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A Russian Maxim machine gun squad on the front in a 1917 photograph. In the middle of the line one soldier wears a French Adrian helmet.
Imperial Russian soldiers on parade in France.Message and postmark Marseille, April 22, 1916.
Russian soldiers resting in the field. Card postmarked November 28, 1916.
Detail from a 1898 map of St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, from a German atlas. Central St Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on the Neva River. Key landmarks from top to bottom include the Peter and Paul Fortress, which served as a prison, Nevski Prospect, a primary boulevard south of the Fortress, and the Mariyinsky Theater.
A call to Italians to buy war bonds to help fund the powerful weapons needed for the last push to Trieste, a mere 25 kilometers from the Italian front lines. It pays 5%, after all, tax free, for an effective rate of 5.55%!
"The army, which during these dark and troubled days has demonstrated its confidence in the Provisional Government and in me as its prime minister responsible for the destinies of the country, must in its great wisdom understand that the only salvation of the country lies in proper organization, maintenance of order, discipline, and unity. Enjoying the confidence of the army, I appeal to all to ensure this. Let each one of you be guided by your conscience and sense of duty to your country at this dark hour when her destiny is at stake.As the Supreme Commander, I herewith demand that all commanding officers, commissars, and army organizations rigorously carry out this order, and I warn that any failure to do so will be severely punished. Signed: Supreme Commander, A. Kerensky. Chief of Staff, General of the Infantry, M. Alekseyev." ((1), more)
"Matters had not been helped by a division of 17,000 Russian soldiers who had fought with Nivelle on the Aisne and then had been unwisely retained in France. Wherever they were stationed they preached revolution. An attempt had been made to ship them back to Russia, but Kerenski did not want them. In time they had become so Bolshevik in sentiment, so troublesome, that it was decided to ask them to surrender, as though they were enemy troops. Only 57 did so. The rest dug trenches and put up barricades. While the civilian population hurriedly departed, a final ultimatum was issued on September 14. It was refused. Next day their food was cut of and they were encircled. On the following day they were attacked." ((2), more)
"Comby looked at his watch, looked down again at the camp. And at precisely 10 A.M. from a hill to the west, there came the flat reports of four spaced shots from the battery of 75s. The battle for La Courtine had begun.The first artillery shot had been a blank, but the next three were exercise projectiles, nonexplosive metal slugs, 'less deadly than regular field projectiles but dangerous nevertheless,' observed Comby. The three shells landed against a hill flanking the rows of barracks and sent up warning plumes of dirt.There was a period of silence to let the threat implied by these warning shots sink in upon the rebels. Then from the barracks the watchers heard a strange sound. The rebels were singing 'The Marseillaise'—followed by Chopin's 'Funeral March.'" ((3), more)
"We hear that Kornilov has been arrested, and do not know whether to be sad or glad; our loyalties are so evenly divided. Kerensky has been our hero since the political revolution in March 1917, but it was thanks to Kornilov that our Armies — especially our beloved 8th Army — achieved such success in Galicia during the recent summer campaigns." ((4), more)
"Russians might have resisted Bolshevism if there had been a real alternative; but the collapse of capitalism was there for all to see. Wages became meaningless: strikes came, one after another, and caused a fall of fifty per cent in industrial production in the summer of 1917.The principal problem in all this was that wages could not be translated into food. Industry had done well enough from the inflation, at least in its earlier stages, before the autumn of 1916. Agriculture was not in a position to profit nearly as much, and the result of inflation was to drive the bulk of food-producers back into the subsistence-economy from which they had only recently emerged, if at all. Food-deliveries to the towns ran down after November, 1916; Petrograd had, when the March Revolution occurred, only a few days' grain-reserves, and the bread-riots that sparked off the revolution continued to detonate revolutionary explosions throughout the summer and autumn." ((5), more)
(1) Close of the order issued on September 1, 1917 (September 14 New Style) by Alexander Kerensky and General Mikhail Alekseyev. Alekseyev wrote seven numbered points that called for a restoration of control by officers and the end of political activity in the workings of the army. Kerensky wrote the close.
Russia and History's Turning Point by Alexander Kerensky, page 355, copyright © 1965 by Alexander Kerensky, publisher: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, publication date: 1965
(2) After the failure of French commander in chief Robert Nivelle's 1917 spring offensive — the Second Battle of the Aisne, begun on April 16 — an offensive that Nivelle had asserted would provide the breakthrough of the German line that would lead to victory, mutinous incidents broke out in the French army, particularly among the troops that had suffered the highest rates of casualties in the offensive. The mutinies were of greater or lesser severity, beginning in April, with increasingly disruptive incidents in May, and the most violent and serious in the first weeks of June. Four brigades of Russian soldiers were sent two France in the spring of 1916, two of them immediately being sent to the Salonika Front. The Russian Revolution of March provided a model for some soldiers. The Russian troops were sent to a hastily evacuated camp for German prisoners of war in La Courtine, 450 km south of Paris, on June 26, 1917, and it was there they made their stand.
In Flanders Fields, the 1917 Campaign by Leon Wolff, page 170, copyright © 1958 by Leon Wolff, publisher: The Viking Press, publication date: 1958
(3) Four brigades of Russian soldiers were sent too France in the spring of 1916, two of them immediately being sent to the Salonika Front. The Russian Revolution of March and the French army mutinies of May and June played out in the Russian units on both fronts. On September 16, 1917, the two brigades that remained in France were isolated in La Courtine, 450 kilometers south of Paris, where they had entrenched, refusing to submit to French or Russian authorities. French General Louis Comby led the siege of the camp to compel the Russians' surrender.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, page 273, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
(4) Excerpt from the entry for September 4, (September 17, New Style), 1917 from the diary of Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross, on the arrest of General Lavr Kornilov for plotting a military coup against the government of Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky. Kerensky had appointed Kornilov Supreme Commander of the Russian Army on July 31, 1917 following his relative success in the Russian offensive earlier in the month. Although claiming to support the Revolution, Kornilov opposed many of its reforms, and wanted to bring back the death penalty for deserters from the army, many of whom had simply left the front. He had begun planning a coup with conservative officers, financiers, and industrialists in the first days of the revolution. Kornilov asked that command of the government as well as the military be transferred to himself specifically to prevent a Bolshevik coup. Kerensky had already held the titles of Justice Minister and War Minister when he asked the government to hand him power to deal with Kornilov.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 315, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(5) Major events that followed the Russian Revolution of February (March New Style) 1917 — the Kerensky Offensive of June and July, the suppression of Bolsheviks and their leader Vladimir Lenin, the right-wing coup attempt by General Lavr Kornilov, the release and arming of the Bolsheviks to defend the government and capital of Petrograd from Kornilov — all took place against a backdrop of demonstrations, food shortages, rising unemployment, and a collapsing economy.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, pp. 291–292, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
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