Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904–05: Secret Operations on Land and at Sea (Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904–05

This book examines Russian military intelligence in the war with Japan of 1904–5. Based on newly accessible documents from the tsarist era military, naval and diplomatic archives, it gives an overview of the origins, structure and performance of Russian military intelligence in the Far East at the start of the twentieth century, investigating developments in strategic and tactical military espionage, as well as combat reconnaissance. It provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the role of military intelligence in the years immediately preceding the First World War, by comparing the Russian military secret services to those of the other great powers, including Britain, Germany, France and Japan. Evgeny Sergeev is head of ‘The Twentieth Century in World History’ research centre at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of General History, in Moscow. He is also Professor in the Russian Academy of Sciences State University of Humanitarian Studies. His research interests focus on the history of international relations, and developments in the secret services and perceptions among military elites.

Routledge studies in the history of Russia and Eastern Europe

1 Modernizing Muscovy Reform and social change in seventeenth-century Russia Edited by Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe 2 The USA in the Making of the USSR The Washington Conference, 1921–1922, and ‘uninvited Russia’ Paul Dukes 3 Tiny Revolutions in Russia Twentieth-century Soviet and Russian history in anecdotes Bruce Adams 4 The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1800–1917 Alex Marshall 5 Soviet Eastern Policy and Turkey, 1920–1991 Soviet foreign policy, Turkey and communism Bülent Gökay 6 The History of Siberia Igor V. Naumov (Edited by David N. Collins) 7 Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904–05 Secret operations on land and at sea Evgeny Sergeev

Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904–05 Secret operations on land and at sea Evgeny Sergeev

First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 Evgeny Sergeev This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-96304-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-41618-3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-96304-0 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-41618-4 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-96304-3 (ebk)

To my wife Irina and our sons Dennis and Oleg

Contents

List of maps Preface Acknowledgements Selected chronology List of abbreviations

Introduction

ix x xi xii xiv

1

1 Russian military intelligence at the start of the twentieth century

11

2 Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

31

3 The Japanese attack against the Pacific Squadron

53

4 Russian military intelligence in the first months of war

65

5 Inside the bastions of Port Arthur

89

6 Russian military intelligence in the Battles of Liaoyang and Shaho

102

7 Realignments in Russian military intelligence before and after the Battle of Mukden

116

8 The debacle in the Strait of Tsushima

141

9 The dilemmas of Portsmouth

150

10 Repercussions of the war: a thorny path of reforms

167

viii

Contents

Epilogue

179

Appendix: The nominal roll of the Russian intelligence staff in the Manchurian campaign, 1904–5

186

Notes Selected bibliography Index

198 227 242

Maps

1 2 3 4

Far Eastern theatre of war, with initial Japanese lines of operation The advance to Liaoyang and Port Arthur Assault on Port Arthur Voyages of the Second and Third Pacific Squadrons to the Far East

xv xvi xvii xviii

Preface

During the week of 7–11 August 2000, a group of scholars held a seminar at the Renvall Institute of Helsinki University to exchange ideas and conceptual approaches to a new history of the Russo-Japanese War. They decided to write an edited collection of essays to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the events that had taken place in Manchuria in 1904–5. Their aim was to reinterpret and better place the significance of the conflict in the history of the twentieth century. In the summer of 2001, Professor David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye addressed to me with a suggestion to join the team of contributors to the project ‘The Russo-Japanese War: A Centennial Reappraisal’. Given the fact that some of my previous studies focused upon military intelligence of late imperial Russia, I was requested by the project’s organizing body to write an essay on the history of Russian intelligence in the hostilities of 1904–5. Obsessed with the idea of a fresh, unbiased research of the role that military intelligence (MI) had played in the Manchurian campaign, I soon realized the paucity of studies on this particular subject. While Russian MI progress in time of war has been so far underestimated, some very important issues of the intelligence process, both on the front and in the rear, still need a thorough analysis. Seeing that the modern historiography, especially in the English-speaking countries, lacks such a comprehensive study, I decided not to limit myself to a brief contribution to the project but to write a treatise which would tackle less examined or simply little known episodes of secret operations in the course of the war. Thus, the book came to be written as a result of intensive research in archives and libraries in Russia, the USA and the UK. It aims primarily at filling the major gap in the history of the most powerful military secret service, though at an early stage of its existence.

Acknowledgements

To try to study the history of Russian military intelligence in the crucial period of the Far Eastern Crisis has called for a great amount of work with archival records, published collections of documents and extensive bibliography, though not particularly on the subject but nevertheless referring to the theme. This undertaking has been made easier by the sympathy of many people whose aid was of great importance to me. I am therefore very grateful to all colleagues who provided much advice in conducting this research. I especially wish to thank Artiom Ulunian and Igor Karpeev for reading and commenting on draft chapters. I would like to warmly thank David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce Menning who shared their knowledge of modern bibliography on the history of the Far East and the reforms in the Russian army in the late imperial period and whose criticism helped me on every step of the way. The study would not have been accomplished without the support of the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. During my visit to this centre of Russian studies, the research was conducted at the Library of the Kennan Institute, at the Library of Congress and at the National Archives of the USA. It was greatly facilitated by the staff of these world-renowned establishments. I wish to address my sincere gratitude to Blair Ruble, the Director of the Kennan Institute. At the final stage of my work, I was supported by a grant from the British Academy and the University of London Institute of Historical Research. I would like to thank the staff of the Institute, and in particular, David Bates and Samantha Jordan. Thanks also to Francine Danaher at the British Academy Department of International Relations for the kindly assistance in the organization of the visiting research fellowship. I am pleased to acknowledge the courtesy of Brill Academic Publishers for the granted permission of re-using some maps from their publication The RussoJapanese War in Global Perspective (John Steinberg et al., eds, Boston and Leiden, 2005). I am grateful to Peter Sowden and Tom Bates for skilfully guiding me through the publication process. I am especially in debt to my wife Irina Sergeeva and our children, Dennis and Oleg, whose constant support and immense patience made it all possible.

Selected chronology

1904 5 February 6 February 8 February 8 February

9 February 9 February 6 March 23 March 28 March 13 April

30 April 10 May 25–26 May 14–15 June 20 June 10 August

26 August–4 September

Admiral Togo receives the Imperial war order Japan breaks diplomatic relations with Russia A Japanese squadron enters Chemulpo (Inchon) harbour, Japanese troops land at Chemulpo in Korea A Japanese destroyer squadron leaves the main fleet and makes for Port Arthur, a surprise Japanese torpedo attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur damages two battleships and a cruiser Japanese troops occupy Seoul Russia declares war on Japan The Japanese fleet shells Vladivostok The first contacts between the Japanese First Army and advanced Cossack patrols in northern Korea Kuropatkin arrives in Liaoyang and assumes command of Russian forces in Manchuria The Russian battleship Petropavlovsk strikes a mine, explodes, and sinks with most hands: Admiral Makarov is killed; the Russian fleet is profoundly demoralized The Battle of the Yalu The last trains escape from Port Arthur, the fortress is cut off The Battle of Nanshan The Battle of Te-li-ssu: a premature Russian relief expedition is routed eighty miles north of Port Arthur Imperial Naval Conference: Russia decides to send its Baltic Fleet around the world to the Far East The Battle of the Yellow Sea; Togo repels a final escape attempt by the Port Arthur fleet; Russian Admiral Vitgeft is killed The Battle of Liaoyang

Selected chronology 5–17 October 15 October 22 October

xiii

The Battle of Shaho The Russian Baltic Fleet sails off to the Far East from Libau The Dogger Bank Incident

1905 2 January 25–27 January 22 February–10 March 27–28 May 9 August–5 September 5 September

Port Arthur formally surrenders The Battle of Sandepu The grand Battle of Mukden The grand naval battle of Tsushima Japanese–Russian peace talks at Portsmouth in Virginia, USA The Treaty of Portsmouth ends the Russo-Japanese War

Abbreviations

CER HUMINT MCGINT SIGINT SMR TECHINT

Chinese Eastern Railway human intelligence mapping, charting and geodesy intelligence signal intelligence Southern Manchurian Railway technical intelligence

Map 1 Far Eastern theatre of war, with initial Japanese lines of operation.

Map 2 The advance to Liaoyang and Port Arthur.

Map 3 Assault on Port Arthur.

Map 4 Voyages of the Second and Third Pacific Squadrons to the Far East.

Introduction

Intelligence is the soul of all public business Daniel Defoe, 1704

All the wars and military conflicts in modern and contemporary history fall under several headings. There were those brief skirmishes at the outposts of colonial empires in which metropolitan armies re-established order, rebuffing attacks from savage tribes and substituting civilized rule for them. A grade higher may be reached by copious full-scale campaigns of momentary importance which seemed to lead to minor geopolitical transformations. And the most significant place must be reserved for the wars whose political, economic and cultural issues had been so immense as to be remembered next generations. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 was without doubt one such landmark. It represented an absolutely new type of war waged by two conscript armies equipped with the latest military technologies. It has gone down in history as a regional confrontation with substantial global repercussions. Suffice to say that Japan’s military victory over Russia greatly encouraged Indian, Egyptian and Southeast Asian nationalism, for the myth of European invincibility was thereby destroyed. And, what seems more important, it developed into the century’s first conflict between maritime and continental empires in a mortal combat for the mastery of the Far East. It is not surprising, therefore, that scholars consider the Russo-Japanese conflict as World War Zero,1 for there had been no earlier large-scale battles which can compare with those in Manchuria, first, in the number of troops engaged under one supreme command and inspired with a firm resolution to win or die, second, in the duration of operations and in length of front, and third, in novel military technologies sanctioned during the course of war. In discussion on the origins of the conflict, there should be noted above all the strong desire of late imperial Russia to establish a stronghold in the Pacific, which ran counter to the interests of the new player on the global chessboard – the Japanese Empire, which was in the process of territorial expansion at the cost of neighbouring continental states. On the one hand, St Petersburg fostered plans to colonize Far Eastern territories in Mongolia, Manchuria and Korea, but

2

Introduction

on the other hand, Tokyo was disinclined to yield initiative to the Russians and strove for geopolitical domination in Asia, the initial step being the establishment of a bridgehead in Korea and Manchuria.2 The outbreak of hostilities was triggered by Tokyo’s apprehensions of the tsar’s intentions to deploy Russian troops in Manchuria on a permanent basis. The last Romanov on the Russian throne was obsessed with the idée fixe of raising state prestige in foreign affairs while simultaneously reducing tension inside the empire. Hence, Nicholas II strove for ‘a short victorious war’ against an ostensibly weak opponent in the Far East who challenged his plans – namely Mutsuhito (Meidzi), the industrious Emperor of the Chrysanthemum Dynasty, who needed a war triumph to vie with Russia over contending spheres of influence and upgrade the Japanese position at the regional level as well as to join the ‘global concert’. For these and other reasons, perception of war in the two belligerent states differed greatly. While a vast majority of tsarist subjects regarded it as a local clash of lesser intensity than in Europe, similar to the campaign against the Boxer insurgents in 1900–1, their counterparts in the Land of the Rising Sun strongly believed that victory over the mighty, sinister ‘Russian Bear’ would be a vital necessity to survive in the epoch of imperialism. High moral standards, national consolidation and protracted military training together with a favourable geographical position and diplomatic support from the UK and the USA – all these prerequisites of a final success in the war seemed indisputable to the Japanese military circles. The problem was in crushing the tsarist army and navy in the shortest period in two or three decisive battles before incremental reinforcements arrived from European Russia to the front. The Japanese needed, therefore, full information on Russia’s war preparedness and possible efforts to augment it. The same was true for St Petersburg, whose determination to wage a war of exhaustion with Japan stimulated gathering data of its potential and objectives on the eve and during hostilities. Military intelligence (MI) has accompanied wars from time immemorial. Any commander has always been in strong need both to obtain information on the adversary and to hide his own potential and intentions from his opponent. The Russo-Japanese War was not an exception. The belligerents were put into a dilemma, where the intelligence services needed to be more accurate in the calculation of the other side’s capabilities and more effective in the frustration of its plots on land and sea. It should be particularly emphasized that, besides their importance for the Russo-Japanese War itself, intelligence operations during the conflict proved to be the last significant episode of the so-called ‘Great Game’, i.e. the clandestine struggle between powers for domination in East Asia. Because spying is fundamentally a service required by decision makers and because of the paucity of studies on the establishment of secret institutions during the reign of Nicholas II, the subject of the book is Russian military intelligence (MI); however, it is studied in comparison with the Japanese and European intelligence communities. As a prelude to further context, a few caveats regarding the intelligence lexicon are in order. Because the Russian noun razvedka sometimes does not

Introduction

3

correspond exactly to the English notion intelligence, and connotes additional meanings, it needs to be defined accurately. Its lexical origins can be traced in the Russian verb vedat’ – i.e. to know, to get information about something or somebody. Consequential denotations indicated such verbs as to look around, to overview, to search for something or somebody, and later, to make an exploratory survey. The derivatives of the verb vedat’ include various nouns: razvedka, razvedchik, razvedyvanie.3 Thus, various English expressions for seeking out information about an enemy – to spy, to reconnoitre, to snoop – can be interpreted with the use of a single Russian equivalent – razvedka. This meaning was fixed for the first time in the Russian dictionaries of 1847 and 1862. However, a more comprehensive interpretation in 1899 edition of the Encyclopedic Dictionary by Brockhaus and Efron ran as follows: Razvedka – i.e. collection of information about adversary, his war potential, means, intentions, preparedness. It is conducted not only in wartime but in periods of peace as well. While in periods of peace, razvedka aims at a possible exact acquaintance with neighbour-states, their armed forces and means of logistic, especially in the frontier zone, with premeditated defence systems, mobilization schedules, etc. To these ends, they utilize topographic maps and statistical data compiled by overt and secret military agents . . . In wartime, the means of razvedka are more diversified and embrace spies, scouts recruited from local population, deserters and defectors, prisoners-ofwar, and, finally, reconnaissance trips made by mounted patrols . . . Scouts for patrolling are selected from the smartest and promptest cavalrymen who have been drilled for their mission before hostilities.4 Putting it another way, razvedka, or military intelligence, was reduced to espionage, i.e. making reconnaissance by secret agents (HUMINT). Though some modern authors prefer to distinguish one definition from another, arguing that ‘while intelligence is a backroom job, espionage is a practical, front-line work’,5 such was a classical conception of intelligence function at the start of the twentieth century. As one eminent Russian military expert defined it in 1907, military espionage indicated the ‘collection of information about armed forces and strongholds of other states together with geographical, topographical and statistical data of military importance, not excluding strategic routes and communications’.6 However, the Russo-Japanese War greatly enriched MI sources and methods. Technical intelligence (TECHINT), which deals with data collection through electronic means (signals and photographs), mapping, charting and geodesic intelligence (MCGINT), which is used in the preparation of targeting information at all levels, and finally, open-source data gathering, which amounted to 80 per cent of all intelligence, were successfully innovated by opponent secret services. Hence, it is not correct to believe, like some authors do, that it was not until the First World War had been going on for some time when the Entente and the Central powers began to realize the importance of enemy newspapers as

4

Introduction

an intelligence source,7 or that signal intelligence (SIGINT) started with the interception of the notorious Zimmerman telegram by the British secret service in 1917.8 Likewise, it should be mentioned that staff activities on the Manchurian front spawned a comprehensive intelligence cycle, i.e. a five-step process by which ‘raw’ information is converted into useful data. It embraced planning, collection, processing, production and dissemination of valuable nuggets of intelligence during the course of hostilities as well as in peacetime.9 While planning and direction requires a lucid definition of aims by higher command, collection units gather, screen and format information to deliver it to a processing agency. Here all the collected data are converted into some sort of intelligence production, which is then assessed in the light of sources’ validity and information accuracy. Thus, a complete mosaic is being composed by an analyst who is also charged with the formulation of a completed intelligence product. The last step was intelligence dissemination in the appropriate oral, written or graphic form serving the need of a customer, the latter bearing in mind that intelligence services can only give advice, pointing out the possible consequences of alternative courses, whereas the final decision must be taken by the executive.10 Because MI runs through all command echelons and the entire conflict spectrum, it has different levels and sides. In coherence with war logic, the present study attributes strategic intelligence to planning and data processing at the broadest, i.e. global or continental levels, whereas operational intelligence serves collection and analysis within the Far Eastern theatre of war or on the Manchurian front as a whole and tactical intelligence, or putting it another way, combat reconnaissance, centres upon scheduling conduct of battles (such as these of Liaoyang, Shaho, Mukden) or forays (such as made by Russian Cossacks against Inkow or Fakumyn). According to the classification in the International Military and Defense Encyclopedia, an offensive side of MI is to be differentiated from a defensive one, usually called counter-intelligence. The latter refers to activities undertaken and data analysed to protect one’s army or navy against actions committed by hostile secret services.11 In the case of the Russo-Japanese War, counterespionage as a subject of special interest has been explored in a number of recent treatises.12 Hence, this book is dealing primarily with the offensive side of Russian MI while definitely not neglecting episodes of counter-intelligence in connection with covert operations. It should be stressed that the book pioneers the inspection of naval intelligence which remains understudied, albeit that the Russo-Japanese War alerted the great powers to the vital and new role it performed. Despite the fact that some material on this particular realm of MI has been published recently in Russia and abroad, it has focused on the strategic level while ignoring operational and tactical spying conducted by the First Pacific Squadron in the sea of Port Arthur and Vladivostok as well as that performed by the Second Pacific Squadron on its route to Tsushima.13

Introduction

5

The literature of MI at the disposal of the ordinary reader is not perhaps so copious, as one might have expected. In fact, the staffs of both armies imposed unusual restrictions on press correspondents. These restrictions, though, as will be shown later, not incompatible with accurate sorting out of war episodes, definitely curtailed the number of military observers and correspondents who remained in the theatre of war, and so limited narratives emanating from that source. Another serious cause of restrictions was the language barrier, for the Russian and especially Japanese tongues were known to but few other Europeans or Americans. Regrettable as this drawback was, the narratives of press correspondents, the reports of contending and neutral professional eye-witnesses and the records of actual combatants laid the foundation for the present study (see the selected bibliography). A typical work of this kind was a combination of personal narrative and journalistic study. From the first cannon volleys in Manchuria, the belligerent governments set up special editorial boards to issue weekly records of warfare. These periodicals were usually supplemented with pictures of military leaders, higher commanders and heads of their staffs, sometimes even of battle episodes and scenes of daily routine. Though pictures of reconnaissance raids or captured spies were few in the photo chronicles of the war, it is only by testing, comparing and evaluating the evidence of every class of witness that the truth can be finally obtained.14 Special reference should also be made to lectures delivered by professors and students at the Russian General Staff Academy, particularly those by former combatants. Intelligence preparations for the conflict in the Far East, reconnaissance operations in the theatre of war and activities of the Russian and Japanese secret services figured in these papers. Their summary, edited by the prominent military expert Professor Aleksei Baiov, was published in 1906–7.15 Analogously, the British, American, French and German General Staffs issued voluminous digests of commentaries on the Far Eastern hostilities, including information about espionage and counter-intelligence. The authors, especially active officers attached to the Russian or Japanese armed services, provided their superiors with characteristics of ammunition, naval vessels, fortifications, and undoubtedly, above all, commanders of different levels.16 For example, three British attachés with the Russian forces, General Sir Montague Gerard, Colonel H. H. H. Waters and Major Home had been particularly chosen to report on their combatant spirits and skills and, as should be emphasized, to evaluate the extent of the Russian threat to India.17 Naturally, the initial publications by Russian observers were deficient in sound and unbiased analysis of MI, inasmuch as a majority of them were deeply impressed or even dismayed by the setbacks in Manchuria suffered by the tsarist ‘invincible’ armies. A certain period of time was needed to produce a more comprehensive view, lacking in individual idiosyncrasies. As to the particular role of MI in the war, the first analytical papers tackling this problem were published in 1907–11, i.e. in the period of hasty reorganization of the imperial armed forces. The most valuable primary sources, besides official dispatches by Russian military attachés and general-staffers (genshtabisty), proved to be diary entries and

6

Introduction

memoirs compiled by officers who contributed to the establishment of land and naval MI at different levels, e.g. those by Boris Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, Nikolai Klado, Dmitrii Parskii, Vladimir Semenov, Igor Shakhnovskii, Mikhail Bubnov, Edward Vertsinskii, Michail Grulev, Petr Izmestiev, Aleksandr Svechin, Aleksandr Skosarevskii, Nikolai Ukhach-Ogorovich, Mikhail Tyvder and many others.18 In general, they accumulated war experience of conducting intelligence operations both in the war of movement and in trenches. That is why some of their recollections, for instance those by Vladimir Buniakovskii, were later converted into handbooks for cadet schools and military colleges in Russia.19 One should devote particular attention to accounts penned by Aleksei Ignatiev, which though somewhat tendentious were rich in fascinating details. He held a position in the staff of the Commander-in-Chief during the Manchurian campaign, and presented, therefore, a vivid account of events he had witnessed. The only defect with his voluminous book was that he issued it decades after the war when his memory might have deteriorated to a certain extent.20 Accusations of non-professionalism together with sharp critical barbs against St Petersburg’s high-ranking bureaucracy filled such works. They often coincided with opinions shared by the foreign observers mentioned above. Surprisingly for the empire of the tsar, almost all commentaries by Europeans were later published in Russian and carefully examined by the general-staffers. One should also keep in mind that not a few neutral correspondents or observers on the Manchurian front were charged by their governments with carrying on secret missions. It would appear probable that the French (official allies of Russia), the British (recognized partners of Japan) and the Germans (definitely interested in prolongation of the Far Eastern conflict) were indulging in intelligence operations most of all.21 A book or recollections by William Greener, the Briton who managed to cross Russia from the West to the East by railway on the eve of the war and was besieged in Port Arthur with the other defendants for several weeks, might not be regarded as a unique example of this kind. The author openly described how he had been seconded for a secret mission to the fortress under the assumed identity of The Times military correspondent. Despite sympathy to Japan, Greener, however, also paid tribute to the heroic protectors of Port Arthur, including officers in charge of reconnaissance.22 Both Russian and foreign military experts in their works, published before 1917, pointed out evident general inadequacies in the tsarist military system. As to Russian MI, it deserved criticism for inaccuracies in forecasts, a perfunctory, distorted knowledge of the potential adversary, lack of adequate schemes of intelligence process, poor coordination among staffers and between them and active commanders, drawbacks in the conduct of human intelligence (HUMINT) (or espionage), inefficiency in mounted and foot reconnaissance in the front area, and insufficient supply of special devices for the performance of spying. A typical example may be a prodigious work by Aleksei Kuropatkin, the War

Introduction

7

Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Manchurian army, Notes on the RussoJapanese War. In attempts to divest himself of responsibility for defeat, the author accused general-staffers of miscalculating and underestimating the Japanese military capabilities.23 The beginning of the First World War followed by the Civil War in Russia removed somehow the unsuccessful campaign in the Far East to the background of social memory, especially after earlier foes had signed a treaty of alliance in 1916. But the authors of two studies on the history of intelligence – Major General Petr Riabikov, the former aide-de-camp assistant in the staff of the Second Manchurian Army and later professor at the General Staff Academy, and the Soviet military expert Konstantin Zvonarev (Zvaigzne) – summed up experience gained by spying in 1904–5.24 While Riabikov appreciated the achievements attained by the tsarist MI in the strict differentiation between the stages of the intelligence process together with bringing in new methods of data verification and those of converting nuggets of information into finished product, Zvonarev sharply criticized autocratic structures, not excluding the tsarist MI. Most often, however, his invectives seemed far from objectivity. He was not correct, for instance, in the survey of military attachés’ activities, in the evaluation of the pre-war mapping and charting intelligence by Russian general-staffers, or in the depiction of counter-espionage methods applied by Russian military commissars in the war area.25 His ultimately negative attitude to the predecessors of Soviet intelligence (Zvonarev held a higher position in it after 1917), whose experience he successfully used in his own pursuit of the White Guardians, culminated in an assertion running as a categorical verdict: ‘Thus, the Russian army began and finished the war against Japan without intelligence at all, and, accordingly, without any knowledge of its adversary’.26 Another pinnacle of interest to the history of intelligence marked the late 1930s, i.e. the period of intensive struggle for mastery in the world intelligence community. That emergence of the war hotbed in the Far East stimulated the unprecedented activities of secret service in the region. Hundreds of spies were recruited by governments for covert operations. Thus, practical needs brought into life extensive explorations of some earlier evolution of MI. However, predominant attention was given to archival research together with the study of counter-espionage structures.27 Later, academic historians attempted to scrupulously depict all the more or less decisive land and naval battles. As Christopher Andrew correctly notes, while ‘discouraged by the difficulty of researching the intelligence records and repelled by the inaccurate sensationalism of many best-selling accounts of espionage’, academic historians have usually tended either to ignore MI or to treat it as of much less importance than other problems of the Russo-Japanese War. Some historians have chosen the way of simply interpreting earlier treatises by Kuropatkin, Riabikov or Zvonarev. The main reason for neglecting MI was, however, inaccessibility of archival collections in the Soviet Union.28 The third boom in the study of the war occurred after the collapse of the

8

Introduction

Soviet Union, when scholars got access to archival collections of primary source material. Besides, the process of reorganization in the post-Soviet secret service triggered a new round of explorations. At present, however, just a few works on MI, penned by a younger generation of Russian historians – Ilia Derevianko, Yurii Shelukhin, Michail Alekseev, Ivan Kravtsev, Vladimir Glushkov, Aleksandr Sharavin, Dmitrii Pavlov – may be regarded as those of interest and importance.29 Besides, the authors of the Studies in the History of the Russian Foreign Intelligence, edited by Evgenii Primakov, contributed to the research of MI.30 The genre has recently embraced books and articles by Vladimir Petrov, Petr Podalko, Yelena Dobychina, Robert Kondratenko, Vladimir Kashirin and others, who examined the activities of Russian military and naval attachés in the Far East at the start of the twentieth century.31 This increasing attention to the hostilities between Russia and Japan was obviously caused by the approach of the centenary of the war. Because of their limited access to archival records, Western academic scholars had proved unable to choose MI as a special subject of study until the collapse of the USSR. Only in the 1990s, did they publish books and articles covering some problems interrelated with Russian MI. For example, Bruce Menning investigated the evolution of the Russian army from the Miliutin reforms up to the outbreak of the First World War. A separate chapter of his book exposed various aspects of the Manchurian campaign of 1904–5, including intelligence operations, which he commented upon with a good deal of criticism. One of the conclusions by Professor Menning focused on the assertion that Kuropatkin ‘was badly supplied with tactical intelligence’.32 To this pioneering study were later added several articles on developments in the tsarist armed forces, where MI figured as well. Interestingly, the author has mellowed his earlier critical opinion upon it. Now he writes that ‘the Russians possessed far better intelligence on the Japanese than has heretofore been judged the case’. The problem was in the failure of higher echelons of commanders ‘to avail themselves of the materials’ presented by general-staffers and ‘advantages they had at hand’.33 David Schimmelpenninck published a series of studies concentrating on the immediate origins of hostilities and the course of events in the Russo-Japanese War.34 He also traced the developments of Russian MI long before the Far Eastern conflict as well as giving a critical interpretation of its role on the Manchurian front. Based on primary archival sources, his works contributed to a far more objective picture of MI activities primarily at the strategic level and at operational levels on land.35 The recent publications by David Alan Rich also provide a comprehensive analysis of Russian MI in the periods before the reign of Nicholas II. The author gives details about internal composition of the tsarist secret service and portrays some prominent figures among the closest circle of the tsar who took responsibility for building foundations for effective intelligence.36 A succinct review of studies on the history of Russian MI would be incomplete without works by the Japanese professor Chiharu Inaba who devoted much

Introduction

9

attention, as well as to counter-espionage, to the less known SIGINT (wire interception and code breaking) and Franco-Russian collaboration during the course of the war.37 Based on a prodigious survey of new archival materials as well as on wide reading in the primary and secondary literature on modern Russian history, the book will examine both the underpinnings and evolution of MI in Russia on the eve of, in the course of and in the aftermath of the war against Japan. Much attention will also be given to experience gained from warfare by the Russian secret service and to the impact it made upon the reorganization of imperial defence in the aftermath. These hugely important items are approached from a fresh look upon archival holdings. Most of them are concentrated in the Russian State Military-Historical Archive (Moscow) and in the Russian State Naval Archive (St Petersburg). They preserve documentary collections of the Main Staff, of the headquarters of the Manchurian armies and the Pacific navy, together with miscellaneous central and regional military structures, e.g. headquarters of the Priamur military district, Military Chancellery of Quantung province and the headquarters of Zaamur military district of Special Corps of Frontier Guards. The author also consulted personal dossiers and papers of generals and admirals such as Aleksei Kuropatkin, Evgenii Alekseev, Michail Alekseev, Vladimir Kosagovskii and Vasilii Flug. Reports, memoranda, analytical reviews by military attachés; notes and minutes by the staff officers in charge of intelligence processes; projects, plans and schedules of war games at the General Staff Academy; maps, sketch-maps, target charts and figures of different kinds often supplement official and private correspondence – all these documents constitute the principal foundation of the present study. A thorough analysis of archival holdings together with a comprehensive study of memoirs and literature on the subject goes hand in hand with a proper examination of voluminous surveys of war operations given in the official documentary publications by the special government commissions instituted in Russia after the end of hostilities. Despite the obvious deficit in correctness and accuracy, these compendiums contain a lot of significant details relating to MI.38 A variety of intelligence summaries and digests compiled by the General Staff officers (or in abbreviated form – generalists) on the Manchurian front, seem to be also of principal importance to this study. As a matter of fact, they demonstrate such novel approaches and methods in MI as the interrogation of local inhabitants and prisoners of war (POWs), the examination of artefacts exposed by scouts on the Russian service in the frontline area, the utilization of balloons, optical devices, radio stations, wire interceptions and even submarines for spying.39 Surprisingly, research in American and British archives also contributed to the study. This means especially the reports of naval attachés and the dispatches of US or British consuls accredited in the main seaports of the Far East, who witnessed war operations or were somehow related to the activities of MI.

10

Introduction

Finally, it should be noted that we also consulted a few belletristic works whose authors endeavour to novelize the history of the Russo-Japanese War. Although sometimes either distorting facts or veiling realities, they procure a kind of ‘epoch fragrance’ that enables the modern reader to plunge into the whirlpool of dramatic events dated to the beginning of the last century.40 The core of the book is organized as ten chapters dealing with various aspects of Russian MI, both land and naval, before and during the warfare, as well as in the immediate aftermath. While the initial chapters expose the composition of the Russian intelligence community in the late imperial era and speculate on the assessments of Japan’s war capabilities made by Russian staffs, the consequent sections of the book tackle crucial and much debated issues referring to the belligerents at three interconnected levels: strategic, operational and tactical. Two concluding chapters reflect the dilemmas of the peace conference at Portsmouth and spotlight the impact of the Russo-Japanese War upon military reforms in Russia. *

*

*

The context is supplied with maps, figures and notes together with an index of Russian officers, mainly of the General Staff in charge of MI in 1904–5 in the Far East. All dates in the main text are rendered according to the Gregorian calendar employed in the West which is 12 days in the nineteenth and 13 days in the twentieth century ahead of the Julian one in use by the Russians before 1918. The author usually refers to the metric system, although in a number of episodes versta – a traditional old Russian unit of distance, approximately equivalent to a kilometre – is in use too. The golden rouble was equivalent to one tenth of a pound sterling at the start of the twentieth century. Transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet adheres to the Library of Congress system without diacritic marks, while common spellings are given to most proper names. As for Chinese lexical units, the author generally follows the Pinyin system with the exception of frequently used names, such as Peking or Mukden. In notes and commentaries for archival materials, the author puts f. for fond (collection), op. for opis’ (inventory), d. for delo (file) and l. (ll.) for list (lists) (folio, folios).

