their own troops when the front line troops were perceived to be desiring to surrender by waving white handkerchiefs attached most likely to their rifles (gads they had them!). Moreover, it is known that another Russian general in 1915 gave orders that if troops deserted then food rations and state support generally for the soldiers' families would be cut off.

John

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One of the books on my shelves The Russian Army And The First World War by Nik Cornish furnishes examples of the death penalty, although the cases cited allude to the Kerensky period after the March Revolution. Apparently, one of the "Sacred Cows" of that revolution was abolition of the death penalty in the army, which in itself attests to the fact that the judicial execution of soldiers was extant in the Tsarist Army. Apparently, in the summer of 1917, as Kerensky's Offensive began to fall apart, summary execution was resorted to :

The death penalty was prescribed, at the front, for treason, rape and flight from the battlefield.

A British RFC officer by the name of Ibbertson witnessed the change in mood and policy :

Cossacks would board the train and anyone they found travelling without a ticket were in for it. There were so many deserters that orders were given to the Cossacks, that all the men who were deserting were to be taken off the trains and every fifth man was to be shot....

Kornilov, promoted to the command of the SW Front on July 21 1917, stated, in his first order :

The wilful withdrawal of units from their position I regard as tantamount to treason. I categorically demand that all commanding personnel apply artillery and machine gun fire against such traitors.

This smacks more of the terror used by the Soviets than it does of formalised military justice. And, indeed, three days after this order was issued, there was an episode at Tarnopol, which was abandoned to the Germans without much of a fight. The Russian soldiers raped and pillaged as they retreated, and were themselves shot down by " punitive detachments" in a failed attempt to restore order and control.

Cornish writes :

The reintroduction of capital punishment was at first regarded by many officers and committeemen as the first step towards the reintroduction of the old style of discipline.

From which I can only infer that the "old style of discipline" had featured significant use of the death penalty, although, I suspect, this had been conducted in a more formalised and discriminating manner than the random killing that began to appear in later 1917, and was intensifed and extended through the Civil War and developed to its most pitiless application in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45.

Sorry I did not post this earlier...I've only just discovered it. That's the thing about buying from Amazon....you aquire books you don't read, and then a topic on GWF suddenly inspires you to get them down from the shelves and open them !

Phil (PJA)

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