1

Russian military intelligence at the start of the twentieth century

An intelligence that is well established in time of peace can alone provide an accurate estimation and correct draft of operations. Lieutenant Boris Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, Chief of the Foreign Section of the Russian Naval General Staff1

The structure and personnel of Russian military intelligence In every period of world history military intelligence (MI) has always been and still is an indispensable assistant of politicians, acting simultaneously as their instrument and their plaything. Despite the fact that it has usually submitted its own interests to political demands and regularities, many leading politicians have very often been swayed by their chiefs of state secret service. Spying is definitely the second oldest profession of mankind! To pinpoint the actual beginning of espionage is historically almost impossible. To the vast majority of academicians, this statement seems no exaggeration at all. In fact, MI has existed since the primordial caveman peered from behind a boulder to get information of the quantity of clubs his shaggy neighbour could employ to make an attack or rebuff one.2 Richard Deacon, the recognized British expert in the history of intelligence, alluded to the maxim by Sir Basil Thomson, the creator of the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, who once remarked that ‘if the Pharaoh Memptah had been given an efficient intelligence service, there would have been no Exodus’.3 Referring to the earliest recorded intelligence report, written on a clay tablet and dated some 2,000 years BC, a commander of a desert patrol near the Euphrates reported to his ‘lord’ of the Benjamite border villagers’ exchanging fire signals, the significance of which could not be determined. The commander recommended that the guards on the city walls of Mari should be incrementally strengthened.4 Later, in the fourth century BC, Sun Tzu, the Chinese military expert, reviewed the function of MI in his famous treatise Art of War. He wrote, in particular, about those who knew the enemy as well as they knew themselves, and concluded that they would never suffer defeat. ‘What enables the wise sovereign and good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the

12

Russian MI around 1900

reach of ordinary men’, he continued, ‘is foreknowledge.’5 It is not accidental, therefore, that Richard Deacon, the author of serial publications on the history of secret service, called the manuscript by Sun Tzu ‘the earliest known text-book on espionage and the arts of war generally and on the organization of a Secret Service particularly’.6 The origins of naval intelligence, at least in Europe, is traced by Richard Deacon in the episode with Alexander the Great, who in the fourth century BC ordered the building of a glass to explore the depths of the sea ‘for obtaining intelligence therein’.7 Even though one may present copious examples of spying in ancient times and the Middle Ages, most scholars believe that the idea of the systematically organized espionage service came with the rise of national sovereignty, i.e. in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Its origin, according to Roger Hilsman, is credited to Frederick the Great and its development to the omnipotent Prussian official Wilhelm Stieber in the second part of the nineteenth century.8 The origins of MI in Russia also date back to obscure centuries. The first ever recorded intelligence operation was conducted by the Slavs against Byzantium in AD 860.9 Scholars have recently identified major strands within the larger skein of narrations on the first Russian spymasters and secret agents in subsequent epochs, while devoting particular attention to the reigns of Peter and Catherine the Great as well as to that of Alexander I and his brother Nicholas I.10 A series of dramatic reforms under the reign of Alexander II opened quite a new epoch in MI development – a period of nations-at-arms and the introduction of modern technologies. The period between 1869 and 1880 became a benchmark in the history of the tsarist secret structures. The reforms of the Russian intelligence community promulgated by Count Loris-Melikov, the closest assistant of Alexander II, reshuffled it into four bodies: Department of Police as a prototype of the KGB, secret guarding police (Okhranka) to prevent anti-government actions at the local level, confidential personal guards of the tsar, and, what is of particular significance for our subject, military intelligence within the Main Staff and the Main Naval Staff. At the start of the twentieth century it was conducted by two segments of the Main Staff – the Military Academic Committee (Voenno-Uchenyi Komitet) and the Asian General Element (Aziatskaia Chast’). The scheme of naval intelligence was practically the same; it was administrated through the Naval Military Academic Section of the Main Naval Staff. But what was more important, from that particular time spymasters had embarked on consistently monitoring armed forces of potential foes as well as those of satellite or neutral states.11 To use modern parlance, there emerged a conception of a so-called intelligence cycle with five main steps (see the Introduction) and a number of principles.12 The regulations and directives for secret service stipulated that MI should be centrally controlled, objective and timely; its sources should be properly exploited and adequately protected while its aims should be clearly defined. The data collected by the system should always be available for comparison,

Russian MI around 1900 13 because the significance of apparently isolated facts may not be appreciated until they are juxtaposed with what is already known or has happened before. Finally, MI administration should have to function under the control of higher command to ensure its usefulness and efficacy.13 The subsequent realignment in the central administration of the tsarist army during 1900–3 resulted in the establishment of the First and Second Directorates of the Quartermaster service at the Main Staff. The principal functions of MI were concentrated in the Second Directorate which contained the First MilitaryStatistical Department. The staff of its Section 7 were charged to analyse the situation in foreign countries, in both Europe and Asia. The Naval Military Academic Section was also transformed into a so-called Naval Strategic Directorate regulating intelligence together with executing other functions. By 1904, the staff of the Russian central intelligence agencies did not exceed 17 staffers for the army and 12 staffers for the navy in total, to say nothing of temporarily attached commissioned and non-commissioned officers. This staff limited in number and finance was responsible for processing data on more than 20 armies and navies abroad!14 The orders and instructions enacted by the tsar himself regulated major aspects of the intelligence cycle. For example, the instruction of April 1903 by the War Minister for the personnel of Section 7 defined their tasks as ‘collection, study and dissemination of military statistics; exchange of data with both legal and illegal agents (attachés and spies respectively); assignment on secret missions to foreign countries; and scrupulous examination of new ammunitions’. It should be mentioned that this very order also abolished the Asian Department of the Main Staff.15 The duties charged by the Naval Strategic Directorate looked pretty much the same. The instruction by the Naval Minister demanded from intelligence officers ‘to study means and modes of patrolling cruisers on ocean communications; to analyse statistics for foreign merchant navies, commercial ports and coal stations as well as to know main sea and ocean routes and naval bases worldwide; to dispatch regularly summaries to the Main Naval Staff’.16 A poor differentiation between analytical and executive levels within higher echelons of MI caused the establishment of two more Sections in the Main Staff. All the daily routine in corresponding with military and naval attachés was carried on by officers who composed special groups at Section 7 of the Main Staff and Strategic Directorate of the Naval Staff. The reshuffle improved but did not eliminate the lack of coordination between Russian land and naval intelligence in time of peace. Later, it discarded their necessary coherence in the Far East too.17 The situation became even more aggravated with parallelism and duplication in the process of data gathering by a few other central military administrative structures, e.g. the Main Engineer Department, the Main Artillery Department, or the Main Department of Fortresses. Besides, staffers in military districts or battle fleets performed inter alia intelligence functions, particularly in borderlands of the Russian Empire, on the Baltic and Black Seas as well as in the

14

Russian MI around 1900

Pacific Ocean. The evident dissipation of resources resulted in low efficiency and poor quality of secret information about adversarial states collected by artillery or engineer officers unprepared for secret service.18 In a broader sense, one should not also ignore interference of other ministries that guided their own secret structures: the Ministries for Foreign and for Internal Affairs, the Ministries of Finance, of Court, of Commerce and Industry and even the Holy Synod, although their direct duties did not presume persistent and purposeful collection of facts and figures relating to national defence. Referring to the situation in the Far East before the Russo-Japanese War, i.e. from the capture of Port Arthur by the Russians in 1898 up to the outbreak of war in February 1904, it is necessary to take into account local official groups performing intelligence in addition to their everyday activities. Above all, there existed the Report Section in the Headquarters of the Priamur military district deployed in Khabarovsk on the Amur River. It was designed to play a crucial role in data gathering on Japan, China and Korea before the war. But in practice, this structure failed to supply higher echelons of commanders with adequate data because of staffers’ incompetence and paucity of financing from the War Ministry. Apparently, the Report Section activities boiled down to the assemblage of military statistics together with the compilation of maps and charts, made by younger Cossack officers during their reconnaissance trips across Manchuria and Korea.19 These topographical surveys served, however, as a base to mapping the region on scales of 1 inch to 1, 2 or 4 versty (approximately 1 inch to 1, 2 or 4 km). Interestingly, Japanese military experts highly appreciated them and later disseminated two-verst maps to their active troops in Korea, Manchuria, and, what is even more important, to the forces landing on Sakhalin in July 1905.20 The lease of Port Arthur and the railway concessions on the territory of the Qing Empire, i.e. the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) and the Southern Manchurian Railways (SMR) entailed the formation of two more headquarters: in Port Arthur to control the Liaodong Peninsula and in Irkutsk to command the Zaamur District of Special Corps of Frontier Guards, the latter responsible for the defence of the CER, albeit formally subordinated to the Ministry of Finance.21 Thus, the staff of Zaamur District of Frontier Guards concentrated upon the prevention of sabotage acts in the defence zone of railways committed by so-called chunguses, the Chinese brigands who in 1899–1901 fought the Russians and either Europeans in the course of the Boxer anti-foreign rebellion.22 The united international expeditionary forces under the command of Lieutenant General Nikolai Linevich (in the fall of 1900 the supreme command was assigned to the German Field Marshal A. Waldersee) suppressed the Boxer mutiny. In the middle of 1900 more than 35,000 expeditionary corps, the core of which consisted of 7,000 Siberian riflemen, took the field against Boxers and regular Chinese forces to raise the blockade of the diplomatic settlement in Peking. On 14 August interventionists captured the capital of the Qing Empire and by the end of the year Manchuria had been completely pacified.23 By the fall of 1903, St Petersburg announced the establishment of a Viceroy-

Russian MI around 1900 15 alty in the Far East and the Committee for this distant outpost of the Russian Empire. The new administrative unit, moulded in St Petersburg as a replica of the Caucasian and Turkistan Viceroyalties,24 was headed by Governor General (or Viceroy) Admiral Evgenii Ivanovich Alekseev, who owing to personal influence on the tsar compelled the resignation of his forerunner, Lieutenant General Dmitrii Subbotich. In his review of the Russian acquisitions in China, or the so-called ‘Zheltorossiia’ (‘Yellow Russia’ equivalent to ‘White Russia’, or Byelorussia), A. Khvostov, the correspondent of the popular monthly periodical Vestnik Evropy, maintained that Under the command of General Dmitrii Subbotich, the first Russian Chief of Kwantung Area, staff-officers assembled important nuggets of information to present a true depiction of this region, quite unknown to us before. And it took them only three years to fulfil the task.25 In 1901, after the suppression of the Boxer rebellion, when the territories of three provinces of northern China were occupied by Russian punitive expeditionary troops, Nicholas II sanctioned the institution of provisional Russian Military Commissariats in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaonin. The Military Commissars, usually chosen by Viceroy Alekseev himself and approved by the War Minister, Aleksei Nikolaevich Kuropatkin, entered upon duties as plenipotentiary representatives of the Russian military administration and mediators in contacts with local Chinese authorities, governor generals, or jangjunes, and heads of towns, or fudutunes. They were subordinated directly to Viceroy Alekseev and dispatched reports to his staff in Port Arthur. One of them, the General Staff Colonel Mikhail Kvetsinskii, set up a network of spies and scouts recruited from ruined peasants, illegal tradesmen, former deserters from the Chinese army and other local villains, though in some cases he managed to force officials or native intellectuals (teachers, monks) to collect intelligence. In this way, there emerged another branch of HUMINT to expand Russia’s influence upon China (for further details see Chapter 7).26 As to the organization of naval intelligence, it was conducted under the auspices of the staffers subordinated via the Pacific Fleet Commander, Vice Admiral Oskar Stepanovich Stark, to the headquarters of Admiral Alekseev. Russian consuls and trade and financial representatives attached to seaports in Japan, China and Korea – all of them were engaged in monitoring foreign naval vessels, routes they used and cargoes they transported from the continent to the Japanese Islands and vice versa. To achieve this aim, they also used men-of-war stationed in Chefoo, Yinkou and Chemulpo. The innovation of wireless radio transmitting intensified the exchange of coded intelligence between monitors and staffers.27 Light cruisers and destroyers carried out duties of another kind. The marine operations in the course of the Spanish–American War of 1898 revealed that speed and high manoeuvrability were the advantages which should be taken to supply naval bases with fresh nuggets of information. Since that time,

16

Russian MI around 1900

light-armed naval vessels had been utilized as auxiliary means of short-range reconnaissance at a distance of approximately 20–30 miles from their coastal bases. In practice, they became a momentous threat to enemy transports in the coastal waters of Port Arthur, Vladivostok or Petropavlovsk.28 The sole talented Russian naval commander at that time, Vice Admiral Stepan Osipovich Makarov, who had thoroughly studied classical treaties by Captains Mahan and Columb, paid an increasing pitch of attention to the development of naval intelligence. In the book Discussion on Problems of Naval Tactic he formulated a conception of the practical application of such technical innovations as wireless transmitting stations and submarines with minimal crew in reconnaissance at sea. Regarding submarines, it should be noted in advance that, despite the minor role they had played in the events of 1904–5, one may commence the record of their history from just that period.29 A key provision for the adequate conduct of MI in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries proved to be the funding of their activities. Generally speaking, the success or failure of any secret service, besides the abilities of its heads and the attitude of the government of the day towards it, is in direct relation to the amount of money spent on activities of this kind. Regrettably, we must use figures provided by the General Staff for Kuropatkin himself, so that they are limited to the needs of the War Ministry while skipping financing auxiliary and parallel structures involved in intelligence process. Debit items of the Main Staff proved, nevertheless, of special interest. In 1902 the total sum of expenses on MI amounted to 50,750 roubles. In the next two years it was augmented to 56,590 roubles, even though allocations to the Main Staff Section 7 alone did not exceed 1,000 roubles. These data contradicted estimates in the books by Richard Deacon who argued that ‘Russia was spending more than a million pounds a year on spying in the 1870s and 1880s, and certainly the figure was approaching £1,700,000 a year at the turn of the century’.30 Perhaps this authoritative expert also took overall expenditures of the Police Department and Okhranka into consideration. In fact, however, most expenditure on the intelligence cycle was dispersed between district headquarters. For example, according to the War Ministry expense sheet for 1903, the Priamur District headquarters was allocated 12,000 roubles and the Headquarters of Kwantung Peninsula got 3,000 roubles on secret operations.31 Apart from this, an annual Quartermaster Service budget of 149,420 roubles was designated to pay salaries to official military attachés accredited in the capitals of major states at an approximate calculated rate of 1,200 roubles per person. Naturally, such minuscule reimbursements of their annual expenditures strongly hampered the progress of business. A tremendous impediment to gathering data was the point of instruction maintaining that almost every item of current expenditures should have been sanctioned by the Viceroy and the Main Staff. This practice caused a useless waste of time and money. Legal military attachés very often paid their informers their personal expenses. That is why additional benefits of nominees for military–diplomatic positions, e.g. real estate, had always been non-official provision for the assignment to Paris, London or Tokyo.32

Russian MI around 1900 17 In the course of the Russo-Japanese War, any earlier budget allocations seemed insufficient. Besides, the sums on MI, reimbursed by the Finance Ministry, were sometimes simply wasted by staffers without any obvious results. In fact, it was impossible to make a precise calculation of expenditures on salaries for spies, payments for secret documents or data they transmitted to staffs, and bribes to Chinese authorities in order to keep them neutral. In a final count, to facilitate activities, say in the HUMINT, the tsarist government had to allocate extra sums to expand Russian influence in the Far East through local mass media. However, St Petersburg appeared a regular loser to London and Washington in fostering a positive view of the Russian army and navy in the Pacific region. The English-language press cultivated for Russia the image of ‘unpredictable devious bear’, plotting the immediate conquest of adjacent territories. As the above mentioned correspondent A. Khvostov wrote in November 1902, British newspapers [in China] are filled with jingoism; they champion all British-like things and criticize all non-British ones. Their mood contrasted sharply with the pessimistic view in Russian periodicals. The hostility of the British press in the Far East towards the Russians exceeds every expectation; nothing sacred exists for it; thus, the reading of British newspapers, sometimes, seems unbearable to any Russian individual because, along with a mockery of Russia, they say that no false rumour should be ignored. To reinforce his opinion, Khvostov argued that rumours about the eventual landing of Russian troops on the Japanese Islands were spread by the Englishlanguage papers published in China.33 It has been mentioned above that Russian MI as a sovereign branch of army and navy administration was undergoing realignments in the period just before the Russo-Japanese War. The most progressive younger experts among Russian general-staffers, for example, Boris Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, Alexandr Svechin, Mikhail Grulev and many others devoted attention to the experience of the SinoJapanese, Spanish–American and Anglo-Boer wars in the light of MI experience. However, there remained two general problems needing to be solved by the tsarist military administration at all levels: first, the incompatibility of methods and weapons to wage modern war against the nominee for great power status (Japan) with the stereotypes of traditional, basically feudal, ‘military mind’ of the Russian officer corps, and second, the deficit of a united command of MI both in the central structures and in the Far East, that greatly reduced its overall drive in conducting the cycle of reconnaissance before and in the course of the Russo-Japanese armed clash.34

Russian general-staffers as the elite of MI Any brief survey of the conditions under which Russian MI progressed more than a century ago would be incomplete, if we did not review its personnel, taking into consideration that some persons proved to be bizarre both as regards

18

Russian MI around 1900

their biographies and the duties they fulfilled, at least according to their service entries and memoirs by their colleagues. To sum up the general features of those officers who were engaged in the collection, processing or dissemination of intelligence, one should pay primary attention to the predominance of the hereditary landed aristocracy. On finishing cadet schools in St Petersburg, Moscow or some other cities in the European part of Russia (or in the cases where their fathers were generals, the Corps of Pages), they usually entered military academies, the most prominent being the Academy of the General Staff (or the Nicholas Academy). Although in general the curriculum met demands for European standards of education, particularly in linguistics, topography and statistics, it was deficient in training elite officers to use their skills in practice, so that alumni remained unfamiliar with military logistics, the application of technical devices in battles and control over strategic and tactical realignments of troops on terrain. At the same time, according to memoirs written by Aleksei Ignatiev, later the Russian military attaché in Paris, ‘professors granted attention of priority to all these questions in the French and German Academies of the General Staff’.35 Interestingly, the curriculum at the Nicholas Academy lacked any training in MI. Because of the strong belief that MI was an element of the general course of military statistics, the aged professors opposed teaching it as a special academic subject. Moreover, most officers originating from traditional Russian nobility regarded MI as a dishonest ‘filthy’ business inappropriate for a noble man. They believed that only ‘civil police detectives, plain-clothes gendarmes and the like rascals could be recruited for espionage’.36 Contemporaries often paid attention to other negative characteristics of this higher military school. They were intrigues, nepotism and political conservatism. Hence, some opinions of the Academy might sound critical. One of the alumni claimed that ‘it looked like an amalgamation of an institute for noble girls and a Jesuit college’.37 As to such an abominable tradition as nepotism, it ran rampant in every branch of the tsarist administration. A powerful relative or patron usually promoted his protégé to higher staff positions. According to reminiscences by the son of Count Benckendorf, the perpetual Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom in the early twentieth century, his posting to the man-of-war Poltava was produced owing to ‘a little wangling in higher circles by my father, coupled with the fact that the commander of the Poltava was Prince Lieven, a distant relation’.38 This practice had gained so wide a spread in the military bureaucracy by the start of the twentieth century that scholars sometimes mistakenly confuse one person with another of the same surname. Suffice to give the typical example of Gleb Mikhailovich Vannovskii, the military attaché in Japan before the war, mistakenly referred to by some experts as the son of the former War Minister Petr Semenovich Vannovskii – Boris Petrovich Vannovskii. The latest investigations have proved, however, that Gleb Vannovskii was the former minister’s nephew.39 There was, nevertheless, another frequently used path to MI. The War Minis-

Russian MI around 1900 19 ter might order an attachment of collegians, e.g. artillerists or engineers, to the General Staff Officer Corps. ‘Attachés’ of this kind usually did not have aristocratic predecessors and strove, therefore, for higher appointments in the army or navy. Hence, they displayed much more enthusiasm in their studies and were more likely become inculcated with innovations in military strategy and tactics. When nominated to the General Staff, applicants were supposed to have command of foreign languages and to be broadly educated individuals. Their reputation, family status and personal incomes were confirmed by the Department of Police. And beyond this, they took care in their appearance.40 In his review of qualities needed for any intelligence officer, for example, reticence, nicety of mind and self-possession, a French military expert, argued that Individuals who are recruited for secret service should be discriminated from cunning and smart people, with reticent and flexible mentality. Their glance must be now gentle, now brave; they have ‘to peruse’ faces of strangers while hiding their own emotions deep in their heart. Their exterior must be nice and at the same time impressive; they must be prepared to play any role.41 Referring likewise to the protective measures devised to preserve the operational security of spying, another authoritative professional, Maximilian Ronge maintained that MI especially requires a sober view of events, persistence in attaining the objective, knowledge of human beings, competence in tradecraft, skills in linguistic, and, naturally, common sense together with caution.42 A general range of interests was expected of any officer incorporated into the General Staff – even to compare with their colleagues in Germany, France or the UK. They commanded foreign languages (usually French and German), studied military history, law and statistics of European states. They could read and sketch topographical charts and were aware of the latest improvements in tactics. But, on the other hand, they lacked imitative, daily practice in the field and, what is more important, they often only vaguely realized the essence and stages of the intelligence cycle. To demonstrate the ‘abyss’ between an ‘ordinary’ general-staffer and a spymaster, one should allude to Richard Rowan’s classical characteristic of a model intelligence officer: Despite the widespread opinion, a regular ‘ace’ of espionage should be of many, if not all, qualities which are of demand for any valuable civil or military functionary. If his gallantry and honesty are doubtful to the slightest pitch, his patron won’t take a risk to rely on him at a time of trouble for the fatherland. The secret agent must be not only devoted to his business and duties but also be devoid of selfishness. He must be the enemy to any kind

20

Russian MI around 1900 of boasting and other unrestrained emotions. He must be as truthful and morally reserved as decisive, resourceful and vigilant. Moreover, the agent on active service of his fatherland must be trained to total inner solitude. His trade proves to be of a special kind. Distrusting anybody, he ought to seek for the confidence of others.43

One of such personalities, who might serve as a model type of a spy, was the former Cossack, Esaul (equivalent to Captain) David Livkin. On finishing the cadet school, he attended the officer classes at the Asian Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. There he studied the Arabic, Turkish, Persian and French languages together with international and Muslim law. In addition, Livkin could fluently speak in the Tartar, Kizghi and English languages which he had learnt by himself. Disguised as the well-to-do Azerbaijan merchant Mohammed Gasanov, he visited Egypt, Persia, India and even reached Sri Lanka. Apart from various confidential missions, Livkin was working hard to set up a wide, multi-echelon espionage network on the territory of British possessions. On returning to St Petersburg, he was seconded to Manchuria where he got down to the familiar business – the organization of HUMINT structures. We shall trace his career in one of the later chapters; however, Livkin may be definitely regarded as the first Russian super-spy in the twentieth century.44 Naturally, it was the military attaché, or ‘agent’ in the Russian language, who was the key personality in the intelligence process before the war. The assessments and calculations of various modes, with which they supplied the War Ministry, aided much to building the foundations for further strategically planning for casus belli. These ‘shoulder-strapped diplomats’, therefore, being the majority of the general-staffers, should be given a more comprehensive examination in order to reveal the hidden underpinnings of the tsarist MI in the epoch of imperialism.

The tradecraft of military attachés in the Far East Despite a number of recent works with some fresh insight into the activities of these officers, whose mandate, in the opinion of the modern American scholar, was ‘to serve as overt spies, gathering all possible information on the nature and status of the armed forces in the countries to which they were accredited’,45 there still remains a necessity to focus upon their tradecraft in the light of preparations for hostilities in Manchuria. While referring to the service entries preserved in archival collections and taking into consideration valuable information in the books and articles by Mikhail Alekseev, Yelena Dobychina, Dmitrii Pavlov, Bruce Menning, David Schimmelpenninck, David Rich and Gudrun Persson, one could be led to believe that Russian military attachés greatly contributed to the MI transformation in the most innovative branch of the tsarist secret service. Some details of these persons and their careers are worth being narrated in this chapter. First, the officers accredited to Japan ought to be mentioned. On

Russian MI around 1900 21 separating the post of military attaché in China from that in Tokyo, Colonel Nikolai Ianzhul entered into office and held it from 1896 to 1899, when the above-mentioned Lieutenant Colonel Gleb Vannovskii succeeded him to this position. Another Lieutenant Colonel, Vladimir Samoilov, was in office during the last peaceful months of 1903. The military career of this officer abounded with amazing turning-points, albeit rather typical of his colleagues, the general-staffers. Having graduated successively from the Nicholas High School of Military Engineers and the Nicholas Academy, he was seconded on a secret mission to Afghanistan, where he became a spymaster of an illegal network created to perform anti-British covert actions at the latest stage of the Great Game. There he was engaged in instigating the Pushtun tribes to revolt against the British administration in the frontier zone. On gaining experience in this tradecraft, Samoilov was removed to Khabarovsk as the deputy senior aide-de-camp at the Headquarters of the Priamur military district. Later he got the position of staff officer on special duties in the Kwantung military administration. Soon he advanced to the post of Chief of the Third Siberian Rifle Division. But the pinnacle of his career proved to be the office of legal military attaché in Tokyo, where he had sojourned for a year and a half before the outburst of hostilities and for eight years in the aftermath until 1914. In the meantime, he also joined the Russian delegation headed by Sergei Witte to negotiate peace with the Japanese representatives in Portsmouth. One should feel it is exaggeration to regard him as a key personality among the military attachés of the pre-war period.46 On the other hand, judging from the records, he contributed his might to the constitution of Russian MI in the Pacific. Given the increasing importance of data on maritime operations, the Naval Minister in 1896 attached the first official ‘shoulder-strapped’ representative to the Russian diplomatic mission in Tokyo. The first official naval agent dispatched to the Japanese capital was Lieutenant Ivan Budilovskii. In 1897 he was replaced in office by Lieutenant Ivan Chagin, and the latter was followed in 1899 by Lieutenant Aleksandr Rusin, one of the most brilliant naval attachés in the history of imperial Russia. Rusin’s contribution not only to naval intelligence but to the general establishment of MI in the early twentieth century has been the subject of a few fresh studies. His career progressed with amazing speed, first in the Baltic Fleet, then in the Far East, and after the Russo-Japanese War in the central boards of the tsarist navy. In the end of his service to Russia, i.e. in the course of the First World War, he was appointed to the second position in the fleet – the Chief of the Naval General Staff and at the same time the Chief of the Naval Supreme Headquarters. Rusin’s reports from Tokyo and Yokohama were perused by the supreme naval commanders and Admiral Alekseev to act as an integrated element of war plans. In his scrupulous review of the Russian military attachés’ activity before the war of 1904–5, Bruce Menning pointed out to the substantial advantages of naval ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomats over their ground force counterparts in evaluating Japanese strength: the first was the utter visibility of the

22

Russian MI around 1900

enemy’s naval assets, the majority of which were concentrated in a handful of seaports that might be kept under direct observation; and the second, was the utter publicity that surrounded naval construction in an era of total naval arms race.47 In view of its strategic predominance in East Asia and the vast territory of the Celestial Empire, the Main Staff stationed two Russian military representatives in China. Colonels Konstantin Vogak and Nikolai Sumarokov held office from 1896 to 1899. In 1900 Colonel Konstantin Desino followed the latter, while the former continued to hold his post until 1903. The First Russian military attaché resided in Tientsin and the Second in Shanghai; they acted separately, usually not even exchanging reports or intelligence summaries with one another. Interestingly, their personal careers also differed greatly. While Vogak, whose ancestors had left Sweden for Russia in the eighteenth century, after finishing military college in St Petersburg and graduating from the Nicholas Cavalry High School and later from the Academy of the General Staff, served in cavalry regiments and finally managed to enter the milieu of the tsar as the supporter of ‘the Bezobrazovtsy’ with their original plans for a Russian Far Eastern policy,48 Desino graduated from two Academies: the one of Artillery and the other of the General Staff, and was for a few years on diplomatic service in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. They both, however, were regarded in St Petersburg as skilled and dutiful military analysts, whose surveys of current events in China merited full attention. Naturally, Desino made a brilliant career after the Russo-Japanese War. His last official position before retirement was as the military representative of the Russian Supreme Commander in the UK. The October Revolution of 1917 ruined, however, his further progress in office.49 As to Colonel Vogak, he was recalled by the Main Staff in the middle of 1903 and replaced by Colonel Feodor Ogorodnikov, a former alumnus from the Nicholas High School of Military Engineers and, certainly, the Academy of the General Staff.50 The special position of naval attaché in the Qing Empire was established only in the aftermath of hostilities, in 1907. In Korea, the office was held by Lieutenant Colonel, later Colonel, Ivan Strel’bitskii in 1895–1902. This officer also graduated from the Nicholas High School of Cavalry and the Nicholas Academy. On his service at the Headquarters of the Priamur military district, Strel’bitskii earned the reputation of an attentive officer, though lacking in initiation and drive in MI.51 Taking into account the irregularity of his reports to the Main Staff and his failure to set up a network of secret agents, most scholars are inclined to blame this military attaché for Russia’s unprepared position in the Far East. But a recently published article by Yelena Dobychina has revealed new details of his biography which somehow alter our impression of this officer. Dobychina argued that during his tenure of the post in Seoul Strel’bitskii did not even have a permanent address and had to frequently move from one rented flat to another. Besides, all his proposals to the Main Staff to develop the web of espionage in Korea through the recruitment of natives, Christian missionaries and Western commercial travellers were left without attention. In 1902 Strel’bitskii was recalled to St

Russian MI around 1900 23 Petersburg under the official order to compile the military-statistical survey of Korea. In 1912 he retired with the rank of Major General.52 Meanwhile, his follower Lieutenant Colonel Leonid von Raaben held the office for a few months only and owing to his duel with the Russian Minister Plenipotentiary Alexandr Pavlov (caused by von Raaben’s adultery with Pavlov’s younger spouse) in November 1903 was replaced by Guards Captain Aleksei Potapov, who belatedly arrived in Seoul before the outburst of hostilities.53 It is well known that military attachés performed a decisive role in strategic intelligence before the war. Nevertheless, officers stationed in East Asian capitals faced specific obstacles which were hard to overcome. The first was poor knowledge of the region and its languages. This prevented attachés from creating an efficient, well conspired network of HUMINT within Asian states, Japan in particular. For example, Colonel Ianzhul complained to his patrons in one of the surveys that Chinese hieroglyphs are the greatest impediment for military attachés . . . This double Dutch not only prevents them from examining any confidential paper they get, maybe quite accidentally, but they also become dependent on the conscientiousness and patriotic correctness of Japanese translators.54 Paradoxically, Russian attachés had sometimes to forward Japanese documents to St Petersburg, where Bukhovetskii, the former dragoman of the Russian diplomatic mission in Tokyo, translated them into Russian to be retransmitted back to Tokyo. The activity of ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomats in the Pacific was also handicapped by Japanese officials and journalists. As Colonel Samoilov reported to St Petersburg in the fall of 1903, Everything concerning the army’s strength and staff is of great secrecy in Japan, and one can get any pieces of information only by lucky chances. As to intelligence of foreign attachés that I am aware of, it cannot compose a complete picture, though it differs from ours.55 In addition, they often found themselves subject to disinformation when they reported to St Petersburg and Port Arthur incomplete or sometimes false details about the adversary’s army and navy based on sources controlled by Japanese counter-intelligence. In the later review of his experience as the official military representative, Samoilov, who resumed his post as the ground-force attaché in Tokyo in the aftermath of the war, reported to his chiefs that The habit of one spying on another, which has taken deep roots in the Japanese character, made them perfect secret police agents. They do not consider espionage to be something shameful. Gendarmes are usually trained to act as spies, and the military use them for secret intelligence in

24

Russian MI around 1900 the war period. On the other hand, it is easier for police in Japan to keep an eye on any foreigner, a ‘white man’, therefore, can hardly escape from local authorities. They look upon every non-Japanese with prejudice, they suppose him to be a spy and control his life. His mail is being looked through secretly, every step is being watched and everybody he meets falls into the sphere of interest of the counter-espionage agency.56

In the summary of the barriers to the conduct of MI in the Land of the Rising Sun, it should be noted that some traditional European techniques, adopted by espionage to conceal the activities of informants, e.g. bribes and intimidation, had apparently proved almost useless in Japan. ‘Secret service is not solely the weaponry of tyranny or the bulwark of governments and armies, it had rightfully turned into backstage, covert method of international struggle’, the former intelligence officer Richard Wilmer Rowan wrote in his famous book about the world history of espionage.57 Let us, therefore, attempt to objectively juxtapose the Russian MI with the corresponding secret services of other major powers. For, though the pre-war tsarist army and MI as an integral element of it came into collision with serious problems, partly mentioned above, the intelligence communities of the main geostrategic chessmen on the world chess-board, as shall be demonstrated further, suffered likewise deficiencies and shortcomings.

Russia’s MI in comparison with the secret services of the great powers Despite differences of organization, the secret services of the major powers were remarkably similar in their basic elements. There basically existed civil and military structure, army and naval intelligence, central administrative bodies and local branches under the control of the centre. It is noteworthy that at the time in question, MI cooperated with the secret police as the junior partner, i.e. it was directed mostly inwards, against revolutionaries and their contacts with potential hostile powers.58 This, so to say, auxiliary role of MI originated in the tradition of the Holy Alliance concluded by the victors of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. In the traditional view, any structure of MI ought to be set up solely for the purpose of gaining victory over the foe in the period of hostilities, while before the war or in the aftermath it was of no immediate necessity. However, the secret service of maritime states, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, differed from that of continental states, such as France, Germany, Austro-Hungary or Russia. It is well known that the British military blunders of the Crimean War were to a certain extent due to the lack of information about the Russians. As a direct result of this, a Topographical and Statistical Department was instituted at the War Office in 1855.59 The new challenges posed, first, by the Indian Mutiny, second, by the speed and efficiency of the Prussian conquest of France in 1870–1, and, finally, by enormous change in the nature of war, required the 1870s military reforms in the UK, when this MI

Russian MI around 1900 25 embryo was reorganized into a real Intelligence Branch that was supervised by Major General Sir Patrick MacDougall with a staff of 27 persons. In a decade, the Foreign Intelligence Committee was set up under the direction of Captain William Hall. It was converted later into a fully authoritative Naval Intelligence Department staffed with only five officers.60 Yet even when Major General Sir John Ardagh took charge of the Branch in 1896, its functions were still extremely limited. Suffice to say that a section comprising only two officers and a clerk had the task of covering the whole territory of the Russian Empire together with India, China and Japan. One of its deficits originated in the traditional amateur status of active intelligence executives, who – to use Richard Deacon’s phrase – ‘lusted after information for information’s sake’,61 or, in other words, played the Great Game for their own pleasure. To contribute to this interpretation of MI, Sir Robert Baden-Powell published the first book on scouting, defending the amateur tradition against those who supported the foundations of a professional espionage work. ‘The best spies’, he emphasized, ‘are unpaid men who are doing it for the love of the thing.’62 As Ian Nish pointed out, ‘the sporting value’ of his numerous intelligence missions before the First World War corroborated Baden-Powell’s argument that scouting gave the officer who engaged in it a remarkably ‘good chance of distinguishing himself’.63 The Anglo-Boer War revealed the amateurish status of British MI. To begin with the perception of spying by some higher commanders, when a copy of the Naval Intelligence Department manual on South Africa was forwarded to General Sir Redvers Buller, the appointed Commander-in-Chief of the expeditionary force, he sent it back on the grounds that he knew everything there was to know about that region. In general, all the MI warnings on the Boers’ intentions given to the War Office were either ignored by the chiefs or, in the case of maps and reports, simply shelved.64 In fact, the Cabinet regarded MI merely as ‘a useful reference library’. Not accidentally, therefore, Major General Ardagh told the Royal Commission in 1903 that MI ‘has not now, and has not for many years had, the influence on the military policy of the country that it ought to have’.65 The Boer War, thus, demonstrated more the failures of data dissemination and use by decision makers than the setbacks of intelligence collection and analysis by officers themselves. Another problem was that at the initial stage of war the intelligence officer was often looked upon as a sort of handyman, expected to undertake odd jobs of every description. Only after Lieutenant Colonel David Henderson was appointed to the position of Head of the Field Intelligence Department in February 1901, did the situation with regard to the responsibilities of intelligence officers in the theatre of war begin to improve. By the end of hostilities in May 1902 the Field Intelligence Department numbered 132 officers, more than 2,300 white civilians and several thousand natives.66 Interestingly, Colonel BadenPowell, the hero of Mafeking, was the first who recruited Zulu tribesmen for scouting activities and trained them in the use of disguise.67 In the aftermath of the Boer War, the British MI was accused of having failed

26

Russian MI around 1900

to fathom correctly the numerical strength of the foe’s designs to attack Natal, of having ignored the significance of artillery and machine guns, and of having lacked topographical information.68 The opinion of Richard Rowan added up to a pessimistic conclusion that There was nothing that resembles the modern organizations of British intelligence and secret service in operation at the time of the conquest of the Boer republics in South Africa. The disorganized uncertainties of the Crimea seemed to prevail, rather than the earlier traditions and excellences of the struggle with Bonaparte.69 Another well-informed researcher, Constantine Fitzgibbon, argues that, given that the principal aim of the British MI was the control of the vast Indian subcontinent, it was in this area where its use was most active and where its officers received some measure of practical drill, though not effective to prove their competence in the war in South Africa.70 To anticipate the further narrative, a good portion of the same kind of criticisms, whether fair or not, was given likewise by many observers to the Russian MI in 1904–5. We may even find likewise inside the British intelligence community such flaws, typical for the tsarist officer corps, as nepotism. Sir William Robertson, Field Marshal and one of the most authoritative military experts, recalled that It was not uncommon for an officer to be chosen because he was a society favourite, or had an attractive wife, or a friend in the Foreign Office, or for some equally insufficient reason. I have known officers to be selected who, besides being unsuitable on military grounds, had no knowledge of the language of the country to which they were sent, or of any other except their own.71 The ‘near relation’ of the British secret service, the MI of the United States, was established in March 1882 under the influence of the Second Pacific War of 1879–82 as the Office of Naval Intelligence, initially comprising four officers. Since the majority of Americans regarded peacetime espionage as ‘a corrupt outgrowth of Old World diplomacy’, alien to the open and upright way of liberty, any further attempts to develop MI were rejected by the Congress. Even the Spanish–American War of 1898 did not improve the neglected status of MI. Despite the Act of 1903 providing a new structure for the War Department General Staff and the growing trend towards teamwork, individualism nonetheless remained the main feature of the American secret service until 1917.72 And what about the continental states of Europe? What were the peculiarities of their secret services? The defeat in the war of 1870–1 against the Second Reich urged the need for a modern secret service, the Deuxième Bureau de l’Etat-Major of the General Staff, to be set up in France. Its activity was primarily aimed at the collection and collation of detailed information about German

Russian MI around 1900 27 preparations for a new invasion of French territory.73 Scholars differentiate two key characteristics of the Deuxième Bureau – its devotion to counterintelligence (one should remember the Dreyfus case) and its perception of any form of intelligence as a commercial commodity that must be bought. To complete the picture, one more feature ought to be mentioned – the close collaboration with the tsarist secret police against revolutionary émigrés in the last decades of the nineteenth century. This ‘friendly spy service’, intensified by Paris in the course of the Russo-Japanese War, will be minutely referred to in the following chapters. Although the origins of the German secret service dated back to the reign of Frederick the Great, the Reich had lacked MI comparable to those of the UK, France and Russia by the start of the twentieth century. Data related to military affairs were gathered by officers collaborating with district officials stationed at the borders of Germany and special intelligence departments within the police force. The intelligence service of the German navy was brought about by Count Helmut Karl Bernhard von Moltke who had been Chief of Staff to the Prussian army. He urged similar organizational developments for the army and navy. In fact, he formulated the programme for the systematic conduct of intelligence operations overseas adopted by the German Admiralty by the start of the twentieth century. Interestingly, the Director of the British Naval Intelligence Department, Prince Louis of Battenberg, claimed in 1902 that some of von Moltke’s ideas should be taken into consideration by the Admiralty.74 In the face of the unprecedented increase in subversive activities by other great powers, the German General Staff agreed to a fundamental reorganization of the institutions for assembling confidential information about ground forces. This realignment was accomplished in 1910, when the staff of the famous Department III B took over monitoring the developments in the Entente Cordiale. In comparison with their British, French or Russian colleagues, the German Foreign Ministry kept a wary eye on the conduct of MI, initially directed mainly towards France but afterwards extended, first to the UK, and later, to Russia as well. The fact that, in Richard Deacon’s opinion, the Germans made espionage a question of serious-minded professionalism is obviously regarded as another distinct quality of the Reich’s MI though, for example, both the Germans and French irrationally believed that British espionage was linked to occult and supernatural influences.75 When the celebrated Major (later Colonel) Walter Nicolai took over the office of its chief in 1913, it had already succeeded in both military espionage and counter-intelligence operations.76 The ‘junior’ partner of the German military secret service in the First World War, the MI of the Hapsburg Empire, progressed, however, more rapidly than its ‘big brother’. The initial body for spying, the Intelligence Bureau, was set up as early as 1864, after the unfortunate war against Prussia. Ever since 1885 there had been organized a special element charged with the collection of military–political information on Russia. Interestingly, the Austrian General Staff annually dispatched two officers to Kazan to study Russian. The later chief

28

Russian MI around 1900

of the Kundschaftsstelle, Maximilian Ronge, at least as famous as his counterpart Walter Nicolai, recalled that there was a pause in the intelligence process during 1903–9, when budget allocations to MI were reduced to nil. Only the Bosnian crisis together with the acceleration of the arms race on the part of Russia induced Vienna to reanimate the Intelligence Bureau in 1907–9. The observation posts of the Austrian MI were organized on the borders of Russia, Italy and Serbia to monitor developments in the areas of ethnic disturbances. However, the espionage activity of the high-ranking ‘mole’ inside the Austrian General Staff, Colonel Alfred Redle, who was recruited by the Russian military attaché, smirched the reputation of the Hapsburg secret service on the eve of the Great War.77 To summarize the conjectures of experts in the history of European secret communities, one should unequivocally stick to the opinion of Ian Nish that ‘intelligence at the beginning of the twentieth century was in general far less professional than either diplomacy or the planning of military operations’.78 In contradiction to this conclusion, however, there existed an intelligence service, which might be regarded by contemporaries as a model structure to spy out alien land. This was the MI of the younger Japanese Empire. Let us make a concise survey of this unique structure, which had its origins in the 1860s coinciding with the opening of the country to the world. In 1929, the later second-in-command of the German Nazi state hierarchy, Rudolf Hess, completed his dissertation thesis under the auspices of the director of the Munich Institute of Geopolitics, Professor Karl Haushofer. He studied the history of Japanese espionage in order to make use of its experience for the purpose of attaining world supremacy. According to Hess, the Japanese secret service aimed at spying into the political and cultural affairs of other states. Nothing was outside the realm of its activities. In fact, Hess concluded, espionage was second nature to the Japanese. Over generations there had emerged in Japan the internal system of mass espionage, where neighbours spied on each other. In Hess’s opinion, on returning home from a trip abroad, the Japanese deliberately visited the police station to communicate information about their sojourn. In case of emergency, they appealed to their consuls in foreign states. The future Nazi boss Rudolf Hess strongly recommended to his ‘Parteigenosse’ to introduce the Japanese system of ‘total espionage’ in the pursuit of dissidents, Jews and other ethnic minorities in Germany. The basic principles ran as follows: 1 2 3

Each person can be a spy; Each person must be a spy; There is no such secret that cannot be exposed.79

The founder of the Japanese army on the European model, Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, believed that reconnaissance and spying are the basic elements of his activity. The advent of the Russians to the Far East, especially to Manchuria and Korea, required, in his opinion, immediate means of response.

Russian MI around 1900 29 Since 1892, when the first college for studying the Russian language had started to function in Japan, and especially after the decade programme for the preparations for war against Russia was adopted in 1894, the General Staff commenced to second officers to spy out the war capabilities of Nicholas’s empire in the Pacific.80 The victory over the feeble Qing Empire stimulated the intelligence process. A network of secret centres to train scouts and intelligence executives was set up on the Japanese Islands. Hundreds of secret agents in disguise penetrated Russian territory, where they opened barber’s shops, pharmacies, laundries, restaurants and often brothels, to amass information on the armed forces of the potential adversary. According to the Daily Telegraph war correspondent Bennet Burleigh, Officers of the Japanese army and navy have thought it no shame to pass as barbers, cheap-jacks, photographers, and what not, in order to be enabled to spy out important and state secrets. The French, the Germans, the Americans, and ourselves [the British], have not escaped such sinister attention at their hands. Coast-lines, warships, harbours, and batteries have all been made their special study. They know as much about Weihaiwei and Hong Kong as our own authorities, and of San Francisco and the Philippines as the Americans. With them espionage has been bred in their bones, and fostered by custom, approved and rewarded by government.81 They established local webs directed by locally recruited spies operating in all the Asian countries. It is calculated that every tenth coolie working in Manchuria before the war was recruited by the Japanese. The central bureau of the Japanese MI was stationed in Tokyo, whence coded instructions to foreign residents were sent and where their reports, conveyed via consulates, by captains of passenger boats and cargo vessels or special messengers, were received and analysed. Some Japanese spies, mostly the members of the Black Dragon patriotic association, were even detailed to become converted to the Muslim religion in order to make a study of it and win friends in areas of Muslim population inside Russia.82 Japan had tapped the telegrams between the Russian military attaché in Tokyo and the Main Staff in St Petersburg and had deciphered their contents since the middle of the 1890s.83 By the end of 1903, the Japanese had arranged special groups to move ahead of the troops in the offensive operations in order to assemble findings on adversary; they had organized secret centres of espionage submitted to MI staffers in the active army, their aim being to cut Russian communications; they had trained 50 kamikaze saboteurs to commit acts of diversion on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Each spy had four messengers at his disposal providing Tokyo almost openly with various data on Russian troops or naval vessels. A secret agent of the Mikado had even managed to join the personnel of the Second Pacific Squadron directed by Admiral Zinovii Rozhestvenskii before it sailed off to the Far East. He was, however, later exposed and hanged on board the flagship

30

Russian MI around 1900

Suvorov.84 Meanwhile, the actual Head of the General Staff, Major General Kodama Gentaro, ordered tens of officers to be dispatched to China and Korea to act as military instructors in Peking, in the circle of Yuan Shik’ai, the Viceroy of Shandong, and at the court of the Korean Emperor.85 The Times correspondent George Morrison wrote in a letter of 24 November 1903 that according to Lieutenant Colonel Ducat, the military attaché to the British Legation in Peking, the Japanese, ‘who have agents at every railway station in Manchuria’, completed ‘an accurate summary of all the Russian troops from Lake Baikal eastwards’.86 The sum allocated to reconnaissance and sabotage in the rear of the Russian army in Manchuria amounted to 120 million yen, i.e. 10 per cent of the total war expenditures of 1904.87 It appears an exaggeration to conclude, as Richard Deacon did, that the intelligence services of the major powers were ‘in the kindergarten stage’ in comparison with the Japanese structure for espionage at that time. But it is true that the Russian MI had to struggle with a secret service that excelled its counterparts in almost every aspect of preparedness for war, on both land and sea.

2

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

Even a victorious war against Japan will be a disastrous calamity for Russia, and history will never forgive those advisers of the Sovereign who have persuaded him to make the present decisions if they lead to war. Aleksei Kuropatkin, General of Infantry, War Minister1

Russian discourse on Japan before the war The impressions of Japan as a distant, exotic country were epitomized by Russian travellers in their notebooks and memoirs. They contained a peculiar amalgamation of astonishment and disdain. On the one hand, they viewed the Land of the Rising Sun as a wonderland, a territory of inner harmony, which was differentiated greatly from the Christian world of challenges and contradictions. On the other hand, the Japanese were portrayed in their essays as people, morally and intellectually, inferior to Europeans. The most informative narratives of a stay in Japan were penned by Vasilii Golovnin, Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Zarubin and Nikolai Garin-Mikhailovskii. The first of those eye-witnesses stayed in captivity for almost three years in the early nineteenth century. He was frustrated with the distrust and perfidy of local authorities. The next visitor to Japan on the eve of the Meidzi Restoration, the famous novelist Ivan Goncharov, compared his hosts’ manners with the behaviour of a child. ‘We could not help smiling’, he wrote, ‘as we watched these soft, white, clean-shaven, effeminate faces, these clever and crafty physiognomies, their pigtails and their squatting.’ Ivan Zarubin, a doctor on board a cargo vessel destined for Sakhalin that dropped in at Nagasaki in 1880, related to the reader the Japanese efforts to emulate ‘the outward trappings of European civilization, to copy from their teachers those things that struck them most sharply as constituting the latter’s power’. In his description of the perception of Western ‘teachers’ by the natives, Zarubin, however, made a distinction between Europeans (and Americans) and Russians. While the former, he alleged, were hated in Japan, his compatriots were truly loved and esteemed by the local inhabitants. Another Russian observer, a railway engineer and novelist, Nikolai GarinMikhailovskii, took a trip to Korea, Manchuria and Japan in 1898. The situation

32

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

in Japan reminded him of the 1860s in Russia, ‘also a period of great enthusiasm and progress’. Interestingly, he compared the Japanese with the Koreans, ‘hopelessly entangled by government surveillance and the burden of the past’, and the Chinese, ‘though vigorous but less equally trammelled’. The population of the Land of the Rising Sun, in his narration, ‘is a force bursting out towards freedom, impressive in their determination, energy and vision’.2 While all these travellers lacked the qualities of spymasters, it is of interest to refer to on account by a professional. Mikhail Veniukov, an intrepid and tireless researcher, who did a good deal of travelling about East Asia, contributed greatly to the exploration and, as a part-time job, to gathering intelligence on Russia’s neighbours. His account of Japan and the society of that country is almost exclusively positive: the Japanese are clean, polite, welleducated in their traditional culture and rapidly acquiring Western knowledge as well.3 However, the lack of deep interest among the educated classes in Russia to her Far Eastern neighbour after 1855, the year when they established diplomatic relations, was combined with a sort of scornful perception of Japan. In fact, only two questions bothered St Petersburg at that time: the increasing competition with the Japanese in fishery and the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church established in Hakodate in 1873.4 The main reason Japan was considered to be a distant periphery by the high-ranking officials in Russia was the tsarist government’s concentration on the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia. The scramble for concessions, territories for lease and spheres of influence was channelled to the Far East, when China and then Japan became of notice to the tsarist government.5 The Russian military analyst Petr Simanskii, who composed a comprehensive survey of events in the Far East from 1891 to the outbreak of hostilities, alluded to the opinion of Count Nikolai Ignatiev, the eminent political figure, on Russia’s objects in the region. “ ‘We, the Russians’, spoke the Count, ‘do not demand a seaport in the Pacific solely to meet state interests. We need it to make the Britons feel, how it is far better to them to be in friendship with us rather than in enmity.’ ”6 The construction of the great Trans-Siberian Railway, on the one hand, and the Japanese victory over China, on the other, altered the geopolitical landscape in the Far East. According to the ambassador in Tokyo, Roman Rosen, at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, Japan’s public opinion had been more or less under the impression that Russia would be inclined to side with Japan. Interestingly, Rosen related to the rumours going the rounds in Japan that the admiral in command of the British squadron in Far Eastern waters had demonstratively shown his preference for the Chinese, and he was even suspected of having, on some occasion, endeavoured to warn by signal the Chinese admiral of the approach of the Japanese fleet. However, later on, the British admiral’s attitude was said to have undergone a radical change, brought on partly by the Japanese victories, partly by the growing certitude that Russia would remain neutral, with perhaps a leaning in favour not of Japan, but of China.7

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

33

This concept corresponds with the viewpoint shaped by George Lensen in his study on the relationships of Japan and Russia during 1875–1917. Professor Lensen pointed out that ‘if Russian diplomatists had been more alert and enterprising, they might have secured a secret understanding with Japan at the time of the war in 1894–5 for the joint partition of the Far East’.8 In the late 1890s, the picture of Japan as a peaceful ‘wonderland’ was gradually replaced in Europe by the alarmist perception of that country as the ‘Yellow Peril’, the notion widely exploited by the German Kaiser, William II, in his private correspondence with the European monarchs, including the tsar. According to memoirs of Prince Bernhard von Bülow, the German Chancellor at the start of the twentieth century, the Kaiser told him pointing his finger at Japan on the map of East Asia: ‘This is the yellow peril, the greatest danger threatening the white race, Christianity, and our entire culture. If the Russians run away from the Japanese now, the yellow race will be in Moscow and Posen within twenty years.’9 In Russia, the publicist Ivan Levitov was the first to bring it to public opinion in a series of essays: Yellow Race (1900), Yellow Russia (1901) and Yellow Bosphorus (1903).10 The strongest proponent of this mythology, the childhood acquaintance of the tsar Prince Esper Ukhtomskii, also contributed to its proliferation.11 The perception of this threat by typical Russians is narrated in Alexandr Kuprin’s story Staff Captain Rybnikov. The novelist described his main character, the Japanese spy Rybnikov, as ‘malicious, mocking. intelligent, even noble but not human, animal instead, or more precisely of a face belonging to a being from a different planet’. Kuprin also uses the attributes and nouns ‘yellow, monkey, machine, inhuman’.12 The allegorical pictorial representations of the Japanese peril usually juxtaposed the ultra-pious female figure of ‘Russia’ to a ghastly stylized Japanese dragon with exaggerated ‘slanted’ eyes, spiky head and ferocious jaws. In a print depicting a naval battle, as an American scholar has recently noted, the text in Russian compares the Japanese to the Mongol devastators of Russia in the Middle Ages or, to put it another way, to Genghis Khan with a fleet of destroyers.13 By the start of the twentieth century, the Land of the Rising Sun was already regarded as a possible catalyst of China’s awakening and the power to lead the new Mongol hordes into the heart of Europe. Instead of the view of the Japanese as a new generation of ‘the Greeks’ moulding a bridge between Europe and Asia,14 there emerged the image of brutal Asiatic barbarians, simulating the qualities of civilized people and fostering plots to conquer the white nations. It was neither in Europe nor in the United States, but in Russia, where the myth of Japan as a country of ‘Yellow Peril’ had become an element of ‘higher culture’. It agitated and inspired numerous personalities in the Silver Age of Russian culture, such as Vladimir Soloviev, Valerii Briusov and Andrei Belyi. The latter wrote in the initial months of the Russo-Japanese War that The great events, we witness now, unite all Russia in a common sentiment. The Russians of all political idiosyncrasies realize that the future of Russia

34

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes is at stake in the present struggle. Her world position together with the destiny of our national ideals, our arts and language, depend on her mastery in Asia and in the Pacific in the twentieth century.15

It should be noted that contemporary assessments in the European, particularly the British, press had much the same opinion of Japan. For example, an editorial in The Times stated that Japan stands on the threshold of a contest which must make or mar her as a power among the powers. Other great conflicts have been entered upon in modern history which were fraught with great possibilities and felt to be of fateful import to the combatants; but never, perhaps, has one of them been imminent which so plainly involved the very existence of one of them as a powerful nation. If Japan were to be vanquished in this struggle, she would have to [. . .] acquiesce in her permanent relegation to the rank of a third or fourth class power – perhaps to her ultimate extinction as an independent people.16 The rhetoric of the ‘Yellow Peril’ echoed both among the educated classes of Russia – the intelligentsia – and the high-ranking bureaucrats, in charge of the decision-making process, began with Nicholas II remembering for his whole life the assault made on him by a Japanese ultra-patriot during his visit to Japan as a globetrotter in 1891. However, some characteristics of the last Russian tsar also contributed to the alarmist perception of that country. It is a well-known fact that Nicholas’s character, full of contradictions, puzzled his courtiers. Weak and irresolute, on the one hand, while fatalistically resolute and stubbornly persistent, on the other, Nicholas resembled, according to one eye-witness, A mechanical toy, which would move straight ahead until the spring either unwound or broke. Fear could stop him like a physical obstacle, but once the fear passed and the obstacle was removed, he would resume his progress in the same direction. He was taught by his father to be an autocrat, considered it his duty, and tried to be a ruler in fact. But this required independent thinking and adaptation to changing conditions, of which he was utterly incapable.17 The Grand Duke Aleksandr Mikhailovich, a second cousin of the tsar, wrote in his memoirs that Nicholas II ‘suffered from his own virtues’ because he was granted with the qualities that were valuable for a common person, but inadequate for a monarch. ‘If Nicholas’, argued the Grand Duke, ‘were born in a family of common people, he would enjoy the life of harmony, encouraged by his patrons and esteemed by the men surrounding him [. . .] He is not culpable that the fate converted his best qualities into the mortal means of devastation.’18 These inadequacies in the sovereign’s nature, the main one of which was, to

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

35

use the Russian Finance Minister Sergei Witte’s expression, ‘the soft haze of mysticism’, or in other words the fatal interpretation of reality, biased greatly his perception of Japan as a barrier against the sacred mission of the autocratic empire to impose Russian Orthodoxy coupled with Slavonic values in the Far East. It was for this strange belief system that the tsar doggedly ignored the war preparations of ‘macaques’, as he scornfully called the Japanese, and later on maintained a steadfast confidence in the ultimate Russian triumph over the adversary in the course of war itself.19 Under such circumstances, a dominant group composed of several chief administrators, i.e. Ministers of Finance, War, Foreign Affairs and Interior, exercised the functions of state government, including those of decision-making. Their understanding of the ‘Yellow Peril’ is, therefore, of interest to better understanding the background of Russian MI in the war. The powerful Finance Minister Sergei Witte, for example, spoke out in favour of Russia’s messianic mission in such a way: ‘Russia appears before the Asiatic people as a herald of Christian ideal and Enlightenment not under the banner of Europeism, but under her own banner of the unique world civilization’.20 In Witte’s opinion, it was Japan which was determined to stop the progress of the Russian Empire in East Asia because she was fostering the plan of setting up a puppet state in Korea and Manchuria. To frustrate this plot, ignominious for Russia, St Petersburg, in its turn, ought to establish an ‘Austro-Hungary of the Yellow Race’, or to put it in another way, an amalgam of China, Japan and Korea supervised by the White Tsar and provided with the friendly support of France and the USA.21 On the other hand, however, Witte expressed his fear of conflict with the Asian neighbour to Lamsdorf in a letter of 1901: Military struggle with Japan in the near future would be a major calamity for us. I do not doubt that we would vanquish the foe, but our victory would come at the cost of many casualties as well as heavy economic losses. Besides, and most important . . . it would arouse the strong hostility of public opinion.22 One of the most thoughtful politicians of Nicholas’s Russia, Roman Rosen, maintained in the survey of the situation in the Far East submitted to the Foreign Minister in May 1897 that We should be ready at any time to rebuff the attack of the Japanese army of at least 75,000, provided the maximum of her expeditionary forces to be the amount of troops she had dispatched to China in the course of the recent war. To prevent such developments and frustrate the possible Anglo-Japanese alliance, unfavourable to a Russia lacking rear bases of supply and naval

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strongholds in the theatre of impending war, the government, to Rosen’s mind, ought to reanimate collaboration with Japan.23 There was, however, the other group of hawkish courtiers in the closest proximity to the tsar – the above-mentioned Bezobrazovtsy (or Bezobrazov’s clique). They produced a tremendous plan of how to conquer the Far East and create a new empire – the analogue of British India. Their influence upon the tsar culminated in the autumn of 1903 with the establishment of a Viceroyalty and the Special Committee on the Far East.24 One memoirist recalled later that Bezobrazov and A. M. Abaza [the nephew of former Finance Minister A. A. Abaza, the Rear Admiral and main administrator for the Special Committee] were persuaded that possession of the Tumen and Yalu rivers would guarantee protection from what they considered to be the inevitable attack of Japan. They also saw in northern Korea a large field for the development of Russian industry. They dreamed of themselves as pioneers of empire, like those sons of England who with the help of her capital, industry and trade had secured for the Island Kingdom many attractive colonies.25 In their views of the situation, both opponents and proponents of the confrontation with Japan attempted to rely upon the assessments of her war capabilities by MI. It is important, therefore, to survey them, beginning with reports and minutes by Russian military attachés in the Far East.

Russian MI assessments of Japanese war capabilities The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–5 stimulated the activities of Russian ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomats. The prompt and thorough victory of the young Japanese army, just recently shaped on the European model, over numerous but technically backward adversaries greatly impressed Russian military observers. Colonel Vogak, who witnessed the campaign, summarized his impressions in the Digest of Geographical, Topographical, and Statistical Materials on Asia, a periodical published by the Voenno-Uchenyi Komitet of the Main Staff: The Japanese army is strong and well organized and consisted of excellent, trained soldiers under the command of officers who are devoted to their service and fulfil duties with patriotism and reasonable passion. These qualities are typical of the Japanese from their infancy [. . .] I observed Japanese troops on march in winter climate, in the heat of battles – under heavy shooting by the Chinese, and I can only appreciate and esteem their way of fighting the adversary. While pointing out certain drawbacks of the Japanese army, namely unsatisfactory artillery protection, ineffective cavalry attacks and poor quality of pioneer troops, this attaché further maintained,

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I shall be not surprised if the Japanese army is regarded to rank as a firstclass one in 10–15 years. And behind the combatants is a nation, ambitious and prepared for anything to glorify Japan. Having beaten China, it strives for nothing but to fight any European power, and its opponent might be either Russia or Britain.26 Another military attaché, Colonel Ianzhul, felt, however, more scepticism about the capabilities of the insular empire. Commenting on some internal premises of the Japanese expansion to the Pacific in his report to the Main Staff, he wrote that, From our, Russian, point of view, the present international relations of Japan are affected by shortage of funds, but the government is still under the influence of hawkish and chauvinistic elements which control public opinion and make preparations for the next war, of course, under more favourable circumstances . . . They aim at gaining predominance in the Far East, and in Korea – in the nearest future. Taking into consideration a potential Anglo-Japanese alliance enacted in January 1902, Ianzhul came to the conclusion: ‘All these ramifications motivate the necessity to keep a close eye on Japan and be fully vigilant for any kind of surprise.’27 The collection and analysis of intelligence by Lieutenant Colonel Gleb Vannovskii provoked formidable reservations in St Petersburg. According to memoirs by General Polivanov, who later took over the position of War Minister, Vannovskii ignored all the requests of Aleksandr Izvolskii, the head of the Russian Legation in Tokyo, to inform him on the Japanese army. Their discord, finally, compelled Iakov Zhilinskii, Quartermaster-General and the direct patron of Vannovskii, to urge his recall to St Petersburg as an intriguer and an officer inadequate for intelligence work. During the first half of 1901, Vannovskii dispatched only four reports of little importance to the Main Staff in comparison with 17 dispatches by Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Konstantin Vogak and 23 by Colonel (later also Lieutenant General) Konstantin Desino.28 Despite strict directives from the Main Staff, the situation did not change for the better. In the final survey made by Vannovskii before his return to Russia, he stated, without citing any proof, that The Japanese army, on the one hand, has already ceased to be an Asiatic horde and has transformed into more or less equipped armed forces on the European model, but on the other hand, it has not yet attained the level of a regular army of Europe that evolved independently. Decades or even hundreds of years will have passed before the Japanese army adopts the moral principles of European troops and can compete with the weakest of them on equal terms.29

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Although Colonel Vannovskii never called the Japanese ‘an army of children’, he was nevertheless sceptical of its capacities. For him, the infantry displayed poor tactical preparation and the artillery lacked mobility because of inadequate horses, while the sad state of cavalry deprived Japanese commanders, whom Vannovskii found ‘weak and passive’, of control on the battlefield. His overall conclusion was ‘that against such an army a powerful cavalry detachment, armed with artillery, in fast-moving and energetic partisan-style actions will have sure and decisive successes.’30 Being pretty much sure of his estimate’s correctness, Vannovskii, even at the beginning of the war, made private statements in St Petersburg salons which demonstrated conclusively that in the first encounter with the Russian army the Japanese expeditionary forces would be reduced to pulp. He, moreover, quite seriously alleged that ‘every great effort of a Japanese soldier would imminently entail swelling of their tongue’.31 As General Kuropatkin afterwards reminisced, information received from Vannovskii had contradicted assessments given by the naval attaché Alexander Rusin. Besides, it did not correlate with data on the strength of the Japanese land troops assembled by the Chief of Section Seven, Colonel Mikhail Adabash, during his trip to the Far East on the eve of hostilities. However, accurate data communicated by Rusin and Adabash to the Main Staff were put aside by Quartermaster-General Zhilinskii and the Chief of the Main Staff Victor Sakharov, who considered intelligence they had assembled inappropriate to be figured in the annual digest of the Japanese armed forces.32 Early in July 1902, Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Samoilov succeeded Vannovskii to the position in the capital of Japan. Many contemporaries regarded him as ‘a very smart and highly educated person’ with a good sense of humour and, what is more important, with ‘good command of the Japanese language’.33 The newly appointed attaché got down to work hard to improve the intelligence cycle, in other words he commenced to set up HUMINT, recruiting secret informants mostly from European and American correspondents and military and commercial travellers, especially the French. To stimulate Samoilov’s efforts, Viceroy Admiral Alekseev instructed him to get down to ‘collecting data on not only military items, but on industrial potential and domestic policy, including information about arms and munitions supply to foreign states [Japan] from abroad together with intelligence of Japanese government activity to put the country on a war footing’.34 In fact, Samoilov, who was soon raised to the rank of Colonel, could summarize recent developments and dispatched to Alekseev’s staff regular reports covering a vast range of items on Russia’s future adversary. For example, in the survey of annual manoeuvres of the Japanese army in 1903, he detailed: ‘The high mobility of infantry, the well-trained artillery [. . .], including mountain units (we, the Russians, have only two batteries in the Far East), [. . .] and the open intrepidity of military men on battlefield.’ At the same time, Samoilov pointed to imperfections. These were, in his opinion, ‘the poor capability of cavalry regiments’, ‘a strong sensibility to

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

39

various unexpected effects’ and ‘the inexperience in distant marches and night operations’.35 Samoilov produced the most probable scenario of an initial stage of war in the report of 10 December 1903. Referring to estimations made by his counterparts, European military attachés in Japan, he argued that the Japanese expeditionary corps might include twelve field divisions and one guard division, but failed to evaluate properly the number of troops sufficient to crush Russian land forces and naval strongholds before fresh reinforcements could reach the theatre of war. He accurately, though, pointed out likely ports for the impending Japanese invasion of the Korean Peninsula.36 Analogously, Colonel Ivan Strelbitskii failed to establish an efficient HUMINT in Korea. The higher commanders more appreciated reports by staff officers who visited that country on intelligence missions, or by consuls accredited to Korean seaports, then those submitted to St Petersburg and Port Arthur by this military diplomatist. During 1901 he mailed to St Petersburg only three reports covering minor items, the activity that enraged the Chief of the Main Staff. His intelligence activity boiled down to the composition of the overall survey of current military–political developments in Korea.37 As a result, Colonel Strelbitskii was ordered to return to Russia like his colleague Colonel Vannovskii. But the activity of his successor in Seoul, Colonel Leonid von Raaben, disappointed the higher echelons of Russian MI as well, though von Raaben’s endeavours to go ahead with HUMINT were nor regarded as a complete failure, partly for the fact that he relied on the spy network set up by the Russian military instructors at the court of the Korean Emperor in 1896–8.38 The intelligence summary of 25 June 1903 submitted to the Chief of the Main Staff said that We have recently managed to arrange gathering data on Korea. We have employed translators and a few Europeans in charge of offices in that country. We have recruited secret agents in Genzan, Chinampo and Fuzan, and two more informants in Ichzhu . . . We receive data on Korean troops, on the Japanese garrisons in that country, on their reshuffling, etc., from the king’s adjutant, from the head of the cadet school (the only educated Korean general) and from the Chief of the Royal War Chancellery. Apart from these channels, von Raaben received information from clerks employed by the ‘Russian Timber Partnership’, a mining engineer dispatched to Korea by his ministry and a former officer who worked as a tutor of the Russian language in that country.39 Regrettably, because of a quarrel with Aleksandr Pavlov, the Plenipotentiary Minister in Korea, this ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomatist was soon recalled to Russia. The other two nominees to the post – Captain Aleksei Potapov and Colonel Alexandr Nechvolodov had been late to reach Seoul before the outbreak of hostilities. They, nevertheless, were later attached, first to the Viceroy’s and then to Kuropatkin’s staff.40

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Notably, Captain Potapov managed to get a replica of the map of Japanese positions on the Korean Peninsula three months before the outbreak of war. According to the Korean who handed this document to Potapov, a certain spy on Russian service had duplicated the official charter which was forwarded from Tokyo to one of the Korean generals recruited by the Japanese MI. Captain Potapov later passed it to Viceroy Alekseev who appeared to simply shelve this valuable document.41 Two more official Russian military agents, the First and the Second ones, were stationed in Tientsin and Chefoo, i.e. a comparatively short distance from the theatre of operations. Both were regarded as extremely experienced intelligence officers, who succeeded in the establishment of the spy network in China. Their views on Far Eastern affairs, however, did not coincide at all. While Colonel Konstantin Vogak supported the aggressive ‘new course’ initiated by Bezobrazov, Colonel Konstantin Desino adjoined to the opponents of this policy in the Main Staff and the Foreign Ministry. In the diary entries of Kuropatkin’s visit to Japan in June–July 1903, the general narrated the discussion with the First military attaché, who accompanied him on the voyage: When I asked Vogak to speak out more definitely on our combat readiness in the Far East and estimate, albeit approximately, what we should do in order to reinforce our potential to the necessary level, Vogak proved unready to elucidate the question. He did not make any calculations of the forces, neither of ours or those of our adversaries, and could not or was disinclined to mention the number of battalions, batteries and cavalry squadrons we should send to the Far East . . . It seemed to him, and he was right, that the disposition of Port Arthur had not been safeguarded properly; besides, he proposed the idea that the Japanese would not be able to land all their forces and that we should seek to have enough troops to repulse the first echelons of assault.42 The intelligence process carried on by the only naval attaché in the Far East Lieutenant (later Captain 2nd rank) Aleksandr Rusin, stationed in Yokohama, is also worth mentioning. Rusin commented on fitting out new warships, reshuffling naval forces, working out a schedule for mobilization and plans for attack against Russian naval fortresses. Current developments in the Japanese seaports, reforms in military training, innovations in army and navy regulations together with descriptions of new samples of ammunition figured in his regular memoranda to Admiral Alekseev and the Main Naval Staff. His skills as a thorough military observer contributed greatly not only to naval assessments but to the evaluation of ground forces as well.43 He managed to get, for instance, a plan of the Japanese invasion of Korea and that of an offensive against Southern Manchuria aimed at cutting off Port Arthur from Russian troops. In the aftermath of the initial stage of invasion, the Japanese Supreme Headquarters intended to capture Vladivostok and to land troops in the southern part of Sakhalin.44

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

41

In October–November 1903 Rusin repeatedly informed Governor General Alekseev of all the fluctuations of naval vessels in the coastal waters of Yokohama and other bases. Given the fact that Sasebo was within the shortest range from Port Arthur, it was destined by the Japanese to be a starting point for an initial naval attack against the Russian Pacific Squadron concentrated in Port Arthur harbour. Late in December, Rusin wired to Admiral Alekseev a minute on intensive military exercises of the Japanese flotilla headed by Admiral Heihachiro Togo and the establishment of the Imperial Supreme Headquarters together with the Supreme Naval Council.45 The situation becoming more and more aggravated and dispatches from Yokohama increased in alarmism. On 28 January 1904, Rusin notified his chiefs of the Japanese ground and naval forces to be put on full war footing with mobilization in view. His last cable was wired four days before the attack against Port Arthur; it contained information on two novel Japanese armoured cruisers, built by the Italians, leaving Singapore to join the battle fleet in the Sea of Japan.46 Surprisingly enough, although Rusin’s reports were appreciated by the Main Naval Staff and Admiral Alekseev, they were not paid much attention, in spite of numerous attempts to attract the notice of supreme officials. One memoirist recounted that Rusin’s reports with entries put upon them by certain higher commanders were simply filed in the archives of the Main Staff without any practical response in spite of numerous attempts of the naval attaché to attract attention to them.47 The reason for such ignorance might be the discordance of his reports with the memoranda by Colonels Vannovskii and Samoilov. In his later reminiscences of pre-war MI, Admiral Rusin described a typical episode of how he, requested by Viceroy Alekseev to comment on the adversary’s war plans, replied to the chief that the Japanese, in his opinion, would avoid splitting their forces, but on the contrary, would concentrate them in one point, possibly in Sasebo, on condition that our navy would be stationed in Port Arthur; they would seek afterwards to crush our flotilla and, depending on the result of the battle, would start carrying their troops to Korea and Kwantung; finally, they would besiege Port Arthur and relegate all forces, that were not engaged in the siege, to Mukden. At the moment Rusin completed his report to Alekseev, Colonel Vannovskii happened to drop in at Rusin’s office. The naval attaché let his counterpart look through the minute. Having done this, Vannovskii ironically remarked: ‘Only a mariner may believe that, on besieging such a fortress as Port Arthur, the Japanese will advance further to Mukden’. In reality, however, wrote Rusin, they manoeuvred in the way he had predicted to the Viceroy.48 In their analysis, the members of the Military-Historical Commission on description of the Russo-Japanese War, directed by Major General Vladimir Romeiko-Gurko, fixed another reason to explain the MI miscalculations of the enemy:

42

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes Our naval HUMINT in Japan was entirely isolated from that on land; it had, therefore, little practical meaning for the army. Meanwhile, the war had begun with operations on sea and landing troops on the Korean Peninsula; hence, naval intelligence was of lively interest to the headquarters of the army in the field.49

This opinion was shared by the Soviet military expert Konstantin Zvonarev, who blamed ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomatists for neglecting HUMINT in the Far East. Zvonarev alluded, for instance, to a minute by Colonel Ianzhul. The latter complained to the Main Staff that Under disastrous conditions of holding office in Japan, I am unable to recruit any civilians or officials as secret agents to gather data on the arms race in Japan; I have, therefore, to take trips about the country . . . particularly with the purpose of checking accidental intelligence or speculations in the press and society.50 Recent studies in archives have revealed, however, that tsarist military attachés embarked on recruitment of secret informants from the common people and ranked officials right after the Sino-Japanese War.51 As for the poor knowledge of Oriental languages and, especially, of Japanese counterespionage activity, both Samoilov and Rusin preferred to employ Western nationals for HUMINT. The close cooperation of Colonel Samoilov with the French military attaché Baron Charles Corvisaire became real evidence of such practice. Corvisaire provided his Russian counterpart with information about mobilization schedules of the Japanese, including a secret plan to besiege Port Arthur.52 In addition, Samoilov received an anonymous proposal to inform him beforehand about manoeuvres of the Japanese fleet. But for the shortage of a few thousand roubles, Samoilov failed to contact that informant and, hence, was unable to notify the Russian command in advance of Togo’s flotilla preparations to assault Port Arthur late at night on 8 February 1904.53 Analogously, Rusin succeeded in the recruitment of two French Lieutenants Jacques Boissier and Pierre Martini. Apart from them, persons in charge of supplying Russian naval vessels with food and ammunition were in Rusin’s pay. They regularly communicated with him on a regular basis for a long time before the war broke out. We know from secret correspondence that managers working in the Hinsburg business house tendered their services to Rusin and the staff of Viceroy Alekseev.54 The tsarist diplomatists, financial and merchant agents, correspondents and even missionaries were recruited by Russian MI. The Minister in Peking Pavel Lessar, the Minister in Korea, Alexandr Pavlov,55 the Consul General in Shanghai, Konstantin Kleimenov, Russian consulates’ officials stationed in Chinese cities, clerks employed in the Russo-Chinese Bank, all of them either established their own spy web or acted as informants to the Russian military administration of Kwantung and Manchuria. The French scholars Pierre Faligot and Roger

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43

Kauffer argued in their two-volume history of intelligence that Russian MI even succeeded in recruiting Yuan Shik’ai, the Governor General of Shandong Province and the President of the Chinese Republic in 1912–16, though they did not give any evidence of it.56 To facilitate contacts with local inhabitants and the recruitment of natives, Admiral Alekseev issued a special ordinance on 12 September 1903. In fact, he followed the Japanese who opened classes in the Japanese language for the population of some cities in Korea and China after the Sino-Japanese War. Alekseev likewise ordered the setting up of classes in the Chinese language in Port Arthur, Ynkou, Jinzhou and Mukden to be attended by subalterns and the rank and file from each regiment located in Manchuria. This directive, though certainly necessary, had not been fulfilled by the outbreak of hostilities.57 One more explanation of the flows in Russian MI might be the strong disbelief by the War Minister, General Aleksei Kuropatkin, the Foreign Minister, Count Vladimir Lamsdorf, and, especially, by the tsar himself in the Japanese resolution to inflict a decisive unanticipated blow upon Russia’s positions in the Far East. According to copious references, Nicholas continued to hold the opinion of Russia’s overwhelming military advantage over the Empire of the Mikado, which prevented the unmotivated aggression of the contender. It is true that Admiral Alekseev shared the same opinion, for he attempted to intimidate the Japanese on the supposition that if Japan could be convinced of an immediate strong rebuff by the Russians on the continent of Asia, she would give up the idea of such an attack. And the final reason of inefficiency proved to be a sharp disagreement between tsarist decision makers accompanied by a bitter interministerial struggle, which prevented high officials from formulating and conducting any unified policy in the region. One memoirist recalled that On the margins of one of Vogak’s reports Kuropatkin made a rather harsh comment to the effect that Vogak was writing a lot of nonsense and that his accounts were to be explained by the fact that he was in close touch with Bezobrazov and supported the latter’s opinion that our army in the Far East should be increased.58 The amount of various hindrances to the activities of official military representatives compelled Russian MI to use other important means of gathering intelligence before the war. They were official and covert trips in the Far East made by General Staff officers. Russian officers used to travel under the pretext of shooting leave, getting medical treatment or linguistic practice. Such trips were undertaken under the control of both the Main Staff and the Priamur military district headquarters. One of such ‘travellers’, the General Staff Colonel Vladimir Al’ftan, made a reconnaissance trip around Korea as early as 1895–6. On returning to St Petersburg, he submitted a memorandum to the Chief of the Main Staff Asiatic Department. The résumé ran as follows:

44

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes Only Korea will give Russia a seaport and all the advantages of such possession regarding both Japan and China. After the seizure of Korea, Russia will be able to threaten Peking directly and scrutinize Manchuria in her ‘iron arms’. Our route to Korea, thus, is through Manchuria. Korea is our object while Manchuria is our means to attain it.59

On the eve of 1901, the General Staff Colonel Stepan Voronin, a highranking official at the Quartermaster’s Department, summarized the propositions of war with Japan after the trip to the Far East. His description of the initial stage of campaign ran as follows: Before resolution to begin such a campaign, they will reconnoitre sea communications; then they will probably endeavour to transfer some of the troops covertly to the southern coast of Korea at Fuzan, taking advantage of the short distance between it and the fortified Islands of Tsushima.60 Another intelligence executive, the above-mentioned Colonel Mikhail Adabash, besides visiting Japan in 1903, explored vast areas with Muslim populations in Sinkiang, Manchuria, Shansi, Shensi and Gansu. His survey testified to the fact that St Petersburg could easily use the dissatisfaction of the Muslims with the suppressive policy of Peking to stop China from giving up its neutral status and in such way as to protect the rear of the Russian Manchurian army.61 On the other hand, the dispatch of younger subalterns by the Priamur military headquarters on two–three-month vacations in Japan, provided they could gather intelligence on current developments in Japanese ground and marine forces, proved to be almost fruitless. They could hardly speak Japanese and could not read the language; besides, they did not act as professionals but rather amateurishly.62 Our analysis of intelligence channels might seem deficient if we do not touch upon some technical methods that had been put into operation in the years before the Far Eastern crisis. Above all, one should rely on studies by the Japanese Professor of History Chiharu Inaba who examined the practice of wire interception and code-breaking, so common among Russian military and diplomatic agents in Shanghai. They contacted a clerk in the Dutch Telegraphic Company and procured through him access to diplomatic correspondence between some Japanese missions in the European capitals and the Foreign Ministry. Professor Inaba concluded that The Russian military attachés received information on a regular basis: all the intercepted dispatches would be immediately deciphered, translated into Russian and sent back to St Petersburg. In case of emergency, for instance in the bitter days of Tsushima, a Russian officer would stay at the telegraph station day and night. Remarkably, the person who managed to break this diplomatic code was the resident of the tsarist Department of Police in France, Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov. He succeeded in recruiting a valet on service at the Japanese Legation in Paris.63

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The Russian naval officers devoted more attention to technical innovations in espionage then their colleagues in the ground forces. A typical example of such an officer was Lieutenant Boris Dolivo-Dobrovolskii who later directed the Foreign Section at the Naval General Staff. In his article for Morskoi Sbornik, entitled ‘Naval Intelligence and Its Organization’, Dolivo-Dobrovolskii itemized key resources for the study of the adversary, stipulating how to set up signal stations on the sea coast and reconnoitre coastal waters with the aid of light naval vessels – gunboats, torpedo-boats and so on.64

Russian war plans and military staff games on the eve of hostilities A well-known myth of the war of 1904–5 is that the Russian higher commanders lacked any plans to fight Japan.65 Recent studies in archival and published sources have, nevertheless, refuted these allegations. In fact, the Main and the Naval Main Staffs got down to planning the campaign as early as in the middle of the 1890s! As we mentioned earlier, the Japanese victories over the out-of-date Qing armies threatened the Russian sphere of influence in the Far East. The tsar convened the Osoboe Soveshchanie (Special Conference) in St Petersburg to discuss the situation in the Far East in 1895. The attendants came to the conclusion that Japan was accelerating its naval rearmament to balance the strengthening of Russian positions in the Pacific with the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. They also estimated that the Japanese ground and marine forces would be in stand-by position to launch war by 1904–6. The War Ministry was given the highest instruction to compose a draft plan of how to repulse Japanese aggression, while the Naval Ministry was ordered to work out a plan of the Pacific Fleet’s realignment in order for it to decisively outnumber that of the foe.66 As a result, Russian military experts elaborated the draft of the Manchurian campaign in the offing. While working on it, the Main Staff reviewed in detail the war operations of 1894–5. The so-called ‘scramble for China’, undertaken by the major powers in 1897–9 to fix their sphere of influence, and afterwards the Boxer uprising influenced the reconsideration of these plans, their contributors bearing in mind two main geopolitical objectives of Russia: the liquidation of the financial deficit in the Far Eastern budget and agrarian over-population in the European provinces. To keep pace with modernization of the army, the War Ministry initiated realignment of infantry brigades into corps. On occupying Port Arthur, the Priamur district headquarters commenced to deploy newly reinforced units in boundary areas. In addition, they established a new administrative element – Kwantung Area to be leased by Russia from China for 25 years. In August 1898 Nicholas II enacted the institution of the Kwantung Area Headquarters. Five years later it was reshuffled into the Headquarters of the Viceroy in the Far East.67

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Meanwhile, the plan of war against Japan was harmonized with a new version of the Schedule for General Mobilization no. 18. The commanders of the Priamur military district, Lieutenant General Nikolai Grodekov, his successor Nikolai Linevich and Admiral Alekseev appealed to the tsar and the War Minister Kuropatkin to procure the defence of the Far Eastern outposts. Analogously, the Main Naval Staff produced in 1901 another scenario of maritime operations.68 From a strategic point of view, revision of war plans aimed at the strengthening of forces and the means to crush the Japanese within a comparatively short time period. The author of the multi-volume History of the Russian Army, A. Kersnovskii, commented on the procedure in the following way: They initially supposed that troops of the Priamur district would rebuff the Japanese by themselves. Then they decided to reinforce those troops by six reserved corps from the Siberian and Kazan’ military districts. And finally, they determined to improve the quality of reinforcements and to dispatch two additional field corps – the 10th from Kiev district and the 17th from the Moscow district.69 The principal discordance between the visions of war in offing by Kuropatkin and Alekseev hampered both commanders in bringing their plans into life. But the main reason for the lack of consistency in the course of military preparations was the vacillations by the tsar himself. Opposing one minister against another, the sovereign in 1902–3 became more and more inclined to support the adventures of Bezobrazov and the personalities of his ‘circle’. One can hardly believe that the Chief of the Main Staff, Lieutenant General Victor Sakharov, opposed the final draft of the campaign endorsed by Kuropatkin on 12 August 1902! The War Minister argued that The present situation, coupled with immobility of the [Siberian and Chinese Eastern] railroads, requires the conduct of foreign policy in an extremely cautious manner in the next few years, in order not to be involved in war under unfavourable circumstances with insufficient strength and immobilized troops.70 Research by modern scholars has revealed that Kuropatkin relied upon the memorandum by the 1880–90s Chief of the Main Staff, General Nikolai Obruchev, on Russia’s strategy in the Pacific. Based upon Obruchev’s arguments, relating, for instance, to the establishment of a new Russian protectorate in northern Manchuria, a replica of those in the Caucasus and Central Asia, or to the limitation of Russia’s expansionism in Korea in exchange for the occupation of northern Manchuria, these plans were reanimated by Kuropatkin in his humble missives to Nicholas II.71 In attempts to find new arguments for his concept and rebut the aggressive plots by Bezobrazov and Alekseev, who adjoined the court party of ‘hawks’, the

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head of the War Ministry departed on a two-month inspection to the Far East in May 1903. He officially intended to check the military capacities of the forces deployed in the region in order to assure the tsar that Russia’s desire to predominate in Manchuria was based on solid, indisputable arguments.72 His travel scrapbook contains a vision of the regional situation and conjectures of a war scenario. The prophetic conclusion made by Kuropatkin ran as follows: ‘The Japanese can attack us either in Kwantung or in Vladivostok. Or they can occupy Korea, and then make an offensive against either Mukden or Port Arthur together with the Chinese army.’ In his opinion, the ground forces operations supported by the attacks of naval vessels might threaten Sakhalin and the estuary of the Amur – both areas very important strategically.73 Referring to war circumstances in the offing, Kuropatkin pointed out that We ought to defend primarily Port Arthur. If the Japanese capture it and then occupy Korea as far as a line through Pyongyang and Genzan expecting our counter-offensive, this scenario seems to me highly probable. An attack from Korea to Manchuria should not be excluded either, particularly if China raises into uprising and cuts up lines of communication with Russia through the CER and Russia has simultaneously to fight Japan in the East and the Trilateral Alliance in the West. An attack against Vladivostok, before our detachments have been removed from the Nikolesk-Ussuriiskii and Novokievskii regions, proves less probable; we ought, however, to take preventive steps on the border. Given the present inadequate defence of these areas, landing troops in Sakhalin and in the estuary of the Amur will be a success; we need, therefore, to be prepared there as well.74 A fortnight’s visit to Japan and a closer acquaintance with its military establishments made Kuropatkin regard that Russia would do better to escape armed conflict with the neighbouring state. His report of the trip revealed once more the inferior nature of Russian interests in Korea in comparison with her aims in other parts of Asia and especially on the Western borders. Kuropatkin himself clarified the concept: Whatever the results may be, the first war versus Japan will not be the last one: on the contrary, it will open a series of conflicts between Russia and Japan, not to mention China. We shall have to fight millions of Japanese and Chinese, and given an attack in the west, we shall lose Siberia up to Lake Baikal.75 But this gloomy outlook could not restrain the tsar from new headstrong actions in the Far East. On his return to St Petersburg Kuropatkin learned about the establishment of the Far Eastern Viceroyalty. The War Minister, whose activities in the Pacific contrasted with the ambitions of the Bezobrazovtsy and

48

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the autocrat as their sponsor, was startled and immediately asked to resign, since he no longer enjoyed the confidence of the emperor. Nicholas’s response was to note the absence of a suitable replacement. Kuropatkin’s promise to act as a commander in the event of war and even participate in the Special Committee on the Far East seemed to mellow the reaction of the tsar. As Kuropatkin concluded in his diary, this conversation displayed Nicholas’s distrust of ministers in principle.76 However, the monarch preferred a kind of palliative in August 1903: Kuropatkin was given two month’s leave while a new Viceroy, Admiral Alekseev, was ordered to prepare a new general plan of campaign in Manchuria. But by the middle of October the task had not yet been fulfilled, for the staff in Port Arthur produced only a draft of the initial stage of war. It aimed at resolutely checking the Japanese advance in Korea and on the Liaodong Peninsula while making preparations for counter-offence three to four months after the beginning of war. It would appear probable that the draft met opposition from Kuropatkin who propagated the ‘Scythian tactics’ of enticing the Japanese into the depths of Manchuria similar to the way the army of Napoleon was induced to invade vast terrains and vanish there in 1812. Not accidentally, the War Minister made a request to the Main Staff on how matters were in 1894, whether the Japanese mobilized and whether they conducted active maritime operations before the official declaration of war was made.77 The sovereign adopted the plan elaborated by Alekseev and his staff, albeit amended by Kuropatkin, only on 27 January 1904, i.e. on the very eve of war when neither the Viceroy nor the War Minister had time to bring it to life.78 The endorsement did not terminate Nicholas’s vacillations of whether to accelerate the preparations for hostilities, or abstain from them in the anticipation of success in negotiating an agreement with Tokyo. The entry in his diary, dated 8 February 1904, the night of the Japanese naval attack against Port Arthur, ran as follows: ‘In the morning I convened a conference on the Japanese problem; we have decided not to commence war by ourselves.’ The tsar obviously sought to gain time for the strengthening of combat readiness. One memoirist later recounted that in reply to his question whether he had enough time to reach the next point of his career, a certain diplomatist calmed him down: ‘Do not worry, you’ll be in time, we’ll try to slow down negotiations till April.’79 Another evidence of Nicholas’s attempts to delay a final decision was the dubious order wired to Admiral Alekseev right before the night attack of Togo’s battleships on Port Arthur: It is preferable that not we but the Japanese open warfare. In case they do not get to operations against us, you ought not to oppose their landing in south Korea or on the eastern coast of that country up to Genzan. But if their fleet crosses the 38th parallel, whether carrying landing troops or not, you ought to attack it first, not wait for them to open fire.80 Although the naval programme for the Far East was adopted by the tsar in accordance with the war plan for ground forces on 27 December 1897, the

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

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coordination between the two Main Staffs still remained inadequate. On 4 March 1898, Nicholas II endorsed an additional budget for the Far Eastern fleet,81 in spite of obvious scepticism expressed by Sergei Witte who was inclined to cut down naval funding and Aleksei Kuropatkin who was determined to sacrifice the chimera of ‘Yellow Russia’ to the real strengthening of Russia’s borders with Germany and Austria-Hungary. It envisaged a dramatic increase in the number of naval vessels in four years, so that the Russian Pacific Squadron would maintain its position over that of Japan both numerically and qualitatively. In the naval games of 1896, 1900 and 1902–3 the Pacific Squadron had to ‘fight’ the Japanese fleet in the coastal waters of Korea. The scenario of the last game modelled the situation of May 1905 when the Japanese allegedly launched an unexpected attack on Port Arthur. The Grand Duke Alexandr Mikhailovich, who participated in this game as ‘the Japanese commander’, reminisced that, provided he was not so experienced as they were, he nevertheless defeated the Russian squadron and successfully landed troops on the Liaodong Peninsula near Port Arthur.82 Interestingly, the scenario of the game envisaged the dispatch of reinforcements from the Baltic Sea to the Far East. It also revealed the real desires of the tsar: to conquer the Kurils and the Islands of Tsushima. The officers who compiled the report on the game concluded that Russia should have the Pacific Squadron three times greater than the foe’s fleet and an army of 500,000, In addition to the superiority in forces, we ought to do our best to increase the combat readiness of our navy to fight the Japanese fleet, and to keep it in a stand-by position, so that it will be able to sail off from base no more than 36 hours after the Japanese fleet did.83 The final draft of maritime operations in the Pacific, approved by Admiral Alekseev and sanctioned by the tsar on 11 April 1903, provided the establishment of the Naval Headquarters in the Far East, the training of crews on board the naval vessels, the dispatch of patrol ships to reconnoitre enemy forces, the recall of Russian stationary gunboats from the Chinese and Korean bases to Port Arthur and the mining of sea routes.84 The basic strategic inadequacy of this plan consisted, however, in a voluntary split of the Pacific Fleet into two groups of naval vessels. While most light cruisers were attached to Vladivostok, main battleships and heavy armoured cruisers were stationed in Port Arthur. Another imperfection was the primarily defensive nature of the operations in the offing, for Admiral Alekseev sought to eschew any risk in the mortal combat for predominance at sea. Finally, its compilers devoted little attention to fixing the seaports where the Japanese expeditionary divisions would land in Korea and China.85 Unfortunately, the last ocean manoeuvres of the Pacific Fleet superintended by Admiral Alekseev in September 1903 proved useless. The vast majority of officers on board the men-of-war knew the theatre of war badly; the commanders of naval vessels could not align concrete tasks to their crews, shooting was

50

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

exercised at short range only, and besides they shot at static targets in bright daylight instead of doing artillery exercises at night and in bad weather. In accordance with the decisions made by the attendants to Alekseev’s Naval Staff Conference in Port Arthur on 31 December 1903, the Commander of the Pacific Squadron, Rear Admiral Oskar Stark, had to draw up a plan for reconnaissance in the Bay of Korea and off the west coast of Korea with Port Arthur cruisers. He submitted the document to the Viceroy only on 8 February 1904 when it was too late to prevent the attack by Togo’s flotilla. Strange as it may seem, meanwhile, another plan of maritime operations was being drawn up independently at the Main Naval Staff in St Petersburg. The staffers considered ‘the opportunity of the Japanese fleet to defeat the Russian navy to be close to zero’. They believed that the landing of enemy troops in the Bay of Korea was absolutely unlikely. Although Captain 1st rank Brusilov filed it to Rear Admiral Rozhestvenskii on 17 October 1903, Viceroy Alekseev seemed to ignore the contents of this document.86 The actual intentions of the Japanese Army General Staff corresponded with its ability to concentrate superior forces in the battlefield more quickly than its adversary, and establish a strategically advantageous position in Manchuria before Russia could bring its reinforcements to Manchuria. According to the war plan, the Japanese would move rapidly north-west through Korea, land forces on the Liaodong Peninsula near Port Arthur and, after the capture of the fortress, advance north along the railway line to threaten first Mukden and afterwards Harbin. This strategic point in Japanese hands would isolate Western Siberia from the Russian domains in the Pacific and effectively paralyse enemy operations. It was hoped that this rapid northern thrust would discourage a counteroffensive and eventually force Russia to negotiate peace with Tokyo.87 We have already argued that pieces of intelligence from various sources communicated to the Main Staff proved discrepant. The numerical strength of the Japanese ground forces calculated by Russian general-staffers varied from 150,000 to 500,000, or, put another way, it was asserted that the adversary would be able to dispatch twelve Infantry Divisions together with one of Guards.88 In fact, Russian intelligence understated the number of reservists and territorial reinforcements. As early as May 1904, the Japanese succeeded in the mobilization of an extra 200,000, and, by September 1905, they increased the army and navy to 442,000 with 20,000 more in reserve. As General Kuropatkin argued later, although the Russian staffs did not overlook the increase in number of Japanese ground and naval forces and noted the construction of each new naval vessel and the formation of each new infantry division in their surveys, they underestimated these military preparations by Japan and regarded the combatant capacities of these forces not to match a European standard. As the former War Minister further concluded, In the Main Staff, they annually adjusted and published detailed digests of intelligence on the organization and number of the Japanese army, they made regular assessments of its tactical readiness and capacity for mobil-

Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes

51

ization. [. . .] However, they did not mention a word about reinforcements which might augment the number of the army by two-thirds. Thus, the overall quantity of the Japanese active troops amounted to 1.5 million, that actual number being three times as much as their number according to prewar calculations by the Main Staff.89 In the course of war, the army and navy lost 14.6 per cent of personnel, and coupled with wounded and sick persons, the Japanese losses in warfare came to 30 per cent,90 albeit this question has remained disputed until recently.91 It should be noted that miscalculations and false assessments were typical of the Japanese too. One prominent political leader in Japan remarked selfcritically that Both sides exaggerated their real forces and means, while everybody was very badly informed on the situation of the adversary. Neither espionage nor intelligence could spotlight the true situation.92 But in contradistinction to the Russians, their opponents were far from neglecting the enemy. In addition, they did not ignore the moral factor of warfare and propagated national values, while Russian public opinion regarded the hostilities not only as ‘a short victorious war’ but, above all, as ‘a colonial affair’, viewing it much more through the lens of the campaign to suppress the Boxer rebellion in 1900. Such an attitude obviously enervated both Russian commanders at all levels and the public at large. Hence, there emerged a sceptical perception of the threat from Japan in the officer corps, although sound opinions were expressed as well. The Grand Duke Aleksandr Mikhailovich, for example, told Nicholas II at the end of 1903 that ‘no sensible person can doubt the wonderful combatant capacities of the Japanese army’.93 To tell the truth, the majority of military experts in such countries as Germany, France and the UK likewise believed the Japanese army and navy did not match their white teachers. The European press published accounts of corruption, lack of training and miserable funding being typical for the Japanese armed forces, which were incapable, according to the press, of winning decisively over the most powerful military empire in the world. We only need to allude to the forecast of the eminent German geographer Count Rewentlov who wrote in 1903 that ‘an offensive against Russia seems to be such an irrational act that we can never expect it from Japan’.94 Another wellinformed author, the British journalist Francis McCormick, claimed that ‘the Russians looked upon the Japanese much as Herodotus says the Persians looked upon the Athenians, whom it is recorded, the Persians thought to be madmen when the Athenians rushed down upon them’.95 One high-ranked Russian intelligence officer, Iakov Zhilinskii, the Quartermaster-General of the Main Staff, viewed the situation in the following way: ‘The Japanese army no doubt is still very far from ideal and it can be compared in no means with the principal European armies, particularly with ours.’

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Thus, on the one hand, the Russian MI produced numerous analytical reports full of anticipations of the coming calamities in view of the intensive preparations for war on the part of Japan. But in contempt of all these reports, Russian society and the officer corps were obsessed with illusions of an easy, quick colonial expedition in the Far East to punish ‘yellow dwarfs’, ‘ugly pigmies’ or simply ‘macaques’ (a species of small monkey indigenous to the region), as they scornfully called the Japanese. The Russian newspapers of a nationalistic tinge assured the reader that Japan would be a feeble opponent to Nicholas’s empire and that it would be no problem to Russia to crush it completely!96 In general, as one modern historian maintains, tsarist Russia plunged herself into a colonial adventure which everybody expected to end in a brilliant victory and not in such massive casualties.97 According to the memoirists, ‘Russian military circles were unaware of the situation in Japan to the same extent as was the public at large.’98 No wonder that the officer corps regarded the insular empire to be like a diminutive, almost ‘toy’ country, and some people in St Petersburg discussed a kind of sleeping virus that infiltrated the Japanese. The rumours spread in St Petersburg that Japanese infantrymen might fall asleep quite unexpectedly to themselves, right in the heat of any battle!99 There were certainly enquiring minds with a sound belief system among Russian officers at that time who sought to get the true information. For example, a commander of the 140th Zaraiskii Regiment in the Manchurian Army, Colonel Evgenii Martynov, described his attempts to obtain more news about the Japanese armed forces at the library of the Main Staff. On perusing the Digest of Recent Information on the Armed Forces of Foreign States before departing to the Far East, Martynov noted fourteen characteristics of the Japanese army, but only one of them, as he later affirmed, proved to be correct (‘the absence of pursuit’), while the others appeared absolutely false.100 But what is even more important, the Russians really underestimated the fighting spirits of the foe. As Kuropatkin admitted later in his memoirs, We overlooked patriotic spirits, which prevailed with the Japanese people; we underestimated a school system to bring up children as patriots of their Motherland, as its future protectors and defendants. We ignored their pride and reverence for the army. We did not take into consideration an iron discipline in the armed forces. We did not pay much attention to samurais. We absolutely misperceived the agitation against us in public opinion after we had deprived the Japanese of their earlier victory over China.101 Taken as a whole, the tsarist MI in the Far East underestimated almost every aspect of Japanese war capabilities. Even on the tactical level, they did not devote proper attention to the study in advance of the theatre of war.102 No wonder the perception of their potential enemy appeared distorted and often far from reality. The Russian army, thus, lost the war even before it was launched by the Empire of the Mikado.

3

The Japanese attack against the Pacific Squadron

Be bold and fearless! Now is the happy time For the people of Japan To show to the world What, by means of solidarity, The nation can accomplish! Japanese military song, 19041

Port Arthur as the major Russian naval base in the Pacific The seizure of Port Arthur itself was not a main objective in the initial plan of operations drawn up by naval strategists at the Japanese Imperial Headquarters. ‘Their aim was to destroy or incapacitate the Pacific Fleet, and that mission accomplished, the base as such would lose most of its military significance’, wrote a modern scholar of Japanese imperial expansion.2 In the view of actual combatants, however, the sea fortress figured as a stronghold of extremely high importance. One of Port Arthur’s defenders, Colonel Sergei Rashevskii, the chief military engineer in the garrison, commented on the situation in his diary: To my mind, Port Arthur is the main objective of the war. With its seizure, the Japanese will win half the campaign, if not more. We shall lose our fleet, bastions and batterers, huge stores, and what is the most vital – we shall lose the operative base of the Pacific Squadron; besides, with the fall of Port Arthur their friends, America and Britain, will obviously begin to support them financially.3 It is necessary, therefore, to understand the meaning of Port Arthur in the war doctrines of both sides. The fortress of Port Arthur (in the Chinese language Lueshun) was named after the British naval officer who commanded the advance unit of British troops

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that landed on the Liaodong Peninsula in the course of the Second Opium War (1859–60). Although the mountain ridges, surrounding its perimeter, facilitated the construction of fortifications and strongholds, they, on the other hand, were dispersed in groups separated from each other by deep canyons. For this reason, the task of setting up a continuous front line of defence did not appear easy to attain. In addition, the steep-sloped hills had plenty of ‘dead ground’ at their footings, hidden from both artillery and gunfire from the defensive line. In order to tackle the problem of ‘dead ground’, the defenders had to deploy numerous small batteries, to construct caponiers furnished with light field cannons and to position nets of barbed wire. In the course of the Sino-Japanese War, the fortress was captured by the Japanese expeditionary corps after a short period of siege. Interestingly, however, the Chinese fleet managed to limp off to another naval base – Weihaiwei. The diplomatic initiative by three great powers, Russia, France and Germany, forced the winners to cease their occupation of the Liaodong Peninsula and return this territory together with the stronghold of Port Arthur back to China. For a short period it was again called Lushun. Notably, the Russian Far Eastern fleet used to station there in wintertime with the permission of Peking. The seizure of Kiaochow by Germany in the fall of 1897 aroused a kind of geopolitical envy in other great powers, not excluding Russia. It became obvious to the tsar and his ministers that the ‘scramble for China’ had begun. Hence, their hands were untied for a game to play on their own risk. The decision was taken by some ‘hawks’ in Nicholas’s circle to follow the Germans in order to thrust upon the feeble Qing authorities an agreement dealing with the lease of the Liaodong Peninsula to Russia. This new possession was designated to become an impressive bulwark of Russian influence in the Pacific: a base with an ice-free roadstead for the fleet and a terminal point for the great Siberian railroad. The bargain was negotiated in early 1898 and in March of that year the Russian banner was hoisted in the fortress, renamed from Lushun to Port Arthur for the second time in its history.4 The Qing authorities agreed to lease the territory together with the fortress and the commercial seaport Talienwan to Russia for 25 years. But the fortress needed a dramatic reconstruction to be made before it became a real stronghold of Russian possessions in the region. According to the initial draft of 1898, the defence line of 70 versts was to be rebuilt as the main defensive perimeter ahead of the old Chinese wall which marked a boundary between the town centre and the suburbs. The plan also envisaged the deployment of 70,000 men and more than 500 artillery cannons, not to mention coast batteries. But the shortage of funds (the Finance Minister substantially cut the drafted allocations from 15 million to 4,235,530 roubles) precluded the full realization of the grand project, the numerical strength of the garrison was later lowered to 11,500 men, 237 cannons and 40 machine guns. As to the defensive line, it was shortened to only 22 versts in perimeter.5 The newly appointed Governor General of the Kwantung area, Admiral Evgenii Alekseev, envisioned the establishment of eight pillboxes, nine artillery positions of reinforced concrete, nine fortifications that were half-concrete and

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half-wooden, nine temporary fortifications, 24 positions of batteries of light cannons together with the installation of a continuous hedge six versts long. By the outbreak of hostilities, however, the construction of one fort had been successfully completed while three forts were half-ready, two forts were remaining at the initial stage of reconstruction and two existed only on paper. The redeployment of four artillery batteries for stationary barrage had been also finished, but work on three others were still in full swing. Only two half-concrete fortifications had been put into operation and five of them were still under construction. Notably, Russian military engineers managed to skilfully convert the mountain ridges and hills into natural barriers as well as to adjust the secondhand Chinese fortifications to the needs of defence. For example, they made deeper trous-de-loup and furnished their bottoms with nailed boards, as well as building numerous novel mined traps for Japanese attackers.6 As to mine-laying in the coastal waters of the Liaodong Peninsula, this procedure was exercised by Russian minelayers only after the Japanese attack of 8–9 February. The communicative infrastructure of the fortress seemed rather good. First, a new railway line with its terminal station in the old town linked Port Arthur with the commercial port of Talienwan. Second, the Russian administration built a dense network of roads, some of them with hard surfacing, although they were open to the enemy’s observation and shooting from the nearby hills. Interestingly, the Russian defenders even used their one car to deliver urgent minutes from commanders to headquarters in case of the breaking of telegraph or telephone connections. Some of the batteries, especially on the coastal cliffs, were equipped with searchlights and range-finders. The overhead telegraph and telephone wires connected all the forts and fortifications with the headquarters of the fortress; their main faults proved to be regular ruptures because of enemy artillery attacks and the heavy electromagnetic flux which made it possible for the Japanese intelligence agents to overhear the talk of staff officers. According to a French military observer, the apparatus for 33 telegraph and 120 telephone posts together with 28 optical devices was stored inside the fortress.7 In addition, a submarine cable was laid between Port Arthur and the Chinese commercial port of Chefoo.8 The small inner anchorage and the limited egress to the open sea were ranked among the main inadequacies of naval facilities, though both were of natural origin. Thus, the full squadron might manoeuvre only over two changes of the tide. The only way to assure readiness for instant sortie was to anchor in the exposed open roadstead outside the narrow entrance to the harbour. These deficiencies in the coastal line of defence added to the fortress’s being vulnerable to attacks by the adversary’s ground forces. The overall numerical strength of the garrison amounted to 34,000 infantrymen and several thousand mariners, i.e. the crews of the squadron. It also included a railway battalion and a special battalion of frontier guards, not to mention smaller units. By January 1904 the civil population was estimated as approximately 30,000 subjects of the Qing dynasty, 3,000 Russians, 770 Japanese and about 1,000 other nationals. After the outbreak of war, half the Russian civilians hurriedly left Port Arthur for Harbin or Russian territory by train.9

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The Russian Pacific Squadron in Port Arthur comprised seven battleships, seven armed cruisers of the first and second classes, and a number of light and auxiliary naval vessels: destroyers, torpedo- and gunboats. The Commander of the Squadron, Vice Admiral Oskar Stark, and the Head of his Staff, Rear Admiral Vil’gelm Vitgeft, though personally honest and assiduous, lacked experience in conducting marine operations and fighting. Besides, they had to obtain the Viceroy’s approval for any manoeuvre of the squadron at sea. The plan of maritime operations, adopted by Admiral Alekseev, defined the general mission of naval forces in the Far East as retention of command over the Yellow Sea from the vantage of Port Arthur. However, the fleet should eschew suffering losses and ought to preserve its forces in order to hamper the adversary’s landing attempts on the shores of Korea, China and Russia.10 As for the brief survey of Port Arthur presented here, of course this fortress constituted a hard nut for any foe to crack, even taking into account the experience of the Japanese in the earlier war against China and the activities of their MI to spy out war preparations on the Russian side.

Russian warning intelligence and the sudden Japanese attack During the last weeks before the sudden attack on Port Arthur in the winter of 1903–4, as Bruce Menning truly stated, ‘a consistent misreading of indicators’ related to the war preparations on the Japanese side ‘clouded Russian perceptions of war imminence’.11 But what were these indicators in reality? It should be taken into account that a specialized mode of analysis, warning intelligence (WI), deals primarily with traditional military threats and with the menace of sudden and surprise attack. It focused on both strategic and operational levels, sometimes even to tactical echelons. Fragments of warning intelligence are usually called ‘indications’, either purely military, or a combination of political, economic and technical. The main objectives are to examine indications in depth and to undertake a cumulative analysis of information over a certain period to anticipate hostile action.12 Apart from the flow of intelligence reports from official military attachés and secret agents to Russian staffs, there were other apparent indications of Japanese combat willingness. For example, one naval officer later recalled a strange Briton who met his commander, Captain 2nd rank Lebedev, and had a long conversation with him in December 1903. The Briton informed Lebedev of the Japanese plan to descend on Russia in Port Arthur in the forthcoming weeks. The attack, added the visitor, would be unexpected, before war was formally declared by the Japanese government. The officer recalled that the mysterious guest met his commander three times, and handed him a map during his last visit on board the Russian torpedo-boat. Upon receiving this piece of intelligence, Lebedev asked for an audience with Admiral Alekseev to impart it to the Commander-in-Chief. His report to the Viceroy, however, infuriated the Admiral. He simply ordered the captain not to spread false rumours and threatened him with a disciplinary arrest. As far as the officer could judge, no atten-

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tion was devoted further by the staff in Port Arthur to this valuable nugget of intelligence.13 Another warning was posed by diplomatists. The eye-witness recalled, By the night of attack, we have already obtained intelligence from diplomatists stationed in Chefoo. They informed us that there was a secret Japanese naval agent besides the Consul on board the ship which dropped in at Port Arthur on 26 January. This agent had been living in Chefoo for many years. They said that while staying in Port Arthur he even went ashore disguised as the Consul’s valet. Thus, he was able to map the position of our squadron, and afterwards, when the ship met at the place agreed with the Japanese flotilla, this imaginary valet communicated the data collected to the commander.14 The same naval intelligence officer must have made a series of reconnaissance ‘excursions’ to Port Arthur before the war. One Japanese naval officer jotted down in his diary on 26 January 1904 that Recently, our spy, the officer of the Imperial Headquarters, has again visited the fortress. We dispatch spies there on a regular basis for a long stay. This officer informed us that the Russians do not think of war. They do no military exercises, they do not fire cannons, and in the corner of the shipyard they have stockpiled torpedo-boats, on whose decks no machinist or boatswain ever stepped.15 For many weeks, Japanese secret agents inside the bastions of Port Arthur, disguised as barbers, photographers, peasants, or even sewage disposal men, studied them in detail, mapped them and calculated mathematically all the heights and angles to be required for the deployment of howitzers to shoot at the troops and warships stationed at the fortress. One may definitely conclude that their admirable espionage system had been organized many years before the outbreak of the war, and continued during hostilities with added zest. ‘The location of the electric power station and main transmission lines, the hidden position of the search lights among the fortified hills, and the distribution of mine fields designed by the Russians to make the harbour impregnable’, wrote Richard Rowan, the American expert in the history of espionage, ‘all were made known to the Mikado’s admirals and generals by agents of the intelligence.’16 On 6 February, i.e. two days before the attack, the Japanese naval vessels sank the Russian cargo ship Rossiia. The mariners regarded this episode as a good omen to begin warfare. If this ship had been equipped with a wireless radio station, it could have immediately informed Port Arthur of this hostile action. Lamentably, the supreme commanders got information of this episode only after the outbreak of war. In some other Korean and Japanese seaports, cargo vessels and passenger ships under the Russian flag had been likewise interned till the end of hostilities. Besides, the Russian post offices in the Korean towns of Fuzan

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The attack against the Pacific Squadron

and Mazanpo ceased transactions after being captured by the Japanese police forces.17 It is well known that the first salvo in the hostilities was made by the Japanese flotilla upon the Russian gunboat Koreets at 4.40 p.m. on 8 February. The boat was rushing to Port Arthur with the diplomatic post and the latest pieces of intelligence. On finding herself surrounded by the battleships under the command of Admiral Urihu, the boat was forced to return back to the Korean port of Chemulpo, from which she had sailed just a few hours before. It is less well known, however, that Captain 1st rank Vsevolod Rudnev, who commanded the armoured cruiser Variag stationed at the same Korean naval base and scuttled there by the crew because of the incapability to fight the superior naval forces of the Mikado, could have likewise sent a wire on the beginning of war to Russian headquarters. One of the best assistants of the brilliant Russian engineer, the pioneer in wireless radio transmission Professor Popov, Midshipman Sergei Vlas’ev later gave considerable evidence of his business trip to Port Arthur to equip naval vessels with 38 new radio stations. He brought only two of them with him, while the other 36 devices were to be delivered by sea. Unfortunately for the Russians, the cargo ship was captured by the foe. However, Vlas’ev managed to fit out one of the devices to send and receive messages up to a range of 140 miles on the Golden Hill in Port Arthur. The cruiser Variag was equipped with a similar kind of radio station as early as 1902, though it had a shorter transmission range of only 14 miles. Three days before the outbreak of hostilities Vlas’ev got in touch with his colleague on board Variag. It was a great achievement of the Russian engineers which could have greatly developed the SIGINT, provided the signals were stable over time. Vlas’ev did not comprehend the reasons of Captain Rudnev for not having wired an urgent message to Port Arthur after Koreets and Variag were attacked by Admiral Urihu at Chemulpo. Nobody knew whether Rudnev made an attempt, and if he did, why it proved unsuccessful, depriving the Russian supreme command of the last chance to rebuff the Japanese attack in the offing.18 Despite all the measures taken by the government of the Mikado on the eve of war to camouflage their offensive plans, the Japanese commanders could not totally conceal their preparations. Had the Russian staff officers managed to impart the intelligence they collated to their supreme command, the attack by Admiral Togo’s squadron would not have been so unexpected to the Russians on the night of 8–9 February. It is a matter of discussion whether the decision of the Japanese headquarters to launch an offensive against Russia before the formal declaration of war infringed international law. The account of an actual combatant, the naval officer Nirutaka, displayed that the unexpectedness of operations in war had always been within the traditional Japanese military thought. It was quite natural, therefore, to Japanese officers of all ranks to take a favourable chance for a decisive blow upon their foe. To use modern parlance, Nirutaka witnessed the decision-making process in the wardroom on board the flagship Mikasa. He wrote his impressions in his diary:

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At the conference of naval commanders, held by Heihachiro Togo, the officer of the Imperial Headquarters took the floor. He has arrived with a secret parcel. One of the attendants asked him whether Japan had declared war on Russia. Suddenly Admiral Togo interrupted the spokesman and replied that it was high time to abolish this old European tradition of declaring war in advance. It was time, he added after that, to apply modern methods, i.e. to launch an offensive when necessary and under favourable circumstances.19 Besides, as early as 1896, Rear Admiral Stepan Makarov pointed out that the Japanese were diligent students of the English, who, in their turn, did not shrink from hostile actions even before war was formally declared.20 The events of the Sino-Japanese War justified that, while negotiations were still in full swing over Korea, the army and navy of the Mikado had already occupied Seoul and had defeated Chinese forces at Anshan.21 We also remember that the issue of a sudden attack figured in various scenarios of naval operations compiled by general-staffers in the pre-war period (see Chapter 2). But there existed an obvious discrepancy between the game and the situation in reality. The modern American historian Bruce Menning, who studied the problem, wrote that The attack in the war game followed immediately on the heels of a formal Japanese war declaration. The point was that the attack came so soon after the declaration that the situation amounted to a surprise. Upon receiving notional news that Japan had declared war, participants playing the Russian side in the war game cleverly avoided the sudden attack by immediately redeploying the Russian squadron to nearby Talienwan bay. When ‘Japanese’ attackers reached Port Arthur, they confronted only a handful of Russian torpedo-boats.22 The tsar and the Foreign Ministry feared being provoked to go on a war footing by their opponent. No wonder, Count Vladimir Lamsdorf, who directed the diplomatic service, imparted his apprehensions to Kuropatkin two days before the attack on Port Arthur: ‘I strongly warn our heroes in the Far East not to rush into a sudden war incident, which may fairly transit into actual war without any solemn declaration of it.’23 No wonder, when Admiral Alekseev put the squadron out to sea for two days’ manoeuvres on 3–4 February, they agitated both the Foreign Ministry and the enemy. The latter believed his plans to be exposed, while St Petersburg regarded the squadron’s navigation test to be a kind of provocation on the border threatening to complicate thorny negotiations with Tokyo. One can see, thus, the fatal cause of Russian unreadiness for war in the traditional discord between mariners and diplomatists. To the benefit of the Japanese side, a few of casualties facilitated the conduct of operation by the Japanese. First, on 8 February Admiral Stark held a grand ball at his palace to celebrate his spouse’s name-day (St Mary’s Day).24 Therefore, ranking naval officers accompanied by spouses and daughters were invited

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to a grand ball at the Naval Club. According to Count Constantine Benkendorf, then a subaltern in the staff of the Pacific Squadron, there was a myth that ‘a number of ranking and junior officers of the fleet, almost everyone except the watchkeepers, were attending the name-day party given ashore’. This party actually took place, and was well attended by both officers on the harbour staff and those from the few minor units of the fleet in repair, but not one man from the ships outside, or the destroyers inside, was there. ‘In the general atmosphere of uneasy expectation’, concluded Benckendorf, ‘no one would have dreamed of attending, even if a strict no-shore-leave order had not been in force.’25 The subsequent account of the Japanese officer also averred that, to the surprise of the attackers, activity on board the warships proved rather intensive even late at night.26 This judgement discredits allegations by some Western war correspondents (mostly British) that officers of the fortress got deadly drunk and launched into amusements in the city brothels in the very period of attack.27 Second, unfortunately for the Russians, the night of 8–9 February was New Year’s Eve according to the lunar calendar, followed by Far Eastern people. The numerous Chinese population of Port Arthur enjoyed themselves at the festival in a traditional manner: they exploded petards with such blasts that only few people inside the fortress heard explosions at the outer roadstead.28 Third, what seems even more important, the naval exercises fixed earlier on this ghastly night were cancelled unexpectedly at the very last moment. The Commander of the Squadron, Vice Admiral Stark, ordered four torpedo-boats to sail to the commercial port of Talienwan (or Dal’nii in Russian). The other naval commanders, however, were not aware of this order; when a detachment of Japanese torpedo-boats appeared at the outer harbour of Arthur at 11 p.m., fully illuminated, the Russian mariners mistakenly confused them with their own. According to the account of an eye-witness, nobody expected such an impudent thrust of the adversary who knew just what he was doing and launched the attack when the crews on board the warships were going to sleep.29 Thus, the initial attack revealed two main inadequacies of naval reconnaissance – the problem of ‘friendly fire’ at sea together with the need of coordination between coastal artillery batteries and naval vessels using various means of identification, e.g. signal lights at night and signal flags in daytime, not to mention the short-range radio apparatus on board the warships. In fact, both sides had the problem of how to properly identify either friendly or enemy naval vessels in any weather. Notably, the defenders of Port Arthur found the solution by providing signal seamen to each battery of artillery overlooking the coastal waters within a short range of the fortress.30 The security measures in question also provided the utilization of anti-torpedo nets to protect warships from unexpected raids of enemy destroyers. The new regulation of how to take security measures at the outer roadstead of Port Arthur was put into operation by Admiral Alekseev on 19 January 1904. Further rectifications were later made to this instruction in the course of maritime operations.31 However, one of the actual combatants, the watchkeeper on board the battleship Retvizan, recalled a strange incident that occurred six hours before the

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Japanese attack. After the seamen let the anti-torpedo net down in accordance with routine regulations, they suddenly received the signal-order from Vice Admiral Stark addressed to the squadron: ‘Stow torpedo nets repeat’. And the nets rose up out of the water. A certain captain even broke the procedure and asked for confirmation, but in vain, he had not got it. Perhaps that was one of the first acts of disinformation in the history of war!32 The Russians, moreover, were startled by the attack because a special service in the cathedral, a parade of the garrison and the departure of the Pacific Squadron were scheduled for the next morning, 9 February 1904. The Head of the Main Staff, Lieutenant General Sakharov, suggested to the War Minister that it would be advisable for the Pacific Squadron to leave the harbour in order to be in combat readiness for maritime operations against the Japanese battle fleet.33 And the flagship of Admiral Stark signalled to the other naval vessels before the sun set: ‘Be prepared to sail off at 6 a.m.’34 One may conclude, therefore, that the adversary forestalled the Russian sortie to the open sea by a few hours only! It should be added that the attack of the Japanese fleet was only a partial success. Despite the intelligence on the Russian squadron, Admiral Togo decided to minimize any risk in the operation. To eschew Russian traps in the coastal waters of Port Arthur, he divided his flotilla of torpedo-boats into two parts: a detachment of eight warships was directed to Talienwan while the main group of ten boats was dispatched to attack the outer anchorage of the Russian fortress.35 They loosed sixteen torpedoes,36 but only three of them hit the Russian battleships Tsesarevitch and Retvizan and the armoured cruiser Pallada, which were shifted to the outer anchorage together with the other naval vessels of the Pacific Squadron on 2 February. The attackers lost one torpedo-boat; several others were badly damaged, though they succeeded in reaching the nearest Japanese anchorage in the waters of the Maodao Islands. To tell the truth, some experts felt perplexed, because they realized quite well that had the Japanese landed troops near the fortress, say, in Takhe Bay on the right flank of the defence line, they would have easily captured Port Arthur in a few hours.37 Although it lasted 75 minutes (from 11.35 p.m. to 00.50 a.m.), this attack had a catastrophic effect upon the commanders of the squadron, for they had lost any confidence in gaining victory over the enemy and any initiative in attaining this objective. The moral effect of the attack, however, proved even greater than loss of three warships and 150 seamen. In Russia, many people took the defeat very hard while the press hurled invectives at the War and Naval Ministries. What is more important, further bad news of the loss of Variag and Koreets together with information of the Japanese landing in Korea came to St Petersburg almost simultaneously with the intelligence of the first attack. As a result, the Russian Main Naval Staff was forced to order the flotilla hurrying to the Far East and found itself in a quandary to return home immediately, although the naval vessels had already reached Port Said in the Red Sea. The reverberations of the night assault outside Manchuria appeared to be much worse in terms of the prestige of Russia. When the world got to know about the defeat of the powerful Russian fleet in the battle with the Japanese

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flotilla, everybody, except a handful of well-informed specialists, felt a real shock: at a moment Japan had entered the arena of the most influential maritime powers. This entailed a reversal in public opinion in both Asian and European countries. In China, the Qing government, though declared formally neutral, was eager to finish with the Russian preponderance in Manchuria. The legislative bodies in some European states, e.g. the British parliament, yielded to refund Tokyo’s efforts in war against Russia. Much less attention, however, was devoted by the public and officials to the fact that the Empire of the Mikado had violated international law when it launched hostilities in the Far East without any formal declaration of war. Even today there are Japanese scholars who regard these actions of the Imperial Headquarters as dishonest and shameful.38

Kuropatkin’s appointment as Commander-in-Chief and the Russian MI The news of conflict was received in Russia with astonishment. The public remembered that Nicholas had proclaimed on the eve of the New Year that there would be no war because he himself did not desire it.39 The manifest issued by the tsar laid the blame for hostilities on Tokyo. The mobilization of Siberian military districts was announced. Notably, there was no mobilization in Central Asia, and the empire’s Muslim minorities were not subject to conscription during the war, so that the vast mass of Muslims inside and outside Russian dominions remained perfectly quiet. However, a few nonconscript cavalry units from the Caucasus, e.g. from Dagestan and Chechnya, joined the Manchurian Army in the summer of 1904. The dramatic commencement of war caused a fall in the prestige of Admiral Alekseev, who was regarded by many high-ranking officials, both military and naval, not to match the position of Commander-in-Chief. The courtiers in the circle of Nicholas II and the public at large addressed petitions to the sovereign about the desirable appointment of General Kuropatkin to the Far East. Meanwhile, the War Minister himself made energetic attempts to obtain the tsar’s goodwill for his plan. In the humble memorandum of 15 February, based upon reports by military attachés and intelligence obtained through other channels, the War Minister suggested to Nicholas a novel strategy for the Manchurian campaign, which contrasted sharply with the existing plan of initial land and naval operations by Alekseev adopted by the tsar earlier. The fact that Kuropatkin linked together Russian strategic interests on its Western borders with the determination to prevent the Japanese invasion of the Empire in the Far East inspired the tsar. But what impressed him most of all, according to the diary entry dated 16 February, were the Minister’s intentions to remove initial hostilities to the territory of Japan. This forced Nicholas to make his choice in favour of the general.40 In the last humble minute submitted to the tsar before the departure to Manchuria, Kuropatkin maintained:

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Thinking over the difficult circumstances under which we have to concentrate troops in the Far East, I suppose that we should put an objective not to be beaten off by parts at the initial stage of campaign [emphasis by Nicholas II]. In Kuropatkin’s ambitious scheme, consequent stages of war were envisioned as: 1 2 3

4

The struggle of battle fleets for domination on sea; The landing of Japanese troops and our opposition to these actions; Defensive operations accompanied by mobile partisan operations in the rear of the Japanese army which should precede the concentration of Russian ground forces; The Russian counter-offensive to be taken in order: a b

5

to oust the Japanese from Manchuria; to force them from Korea as well.

The landing of Russian troops in Japan. The strike to be inflicted upon the Japanese territorial garrisons. The suppression of uprising of the natives. The capture of the capital and the Emperor.41

Modern historians believe, however, that the principal faults of this plan consisted in the underestimation by the War Minister of the Japanese to have launched simultaneously an attack on Port Arthur and an offensive against Liaoyang. He also miscalculated the pace of landing troops in Korea and that of their north-west advance to the Sino-Korean border through wooded and mountain areas.42 In general, the appointment of General Kuropatkin as Commander-in-Chief was heartily welcomed by the public, for a lot of ordinary people considered him to be a successor to the eminent ‘White General’ Mikhail Skobelev, the victorious conqueror of Central Asia in the course of the nineteenth-century Great Game. Besides, Kuropatkin might be regarded as a kind of self-made man. He ranked not with traditional Russian aristocracy but with gentry who had to be on military service to earn their living. The overall public animation with Kuropatkin appointed to the highest post, figured in the memoirs of Lieutenant General Sobolev, the commander of the 6th Siberian Corps: All Russia worshipped Kuropatkin on his departure to the Manchurian front. Everybody hoped that his army would certainly crush the Japs. He himself strongly believed in his lucky star and spoke out that peace would be signed in Tokyo.43 On 22 February 1904, the Moscow Gazette editorial proclaimed: No cannon salutes will escort General Kuroparkin on his departure to the

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The attack against the Pacific Squadron Far East; no lights of triumph will follow him along the way to the front. He will be escorted by blessings of the Russian people and Russian hearts will inflame, full of inspiration and belief in this talented military leader, in his experience, self-possession and gallantry.44

In the final account, however, Kuropatkin’s promotion distorted the supreme command in Manchuria. While on the one hand the plan of campaign in offing by Alekseev had not been ultimately rejected by the tsar, a new project by Kuropatkin, on the other hand, had not been adopted by the Viceroy either. The arrival of the new Commander-in Chief at Liaoyang on 28 March 1904, thus, only set hurdles for the coordination of staffs’ activities. The corps and divisions were deprived of concrete and correct instructions, for they had to fulfil orders both from Admiral Alekseev, who continued to act as the Supreme Commander of ground and naval forces in the Pacific, and by General Adjutant Kuropatkin, the Commander-in-Chief of the Manchurian Army. It seems a paradox, but in the view of some military experts, the most striking imperfection of the new commander proved to be his earlier military career in the Balkans and Central Asia. For example, the prominent military specialist General Petr Dragomirov ranked Kuropatkin among the so-called Tashkentsy (the ‘Tashkents’). That was an abbreviation for the actual combatants of wars waged by the Russian expeditionary forces to subjugate the khanates of Central Asia in the 1870s and 1880s. Dragomirov concluded: Strange as it may seem, the ‘Tashkents’ are a kind of officers who had obtained the experience of Russian limited military actions in Central Asia, where the adversaries proved to be weak and the tactics ceded in significance to the problems of food supply, sanitation and hygiene of troops, etc. These issues had been of much more importance for commanders in such conflicts.45 But for the fact that public opinion in Russia perceived the war as a distant colonial affair, very much like the short-term Chinese campaign of 1900, the appointment looked justified and accurate. If ever Russia waged a drawn-out war, believed some sceptics, Kuropatkin would force the enemy to exhaust her resources, and Russia would show her real strength in the final account.

4

Russian military intelligence in the first months of war

Russia is doubtless strong, But her regiments do not scare us, The Russian possessions are deserted, The souls of soldiers are empty. And our homeland is mighty, She exists for many years. The sons of Japan like a storm cloud, Will rush at the enemy. Japanese military song, 19041

The challenges of the initial stage According to ‘The Regulations for the Army in the Field’ adopted in 1890, after the outbreak of war, MI should be conducted not by the staff of the Commanderin-Chief but by the executives at the army quartermaster departments. Each department comprised four divisions of operations, reports, topography and intelligence. The Quartermaster-General himself oversaw ‘collection of data on the adversary, communications and area’. This meant the direction of ‘topographical studies and reconnaissance’ together with the collation of information gathered from various sources, including those of an open nature, e.g. newspaper articles. The staff of the intelligence division was responsible for regularly and accurately informing the Quartermaster-General of ‘adversary troops’ numerical strength, of their disposition, realignments and intentions’. They were also in charge of the duty ‘to recruit reliable informants and scouts from natives’, ‘to interrogate prisoners of war [POWs]’, ‘to produce summaries of intelligence and disseminate them to commanders’. In practice, however, counter-espionage operations and censorship over official foreign military observers and war correspondents accredited at the headquarters of the Manchurian Army were added to the aforementioned functions of intelligence officers on the Manchurian front.2 ‘The Regulations for the Army in the Field’ envisaged the following duties by the chiefs of staffs in corps and divisions:

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Russian MI in the first months of war On the order of his commander, he [the chief of an appropriate staff] personally analyses, as often as possible, the enemy’s disposition; he may use special troops to reconnoitre it . . . He addresses memoranda on means of collection of intelligence to a higher commander and asks his permission for expenses to be reimbursed to spies and informants.3

In practice, however, the administration of MI in wartime had lacked a proper juridical base until 1904. The duties of commanders, chiefs of staffs and quartermaster departments along with those of officers of intelligence divisions and sections were deficient in strict definition. On the one hand, the Supreme Headquarters had to obtain information about the adversary from QuartermasterGenerals in active armies, which, in their turn, ought to receive data from intelligence personnel, usually the officers of the General Staff, in corps and divisions. But in reality, the establishment of this ‘paper hierarchical structure’ only led to confusion in the conduct of intelligence instead of its efficient coordination on three levels: strategic (i.e. by Commander-in-Chief), operational (i.e. by the commanders of active armies) and tactical (i.e. by chiefs of corps and divisions). This resulted in vain attempts by Viceroy Alekseev, Commander-in-Chief Kuropatkin, Chief of his Staff Vladimir Sakharov (a brother of the new War Minister, Victor Sakharov) and Quartermaster-General Vladimir Kharkevich to regulate a whole cycle of intelligence at the initial stage of war, when the vast majority of officers of intelligence sections operated almost autonomously. This discouraged data processing and exchange of intelligence digests between staffs on the front. Independently of the army in the field, the headquarters of the rear also set up an informal intelligence section. It was inaugurated by Admiral Alekseev on 18 February 1904.4 In addition, the staff at the headquarters of the Corps of Frontier Guards, the personnel of the report section in the Priamur military district and the general-staffers at the headquarters of the Viceroy himself organized secret services of their own, to complete the picture of disarray in performing intelligence operations in the initial weeks of war. This present study would seem, however, unfinished if one ignores the General Staff officers nominated to the posts of Russian Military Commissars in three Manchurian provinces. Colonels Mikhail Sokovnin, Mikhail Kvetsinskii and Aleksandr Bogdanov commenced to collect the so-called ‘administrative reconnaissance’ from when Russian troops invaded Chinese territory to suppress the Boxer rebellion in the fall of 1900. Reconnaissance on the strategic level was conducted by Russian ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomats in China, i.e. by Colonel Feodor Ogorodnikov, the newly appointed First military attaché, and by Major General Konstantin Desino, the aforementioned Second official agent. Some other senior officers, for instance, Major General Vladimir Kosagovskii, earlier in charge of the Russian espionage web in Persia, attached to the staff of General Kuropatkin, Colonels Alexandr Nechvolodov and Aleksei Potapov, who had no time to enter the position of military representat-

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ive in Korea and were removed to the field headquarters of Admiral Alekseev, also contributed their mites to the conduct of secret operations. A new centre of Russian espionage in Shanghai was organized by the former envoy in Korea, Aleksandr Pavlov, who was compelled to leave Seoul for China after the outbreak of hostilities. We treat the activities of these and other intelligence officers in following chapters. The main problem the Russian MI had to face right in the first weeks of war, was the immense deficit in time. The vacancies in the field headquarters needed to be staffed with skilled officers, limited in number. They had to define the range of duties as well as to regulate responsibilities on all levels. More than that, they had to institute intelligence sections and groups in corps, divisions, regiments and battalions. Meanwhile, the position of Russian ground forces in the theatre of war deteriorated with every month. First, the rapid Japanese landing on the shores of Korea and the seizure of the seaports Chemulpo and Chinampo went hand in hand with repulsive manoeuvres of Admiral Togo’s fleet near Port Arthur. Second, the huge mass of troops from Siberia arriving in Manchuria to reinforce the ground forces needed continuous reshuffling in corps, divisions and smaller units to be provided with staff officers, often with no experience in war campaigns. Third, an obvious ‘leapfrog’ in the nominations of ranking commanders prevented the appointment of professionals to key posts in the headquarters. Intrigues, nepotism and favouritism ran rampant in the course of the war. Lamentably, the Headquarters of the Viceroy became a permanent epicentre of machinations with career promotion and officers racing for awards. In the core of this dishonest activity, however, was hidden a painful repugnance of Admiral Alekseev towards General Kuropatkin. Interestingly, however, it was the Supreme Commander of the Russian ground and naval forces in the Far East who addressed the unbiased opinion of higher command on the character of war to the natives in northeastern China: Be all military ranks, merchants, gentry and ordinary people in three Manchurian provinces in trembling and submission . . . I, the Viceroy, anticipate that the population will treat Russian troops with sympathy. If, on the contrary, Chinese officials and inhabitants treat Russians with hatred, then the Russian Government will get down to the liquidation of such persons without pity and will not hesitate to take any steps to protect their national interests.5 Captain Aleksei Ignatiev, senior aide-de-camp at the headquarters of Kuropatkin, illustrated the initial discord between staffs with the following remark: ‘By 14 April 1904, we had not yet formed a definite opinion upon the bridgehead of the Japanese troops landing on the sea coast – the data we possessed contradicted one another.’6 The General Staff Captain Aleksandr Svechin likewise gave evidence of the chaos in the intelligence branch:

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Russian MI in the first months of war The intelligence officers at Kuropatkin’s headquarters did their utmost not to find out the real strength of the Japanese armies, but to provide the higher commanders with confidence and fighting spirit. To this end, the assembled data were collated unilaterally – every finding on the adversary’s numerical weakness was put forward, while opposing information suffered critical remarks and was removed to the back stage . . . In some cases, they penned current developments not in words but in actions, for example, under the pretext of the enemy’s immediate assault, they began shooting, then compiled reports, whereas in reality they simply trained rank-and-files without any involvement of the Japanese.7

The general-staffer Vladimir Kosagovskii, who later became responsible for socalled ‘long-distance’ reconnaissance in the front area, commented on the developments: At present, we can’t bear this suspense any longer, for we don’t know and don’t believe each other; all officers are new, nobody is au courant of current affairs; no institutions have been established yet.8 Foreign military observers made even more pessimistic remarks on the state of affairs. One of them, the French war correspondent Ludovico Naudeau, pointed out rumours about the adversary’s numerical strength and realignments that circulated among the ranks at Kuropatkin’s headquarters: One day I heard that a certain general told his colleague about 150,000 of the Japanese in Manchuria, but his interlocutor argued that the enemy disposed 26 divisions of 15,000 servicemen each, i.e. 390,000 soldiers and officers. In fact, however, nobody was sure of any concrete figure. Naudeau further narrated his chat over a bottle of wine with Colonel X, who gloomily confessed to the French correspondent: ‘Poor old Kuropatkin, he is in great difficulties. He is at a loss what to do. He is labouring hard but in vain. He is not provided with proper intelligence.’9 Paradoxical as it might seem, the inhibitions to the conduct of the intelligence cycle were even caused by high patriotic spirits of the Russian people, namely of university students and Siberian peasants, at the initial stage of war. While some of the younger people dreamed of heroic deeds on the front and being impressed by the propagandist campaign in the mass media, got in a rush to defend Christianity from the omnipotent ‘Yellow Peril’, huge masses of peasantry desired to get vast land lots in Manchuria, for there spread a rumour among peasantry in eastern provinces of the Russian Empire that those mobilized to the active army would be awarded with land by the tsarist administration absolutely free of charge.10 In the aftermath of war, the aforementioned commander of the 140th Zaraiskii regiment, Colonel Evgenii Martynov, argued that

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The people’s fighting spirits were high. Although the goal of the war could not raise much enthusiasm with soldiers, they were full of young fervour because they believed sincerely in the invincibility of Russian arms and were inclined to revenge the Japanese for initial defeats at sea.11 Another actual combatant, Captain Riabinin, on alumnus of the General Staff Academy, later wrote that ‘in the very beginning of war, there might have been aroused a wave of national enthusiasm, but the authorities could neither develop it nor animate a dormant interest in war’.12 It was that initial desire, according to an apt remark by the senior aide-decamp at the headquarters of the Third Manchurian Army, Captain Dmitrii Parskii, ‘to get on the march’, which triggered an avalanche of applications by general-staffers to be dispatched to the front. Before the arrival of Kuropatkin in Liaoyang on 28 March 1904, the petitions were sent by officers and volunteers mostly to Vasilii Flug, Quartermaster-General at the Headquarters of Admiral Alekseev. Here is a typical example of such a telegram wired to Flug by a certain Colonel Ryzhov: ‘Hereby I most humbly apply to Your Excellency for permission to be nominated to any vacant staff or field post in the Far East. I am living in St Petersburg at Stremiannaia ul., bl. 8.’13 After late March, however, the flow of applications had changed its direction in favour of the Commander-in-Chief of the Manchurian Army. The number of applicants was so great that the Main Staff issued a special order of circulation on 5 April 1904. It forbade officers on leave to arrive at the theatre of war at their own risk or to make applications for any vacancies in the active army. But both their open vigour and hidden desire to make a career in the Manchurian campaign proved to be at odds with their professional competence.14 To put it differently, most of them knew very little about the theatre of operations or about the adversary. Besides, the vast majority of especially senior commanders were far less trained in modern tactics than in the direction of military parades. For instance, they were not familiar with shooting from hidden artillery positions or with the application of machine-guns in battle. No attention was devoted to training officers and troops to wage war in mountainous region. In his final analysis of the Far Eastern campaign, the former Commander-in-Chief, Aleksei Kuropatkin, critically commented on their activities: It should be stressed that the main quality of our high-ranking military, particularly in the first period of campaign, was deficit in initiative, lacking skills to conduct an offensive combat and full of indecisiveness in chasing the enemy. All these resulted in the poor collaboration of numerically strong units, in the ignorance of neighbouring regiments and in the premature admission of defeat. In the discussion of the crucial role played by intelligence officers, Kuropatkin concluded that the majority of general-staffers had to be praised for their theoretical knowledge and devotion to service. At the same time, there

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always existed an abyss between alumni of the Nicholas Academy and active officers: the latter regarded the former as totally inexperienced in taking commands of soldiers on the front line.15 However, such negative assessments of general-staffers who were the main figures in the intelligence service on the Manchurian front only eclipsed numerous inadequacies of Kuropatkin himself in the course of war. As a matter of fact, he is culpable to a great extent for the selection of intelligence executives at his headquarters. Quite another state of affairs seemed typical for the enemy. The ruling elite of the Japanese Empire did not need to propagate a vital importance of the victory in the armed conflict with the ‘northern colossus’ for economic, political or philosophical reasons. It was simply enough to publish the following appeal to the nation: ‘Go ahead, the infantry of Nippon, go ahead, the cavalry of the Land of the Rising Sun! Crush and chase the hordes of savages, let your banner be hoisted at the top of the Urals!’16 As a rule, only nominees, experienced in secret operations, acquainted with Russia, physically and psychologically fit for war hardships, were handpicked from many others to serve as intelligence officers. For example, the head of MI in the First Japanese Army, Colonel Hagino, had sojourned in Russia for seven years before the war broke out.17 The staff of the Japanese MI surpassed their Russian counterparts in quality. Ludovico Naudeau made the following commentaries: On the one hand, they [the Japanese staffers] always try to keep the Russians in total ignorance of their operations and prevent them from obtaining data of war plans. They managed to camouflage their strength, manoeuvres and means. On the other hand, because of their cooperation with the Chinese, they guaranteed the latter’s assistance in the intelligence process.18 There was also evidence given by the British correspondent Reginald Kahn. He wrote that ‘all these Japanese officers might be regarded as extraordinary persons for impenetrable reticence and skills with which they eschewed all endeavours by Russians to inquire about anything in the Japanese army and rear’.19 Despite the Japanese military intelligence officers’ superiority over their Russian ‘colleagues’, the latter rapidly adapted to the circumstances of modern war and developed progress in the intelligence process on practically all levels with every month of hostilities. Their professionalism was improving so remarkably that the Japanese command had to pay more and more attention to counterespionage operations to frustrate the enemy’s preparations.

Russian strategic and operational intelligence In the authorized summary of intelligence operations conducted by the staff of the Manchurian Army from February to October 1904, i.e. in the months of the

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rapid Japanese advance to the north-west, the Quartermaster Department defined four main areas of espionage: ‘long-distance [or strategic] intelligence’, ‘local [or tactical] intelligence’, ‘intelligence on the flanks’ and ‘intelligence preparation of the rear in case of retreat’.20 To use modern parlance, they took strategic, operational and tactical levels into account, where the last item actually refers to actions in counter-espionage. In this respect, the following issues of strategic intelligence, initially controlled by Major General Flug at the Headquarters of Admiral Alekseev and only later transmitted to the auspices of Quartermaster-General Vladimir Kharkevich under the command of General Kuropatkin, were regarded by the Russian command as of top priority: 1 2 3 4

the war plans and intentions of the adversary; current political, economic and financial affairs in Japan; reinforcements, reservists and supplies in ammunition together with those in armaments from neutral states; diplomatic support to the Land of the Rising Sun by its formal (the UK) and informal (e.g. the USA) allies.

The main channels through which the steady flow of strategic intelligence reached the Russian staffs were the espionage network created by military attachés stationed in European and Asian capitals. Other valuable pieces of information were rendered to the Russian command by secret agents, of either Russian or European origin (e.g. by the legendary secret double agent Sidney Reilly, who originated from a poor Jewish family living in Odessa). All such informants were refunded from special budget allocations. The Russian ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomatists also succeeded in the interception of Japanese wires and in breaking codes used by the Foreign Ministry of Japan. Much later, in the time of the First World War, Sir Samuel Hoare related to the achievements of Russian code-breakers: In this branch of intelligence the Russians excelled. Their experts could unravel almost any cipher in an incredibly short period of time. One of them (an officer of the Naval General Staff) implored me as a friend and ally to ask the British Foreign Office to change a cipher that he would read almost as easily as his daily paper.21 To add to the aforementioned intelligence sources, one should also shed light upon overt channels of information – newspaper publications. It is a well-known fact that the policy of Russification pursued by the tsarist government in the reign of Nicholas II in Poland, Finland and the Baltic provinces met a negative reaction from the West. The ‘pogroms’ or ethnic cleansings, carried out by Russian nationalists in Bessarabia, Byelorussia and Ukraine, aroused protest in European countries. Another reason for discord between Europe and Russia at that time was the competition for new consumer

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markets and natural resources at the periphery of Europe. The ruling elites of the Old World depicted the Romanovs’ empire as ‘an aggressive bear’ ready ‘to gorge himself with more territories in Asia’. The propaganda waged by Russophobes in the West, thus, moulded the attitude of Far Eastern nationals to Russian troops and, consequently, to Russian MI. As, for example, the Russian military attaché Colonel Konstantin Desino reported to Admiral Alekseev two months after the outbreak of war, In the course of this conflict, the Russophobe press continued to propagate against us with such vigour that sympathy towards the Japanese, not only among the Chinese but also in the mass of foreign subjects living in the Far East, prevailed over good feelings to the Russians. It prevents us from getting any assistance to the active army.22 In the minute addressed to Count Lamsdorf, the Russian Ambassador to Washington, Count Arthur Cassini commented likewise as follows: Under present circumstances, taking into consideration the crisis in the Far East and the great interest of local society in events in the Pacific, the British are doing their best to foil our traditional friendly relations with the North American Republic: to attain this goal they publish editorials which attempt to prove that our interests are allegedly totally incompatible with those of the USA, or spread inconclusive news to sow seeds of discord between the Americans and us.23 For all these and other reasons, the Russian military attachés and secret residents had to be particularly careful in contacts with their potential confidants. Even traditional partners of the Russians – citizens of the French Republic – were reluctant to cooperate with Russian intelligence in gathering secret data. In fact, while giving credit to the Russian assistance in Europe in case of a new war against Germany, Paris was looking indifferently at the tsar’s ambitions in Asia. But even such unfavourable circumstances could not prevent Russian MI from progress in the first months of war not only in the Far East but in major European capitals. The most valuable nuggets of information were provided by Russian military attachés accredited in the United Kingdom – Major Generals Nikolai Yermolov, Konstantin Vogak and Captain 1st rank Ivan Bostrem (the latter in charge of naval intelligence); in Germany – Colonel Vadim Shebeko and Lieutenant Aleksei Dolgorukov; in France – Colonel Vladimir Lazarev and Lieutenant Grigorii Yepanchin; in Sweden – Colonel Aleksandr Alekseev together with the aforementioned Dolgorukov; in Austria-Hungary – Colonel Vladimir Roop and Lieutenant Aleksei Kapnist. According to their service entries, all of these originated from hereditary nobility or the well-to-do. In dispatches to St Petersburg Major Generals Yermolov and Vogak dwelt on the problem of reorganization of the British armed forces after the Anglo-Boer

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War of 1899–1902. This process and its corollaries were of particular interest to the tsarist government because one should not have excluded the possibility of the UK alienating Japan in the Manchurian campaign, especially if Russia took over. Notably, the British Admiralty drew up a plan of war against Russia in case of emergency. It envisaged at an initial stage the landing of a 135,000-strong expeditionary corps on the Baltic shore, which would be followed by a similar landing operation in the Black Sea. The British strategists suggested to their government that it should blockade the Russian Black Sea Fleet, prevent the Baltic Squadron from sailing to the Pacific, and provide Japan with reinforcements and armaments on the orders of the Japanese Imperial Headquarters. In January 1905, for example, ten cargoes with ammunition left the UK for Yokohama. It is also should be noted that British were employed by the Japanese as instructors to train all ranks in naval forces.24 To monitor British war preparations and to assess her combat-readiness, such were the crucial responsibilities of Russian official agents in London. Much attention was devoted to the analysis of reforms in the British armed forces. The Chief of the Main Staff Statistical Section, Major General Vitalii Tselebrovskii, commented on a series of reports rendered to his office by Konstantin Vogak in November 1904: While perusing Britain’s plans of a possible armed collision with Russia, our military agent noticed that radical changes had occurred since the beginning of this year under the influence of the so-called ‘Curzon–Kitchener school’. Their adepts speak in favour of offensive actions Britain should undertake in Central Asia, because such policy will inflict the most sensitive blow upon Russia, undermine her prestige there and lead to the occupation of Seistan and even the whole of Persia by the British.25 The same document also exposed Russia’s apprehensions of the eventual dispatch of Anglo-Indian troops to some geostrategic points in China, at a short distance from the theatre of war. They were Weihaiwei, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. Later, when the squadron directed by Admiral Rozhestvenskii was moving to Tsushima, the British naval agents and warships were persistently keeping their eyes on all its manoeuvres.26 The naval attaché Ivan Bostrem investigated sea routes used by the British naval vessels, developments in the Admiralty and the state of the main coaling stations located in the possessions of King Edward VII. Patronized by the Grand Duke Alexandr Mikhailovich, the Main Naval Staff worked out the details of the draft of light cruiser raids on sea routes linking Europe with Japan. We will return to the analyses of their operations on enemy communications in a later chapter. Meanwhile, the military attaché in Berlin, Colonel Vadim Shebeko, rendered to St Petersburg a series of reports about orders for artillery supply placed by the Japanese at the Krupp enterprises in Essen. He managed to recruit an informant working at the plant:

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Russian MI in the first months of war One of the factory clerks is about to contact me for a rich bonus. He will be in a position to communicate data not only on already-ordered war munitions, terms of fabrication and delivery to seaports, but inform me of cargo boats and days of departure as well.27

The Main Naval Staff instructed Shebeko to keep his eye on the process. On 7 December 1904, Shebeko reported to his superiors about a transport loaded with 326 field cannons and 93 mountain howitzers in addition to steel slabs destined for Japan. It was the German cargo vessel Sambia which sailed from Hamburg to the Far East. On 15 December 1904, the Russian cruiser Ural got an order to leave Dakar for sea patrolling to sink the cargo. Unfortunately, the cruiser failed to seize the vessel in the Atlantic near Gibraltar, because the Sambia had already passed through Suez instead of the Straits of Gibraltar. The Ural later joined the Second Pacific Squadron on its way to Tsushima.28 In their evaluation of the somewhat dubious attitude of Berlin towards St Petersburg, Russian military and naval attachés attempted to shed light on the real intentions of William II. The Kaiser persuaded Nicholas II to accept the support of the Reich, but simultaneously the biggest German corporations gained high profits fulfilling war orders from Japan. More than that, the Reichstag debated a new military programme, according to which the general modernization of armed forces, especially cavalry, should be given a strong impetus, taking into account the lessons learned from the campaign in Manchuria.29 The alliance between Russia and France facilitated the establishment of an informal centre for Department of Police secret operations in Paris. Apart from the conduct of counter-espionage, studied by scholars in details,30 one may point to the activities of ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomats in that country – Colonel Vladimir Lazarev and Lieutenant Grigorii Yepanchin. In November 1904 Lazarev informed the Main Staff about a proposal of the former French military attaché in Tokyo, Captain Viscount de Labri, to set up HUMINT in the theatre of war with the aid of two retired military men, French nationals named Dori and Bouguenne. The sum they required in advance amounted to 20,000 francs (7,500 roubles).31 However, this collaboration of a friendly secret service did not prevent the famous Kreso plants from fabricating mountain guns for Japan. After Paris had declared neutrality and particularly after France and the UK had signed the Entente Cordiale in March 1904 to remove obstacles to the ‘encirclement’ of Germany, St Petersburg, according to the military and naval attachés, had to raise the prestige of the Russian Empire in the eyes of the French. In his memorandum on the state of opinion of the military elite, Colonel Lazarev reported to his patrons in the middle of 1904: One of the French supreme commanders – General Moulenne – believes that in Russia ‘everything is rotten’ and needs reforms; the majority of persons in the head of government and army are regarded allegedly as ‘quantités négligeables’. General Kuropatkin and commanders of corps

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have no prestige and can gain nobody’s confidence. There is competition, quarrels and mutual repugnance among military leaders in the Far East.32 The Russian attachés in Scandinavia and Austria-Hungary focused upon the Japanese war orders placed with Austrian military factories. For instance, on 14 December 1904, Colonel Alekseev wired to the Main Staff from Stockholm about the order placed at the world-famous Swedish company ‘Boforts’. There were steel armoured slabs and artillery cartridge-cases on the order list. In his turn, Colonel Roop forwarded a dispatch from Vienna to the Main Staff on the purchase of horses in Australia for the needs of the Japanese army.33 Evidently, the General Staff officers in the Far East contributed to strategic intelligence most of all. As the head of Admiral Alekseev’s headquarters, General Iakov Zhilinskii, admitted on 30 March 1904: Pursuant to the desire of Viceroy, I inquired the staffers as to whether it is possible to obtain secret intelligence straight from Japan through spies or from the French Minister and the French attachés stationed in that country. They might communicate it to us via orderlies in Shanghai.34 Military diplomats sifted out valuable nuggets of intelligence from missives of their own informants – Russian or non-Russian nationals. They also analysed publications in daily papers and specialized digests except for periodicals in the Japanese language which they had irregular access to in the first months of war. The Soviet military historian Konstantin Zvonarev pointed out that ‘only from time to time had MI obtained odd copies’ of newspapers or magazines but the poor command of oriental languages proved the greatest obstacle to their instant perusal.35 Some interesting characteristics figured in the survey of the intelligence process conducted by officers in the Manchurian Army before it was split into three independent armies. One of them was Colonel Aleksandr Nechvolodov, the aforementioned nominee to the post of military attaché in Korea. On recruiting a number of Europeans, the French Jean Shaffangeune, the Swiss Oskar Barbier and the German Otto Meier, Nechvolodov sent them on secret missions to Japan, Korea and Formosa (now Taiwan) in the guise of commercial travellers. He kept in touch with them in rather a strange way: the emissaries were instructed to wire data to Russian orderlies stationed in Europe, the latter, in their turn, were obliged to transmit telegrams via St Petersburg to the headquarters of the Manchurian Army. All the messages should resemble the telegrams used by merchants compiled under ‘agreed trade terms’, independent for each agent. The Russian command formulated a task for Nechvolodov to estimate ‘numerical strength and composition structure of troops landing near Port Arthur’, to define ‘what other reserves, apart from the First Army, were transferred from Korea’ and to oversee ‘the reinforcements for the Fourth Army arriving from Japan’.36 Usually, the sums paid by Russian spymasters to their agents varied from

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generous to small depending on the value of the data. However, the salaries of the distinguished ‘moles’ in the Japanese rear amounted to impressive figures. As Nechvolodov reported to Quartermaster-General Vasilii Flug on 11 May 1904: 1

2

3

Oskar Barbier is paid 1,300 roubles a month, plus an extra 1,000 roubles to purchase goods; he also gets bonuses for messages delivered on time: 500 roubles for the first one, 1,000 roubles – for the second, 1,500 roubles for the third, etc. He gets 500 roubles as extra fee for each subsequent message. He will be paid 2,000 roubles after the end of war. Jean Shaffangeune is paid 1,000 roubles a month, plus an extra 500 roubles to purchase goods, and 500 roubles for each urgent message. He will be paid 2,000 roubles after the end of war. Otto Meier is paid 1,300 roubles a month, plus another 1,000 roubles to purchase goods, and 500 roubles for each important message. He will also be paid a bonus of 3,000 after the war.

All their expenditures on cables are reimbursed, and they got 500 roubles each in advance to meet postal expenses. Before dispatch they are also paid a five months’ award in advance. Further monthly awards are remitted to them through solid foreign banks.37 But even the great investments in HUMINT like those made by Russian MI could not guarantee high ‘profits’. Colonel Nechvolodov complained to his patrons that information he had received from the persons in question lacked regularity and urgency. Value was lost in the course of delivering data to the terminal ‘consumer’ – the higher echelons of the Russian command. The attempt to redirect Shaffangeune and Barbier to gather intelligence about the Japanese naval forces while the squadron of Vice Admiral Rozhestvenskii was approaching the Pacific in early 1905 proved unsuccessful. To this purpose, the first spy was dispatched to Batavia while his colleague went to Macao. However, we have no reliable evidence of what the results of their mission were in reality. For this reason, Russian spymasters dismissed them in May 1905.38 The military attaché in Tientsin, Colonel Fedor Ogorodnikov, and his compatriot in Shanghai, Major General Konstantin Desino, did their utmost to create an echeloned system of HUMINT. They employed a few foreign correspondents and merchants to monitor developments in the Qing army and to check efforts by Tokyo ‘to play a Chinese trump card’ against Russia. On 17 July 1904, Desino wired to Admiral Alekseev that There is a rumour spreading among locals that if the Japanese capture Port Arthur, China will join them to fight the Russians and there might flare up a general rebellion against foreigners.39 On 16 August 1904, the intelligence section at the Viceroy’s Headquarters received another coded message of alarm, this time from St Petersburg. It again

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related to the Qing position in the course of war: ‘According to secret data, China is going to join Japan as soon as General Kuroki [the commander of the First Army] captures Mukden.’40 It should be stressed that the Russian command in the theatre of war apprehended a real possibility of instant Chinese involvement in the conflict during the whole period of hostilities. In February 1904, one of the chief diplomatic officials at the headquarters of Admiral Alekseev wrote in his diary: Admiral charged me to compile a telegram [to St Petersburg] that China is running an arms race and redeploying troops to the north, possibly to move them against us under favourable circumstances, when we are engaged in the protection of the Yalu. We should therefore put the question point blank: if China keeps its neutral status, then the government should remove the troops, if not, we ought to smash them now, before the Japanese advance from Korea.41 On 17 March, Thomas Sammons, the US General Consul in the Chinese port of Newchwang, reported to the Department of State about his perception of current affairs in Manchuria: ‘They [the Russian command] seem, at present, to fear more the Chinese troops under General Ma and are making preparations to resist them. They claim to believe as certain, that they will be attacked by General Ma’s troops . . . Russia’s army organization was to consist of 300,000 men to meet the Japanese army and 200,000 to fight the Chinese . . . There is nothing that they fear so much as a union of forces between Japan and China.’42 On the one hand, the occupation of Manchuria by the tsarist troops and the suppression of the anti-foreign uprising in 1900–1 caused the natives’ hatred of all Russians, and especially of Chinese officers and authorities. One observer recollected in the war’s aftermath, how ‘obvious unfriendliness and slightly hidden malice towards Russians burst out when a Chinese was addressed by a Russian, even if this response was justified’.43 The tsarist military administrators could actually do nothing, except to issue proclamations like the one from Admiral Alekseev to terrorize the ordinary public and to bully the Qing authorities to force them to support the army of occupation. In their analysis of the situation, the Qing government, nevertheless, was aware of the gloomy consequences that might arise if they dropped the neutral status declared by Peking at the beginning of the war. Besides, the authorities of the Celestial Empire realized quite well that the internalization of the bilateral armed conflict did not meet Japan’s strategic interests, for it would trigger off the intervention of other great powers into China in attempts to expand their spheres of influence in the Celestial Empire. But the instigation of riots by the local population in the rear of the Russian armies proved to be a task that Japanese MI worked unsparingly and persistently on. As one of the leading Japanese military admitted after the war, ‘our General Staff had been keeping China strictly neutral on the surface, while behind the scenes there was a Japan–China alliance’.44

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The landing of a Japanese expeditionary corps in Korea increased the necessity of data gathering and analysis with reference to this particular country. According to Major General Desino, he employed three spies and dispatched them to Korea disguised as newspaper correspondents and commercial travellers. The Russian attaché called his informants Lippenov, Croule and Gai-Klar (in his own transcription), though he did not mention their nationalities. As far as we know, they were instructed to spy out the enemy’s possible advance along the following routes: Tientsin–Sinmintin, Genzan–Tonghuaxian and Genzan– Vladivostok.45 A series of preventive measures were also recommended by military attachés to the Russian command to foil acts of sabotage planned by the Japanese secret agents, though this particular subject needs additional study. A coded telegram from the Main Staff to Alekseev dated 4 June 1904, stipulates that Colonel Ogorodnikov is reporting from reliable sources that [. . .] the Japanese prepared poison mixtures to make attempts upon the lives of Kuropatkin and his staff; they also plan to poison wells in Liaoyang; you need to be extremely cautious with drinking water.46 Below, we will treat this item in the light of sabotage acts undertaken by Japanese MI on Russian communications in Manchuria. As we have already pointed out, Russian diplomatic and financial officials accorded unprecedented assistance to military intelligence. It is not an exaggeration to state that the former Minister to Korea, the Full State Counsellor Aleksandr Pavlov, played a decisive role in the establishment of HUMINT on the territory of that country. Born to a noble military family in 1860, Alexandr Ivanovich Pavlov obtained distinction after graduating from the elite Naval Cadet Corps in 1882. Soon he had been given the rank of Midshipman. Pavlov took part in regular annual cruises but later he retired from naval service and started working as an official at the Foreign Ministry Asiatic Department. In 1895 Pavlov was appointed to the post of assistant secretary of the Russian Minister to China, Count Arthur Cassini. In fact, this former naval officer contributed greatly to the conclusion of the Russo-Chinese agreement on the lease of the Liaodong Peninsula in 1898. Because of this diplomatic success, Pavlov was upgraded to the rank of Full State Counsellor (in civil list of ranks equal to Major General) and transferred to the post of Minister to Seoul.47 In contrast to the enthusiastic testimonials of his activities in Korea from some modern scholars, there was evidence of criticism from Pavlov’s colleagues, for example, by his predecessor in the post of Minister in Seoul, Konstantin Weber. He maintained that Pavlov, though with the best intentions, often mistakenly attempted to force the Korean Emperor and his subjects to side with Russia in their foreign policy. ‘Pavlov did not understand the nature of the Koreans’, said Weber, ‘and when things took an unfavourable turn for Russian interests, he, under the pressure of public opinion in anticipation of new brilliant

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successes, plunged into fervent activity, embarked on taking drastic measures, and, in a final account, he alienated the Koreans.’48 After the war broke out, Pavlov applied to the Foreign Ministry with a suggestion to move to Shanghai in order to organize the network of secret agents collecting intelligence on current developments in Japan and Korea, especially on those in the military sphere.49 On receiving the formal confirmation by Count Lamsdorf, the chief of foreign affairs, and concrete instructions from Viceroy Alekseev, Pavlov got down to the organization of the Russian espionage network in Shanghai. Interestingly, his espionage was approved by the tsar himself in April 1904.50 The Chief of Admiral Alekseev’s staff, Lieutenant General Iakov Zhilinskii, instructed Pavlov to assemble information on the Japanese mobilization, food and armaments supply to the active troops in Manchuria and Korea, and the state of opinion in the high-ranking military. One of the most significant issues on this agenda was the following: ‘Are the Japanese inclined to wait for our invasion of Korea or do they plan to launch an offensive to Manchuria themselves?’51 In fact, Shanghai has always been regarded by the intelligence community as a major centre of the espionage industry. In Richard Deacon’s opinion, ‘it was from here that spies of all nations plotted to which particular warlord or favoured regional leader the surplus arms of the First World War should be diverted’.52 But this practice became regular much later than the period in question. However, the foundations were laid in the course of the Russo-Japanese war, and partly by Aleksandr Pavlov. Meanwhile, he retained intimate contacts which he had set up long before the Russo-Japanese War with some courtiers of the Korean Emperor. That is why the network of his agents consisted primarily of Koreans and Chinese though he recruited European subjects as well. According to the final survey of secret operations compiled by intelligence officers at the Headquarters of the Manchurian Army, It was especially for the purpose of intelligence that the Full State Counsellor Pavlov offered to a Korean, Kim, attached to our diplomatic mission, to establish permanent covert contacts with local Korean authorities and agents in the middle of April 1904. The latter might be handpicked both from the retinue of the Korean emperor and from among influential Korean dignitaries well disposed towards us. The agents might later be sent on missions to the Manchurian borders.53 The Chief of Kuropatkin’s Staff, Lieutenant General Vladimir Sakharov, and Quartermaster-General Vladimir Kharkevich cabled an order to the Commander of the so-called Eastern Vanguard Detachment, Major General Zasulich, to keep in touch with this agent: Kim will be provided with Pavlov’s detailed instructions concerning the collection of data which are most important to us in view of operations in

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Unfortunately, this carefully elaborated agenda suffered correction because of the rapid Russian retreat into the depths of Manchuria from the Sino-Korean border after the defeat at the Yalu river in early May 1904. As a result, agent Kim made his way not to his homeland but to Khabarovsk, i.e. to the headquarters of the Priamur military district. According to the reports by Pavlov, a French correspondent, Balé, was also recruited to act as one of the best spies stationed in Japan. The Russian MI regarded him as an excellent expert in Japanese customs and linguistics. ‘As a person who commands the Japanese language and knows the army, people, history and literature of that country pretty well’, wrote one of the Russian intelligence officers, ‘Monsieur Balé gave us the benefit of reports on the Japanese armed forces, of translations of articles published in daily periodicals and of delivering lectures on Japan to the staff of the Manchurian armies. These lectures were printed for dissemination to officers who had little knowledge about our adversary before they got the information.’55 The Russian consuls in strategically important Chinese cities, Kleimenov, Kristi, Laptev and Tideman (some further information on the efforts by the latter to set up lines of communication between Chefoo and the besieged defendants in Port Arthur is given in the next chapter), being in close cooperation with Pavlov, also contributed to data gathering and the recruitment of secret agents on the territory for which they were responsible. They obtained information about the enemy’s and China’s war potential, ‘though of an occasional nature, but often valuable and detailed’.56 To illustrate their activity, it is necessary to give our attention to a coded telegram from Pavlov to Quartermaster-General Kharkevich on 8 September 1904. The Russian spymaster referred to the visit of a certain German subject to the Russian General Consulate in Shanghai: A certain German, decent in appearance, told our General Consul Kleimenov that he had just arrived from Japan, that he was serving allegedly on a secret mission for Russian military administration, that he was keeping in confidential touch with General Kuropatkin, Admiral Skrydlov [the Commander of the Vladivostok Squadron of warships] and our military attaché in Berlin, Colonel Shebeko, that he was a retired naval officer and that he could tell nobody his real name except for his nickname, which was Becker.57 It became clear from the talk with Becker that he had dispatched to Kuropatkin four messengers with reports on the situation in Japan, precisely,

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upon the conscription of more than 9,000 reservists to the active army. The negative reaction by Kharkevich to this missive was conditioned by the lack of other sources on Becker. Kharkevich notified Pavlov that the Russian higher echelons were unaware of any German intelligence agent called Becker.58 As to the subsequent career of Alexandr Pavlov, it came to an end in 1910, when he was blamed for the deficit amounting to 10,750,000 roubles which was spent on some ‘economic operations’ in the course of war. Pavlov was forced to retire on a pension of 4,000 roubles a year.59 A member of the governing board of the Russo-Chinese Bank, Leonid Davydov, who had already spent several years in China when the war broke out, also tendered his services to the Russian command. Not only did he collect strategic data but he carried out delicate missions of various kinds. For instance, a secretary of the Japanese military attaché in Chefoo had been in the pay of Davydov. They got in touch through Davydov’s assistant, Fridberg by name. In the opinion of intelligence staff, the data received from this top banking manager ‘proved to be reliable and prodigious’.60 One should take into account another important aspect of Davydov’s clandestine activity which sharply contradicted with the official post of a respectable banker, namely, the organization of sabotage in the adversary’s rear. He, for example, arranged setting fire to the Japanese ammunition dumps together with acts of sabotage on railroads and telegraph lines under their control. In the account by the intelligence staff of the Manchurian Army, they mentioned the arson of some large Japanese depots in the village of Shahotsi on 14 October 1904.61 Specific measures of deriving data from periodicals need a quite separate analysis in spite of the fact that staffers regarded them to be an element of more operational than strategic intelligence. But daily papers, to say nothing of magazines, lagged in time, sometimes very protractedly, between the actual event and its later interpretation. We may, therefore, rank this kind of information processing to strategic means applied by Russian MI. Thus, some officers at Kuropatkin’s headquarters produced a comprehensive overview of the flow of publications in The Japan Times: From the first days of war the Japanese press got an absolute order from the government [emphasis in the original]: to keep secret everything relating to conscription, mobilization and movements of ground and naval forces. The government warned the press against trumpeting military secrets referring to episodes of the latest Sino-Japanese War. It appealed to the patriotism of the mass media to avoid the publication of news, no matter how interesting it might be to the audience, if even some hints could have favoured the adversary in view of the Japanese war plans together with those of army or fleet military exercises. That inscrutable mystery surrounded all the manoeuvres by Admiral Togo or Marshal Oyama displayed to what extent the press in Japan had responded to the government’s appeal to it.62

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As the authors of survey pointed out, nevertheless, one could excavate odd pieces of information about Japanese tactics, the fighting spirit of actual combatants, and the army’s daily routine even from periodicals sticking to such rigid regulations. Besides, though belated but valuable data might be extracted from official correspondence of some high-ranking commanders and particularly from reportage by British, German, French and American reporters stationed at the theatre of operations. To monitor the press, the sections of both intelligence and censorship at the Russian Supreme Headquarters filed dossiers of newspaper cuttings as well as compiling digests of published articles. The order to preserve war secrets to the Japanese press contrasted with the conditions under which the Russian daily papers published various data on the army and navy in the Far East, though the higher command took certain steps to restrict the access by correspondents to secret information and to censor their reports from the Manchurian front. According to William Greener, The Times correspondent in Port Arthur, In a few weeks after hostilities began, the Viceroy’s staff drew up regulations countenanced and enforced by the general-staffers in St Petersburg. They were aimed at lessening the number of daily paper correspondents accredited at the Russian army in the field, as well as to effectually oversee their activities through censorship which was then implanted at the headquarters.63 Despite some drastic measures undertaken by the military, the experts of the Russian General Staff continued to denounce the flippancy displayed by correspondents to Russian daily papers. They critically argued that At the time when our papers, not excluding government ones, published news with outstanding frankness and reprinted official dispatches on army composition, numerical strength and disposition, on mobilization in military districts, on logistics [with the detailed traffic of divisions and regiments to the Manchurian front as the daily Novoe Vremia did], the Japanese press keeps absolute silence about everything relating to warfare, and the military censorship all over the Land of the Rising Sun prohibits referring to commanders by name, to say nothing of units and their manoeuvres. The Japanese Main Staff realized quite well that it was not enough to administer reconnaissance, one had also to hamper the adversary developing it.64 It should be added that the Japanese command strictly forbade sending private telegrams through field posts in time of war.65 In March 1904 Kuropatkin made another attempt to coordinate different staffs in the conduct of ‘long-distance intelligence’ by charging Major General Vladimir Kosagovskii with these duties, though he was nominally appointed as the commander of the independent Liaohei Detachment and as the commandant of the fortified zone of the same name. Later, he was transferred, however, to the post of commander of the Twelfth Siberian Cossack Division.66

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In my opinion, Kosagovskii’s activity related more to a certain intermediary sphere of MI between the strategic and operational levels. The diary penned by this well-informed general presents an exhaustive survey of disarray and collision of ambitions, both departmental and personal, at the headquarters on the Manchurian front. Here is an entry dated 30 March 1904 which exemplified his perception of the current situation: ‘I have learned from talking to Sakharov and Kharkevich that we are obtaining practically no information about our adversary and that we are in the process of setting up a wide network of intelligence agencies, although today we are completely blind.’67 An everlasting mess at Russian headquarters substantially reduced the capacities of even skilled and experienced intelligence officers. Some of them, however, lacked initiative and expertise in the establishment of the intelligence process. On 6 April 1904, Kosagovskii gave his observations in the following entry: ‘General Sakharov makes a good impression upon everybody, but, first, he himself is a novice on the front, and, second, he has got neither expertise nor skilled assistants . . . Besides, there is a heavy lead weight over all of us, which is the tsarist Viceroy.68 In late June 1904, Kosagovskii received an advance of 50,000 roubles to organize reconnaissance operations. At the same time, Quartermaster-General Kharkevich ordered a few well-trained officers to be at his disposal. They were Colonel Nechvolodov, Lieutenant Colonels Potapov and Panov, Captain Odintsov, Captain of the Twelfth East Siberian Regiment Nechvolodov (perhaps a relative of the aforementioned Colonel Aleksandr Nechvolodov). The translator, the Swiss subject, Oskar Barbier, mentioned above, was attached to the group, the task of which was to accelerate HUMINT in Manchuria and bordering areas. A typical example of their activity might be the case of the recruitment of a British subject called Collins, who had worked for some time as a jockey at the court of the Mikado. Later, Collins got the job of a clerk at the ‘East-Asian Shipping Society’ and after that he made reported to a certain British-run periodical in Shanghai. After the war broke out, he found himself together with his family in Port Arthur. As a matter of fact, he lost his job because of the blockade of the Russian fortress by the Japanese flotilla. Then Collins somehow made up his mind to tender his services to Kosagovskii and his colleagues. His proposal was accepted by Russian MI because of Collins’s excellent command of the Japanese and Chinese languages. Besides, he might rely on pre-war contacts at the Mikado’s court. He was promised to be provided with a monthly maintenance allowance of US$300. In return, Collins’s duties implied he would regularly inform Russian residents in China by means of coded telegrams. Unfortunately, Collins’s activity in Japan lasted for three months only. Very soon the Japanese counter-espionage service explored his activities and arrested him. The martial tribunal sentenced him to 11 years of penal servitude. However, in 1906 the convict was given amnesty at the request of the British Foreign Office.69 Referring to HUMINT on the operational level, one should focus attention on locals who were actively used by the Russians in espionage, although the

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Japanese were sometimes effective in preventing Russian recruitment of Chinese spies. Besides, many Chinese subjects reluctantly cooperated with Russian emissaries for fear of subsequent repression by the Japanese counterintelligence service (one should not forget that the Russian troops retreated and that Japanese ground forces almost constantly moved ahead). Besides, it seems true that the poor expertise of Chinese volunteers also prevented Russian intelligence officers from recruiting them, particularly at the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, the interim Commander-in-Chief (before the arrival of Kuropatkin to the front), General Lieutenant Nikolai Linevich, adopted recruitment of natives from the very outbreak of hostilities, on 23 February 1904. Notably, he soon also confirmed the special ‘Expense Sheet of Secret HUMINT’. According to this document, those agents and intelligence scouts employed from the local population ought to be paid from ten to 200 roubles for each message delivered to Russian command, their moneys varying depending on the importance and urgency of the data.70 At the beginning of the campaign, this element of HUMINT was supervised by the Captain of the Seventh East Siberian Infantry Regiment, Kuz’min, attached to the so-called Eastern Detachment together with the Commander of the Ninth Infantry Division, Major General Kondratovich, who, as was stressed in the report by the intelligence section, ‘employed also some Christian missionaries in Manchuria’.71 The instructions for these persons envisaged ‘carrying out HUMINT with the aid of secret agents dwelling in the area adjacent to the adversary’s location’. The overall sum of money for this purpose amounted to 10,000 roubles over four months though Kondratovich considered it far from optimal and appealed to the command for supplementary allocations.72 From the end of June 1904, Major General Kosagovskii was ordered to direct HUMINT in the front area. It is interesting, therefore, to quote an extract from a report by Lieutenant Colonel Panov to Kosagovskii, dated 12 August 1904, for it comprised the assessment of developments in this particular realm of MI. While analysing all the problems of recruitment, Panov pointed out that Local inhabitants almost totally rejected contacting us because of the high risk and eventual cruel punishments by the Japanese. They further assure us – we cannot say whether it is correct or not – that after the retreat of Russian troops all the Chinese who had been in Russian pay ought to escape from their villages, or the Japanese would sentence them to death on getting information about their service. The Japanese suspect everybody among the Chinese of espionage to the benefit of the Russians.73 In Panov’s opinion, one of the decisive, though cruel, measures to prompt locals to cooperate with the Russian military intelligence might be the taking of hostages. Commenting on the practice of the Japanese, who used this method ‘without exciting any particular hatred’, Panov believed that it would dispose the Chinese to cooperate fully with Russian MI as well.74

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To illustrate this concept of Russian intelligence officers, we give an extract of the order by Major General Teleshev, Commander of the Fourth Donskaia Cossack Division, to his staffers, dated 23 October 1904: To reinforce reconnaissance, the Japanese trained scouts before the war; these scouts are able to signal their patrons with flags, mirrors and electric torches at night, to warn them of all our realignments. One should suspect all the Chinese, especially locals, who offer us their service as translators or guides . . . In order to get rid of scouts spying for the Japanese, it is necessary to drive out the inhabitants before entering any village, or to take hostages older males or senior authorities. Mounted patrols ought to change their routes as frequently as possible and not stay in the same village for a long time. Asked by a mounted patrol, natives often tell Cossacks that there are no Japanese staying in this or that village. Nevertheless, one should verify their testimonies by other means and bring inhabitants to their village. Besides recruited scouts, the Japanese have excellent spies of their own. These spies go ahead and occupy heights using trees, chimneys and roofs. While moving forward our reconnaissance groups ought to observe very attentively such objects in order to verify the presence of Japanese spies. The latter usually have pocket telephones [?] and can transmit messages to Japanese troops – one can annihilate them only by well-aimed sniper shooting.75 It seems strange, however, that spies on Japanese service were provided with peculiar ‘pocket telephones’. We have found no further mention of such devices in either primary or secondary sources. Captain Nechvolodov, one of Kosagovskii’s assistants, arrived at similar conclusions. In summer 1904 he was dispatched on a mission to organize a spy network in the big transport hub of Yinkou. On 18 July he reported to his chief that he had managed to contact a certain German entrepreneur, Passek by name, with the aid of the township governor, Mr Grosse. Passek agreed to enrol scouts through the mediation of a Chinese merchant for a sum of 15,000 roubles. They ought to gather data on Japanese troops’ eventual passing through Yinkou. But Quartermaster-General Kharkevich, who regarded the idea too risky and rather expensive, rejected it later.76 There emerged, thus, some sort of personal enmity between two Major Generals – Kharkevich and Kosagovskii. They challenged each other to collect more prodigious and genuine data to be included in daily and weekly summaries of intelligence for Kuropatkin. Constant personal competition, on the one hand, and a repugnance to Kosagovskii from his subordinate officers, on the other, diminished the efficiency of intelligence operations in the theatre of war. In reality, the duties performed by this newly established informal body of intelligence officers conflicted with the activity of the formal intelligence section at the Quartermaster Department of the Manchurian Army. This section was consequently directed by skilled senior aides-de-camp of the QuartermasterGeneral, Lieutenant Colonels Slesarev, Liupov and Linda. Suffice to say,

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Konstantin Linda had issued the topographic survey of Manchuria as early as 1900, i.e. in the course of the punitive expedition by Russian troops against the Boxers.77 Soon the latent conflict of different intelligence agencies on the front became an open secret. Not surprising, for instance, that the survey of Kuropatkin’s intelligence section did not mention any concrete results attained by Kosagovskii and the group under his command. It is also supplemented with the limited number of dispatches and reports made my Kosagovskii to Sakharov, the Chief of Kuropatkin’s headquarters.78 Hence, from the middle of 1904, two Staff Captains, Afanasiev and Rossov, took over further organization of tactical human intelligence. The former became responsible for the centre and left wing of the Russian front area, while the latter looked after the right wing. Qi, a Chinese professor from Vladivostok, assisted Afanasiev in his mission. Qi succeeded in collaborating with several retired Chinese officers. Interestingly, Afanasiev and Rossov checked up on the recruited scouts by crossing the Japanese sentry-line themselves.79 After the split of the Manchurian Army into nominally independent parts the conduct of HUMINT on the operational level was assigned to intelligence executives at their headquarters. However, Vasilii Blonskii, the Staff Captain of the Eleventh East Siberian Infantry Regiment, and a recent alumnus of the Eastern Institute in Vladivostok, took over general coordination of HUMINT operations. His command of Chinese was perfect.80 The lack of harmonization in the conduct of the intelligence cycle by various staffs in Manchuria resulted in parallelism and duplication of their functions. Apart from the army, the Mukden Military Commissar, Mikhail Kvetsinskii, his deputy, Staff Captain Penevskii, and the intelligence officers who staffed the Zaamur district of Frontier Guards also contributed to the performance of HUMINT. They often got in touch with local Chinese authorities in attempts to employ them as informants for Russian MI. The results, however, proved miserable and far from the expectations of the higher command. Those individuals who agreed to cooperate with Russians usually could not distinguish one kind of Japanese troops from another, and also their messages were irregular and fragmentary. For example, Staff Captain Penevskii made a good deal of effort to recruit the township governor of Liaoyang who informed the Russian officer through his own agents on the numerical strength and disposition of divisions under the command of General Kuroki. But after the tsarist troops had retreated from Liaoyang in early September 1904, this valuable source of information was lost.81 According to archival sources, these Russian officials, and foremost the Heilungjiang Military Commissar, Colonel Bogdanov, were instructed to collaborate with the staff of frontier guards who, in their turn, ought to gather data on the mood of the natives, the forays of Chinese mounted bandits, the so-called chunguses,82 in the Russian rear, the manoeuvres of Qing troops, plotted acts of sabotage on communications, primarily in the zone of the CER, and so on.83

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Intelligence collation and dissemination on the Manchurian front The task of data processing is regarded by experts as one of the most significant and complicated in the conduct of intelligence process. The secret services of all the major powers faced this task in the course of local wars at the start of the twentieth century: the British in South Africa, the Americans in Cuba, the Japanese in China. Russia was no exception in Manchuria. Although the war plans were drawn up by strategists and adopted by the tsar in the last months before the war, the staffs on all levels, to begin with the Main Staff, were not provided with any methods or instructions of data gathering and dissemination to higher echelons. They had, therefore, to establish the whole system, so to say, on a blank sheet within rather a short initial period of warfare. The essential characteristics of this stage in intelligence process figured in the accounts and surveys by the staffs. They noted, first, a time lag of days or even weeks in the gathering of data and their consequent collation, when ‘raw’ nuggets of information were converted by officers into final products – summaries of intelligence to be submitted to higher commanders.84 However, some ranking intelligence officers, both military, for example Kosagovskii, Nechvolodov and Kvetsinskii, and civil contributors to MI, for example Pavlov and Davydov, obtained permission to send their missives direct to Alekseev or Kuropatkin, bypassing in this way the intelligence sections under their command. Following this practice impeded the collection and perusal of information, not to mention data summation in due course. The compilation of summaries had come into the practice of Russian MI since March 1904. It soon became a daily routine for the officers at Kuropatkin’s Headquarters. There emerged, however, the problem with printing equipment: the officers used a hectograph to produce only four copies of summaries at a time to provide the Commander-in-Chief, the Chief of his staff, the QuartermasterGeneral and the officers of the intelligence section themselves. The up-to-date printing machines were put into operation only in March 1905. The QuartermasterGeneral at Admiral Alekseev’s Headquarters arranged a similar procedure. Amazingly, both Alekseev and Kuropatkin supposed initially that it was useless to disseminate copies of summaries to lower ranking commanders. However, defeats on the front compelled Quartermaster-General Vladimir Kharkevich to approve the dissemination of intelligence digests to the corps in September 1904 and later to division commanders. When, instead of the Manchurian Army, three new strategic groupings were set up in the fall of 1904, their staffs regulated this process on a more profound base, though this multi-level system still suffered imperfections, for example, when intelligence dissemination often lagged behind the actual dynamics of events in the front area.85 By the middle of 1904 the structure of summaries had gained formalization. It had hardly changed by the end of the war, and contained data on:

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1 2 3

the numerical strength and disposition of the Japanese troops; the conscription of reservists in Japan; fortifications on the Manchurian front and in the rear of the Japanese armies; the adversary’s war plans and intentions; Chinese troops; current events in the Far East; speculations of natives in Manchuria, Mongolia and Korea; miscellaneous facts and figures from the press worth being mentioned separately.

4 5 6 7 8

Sometimes summaries or reports of the situation were supplemented with sketches, sketch-maps, charts and pictures. The assortment and verification of ‘raw’ data meant their tabulation either as documentary, i.e. artefacts that needed no subsequent identification, or as hypothetical, i.e. those pieces of information received from attachés, spies and scouts that should subsequently be verified. Interestingly, the latter mode of intelligence prevailed in the first months of war.86 Unfortunately, summaries of intelligence and reports of the situation were not of high quality at the beginning of hostilities. The senior aide-de-camp at the headquarters of the 2nd Manchurian Army, Captain, later Colonel, Petr Izmestiev claimed that those facts stipulated in summaries were often refuted by other nuggets of intelligence on the very next day. The permanent competition between staffs, when each of them did their utmost ‘to flaunt the value and urgency of their own intelligence service’, added to perplexities obtaining data by the higher command.87 In recapitulation of the analytical methods enacted by the Russian MI at the inceptive stage of war, one should bear in mind a series of handbooks and digests published by intelligence officers in the Manchurian Army: A List of Chiefs of Divisions and Brigades in the Japanese Army (in two editions), A Structure of the Japanese Armed Forces (also in two editions), and The Schedule of the Japanese Armies in the Field on 14 December 1904. They continued to issue statistics of that kind later, both in the period of trench war and in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese conflict.

5

Inside the bastions of Port Arthur

What is a Japanese? A midge! One can’t but laugh at him! I’ll dry him up on the bayonet and send him home in a letter. From the conversation of Russian defendants in Port Arthur, 19041

Russian naval intelligence in Port Arthur From the outbreak of war, the conduct of naval intelligence was supervised by the Chief of Admiral Alekseev’s Staff, Lieutenant General Iakov Zhilinslii. The situation changed, however, after Vice Admiral Stepan Osipovich Makarov assumed command of the Pacific Fleet instead of Vice Admiral Stark. After his arrival in Port Arthur on 8 March 1904, this able naval tactician set about systematically organizing reconnaissance operations at sea, at both short and long distance.2 First, Makarov determined to prepare the shore bastions to rebuff impending attacks by the Japanese. To this end, he cooperated with the capable commandant of the fortress Major General Smirnov, who took up the post in the middle of March. To protect the outer anchorage and the coastal waters from the enemy’s men-of-war, the newly appointed chief of the fleet ordered the stationing of observation posts on top of Golden Hill and other high hills. Each of them was equipped with long-range searchlights to check for battleships on the sea approaches to the fortress. They were linked by telephone with a unified system of coastal and shipboard batteries. His second important order was the detailed regulation of mine-laying in the entrance of the harbour and on the main routes of the Japanese fleet around the Liaodong Peninsula.3 Because Russian sailors gradually gained experience in this procedure, two Japanese armoured ships, Hazuse and Yasima, struck the mines and sank on 15 May 1904, a real ‘black day’ for the Japanese navy. In total, the battle fleet of Japan lost 12 ships to Russian mines in the course of hostilities.4 Third, Makarov organized swift light vessels into two detachments, one for spying on remote approaches to the fortress and for a delivery service, the other to be on guard and watch service in the coastal waters of the Liaodong Peninsula. For example, on 11 April a detachment of eight destroyers commanded by

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Captains 2nd rank Bubnov and Eliseev sailed off Port Arthur to reconnoitre the location of the Japanese flotilla prepared to blockade the outer roadstead (they repeatedly made such attempts in the first months of war) and to land troops on the Liaodong Peninsula.5 In his reports to Alekseev and the Main Naval Staff, Makarov suggested how to intensify naval intelligence with light cruisers, radio interception and submarines. The use of submarines by the Japanese against the Russian squadron, although it was not possible in the course of the war, still discomfited Makarov who repeatedly warned his staff of this real threat to naval vessels in Port Arthur.6 The resolution and vigour demonstrated by Makarov revived Russian naval morale and even encouraged the indecisive and vacillating Nicholas II. The tsar jotted down in his diary: I have just received very interesting telegrams from Alekseev after his return from Port Arthur. He reports on repairing battleships [damaged by the Japanese on 9 February], fortifying the front line and our Nanshan positions [in the narrowest waist of Liaodong Peninsula], and finally, about a successful concentration of active troops. Thank Heavens – everything is going on smoothly and faster than we thought.7 However, the tragic incident of 12 April 1904 stopped the developments in naval MI under the command of Makarov. In fact, the admiral fell victim of the aforementioned disarray in distinguishing between their own and alien naval vessels by the Russian artillery coastal batteries. On the night before the catastrophe, Makarov was staying on board the Diana, a cruiser on guard at the harbour entrance. Her commander reported to the admiral that there were torpedo-boats outside, and asked if he should fire upon them. But Makarov mistakenly confused them with the Russian torpedo vessels sent out upon a reconnoitring expedition the day before and returning to base at that very moment, and gave the order not to fire. This fatal mistake resulted in the Japanese destroyers laying a number of mines in front of the entrance. Next day, while irate at the news of the torpedo-boat Strashnyi being cut off from the Russian squadron by the Japanese destroyers, Makarov did not give the order to sweep the mines in the main Russian fairway of Port Arthur. Thus, his flagship Petropavlovsk left the inner harbour, struck a mine, exploded and sank with all hands in a matter of moments. The admiral, his staff and more than 500 seamen were killed or drowned. Only a few officers, including the Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich, and 73 seamen of the ill-fated ship saved their lives. There even spread false rumours of a submarine attack on Russian battleships between Port Arthur’s defenders. Sources of false rumours might be Japanese agents provocateurs among the garrison. Meanwhile, the Japanese continued to lay mines in the outer roadstead almost every night using such tricks as sending Chinese fishing boats (junks) ahead of their destroyers to camouflage their manoeuvres. Thus, on 20 April, the blockade of the principal Russian naval base in the Pacific had begun: in daytime by armoured battleships and at night by torpedo-boats.8

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At the same time, the Russian fleet was profoundly demoralized, the crews lapsing into a torpor while its new, far less able, commander, Rear Admiral Vitgeft, resumed the timid no-risk policy of Makarov’s forerunner. One eyewitness commented on this appointment that Russian admirals were rather conservative and had devoted little attention to the war games arranged by the Naval Academy on the eve of hostilities. Thus, when Rear Admiral Vitgeft visited St Petersburg on several business trips, he did not feel it was his duty to drop in at the Academy and to join in any ‘team’ of staffers in the periods of these exercises.9 At the very beginning of war, the defenders of Port Arthur shared their superiors’ belief that ‘peace would be signed in Tokyo within three weeks of the first shot’.10 The death of Makarov changed the morale of officers and seamen from enthusiastic to gloomy. Some people even regarded that ‘God had given up the Russians if He had permitted the death of Admiral Makarov’.11 The French historian Girard Piouffre maintains that on the day Makarov was killed, Togo had won the war, though he did not yet know it.12 The information on the adversary, which Russian reconnaissance ships gathered at sea, was not sufficient to guarantee the squadron’s break through the Japanese naval blockade, in spite of numerous sorties to patrol coastal waters and the guard of the outer roadstead by cruisers. While Vitgeft lacked intelligence about the Japanese losses and location, Togo was kept well informed of Russian movements by spies inside the bastions of Port Arthur. Admiral Virgeft, thus, had to act almost blindfold both in the attempt to escape to Vladivostok on 23 June and in the battle of 10 August, for each time his flotilla left the harbour, it ran across the main forces commanded by Admiral Togo.13 On 23 June, the Pacific Squadron put out to sea, but Japanese torpedo-boats were on alert, because the news of the planned escape had been published in the local paper Novyi Krai. While Vitgeft defended his battleships from the Japanese torpedoes and swept clear the passage, Togo’s battle squadron appeared on the horizon, prompting the Russian admiral’s return under the protection of the fortress batteries.14 Apart from the paucity of Russian shipboard guns,15 the lamentably poor Russian intelligence was again one of the key factors which caused the defeat of the squadron in the forthcoming Battle of the Yellow Sea on 10 August 1904. When a 12-inch shell hit the flagship Tsesarevich, the explosion killed Vitgeft together with his command group and locked the steering. The other Russian men-of-war were thrown into confusion, for they could not follow the flagship which began steaming in a circle. The next in command was Rear Admiral Pavel Uhtomskii, on board the Peresvet. Although he signalled to the other ships ‘Follow me, return NOT Port Arthur’, the negation ‘not’ was lost in the heat of battle and the whole order was mistaken by the squadron as ‘Follow me, return to Port Arthur’!16 Meanwhile, another battle group of the Russian Pacific Fleet, which was based in Vladivostok according to the war plan drawn up by Vice Admiral Nikolai Skrydlov as early as 1901, put out to sea on regular reconnaissance

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missions along the coasts of Korea and Japan. The objectives of this cruising were to intercept the enemy’s war transports destined for Korean ports and to redirect its naval forces from the siege of Port Arthur to the defence of its own shores. Despite a series of obvious successes at sea, when a number of Japanese cargo vessels loaded with heavy artillery guns and ammunition were sunk by this little Russian flotilla of four cruisers, their activity revealed the principal inadequacies in the organization of spying. First, the pompous ceremonies of departure from Vladivostok often divulged the eventual maritime operations plotted in secrecy by the staffs. Second, the battleships almost ignored the practice of taking POWs and the subsequent interrogation, which might have resulted in the gathering of valuable nuggets of intelligence on the location of Japanese naval vessels and ports of destination by naval expeditions planned by the staffs. The attempt made by Rear Admiral Konstantin Iessen to meet and reinforce Vitgeft’s squadron with three cruisers on 14 August 1904 ended with the scuttle of Riurik and severe damage to Rossiia, when Russian battleships met the superior detachment under the command of Rear Admiral Kamimura in the Korea Strait. Interestingly, the Russian naval command in Vladivostok obtained the information on the battle in the Yellow Sea and sailed off to rescue their compatriots only on 11 August, when the Russian Pacific Squadron had already suffered defeat.17 The rumours of submarines to be used in the Pacific proved true to life: however, not in the case of Japan, but in that of Russia. The Main Naval Staff adopted a top secret programme of their delivery in pieces to Vladivostok with subsequent assembling at the shipyards. The first production Russian submarine, the Dolphin, was delivered to Vladivostok at the end of 1903. With the outbreak of war, the Naval Ministry accelerated the process of building submarines in the Baltic and placed orders with Western companies, e.g. in the USA. By the end of 1904, it had supplied the Pacific Fleet with seven submarines, while another six machines were dispatched along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok, where they were later assembled and put into operation. As Russian naval historians pointed out, ‘it meant the first strategic transfer of submarines between theatres of naval operations by special railway transporters carrying these boats’.18 In the period of construction, crews for submarines were recruited and drilled by skilled naval officers. The Dolphin became a training centre under the command of the first Russian professional submariner, Lieutenant Captain Beklemishev. In January 1905 top naval officers held a conference on board the cruiser Gromoboi in Vladivostok to elaborate a scheme of submarine operations against Japanese marine forces in the Tsugaru and Korean Straits. As their navigation range was short and the crew lacked experience, Russian cruisers had to tow them to the straits at night and deliver them to enemy naval bases, where submarines could attack Japanese battleships and war transports. These plans, however, proved impracticable. Later, Vice Admiral Skrydlov, the superior naval chief in Vladivostok, ordered the submarines to keep watch on the remote approaches to the last Russian naval base in the Pacific. The

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Dolphin and another boat, called the Som, put out to sea on their first patrol mission on 21 February 1905. Although the low power of their engines and the construction of the submarines prevented them from long-distance navigation in the Yellow Sea, one of these vessels, called Kasatka, undertook a seven-day reconnaissance expedition to the shores of Korea, while the Keta was used by the naval command to protect the Amur estuary together with a group of torpedo-boats from the Japanese landing operation. In fact, the higher Russian command also feared an eventual enemy breakthrough up the estuaries of the Amur and the Sungari rivers to take the Manchurian Army in the rear.19 However, neither the Som nor the Kasatka was able to prevent Japanese transports landing expeditionary corps on the island of Sakhalin in July 1905. One could be led to believe that the Russian submarines contributed somehow to the conduct of naval reconnaissance and assured the security of the coast at Vladivostok, they actually rebutted only one attack launched by the Japanese battleships against the last Russian naval base on 11 May 1905. That very morning, two submarines were patrolling remote approaches 70 miles from Vladivostok when two Japanese destroyers suddenly emerged out of the thick fog. The commander of the submarine Som decided to attack the enemy and ordered his crew to be prepared. But the destroyers speedily fell back and vanished in the fog undamaged. Though one of the submarines later ran aground, the adversary’s men-of-war were ordered to give up further attacks. From that day the Japanese admirals realized the real threat of this new Russian weapon to their naval vessels.20 Later, some foreign military observers also paid attention to this innovation. For example, in his response to a request by the Chairman of the Naval Committee of the American Congress, the chief executive at the Office of Naval Intelligence pointed out that although submarines had not yet appeared on the scene of war, there might yet be interesting developments from that quarter in the future.21 When the battleships of the squadron returned to Port Arthur after the battle of 10 August, their ordnance and crews were transferred to ground operations and never again risked on missions of spying on the open sea.22

SIGINT and other means of tactical intelligence The Russian naval staffs put innovations into the practice of reconnaissance on a more regular basis than their colleagues did in the active army. For instance, Vice Admiral Makarov ordered to be put into action a station for signal interception in Port Arthur. On 22 March 1904, when the Japanese flotilla shelled the fortress, he instructed some naval engineers at his disposal to jam the enemy’s signals. In the opinion of Bruce Menning, it appeared to be the first recorded instance of radio-electronic combat.23 During the war, for the first time in belligerent operations, wireless telegraphy was brought into use by the combatants, and another attempt was made to establish a new class of spies, this time to the detriment of neutral states. The editorial boards of some British and American daily papers fitted up a Chinese

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steam-yacht, the Haimun, with wireless telegraphy apparatus and sent correspondents out on it into the Pacific. While moving about within the zone of operation of the battle fleets, the correspondents sent messages in cipher to the British naval base of Weihaiwei, whence they were telegraphed to the newspaper offices. In April 1904, suspecting that the reporters were delivering valuable nuggets of information to the Japanese, Admiral Alekseev issued a circular, which was communicated by the tsarist diplomatists to the foreign ministries of the neutral powers in the following terms: If neutral vessels, having on board correspondents who may communicate news to the enemy by means of improved apparatus not yet provided for by existing conventions, should be arrested off Kwantung or within the zone of operations of the Russian fleet, such correspondents shall be regarded as spies, and the vessels provided with such apparatus shall be seized as lawful prizes.24 Interestingly, the foreign offices of London and Washington issued a forcible remonstrance against the attempt to make war-correspondents ‘spies by decree’ and refused to waive any rights which they might have in case of the arrest of their citizens or the confiscation of their vessels. On the other hand, Russian MI in Shanghai, headed by the aforementioned resident, Alexandr Pavlov, who acted under the cover of diplomatic immunity, continued to intercept Japanese wires from Europe to Tokyo via this Chinese hub. From April 1904 to March 1905 they deciphered 350 telegrams. But as soon as a new submarine cable between Japan and the USA had been put into operation, the intensity of transcontinental wire communication diminished. The Russian MI, thus, lost one of the most decisive channels of SIGINT in the course of the war.25 As early as 1903, the Russians decided to bring into use a wireless telegraph connection with their new naval base at Port Arthur to the Chinese seaport of Chefoo, situated just on the opposite seacoast across the Zhili Gulf. They stationed two high masts – one on the top of the Golden Hill in Port Arthur and the other on the territory of the Russian Consulate in Chefoo. Petr Tideman, the Russian Consul in that port, who had graduated from the Eastern Institute in Vladivostok and took up the office at the age of 30, purchased two radio stations, produced by the famous German Telefunken Company, to arrange a direct connection with the naval base. Regrettably, the frequency band of the Russian radio transmitters almost entirely duplicated the one used by some Japanese men-of-war, while the German technicians had no modulator to alter the frequency range of their transmission. Despite all their efforts, the signals from Japanese sources jammed the transmission so that Tideman was forced to give up the idea. Besides, a Japanese shell hit the mast in Port Arthur and in this way excluded any chance to resume wireless transmission.26 Information regarding a submarine telegraph cable allegedly laid by Russian military technicians between the besieged fortress and Chefoo remains unproved by archival records.27

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When the attempts to set up radio and telegraph connections failed, the higher Russian command and diplomatists decided to put into action another means of reconnaissance and speedy communication. They began to recruit Chinese fishermen and boatmen, experienced in smuggling long before the outbreak of hostilities, who crossed the gulf with Russian liaison officers on board their junks to and from Port Arthur. The messages were coded by intelligence officers on tiny sheets of paper and duplicated or even triplicated to assure safe delivery to the point of destination. The delivery period did not exceed six or seven days for a round trip. The beginning of the siege of the fortress itself in May 1904 instigated the flow of volunteer Russian subalterns to liaise between the garrison of the fortress and the Manchurian Army. According to archival records, the group of valiant subalterns engaged in undertaking these missions at extremely high risk to their lives soon got together both at the Headquarters of the Manchurian Army and in Port Arthur’s garrison. These heroic men were Standard-Bearers Shtenger, Kostlivtsev and Radzivil, Cornet Christophorov, Lieutenant Eckgarde and many others. One of them, Dmitrii Gurko, a General Staff Captain managed to convey the report of General Stessel to Kuropatkin on the Battle of Nanshan from Port Arthur to Liaoyang in May 1904. To fulfil the task, the courageous officer succeeded in crossing the Zhili Gulf in a junk through the Japanese line of naval blockade. The other Russian couriers, except for one subaltern, likewise escaped arrest by the Japanese.28 As to Chinese boatmen who conveyed intelligence, their moneys usually amounted to 50–60 Shanghai dollars for a trip. To additionally encourage supporters, the Russian authorities began to award them with special silver medals of St Stanislav or St Anna, which they appreciated more than bonuses. However, their activities were threatened by constant attacks of Japanese torpedo-boats ruthlessly sinking the junks. According to the evidence, about 15 per cent of Russian orderlies and Chinese boatmen were killed during these perilous ‘sea tours’.29 Another threat to them was persecution by the Qing authorities. This is exemplified by the story of Yung, a Chinese boatman on Russian service. One day Yung came out of Port Arthur in a junk and after landing in Chinese territory sent information about the Japanese fleet to the beleaguered port by means of pigeons. Although he was not captured by the Japanese, they called on the local administration to arrest him as a spy. The fate of this brave man remains unknown to us.30 As follows from the story of Yung, in the course of the siege, the Russians likewise used carrier pigeons for dispatches (so did the Japanese, but there is no evidence in Russian sources).31 The birds were delivered from Port Arthur by the same boatmen, whence special orderlies set them free in coastal waters to fly back to the fortress carrying rolled-up coded messages tied to their legs. The procedure looked very much like the one used by British scouts in the AngloBoer War, when messages were inscribed on small bits of paper rolled up into a tiny ball and pressed into a hole bored in a stick, the opening then being stopped with clay.32

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One eye-witness recalled that, although the pigeons took the right direction, not a single message was received by the defenders in this way. Perhaps the distance between Port Arthur and Chefoo of 80 miles proved too long for the pigeons to cover without rest.33 However, further attempts were made by staffers at the Headquarters of the Manchurian Army to use birds for this purpose. They organized a special station in Liaoyang to train carrier pigeons for dispatches to Port Arthur. Unfortunately, in the course of the Russian retreat from the city in early September 1904, the crew in charge of keeping the birds were too late to evacuate the cages with 45 birds by the last train to Mukden. They had nothing to do except to set them all free. As a result only three birds reached Port Arthur a few days later.34 Apart from mission of intelligence, the Russian diplomatists and official agents of the Finance Ministry on Qing territory contributed to the organization of regular supplies of food, medicines and ammunition of various kinds from Chefoo, Tientsin and Shanghai to the beleaguered fortress. In the course of the siege, some aforementioned personalities, Pavlov, Tideman, Laptev, Davydov and others, were busily engaged in leasing cargoes from neutral powers to be sent to the fortress. However, only a small amount of supplies safely reached the defenders because of the Japanese naval blockade, while the vast majority of transports loaded with various things the garrison urgently needed, sank after the attacks of the adversary’s torpedo-boats on the outer approaches to Port Arthur.35 The report by Admiral Togo to the Imperial Headquarters on 1 October 1904 emphasized the importance of interception operations carried on by the Japanese: The adversary, being for a long time cut off from his main forces, begins, little by little, to suffer shortage of food and ammunition. While announcing generous awards, he proposes to natives to get down to smuggling. Many neutral vessels and junks, therefore, ignoring perils, carry on contraband. The fleet is on alert to meet the enemy’s squadron and, at the same time, it has to apply all efforts to intercept smugglers. The torpedo-boats at Port Arthur establish the first blockade line, the cruisers the second one; they are added to by reconnaissance vessels sent to the Gulf of Zhili and to Shandong to check on and seize the smugglers’ boats.36 After the Japanese seized the fortress and the Pacific Fleet ceased to be the main battle force in the region, it was Lieutenant Boris Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, a talented protégé of Admiral Makarov and a flag officer at the headquarters of the Vladivostok cruiser detachment, who suggested to the higher command a new system of wire interception, code breaking and jamming the signals of battleships at short range. Aided only by two graduates from the Eastern Institute, he pioneered the method of naval radio reconnaissance, which the Russians used for the first time in the fight with the detachment of light vessels under the command by Vice Admiral Kamimura.37

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As primary sources evince, although the Japanese lagged behind DolivoDobrovolskii in radio reconnaissance, they worked hard to likewise organize wire interception and decode Russian messages. A report by Rear Admiral Grevs to the staff of the Priamur military district corroborated this conclusion: While checking the observation post stationed on Cape Maidel, Petukhov, the military telegrapher, imparted to Captain Feklin about his suspicion that some station had interfered with our telegraphic line to intercept wires, because there are often inexplicable breaks in communicating messages by the Russian devices.38 Later, when the Second Pacific Squadron was approaching the Yellow Sea, the Japanese used observation posts stationed on the tops of the highest coastal mountains together with interception stations and light naval vessels spying out the open sea to procure full information on possible routes and manoeuvres of Russian battleships before the fleets met in the Tsushima Strait.

Combat and human intelligence during the siege of Port Arthur On the Viceroy’s departure to Mukden in early May 1904, Lieutenant General Anatolii Stessel’, appointed by Admiral Alekseev to be the chief commander of the defence as early as 14 March, took over the organization of MI, first on the whole Liaodong Peninsula and later inside the besieged fortress. There were thirteen attached General Staff officers at his disposal to collect, collate, process and disseminate intelligence about Japanese expeditionary corps. However, both Colonel Reis, the chief of Stessel’s staff, and the commander himself, devoted too little attention to these data or even simply ignored the findings on the adversary. The majority of eye-witnesses characterized General Stessel’ as little more than an inflated military manikin puffed up by his epaulettes. Reginald Hargreaves, the British military observer in Port Arthur, wrote that Stessel’ was ‘a compound of textbook and parade-ground martinet’.39 One Russian novelist described Stessel’s conservative perception of innovations in the episode with telephone lines fixed to facilitate the administration of defence: ‘I hate this chirring nasty thing. It means too much trouble without any sense, for it is always out of work. Let it chirr at the headquarters, while orderlies dash to me with reports. Any live connection is better than all these electric things.’40 Another actual combatant, Colonel Sergei Rashevskii, exemplified his critical impression of Stessel’ in a diary entry: His absolute incompetence in military science and even ignorance in it draw him to the negative perception of the general-staffers’ contribution to the defence. In a final count, there is no one officer in his staff who knows the plan of the fortress, who is familiar with the new bastions, weaponry, roads,

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Inside the bastions of Port Arthur etc., so that, if in an emergency during the Japanese assault one has to send reinforcements to any sector of defence, almost nobody would have an idea of where to depart, especially at night, and what the consequences of this sortie may actually be.41

In the opinion of this eye-witness, the conduct of MI by the staffers was poor. On 30 June, he stated in his diary: We have not yet learned which of the adversary’s divisions is now operating against us at Port Arthur. Neither do we know anything of the numerical strength of troops besieging the fortress. In a word, we are totally unaware of the adversary’s forces and intention. We have no idea of how things are to the north. We have procured no information of Kuropatkin for the last ten days.42 The constant conflicts and personal idiosyncrasies of garrison commanders prevented the reconnaissance operations from being effective. The absence of Admiral Alekseev affected the increase of rivalry between generals and admirals. Each of them preferred to collect and analyse intelligence through executives and secret agents of their own, without even reporting their findings to each other. The general situation was aggravated by the intense activity of the Japanese network of espionage inside the fortress. Their secret agents, disguised as Chinese peasants and coolies, used to penetrate the Russian positions ignoring the barriers and traps set up by the Russian troops. Equipped with small pocket torches, they regularly communicated signals to Japanese torpedo-boats at sea. According to garrison combatants, they attempted to misinform Russian naval commands both on the shore and on board ships on the false preparations to attack the outer roadstead or, to the contrary, on an eventual withdrawal of battleships from the fortress. Sometimes, phoney ‘deserters’ crossed the front line to be sent by the Japanese to deceive the Russians on the fresh divisions, allegedly speeding to reinforce troops beleaguering the fortress. ‘Evidently, they recruited scouts among the Chinese population of Kwantung’, wrote Captain 2nd rank Vladimir Semenov, one of Port Arthur’s defenders, ‘besides, experienced agents of espionage mapped every realignment of our ships on a regular basis.’43 The topographic study of the terrain carried out by scouts both before and during the war, resulted in the Japanese officers being supplied with notebooks containing accurate blueprints and descriptions of all Russian bastions, caponiers and casemates.44 Besides, there is information of a Japanese ‘mole’ in Port Arthur’s civil administration, who conveyed to his patrons a full description of Russian fortifications.45 To stop this activity and to neutralize Japanese scouts, Russian military authorities sent off special groups of mounted and foot patrols. The arrested person, usually a native levied by the adversary, was conveyed by patrol to the headquarters, where, after interrogation, he was executed by hanging by the neck, whether or not he had succeeded in obtaining information or conveying it

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to the enemy. Two persons in the staff of General Stessel’ were in charge of counter-intelligence: Lieutenant Colonel Petr Butusov, the chief of the frontier guards in Kwantung, and Colonel Shershov, the chief of a special gendarme mounted detachment. The main problem that the Russian counter-espionage service faced inside the bastions of Port Arthur, was very like the difficulties of their colleagues in the Manchurian Army, namely their poor command of the Chinese and Japanese languages. In fact, secret documents in oriental languages, captured by Russian executives of counter-intelligence or volunteer scouts in the course of the siege, remained a mystery because of the lack of professional interpreters. This inadequacy likewise hindered Russian MI in Port Arthur from recruiting locals to gather intelligence on the Japanese on a massive scale.46 Generally, combat reconnaissance was conducted by mounted and foot groups of scouts. The usual practice was to muster such groups of volunteer officers and soldiers with thirty men per company.47 When the fortress was cut off from the Manchurian Army and the vanguards of the 3rd Japanese Army of General Nogi occupied the surroundings of Port Arthur, Russian commanders set about carrying out sorties to reconnoitre their positions. The main task of these groups was to insinuate into enemy positions and to monitor all his preparations for new attacks on the bastions. In addition, they were obliged to carry out a so-called ‘sapping reconnaissance’ to prevent the Japanese from blowing up Russian fortifications. It is well known that three general assaults against the fortress in August, September and November–December were successfully rebuffed by the defenders, though they had to gradually retreat to the old Chinese wall – their terminal defence line in front of the town and harbour. ‘The skilful use of starlight shells, powerful electric search-lights, and machine guns worked in conjunction, wrought awful havoc in the ranks of the assaulters’, wrote W. R. Smith, the correspondent of Associated Press and Reuter’s Telegraph Company, who eye-witnessed the August general assault.48 In the long autumn nights of 1904, groups of Russian scouts crept upon the enemy’s sentry posts in order to capture artefacts or, in rare occasions, to take POWs. However, most of these sorties resulted in nothing. Their actual participants recalled that the Japanese soon set up hedges of barbed wire and tied empty metal tins to poles, which made a noise when Russian reconnaissance patrols crossed these sentry-lines.49 Sometimes, the dispatched scouts had to stay in secrecy for many hours before they dared to penetrate by stealth into Japanese positions. On being exposed by sentry posts, they suffered instant enemy fire and usually had to fall back to their defence lines. The losses of officers and men taking part in such sorties amounted to 30–40 per cent.50 It should be noted, however, that the Russian command attempted to put into operation such novel means of troop reconnaissance as balloons and even kites. Interestingly, the Russian army put them to the first test as early as the 1880s. By the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, a test-centre for balloons had been set up in the suburbs of St Petersburg. A real enthusiast of aeronautics, Colonel Kovan’ko, was appointed to supervise the tests. In addition, seven more balloon sections were organized by Russian troops in the early twentieth century.

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On 1 August 1904, Nicholas II observed tests of balloons in Peterhof. The sovereign highly appreciated the use of these aircraft for reconnaissance in the field and founded the East Siberian Field Balloon Battalion comprising two companies. Colonel Kovan’ko took the head of the unit.51 In practice, however, devices of this kind proved too expensive for daily use and far too dangerous to be applied by active troops in combat reconnaissance. The first balloons were filled with hydrogen which might explode at any moment and cause serious casualties to personnel. Both direct sunshine and fog hindered observers in the balloon car from monitoring the enemy’s position from the height of 300–500 feet. Besides, the balloon itself appeared to be quite an easy target for the adversary’s snipers, who started intensely firing upon it from a distance of three miles. For all these and other reasons, almost all the initial documented attempts of aeronautic reconnaissance failed. Although, in December 1904, the balloon company was attached to the Staff of the Third Manchurian Army, after the Battle of Mukden such activity ceased because the acid and other substances necessary to fabricate hydrogen had run out, while the higher command declared to allocate additional sums to restore these devices.52 According to the evidence of the defenders, in July 1904 Lieutenant Mikhail Lavrov, the head of the aeronautic section established by the Naval Ministry, constructed and tested a balloon in the Russian defence line. As Colonel Rashevskii mentioned in his diary, the garrison had great need of this apparatus, for the Russians were unable to estimate the numerical strength of the beleaguers and the exact dispositions of their artillery batteries.53 Despite the fact that the ladies of the garrison even sacrificed their silk gowns and skirts to make balloons, the tests failed for the deficit of acid to fabricate hydrogen. Meanwhile, on 27 September, the Japanese raised up their first reconnaissance balloon above Wolf’s Hills. Interestingly, it was made of materials captured by their patrol cruisers from the Russian cargo ship Manchuria destined for Port Arthur.54 It is a little-known fact, but Russian inventors even planned to use the first military helicopter for air reconnaissance. In 1904, Iosif Lippovskii, an engineer at the Putilov plant, constructed a test helicopter capable of raising a crew of two and 490 kg of bombs. The project was criticized by the celebrated scientist Nikolai Zhukovskii, the father of Russian aeronautics. His criticism resulted in the War Ministry and the Main Staff refusing to continue tests. The Japanese might have thanked Professor Zhukovskii for his unintentional assistance.55 But despite all the Russian efforts, the eight-month siege of the fortress resulted in capitulation. Colonel Rashevskii’s diary entry of 16 October reflected the offensive spirit of the Japanese attackers: ‘With every day of siege, we become more and more assured of what a perilous enemy the Japanese are to us. They charged the fortress so skilfully, using artillery, machine-guns, sapping and mining, they so intrepidly dashed to the defence lines that we must acknowledge their extraordinary courage and great experience.’56 The seizure of the main strategic heights surrounding Port Arthur, by the beleaguering army of 100,000 men, prompted the Russians to lay down their arms on 2 January 1905, although the numerical strength of the garrison of more

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than 40,000 combatants still remained sufficient to continue this mortal struggle. According to surviving combatants, there was little chance to sustain another month or even week of the siege, for there was a breach of almost five versts in the defence line, which the Russians were unable to efficiently protect for a long period. Otherwise, some fortress commanders and Western observers believed that the Russian positions were still capable of defence which could only have been overcome by weeks of sapping and mining. Later, they accused General Stessel’ of not having prepared and provisioned these positions for a continuation of the defence.57 However, the majority of sympathetic bystanders were convinced that, if the Japanese advanced on the wide front, the defenders would have to capitulate because they would delay the seizure of the whole fortress for less than an hour. If the defence line were broken through, they might have burst into the streets or might have simply smashed the civil buildings, including the city hospitals with 18,000 wounded defenders, with precision shell bombardment. ‘The language of the last report of the Russian Commander-in-Chief [Lieutenant General Stessel]’, claimed one British eye-witness, ‘indicated that he feared carnage in the streets if the place was taken by assaults, for he stated that he intended taking measures to prevent such carnage.’58 Another British war correspondent argued that even those Russian officers who were most friendly disposed to General Stessel’ assured him that they could have held out in Port Arthur for at least a fortnight longer, but to what good?59 In January 1905, just on the eve of the democratic revolution in Russia, William Greener, a correspondent of The Times in Port Arthur, who, apart from performing his normal duties, also acted as secret informant to the British Admiralty, depicted a colossal negative impression made upon the whole Russian nation by this defeat: Russian residents, without exception, were very fond of Port Arthur, and all Russians, and many foreigners, regarded the place with affection. It was symbolic of Russian expansion, of Russian dominion of the Pacific. The navy revered it; it was their only ice-free port; the soldiers were proud of it; as an impregnable fortress it appealed to their sense of power.60 The fall of Port Arthur surely accelerated an overall strategic victory of Japan over the tsarist regime. At the same time, it contributed to developments in the sphere of intelligence on all levels, because the eventual seizure of other, far less protected strongholds of the Romanovs’ empire might follow the capitulation of the naval base. As early as the end of May 1904, long before the fall of Port Arthur, the Japanese landed an independent detachment of infantry troops on the Kamchatka Peninsula threatening to cut off the northern Russian possessions from the rest of the Russian Far Eastern territories. Although this detachment was met with a strong rebuff from the local garrison, and the Japanese command had to withdraw its landing units from Kamchatka, the invasion of the peninsula was regarded as an ill omen of the Russian collapse in the Pacific.

6

Russian military intelligence in the Battles of Liaoyang and Shaho

As Chinese he dressed to hide his plan Crossed himself quickly, off then bravely he ran, To the Japanese lines, Where they saw through his drag. ‘Rojin’ rose the cry; he was grabbed; he was bagged. Russian folk song, 19041

Operational reconnaissance on the flanks of the Russian army After the outbreak of war, the organization of combat (or troop) reconnaissance by special mounted or foot patrols of scouts and by trained orderlies faced various obstacles. First, those groups of volunteer scouts, recruited from officers and other ranks, lacked experience in monitoring realignments of the Japanese infantry and cavalry units on the mountain terrain of Manchuria, so unfamiliar to Russian plain-dwellers. The alternation of high cone-shaped hills and narrow, deep canyons alarmed not only peasants dressed in military uniform but regular officers as well. In addition, the Manchurian kaoliang (sorghum) of two metres height from May to October, hindered reconnaissance patrols from observing the enemy. The majority of natives, feeling distrust or even hatred towards Russian troops, when being asked for the right direction, often deliberately confused routes to hamper the progress of spying. The looting of villages and massacres of inhabitants, performed by the Cossacks, also reinforced this negative attitude. Geoffrey Jukes, the modern British historian of the Russo-Japanese War, rightly states that, inasmuch as ‘a cavalryman could carry off more in his saddle-bags than an infantryman in his pack’ and because of ‘frustration induced by successive defeats was taken out on the defenceless Chinese’, the Cossacks had the worst reputation in the Manchurian Army. Their suspicions of Chinese spies

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helping the Japanese led the Cossack detachments to pillage peaceful settlements, torch villagers, rape women and butcher cattle and poultry. Geoffrey Jukes exemplified this conclusion with the following episode: ‘One eye-witness noted that an entire family hiding in a pit was killed because someone suggested they were Japanese spies.’2 Meanwhile, the Japanese propagandists formulated the conception of ‘the unity of Asiatic nations to face barbarians from the North’, which found a response in the educated classes of the Qing Empire. Not accidentally, the General Staff Major General Vladimir Kosagovskii stated in his diary that China declared neutrality but the Celestial Empire sides with Japan by all means against the detestable Russians. The Chinese do not love the Japanese either, but they are going to tackle this problem only after they take back Manchuria from Russia.3 The Russian command apprehended that both Peking and the semi-independent feudal rulers in Outer Mongolia and Sinkiang would instantly break neutrality to the benefit of Japan. Hence, the staffers devoted particular attention to MI on the flanks of the Manchurian front. Amazingly, some intelligence officers even suggested to Kuropatkin to second a group of experienced staffers to the headquarters of two eminent Qing generals, Yuan Shik’ai and Ma Sayuan, in order to inform the Russians about the disposition and movements of the most battleworthy units under their command. However, on the recommendation of Count Lamsdorf, the Russian Foreign Minister, Kuropatkin disagreed with this proposal for fear of international scandal and eventual involvement of European powers in the Far Eastern conflict.4 On the other side, the Japanese intensified their efforts to instigate the new anti-Russian uprising in the rear of the Manchurian Army. The appointment as military attaché in Peking of Aoki Nobuzumi triggered off the establishment of closer links between Tokyo and some Chinese military leaders, such as the aforementioned General Yuan Shik’ai. After the war broke out, Major Aoki began to set up units for spying and sabotage behind the Russian lines in Manchuria, using Peking as a base.5 In late May 1904, Lieutenant Colonel Hasiguchi Izauma, one of Aoki’s closest assistants, set up diversionary groups in some mountain regions on the territory of the Qing Empire. The Chinese intelligence, controlled by Yuan Shik’ai, began to actively collaborate with General Yasumasa Fukushima, the head of the Japanese MI at the headquarters of Marshal Iwao Oyama, the Commander-in-Chief. The real spymaster, General Fukushima, formulated a plan to strike Russian units which became separated even at a short distance from the main forces, by bands of chunguses directed by the Japanese intelligence executive. It would seem very likely that such actions might infringe the neutrality of China. To check the data received from diplomatic sources against the information on the possible breaking of neutrality by Peking obtained through secret agents,

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Russian MI contacted attachés, consuls, frontier guards officials and other individuals on a massive scale. One should bear in mind that about 40,000 subjects of Nicholas II inhabited the wide strip of Manchurian territory along the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), concentrated in the largest cities of Harbin and Mukden.6 While the Qing authorities preserved Mukden as the medieval capital of Manchuria, Harbin, by the beginning of hostilities, had turned into the bulwark of Russian influence in northern China. Thousands of military men and civil functionaries together with adventurers of various kinds crowded the city streets, markets, shops and restaurants. Just 700 officers and 20,000 other ranks assigned responsibility for provisioning the Russian army, bought over 2,000,000 pounds of victual and fodder.7 Not surprisingly, the secret services of other major powers tried to fish in these troubled waters. In the initial months of war, the intelligence section of the Manchurian Army dispatched several skilled staffers to Generals Yuan and Ma in order to estimate the numerical quantity of their forces in the field and investigate their hidden intentions. Two of them, Staff Captain Rossov and Esaul David Livkin, have been mentioned in earlier chapters. The former made his trip under the identity of a Danish correspondent to Yuan and managed to procure information of Ma’s disinterest in levying open war with the Russian troops. Livkin, a real expert in Oriental studies, disguised as a Russian tea merchant Popov, attained even greater results. He took the head of a tea traders’ caravan on its way to the headquarters of General Ma. At first, he was accorded a cold, one may say even a hostile, reception by Ma and his retinue. Later, the generous gifts and polite manners of Livkin mellowed their attitude towards Esaul and his companions. Perhaps, this progress was achieved through his tolerant perception of the Chinese Muslims (e.g. the Donghans) represented in Ma’s retinue. In the talks with Ma and the general’s subordinates, Livkin found out that his interlocutors were informed of the fact that the tsarist government did not actually conscript Muslims in the active army, though about 15 per cent of regular officers among the Russian troops were Islamic adherents.8 A series of conferences, held at Ma’s headquarters, led the Russian emissary to believe that this powerful commander did not plan to wage open war in the zone of the CER and in the area of the Amur. Ma assured him that he had received no secret instruction to cooperate with the Japanese in combined hostile actions on the right flank of the Manchurian Army, and would keep a neutral status up to the end of the Russo-Japanese conflict. The data, collected by Esaul Livkin, were of such profound significance that the higher command immediately stopped the relocation of troops to Inner Mongolia. Sadly, the career of this unique intelligence officer proved unfortunate. Badly wounded in the Battle of Mukden in March 1905, he retired on a pension with the rank of colonel and perished in poverty shortly before the outbreak of the First World War.9 Apart from professionals, Russian MI intensified the employment of civilians. Close examination of the episodes offered as examples reveals that tens of volunteer helpers were engaged in the intelligence process. One of them, a

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certain Gromov by surname, who was assigned responsibility for provisioning the Russian troops with cattle bought from the Mongols, gathered information about the adversary and the terrain under his control. From June 1904 on, he and the agents he recruited were charged with the covert supervision of the large segment of the Southern Manchurian Railway (SMR) located to the north of the 42nd parallel.10 His efforts to prevent acts of sabotage and expose Japanese spies on the territory under his responsibility were appreciated by intelligence officers who compiled the final account the conduct of MI in the course of the war: ‘Mr Gromov is quite a proper person for intelligence because of his deep knowledge of Inner Mongolia and wide contacts with Mongolian princes before the war.’ The document reveals that Gromov instructed his agents departing to Mongolia and Manchuria of how to collect data on the Japanese secret contacts with the native population. He instantly transmitted all nuggets of intelligence on saboteur groups headed by Japanese instructors in the Russian rear directly to QuartermasterGeneral Kharkevich.11 Gromov’s activities proved both intensive and useful, despite the perplexity of the Soviet military historian Konstantin Zvonarev who was bewildered by the fact that Russian MI had collaborated with an ordinary merchant in such a delicate realm of spying. Amazingly, Zvonarev further alleged in his book on tsarist MI that Gromov together with the chief of military transport, Major General Nikolai Ukhach-Ogorovich, established a parallel centre of reconnaissance in the rear of the Manchurian Army as a substitute for the formal intelligence section of the Quartermaster Department. The primary sources disagree with this conclusion.12 In the study of evidence from actual eye-witnesses on how other freelancers were involved in secret operations of intelligence, I found, for example, a series of confidential missives submitted to the army intelligence section by Miagkov, a certain craftsman born in the small Siberian town of Kansk. The messages covered the period of Miagkov’s stay in northern China from 7 to 31 March 1904. This person provided the supreme staff with valuable surveys of intelligence on the morale of the natives and rumours spread by provocateurs in Manchuria in the initial stage of hostilities.13 On his arrival of Liaoyang, Kuropatkin established several independent cavalry detachments to reconnoitre terrain on the left flank of his army. Soon, these groups were united in the so-called Liaohei Detachment under the command of Major General Kosagovskii, mentioned in previous chapters. Apart from the conduct of spying, this unit was charged with fighting chunguses and eliminating saboteurs on communication lines.14 Two cavalry detachments, under the command of General Staff Colonel Aleksei Madritov and Major General Petr Mitschenko, took responsibility of tactical reconnaissance on the left flank of the Manchurian Army. The establishment of these independent mounted formations reflected the concept of carrying out cavalry raids in the foe’s rear brought to life by the belligerents in the American Civil War of 1861–5 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8.15 Neither Russian commander was a newcomer to the Far East. Colonel

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Madritov, for example, took part in the suppression of the Boxer uprising in 1900–1. Later, he worked as a chief manager in the staff of the Russian Timber & Mining Trade Society at the Yalu River. Enjoying Admiral Alekseev’s favour, Madritov was appointed as commander right after the outbreak of war. On 2 March 1904, he was instructed by the Viceroy himself not only to regularly reconnoitre terrain on the Sino-Korean border with a mounted detachment of 500 sabreurs but also to dispatch scouts recruited from the local Chinese, Manchurians and Koreans to spy out manoeuvres of Japanese troops beyond the front-line. Besides, Madritov was charged with carrying out diversionary attacks on lines of communications.16 In the aftermath of war, one memoirist commented on the results of Madritov’s activity in the following terms: Depending on the current situation in the Far East, Kuropatkin either demanded dismissal of Madritov [the Commander-in-Chief obviously disapproved of Alekseev’s patronage of Madritov] or decided to benefit from the experience of that industrious officer as an expert in current affairs. All in all, Madritov finished the war at the head of the half-partisan detachment isolated from the active army to such an extent that after the Battle of Mukden he found himself deep in the Japanese rear and could hardly break through to return back.17 The war correspondent of the daily paper Rus which came out in Port Arthur before the war and during the short period of hostilities, a certain Kozlov, accompanied the bold colonel in a few raids of his cavalry across Korea from 1 April to 4 June 1904. Naturally, his narration of these expeditions based on personal experience and issued right after the events he witnessed, sounded rather optimistically: ‘We shall win over the Japanese in a jiffy’, claimed both officers and the other ranks recruited by Madritov, ‘and the heroism of the tiny soldiers will vanish as if by magic’. Another ranker, being absolutely unfamiliar with the situation in Japan but filled with scorn for the enemy, confided to Kozlov in a friendly talk: ‘I want so much to gaze at a Japanese! They say they are courageous, those macaque people . . . It seems to me, however, that there is not much gallantry in them. As soon as they are beaten two or three times, they will start running away like the Chinese did. The latter also appeared to be fearless in the beginning but then they chased one another [this man is apparently speaking of the Boxer rebellions]. That is because of their Asiatic nature . . . What worthless people they are after all!’18 Evidently, the lack of reliable liaison channels delayed the receipt of intelligence from Madritov on a regular basis. And when Russian troops relinquished positions on banks of the Yalu (in May 1904), the body of cavalry, ordered by Madritov, likewise receded in a northerly direction from the Sino-Korean border, thus putting end to reconnaissance on the Korean Peninsula. It became extremely risky to undertake cavalry raids to the interior of General Kuroki’s army on a massive scale. That is why since that time only small mounted recon-

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naissance patrols had insinuated through the Japanese sentry-lines with no substantial effect. As for Colonel Madritov, he continued to conduct HUMINT and fight chunguses.19 The activity of a second independent mounted detachment, the Zabaikal Cossack Brigade, headed by Major General Mitschenko, was narrated by Dmitrii Anichkov, an officer of the 11th Orenburg Cossack Regiment who stayed with this unit for five weeks.20 According to his notes, the detachment gathered intelligence on the numerical quantity and location of Japanese troops, interrogating Chinese subjects and Christian missionaries. Judging from Anichkov’s observations, the data obtained were often incorrect or purposely misrepresented by the natives. Nearly all attempts made by Cossack officers under the command of Mitschenko to undertake long-distance expeditions of 150–160 km ended in no result, when it was extremely important for the Russian command to procure any reliable pieces of intelligence on the Japanese troops landing in Korea. That is why Kuropatkin retired Mitschenko from Korea back to Manchuria on 2 April 1904.21 In the opinion of Lieutenant General Count Feodor Keller, the commander of the so-called Eastern Group of Russian troops, killed by a shell in the Battle of Wafangou, all mounted Cossack groups proved incapable of infiltrating ‘through the line of advanced units of enemy troops, in order to obtain precise data on the realignments of Japanese divisions’. Even fragments of intelligence collected by these groups were ‘inaccurate or incomplete’, while officers reporting to higher command ‘constantly overestimated the adversary’s numerical strength’.22 In late May and early June 1904, i.e. by the time when the vast majority of the Japanese troops had already landed on the continent, Quartermaster-General Vladimir Kharkevich ordered Mitschenko to transfer attention to fortification reconnaissance through scouts. The instruction ran as follows: Apart from investigating numbers of units, names of commanders, quantity of cannons and strength of troops, scouts ought to collect data on fortresses and artificial obstacles, mining areas, depots and barracks, etc. It is also desirable that permanent agents and their assistants keep watch over the enemy in the most important areas of disposition. They ought to monitor all the traffic of the Japanese along lines of communication and to report on a regular basis of how many of them will pass a specific locality. It would be better if scouts could make notes about fortresses or artificial obstacles with all modifications they have suffered. The necessary funding will be allocated on request. You are to spend 3,000 roubles per month on reconnaissance.23 Provided with such stern directives, the brigade, nonetheless, almost failed ‘to present any valuable and informative data either on the numerical quantity or on the exact location of Japanese troops in Korea during spring and summertime of 1904, as the Military-Historical Commission underscored in the aftermath of war.24

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In anticipation of later chapters, we must state that two other raids to the backyard of the Japanese armies, undertaken by an amalgamated detachment of cavalry and mounted artillery under the command of Mitschenko in late 1904 and in spring 1905, likewise came to nothing. The Russians only managed to set fire to food depots, blow up a bridge on the SMR and take a handful of POWs. At the same time, they lost tens of rankers and a few subalterns.25 The transition of the war into a stationary phase and the emergence of a permanent front line increased the importance of combat intelligence by small cavalry patrols and small groups of foot scouts at short distances. Almost all Russian corps, divisions, brigades and regiments began to establish special reconnaissance groups though the pre-war field regulations did not stipulate these kinds of subunits. Many officers, like Colonel Druzhinin, the garrison commander at the Manchurian railway station of Kaizhou, found fault with the daily routine of troop reconnaissance: ‘We receive limited information about the enemy solely by the skills and courage of our officers, namely subalterns, while superior commanders traditionally neglect spying.’ Druzhinin further mentioned instructions to reconnaissance patrols when dispatching them to spy out the enemy: ‘Go there and there, investigate the terrain, and if you meet the Japanese, return back without losses.26 But the quality of the intelligence process performed by foot or mounted patrols did not meet the expectations of the higher command either. Secret missions of individuals were likewise doomed to failure. In late September 1904, a volunteer from the 284th Chembarski Regiment, Vasilii Riabov, crossed the front disguised in Manchurian peasant garb, but was seized by the Japanese within a few days and executed. His valiant behaviour impressed the Japanese to such a great extent that they conveyed to the Russians the account of Riabov’s last minutes before his execution. Later, his heroic deed was propagated by Russian military authorities on a massive scale. They even issued a brochure depicting Riabov as a national hero. After the war, it was put by the War Ministry on the list of printed materials obligatory for study by active troops.27 Episodes of this kind were typical for the same reasons mentioned earlier: the lack of training, inadequacy in special skills, inexperience in carrying out operations in mountainous regions. Besides, the enemy assumed a series of protective measures, such as military camouflage to hide sentry posts, optical devices to check out Russian scouts, secret signals to inform troops of the Russians’ approaching. One could be led to believe that the thorough analysis produced after the war by Staff Captain Aleksandr Svechin, a celebrated Russian military expert and theorist, reveals the flaws of spying conducted by actual amateurs: We did not satisfy ourselves with investigation of the front line, we sought to explore the interior area, to detect enemy positions on the ground, to expose his plans and intentions. Our volunteer reconnaissance groups attempted to infiltrate his positions like seeds dropping through a sieve. Our command chose the best rankers and officers; volunteers were given vague instructions; the groups were sent a distance of 100 verst to certain death,

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the more certain, the braver were the officers. Hundreds of missing servicemen ‘paid’ for worthless data assembled by a lucky individual. In June 1904, this felonious elimination of the best soldiers and officers of the Eastern Group of Troops [which operated against the First Japanese Army] reached a pinnacle . . . On 21 June they dispatched more than ten groups of volunteers but nobody came back. No less than 15 per cent of officers and 10 per cent of soldiers were killed in fruitless raids . . . We lost both the best servicemen and a belief in ourselves, we accustomed ourselves to misfortunes, and we gradually forgot how to win.28 The conduct of troop reconnaissance did not get better after General Staff officers took over command of volunteer reconnaissance groups, inasmuch as some of them sought the attention of the Russian higher command more than they spied on the Japanese. Here is a war episode narrated by an intelligence officer: One day there arrived Captain M. [possibly, Captain Mikhailov, the assistant of the senior aide-de-camp at the Manchurian Army Headquarters]. He conveyed to the Japanese bank of the river the immediate group of volunteers that was fired at from the Stolovaia Hill as if it were a flock of wildfowl; several rank-and-files were badly wounded and Second Lieutenant Ivanov, the head of the men, was seriously wounded and died in a few days. And what about Captain M.? He returned to Mukden, rendered a report to his command and . . . was awarded with the ‘Order of Vladimir with swords’; quod erat demonstrandum.29 The spying on the adversary’s positions by patrols and individuals combined with other less hazardous means, most notably gathering enemy documents and other artefacts, including maps, notebooks, letters, badges, envelopes and munitions, and interrogating POWs (the reward for capturing a Japanese soldier was 100 roubles and 300 roubles for an officer).30 All data were communicated to intelligence sections, first at the level of divisions and corps, while the most important information was reported to Kuropatkin’s headquarters. Here again the principal problem was not only with the Japanese counter-intelligence misinforming their Russian ‘colleagues’, but with the lack of professional interpreters. According to evidence, translations were usually made by alumni of the Eastern Institute in Vladivostok or by Chinese and Koreans employed for this purpose. In May 1904, the Main Staff urgently dispatched five Koreans – students at Kazan Seminary – to Manchuria. However, only one of them later joined the Manchurian Army. That is why the army intelligence section had nothing to do but to employ local far less educated dwellers to act as interpreters for Russian MI. Some of them, as it became clear afterwards, received moneys from Japanese counter-intelligence on a regular basis.31 Aleksei Ignatiev, the aforementioned General Staff Captain, recalled that a Chinese interpreter, whom he employed for a similar purpose, was distinguished

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with a ‘stubborn unwillingness to look straight into eyes’. Instead of translating short questions to village inhabitants, that interpreter ‘usually talked to them for a long time’. Nevertheless, as Ignatiev admitted later, he had no idea whether his Chinese helpers were double-agents on both Russian and Japanese service.32 According to some Western observers, the Japanese succeeded in the creation of efficient HUMINT with the aid of secret agents recruited from Qing subjects long before the war. The evidence of Captain Peter March, attached by the American General Staff to the Japanese troops exemplified this conclusion. In March’s opinion, the command of the Chinese language, the readiness with which any Japanese could simulate a Chinese, and the utter incapability of a big, blue-eyed, fair-haired Russian to accomplish such a feat, gave the Japanese a great advantage in conducting subversive operations on the territory of the Qing Empire.33 In September 1904, Quartermaster-General Kharkevich issued directives of how to perform the intelligence cycle in field corps and divisions. Reflecting the experience gained by the Russians in the course of the war of movement, this document envisioned new tasks for the conduct of reconnaissance operations by officers at the level of corps and divisions: Besides secret intelligence carried out by the army staff, corps should execute HUMINT by themselves to attain their own concrete objectives. They are to find and employ proper agents with the help of the Chinese interpreters. Agents should sojourn in areas occupied by the enemy and seek such jobs as ferrymen, porters, shop assistants, etc., informing the staff officers of the adversary’s movements and the numerical quantity of units . . . The officers in intelligence sections are to report data received from secret agents to the army headquarters only after all required verification and comparative study has been performed.34 The transition of belligerents to the trench stage of war and the realignment of the Russian troops on the Manchurian front, both prompted further developments of combat reconnaissance in corps and divisions. We will have occasion to return to this process in the course of the narrative.

The role of cavalry reconnaissance in the Battles of Liaoyang and Shaho Despite views on cavalry reconnaissance being an outmoded method of combat intelligence prevalent among military theorists by the end of the nineteenth century,35 the tsarist generals pinned great hopes on mounted detachments at an early stage of war. They moreover shared the opinion on ‘the Russian cavalry’s overwhelming superiority over that of its Japanese counterpart’ (the reader should bear in mind reports submitted to the Main Staff by Colonels Vannovskii and Strel’bitskii). They mistakenly believed that Russian commanders would know about each movement on the opposite side, while hiding their own manoeuvres from the adversary.36

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Having been received long before the war broke out, some inaccurate data usually mythologized Japanese cavalrymen. Typically, according to a certain observer, ‘when they [the Japanese] are given an order to progress forward, they dare not go faster than a walk for fear of falling down!’37 Notably, a novelist penned the chat of two Russian officers in a time of fireside relaxation, when one of them expressed his view of cavalry in the following words: I have read in a French newspaper that cavalry would win this war. The author writes that the Japanese had scanty cavalry divisions, so that they would be limited in the intelligence process. Moreover, they would be incapable of fighting the mighty Russian mounted regiments of Cossacks, the best in the world, while the rest of the Russian army behind the cavalry detachments would move in full confidence. And we would know everything about the Japanese. Our cavalry would swoop down on their flanks and interior structures, violating their lines of communication.38 However, battle experience soon shattered these illusions. The Russian cavalry, particularly the Cossacks and irregulars of Central Asian and Caucasian origins, proved unable to infiltrate deep into positions of ground forces, while, on the other side, the Japanese set up reinforced, camouflaged sentry-posts or ambushes, armed with machine-guns. But the main reason of Russian flaws was the nearly total incompetence of Cossacks, regular dragoons or Caucasian irregulars in troop reconnaissance. Being unable to trace the enemy with the help of topographic maps and modern optical devices, they simply lost orientation on the woody, broken, less-known terrain of Manchuria and Korea. This conclusion is exemplified by the General Staff Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Buniakovskii, the author of a manual on the army guard service, summarizing the inadequacies of cavalry reconnaissance in the Manchurian campaign: In the last war, a favourite practice of our cavalrymen, when faced by weaker mounted patrols of the adversary, was to dash into immediate fight and to chase them thoughtlessly if they retreated. In this way, our detachments not only fail to fulfil their main tasks, wasting time and losing strength, but they often ran against infantry units that fired upon them and killed the troops, sometimes to a man.39 Some European observers likewise pointed out failures in Russian cavalry reconnaissance: For the fact that formidable bodies of cavalry devoted little attention to proper security measures, there happened unexpected skirmishes, which usually resulted in the Russians’ retreat and abstention from further activity; on the other hand, one could evaluate the numerical strength of the adversary in extraordinary cases. The Cossacks were ordered to dismount on

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Inefficient combat intelligence, and, particularly, that performed by cavalrymen, led to the inadequate planning of tactical operations by Russian staffers of different levels to check the Japanese offensive in the ground battles of war. Typically, Russian regiments noticed the enemy crossing the Yalu on 30 April only by the din of cannon wheels on pontoons that had been constructed by the Japanese secretly the day before. This situation illustrated the inability of Russian scouts and mounted patrols to amass intelligence on the adversary’s preparations and actual undertakings on the front line.41 In total, the belligerent powers fought seven full-scale ground battles: of Yalu on 30 April and 1 May, Nanshan on 25–27 May, Wafangou on 13–15 June, Liaoyang from 26 August to 4 September, Shaho on 8–18 October 1904, Sandepu on 25–29 January 1905 and Mukden from 19 February to 12 March 1905. According to archival records and memoirs of actual combatants, the conduct of Russian cavalry reconnaissance in the main operations of ground forces appeared very much alike in each battle. For example, one intelligence officer attached to the staff of Kuropatkin recalled that The Japanese attacked our units one after another, bringing up reinforcements from neighbouring valleys. It was almost impossible to understand their movements in the mountain labyrinth, so unfamiliar to our troops. As a result, by the time of attack, we constantly found ourselves in front of a stronger opponent.42 François de Negrier, the Inspector General of the French army, likewise critically reviewed the role played by the cavalry units under the command of General Alexandr Samsonov after the Battle of Wafangou in a brochure on the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War. Oddly, they spent 23 days in losing ground to the extent of 37.5 miles, always hanging on to the enemy and watching his movements, but wholly unable to obtain sufficient information to justify undertaking any important operation. ‘Even when the infantry was close at hand’, continued the French analyst, ‘General Samsonov was unable to give his horses any rest, as he had orders to keep his cavalry always in advance of the infantry.’ In fact, the Russian cavalry units, untrained in marksmanship, and only provided with light artillery, were never able to pierce the line of Japanese sentry-posts or screens.43 It is far beyond the scope of this study to survey the role of cavalry reconnaissance in all ground battles of the war; hence, it seems more appropriate to present its key characteristics, both positive and negative. To my mind, the battles of Liaoyang and Shaho exemplified these characteristics in a proper sense.

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At Liaoyang, as a modern American historian has pointed out, ‘the Russians dug three defensive positions that stretched some 70 km around and reached some 65 km from the centre of the city citadel’.44 After the Russians had rebuffed initial attacks by the Japanese on the positions occupied by the 3rd Siberian Army Corps, they should have launched a counter-offensive to gain a decisive victory, taking into account their substantial numerical advantage in reserves. However, without adequate tactical, and particularly cavalry, reconnaissance, Kuropatkin decided to avert any further risk of envelopment and consequently retired his troops to the second and third lines of defence. The battle resulted in the Russians’ defeat after the cavalry screens on the flanks and in the centre of the defence line, headed by Major Generals Samsonov and Mitschenko, abandoned their positions, ceasing to withstand the fierce onslaught of attackers. It is well known that the Japanese progress in outflanking the Russians, combined with Kuropatkin’s passiveness in the course of the Battle of Liaoyang, was caused by often controversial reports submitted by intelligence officers to the Commander-in-Chief. The most difficult problem all along was to obtain reliable nuggets of information as the situation became extremely complicated. The mounted patrols everywhere ran up against Japanese infantry or dismounted cavalry. Notably, to force the enemy’s line even at a point known to be favourable to a cavalry charge was an enterprise too hazardous to attempt in practice.45 The lessons of this battle for cavalry reconnaissance were summarized by Kuropatkin, actually one of the main culprits of the Russians’ defeat. He realized that the cavalry had failed to perform its two principal functions: to reconnoitre the enemy’s positions and to cut his communications. On 19 September 1904, the Commander-in-Chief renewed his instructions to active commanders of divisions and brigades. The document restated the importance of cavalry reconnaissance. Taking into account its inadequacies at Liaoyang, Kuropatkin critically viewed this branch of Russian MI: Regrettably, one must admit that our counter-attacks have failed so far. I believe that the main reason of these failures is lack of proper intelligence on the front; due to this fact, instead of attacks in accordance with the precise plan, we inflict chaotic odd blows and therefore did not succeed. Ignoring the will of the adversary, we determined the direction of the main blow too long beforehand. It often occurred that, not knowing the enemy’s disposition, we dispersed our troops into battalions or even smaller groups. In other cases we were operating without a detailed blueprint. Finally, we proved to be reluctant in attaining the objectives of our counter-attacks.46 The irrepressible advance of Japanese armies to the north affected great losses of men and horses among the Russian troops, both cavalry and artillery. It drew the higher command to add amendments to point 68 of the ‘Regulations in the Field’, which henceforth ran as follows: ‘Under present circumstances, it is

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extremely difficult to carry out mounted reconnaissance; those who have approached positions of the adversary should first dismount to continue by foot.’47 Improvements in the conduct of cavalry intelligence resulted in the fact that Russian commanders ceased to dispatch their plentiful Cossack groups across the front and set about sending minor scout groups at closer ranges. It would appear probable that the aforementioned Lieutenant General Keller was the first to carry out this new means of spying. On 24 June 1904, he issued the following order: ‘In the majority of episodes, an officer with a couple of bold, reasonable Cossacks should make better and safer distant reconnaissance by foot than a strong mounted patrol, which has to manoeuvre on more open ground.48 To reanimate the fighting spirits of his demoralized army and the decreasing prestige of Russia in China, Kuropatkin decided to encircle the Japanese Army by flanking strikes at the river of Shaho. He divided the troops under his command into two large groups: Eastern and Western, to rebuff the Japanese Army back to Liaoyang. In fact, the Russian higher command planned to crucially change the course of the war before winter came and any further strategic operation was impossible in the severe climate of northern China. Regarding the conclusions made by Russian military analysts such as Alexander Svechin,49 some scholars argued that this battle may be described as the first modern operation, as justified by the so-called ‘operational indices’, such as the number of men engaged, the length of the front, the depth to which operations were conducted, and the duration of the particular operation. ‘In this case’, writes one American historian, ‘forces totalling almost 400,000 men were engaged in nearly continuous fighting for two weeks, along a more or less solid front some 90 km in breadth and 20 km in depth.’50 Although by the time of this fighting Kuropatkin seemed to have gained a more precise understanding of the numbers and the operational thinking of his enemy, there remained numerous inaccuracies in the routes of advance mapped by military topographers, especially in the mountainous area of operations that was in offing. ‘We not only used to neglect topographical characteristics, but often missed the classical positions created by these forces of nature’, recalled Alexandr Svechin. As a result, only those officers who had persistently studied the maps for two to three months, proved capable of comprehending the relief in all details. The Russian military expert further pointed out the critical importance of mountain heights ‘commanding’ the terrain beneath them, which, in his opinion, should be used both for field reconnaissance and the tactical government of troops in any fighting.51 The inadequacies in the conduct of spying at the tactical level were provoked by the misapprehension of what concrete intelligence might be collected by patrols or small advance units. Nearly all Russian mounted or foot groups of reconnaissance usually reported to their staffs that this or that village was occupied by the Japanese, but the information did not meet their commanders’ expectations, because they demanded intelligence on the depth of the enemy’s defence. On the other hand, Russian commanders seldom established observa-

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tion posts on the tops of the numerous hills in the closest proximity to the enemy positions. Besides, Russian officers, especially subalterns, definitely lacked such devices as binoculars or guided balloons to effectively keep watch on every movement of their opponents.52 There remained problems with poor operational liaison between staffs and coordination of the intelligence process conducted by officers in neighbouring active units. Instead of connecting with their neighbours by field telephone or telegraph lines, most older chiefs preferred to send orderlies, who frequently lost their way on the unknown terrain or were killed by Japanese snipers. One actual combatant narrated a war episode exemplifying this conclusion. When the subaltern under his command arrived at the headquarters of a certain general and asked him to share intelligence with his colleagues, the general exclaimed in dissatisfaction: ‘No! I am not going to give you any information, or you may report it to higher staff before we would!’53 The tactical shortcomings of Russian MI in the Battle of Shaho added to the fears of the higher command at the strategic level. Both Alekseev and, especially, Kuropatkin apprehended the situation in the rear would become more aggravated. A few years later, the Russian Commander-in Chief argued that All our actions were hampered by insufficient intelligence on the enemy. The information on developments in our rear, in Mongolia, in the provinces of Manchuria, delivered by General Chichagov [the commander of the frontier guards] and by other persons, seemed alarming and necessitated the dispatch of substantial forces to guard the rear. The defence of Vladivostok and the Ussuriiskii province, taking into account the Japanese mastery of the sea, also required sufficient forces in case of Japanese landed troops there. The situation became complicated and unfavourable to us, which enabled the Japanese to take over the initiative from the beginning of hostilities.54 On 12–13 October, the troops under the supreme command of Marshal Oyama halted the general offensive of the Russian troops in the mountain region to the north-east of Liaoyang. The renewed fighting south to the Shaho River soon exhausted both armies: the Russian had lost 41,000 of 200,000 and the Japanese lost 20,000 out of 170,000. One may conclude that this bloody, albeit indecisive, battle ended in a tie. However, Kuropatkin again preferred to draw off his troops to the winter positions at Mukden in anticipation of new massive reinforcements being dispatched to Manchuria from the Russian provinces. While his units apparently needed realignment, Russian MI likewise required reorganization in its structure and functions.

7

Realignments in Russian military intelligence before and after the Battle of Mukden

The hour has struck, the time has come! We shall restore the law! The burden of war is not heavy for us, Death to Russia! Go ahead, Nippon! Japanese military song, 19041

Reorganization of Russian MI after the Battle of Shaho On 19 October 1904, Nicholas II dispatched his customary letter to the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II or, as the tsar called him in private correspondence, ‘dearest cousin Willy’. The message incorporated a notable phrase: ‘I will continue the war to the end, that is to the day when the last Japanese will be dragged out of Manchuria.’2 Meanwhile, the situation on the front in the fall of 1904 seemed to favour the firm resolution of the Russian emperor to gain a final victory over the foe in the Far East: the Japanese advance to Mukden was checked, the Russian ground forces had received more and more reinforcements; the capacity of the TransSiberian Railway was increased to 14 return trains in a day instead of four in January 1904; the garrison of Port Arthur continued to reply to the fierce attacks of the Japanese on their bastions. In a final account, Russia still held the Baltic and the Black Sea battle fleets, more powerful than the Japanese navy. Besides, after routine vacillations, the tsar endorsed dramatic alterations in the higher echelons of command. On 23 October 1904, he wrote in his diary: ‘I decided to appoint Kuropatkin to the post of the Supreme Commander of all the armed forces in the Far East and to relieve Alekseev of his duties, but not of the post of Governor General. I have endured a heavy inner struggle to come to this decision.’3 On 25 October, Viceroy Alekseev yielded his duties to Kuropatkin. He left Manchuria for St Petersburg five days later. The baleful duplicity of command in the Manchurian Army was thus eliminated, and Kuropatkin reduced the number of levels of military administration of both ground and naval forces. These alterations prompted reorganization in the army structure. In place of the

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eastern and western groups, the Manchurian Army was now divided into three independent armies, each with its own headquarters, quartermaster service and intelligence section charged with tactical reconnaissance. As a result, the former Quartermaster-General Vladimir Kharkevich, was promoted to the post of Chief of Kuropatkin’s staff, and Major General Aleksei Evert to Chief of the Quartermaster Department (after the Battle of Mukden he was replaced by Major General Vladimir Oranovskii, the son-in-law of General Nikolai Linevich). From December 1904 the army quartermaster departments were supervised by Major General Victor Flug, Major General Grigorii Shvank and Major General Mikhail Alekseev.4 Following an order issued by Kuropatkin, military attachés and commissars in Manchuria were submitted directly to the new Supreme Commander, while his staff focused upon strategic MI in the theatre of operations.5 Very soon, however, the endeavours to introduce strict norms of subordination faced similar challenges of poor coordination between staffs and a lingering delay in intelligence communication. The Priamur military district, the Zaamur district of Special Corps of Frontier Guards, the intelligence section in the staff of the supply branch of Russian armies, not to mention the staff of naval forces in Vladivostok, continued to carry out secret operations, often at their own risk. Apart from the reorganization at army level, the personnel of intelligence sections increased in quantity by new appointees and attached General Staff officers. Their duties were defined more precisely: counter-espionage, censorship and the supervision of Western observers in the theatre of war were removed from their agenda, while prior attention was given to more comprehensive data collation, verification and dissemination. The disastrous catastrophe at Mukden and the Russians’ hasty retreat to the north of Manchuria led to the Japanese capturing a wagon-load of maps and secret files. Most of these materials comprised operational summaries and indexes of agents.6 This fatal event disordered the network of Russian HUMINT and stopped the recruitment of new informants for a month. Some of the experienced professionals, e.g. the aforementioned Frenchman Balé, were recalled from Japan back to Kuropatkin’s headquarters.7 Meanwhile, intelligence officers, both at the Main Staff and on the Manchurian front, resolved to convert the names of secret agents, particularly those mentioned in official correspondence, into codes or interim sobriquets.8 It took the Russian military intelligence a few weeks to recover its HUMINT. By the summer of 1905, the process of reanimation of the Russian intelligence community in the Far East was in full swing. From April to June, the intelligence section diversified its channels of communication and developed tradecraft. There was progress in the process of planning operations, defining responsibilities and creating a new regional web of espionage. For example, Colonel Linda, the head of the intelligence section at Kuropatkin’s headquarters, recruited two French citizens, Echare and Plare, who were immediately dispatched to Japan to fill the gap in HUMINT. They were ordered to estimate the strength and quality of reinforcements destined for the front, while

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simultaneously watching the preparations of the Japanese to launch an attack against Vladivostok and to land troops on Sakhalin. Both Echare and Plare were to liaise with the intelligence section through Russian military attachés and consular clerks stationed in Shanghai, Chefoo and Khabarovsk.9 At nearly the same time, on 21 April 1905, Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandr Vineken, one of senior aides-de-camp at the headquarters, drafted a plan of sending off Lieutenant Subbotich disguised as a Serbian journalist under the name Marinkovich on a secret mission to the Land of the Rising Sun. A report by Vineken to Quartermaster-General Vladimir Oranovskii specified the objective of this mission: Our HUMINT in Japan has just suffered a disastrous strike, because secret files were lost in the retreat from Mukden. In view of the danger to life, nearly all the agents have been recalled from Japan. I propose, therefore, to take the opportunity to second to Japan a person who is familiar with military service and enjoys our full confidence. Lieutenant Subbotich of the 11th East Siberian Rifle Regiment volunteered for such a risky adventure. His military education, non-Russian origin, perfect command of the German and French languages, ties of kinship in the Serbian ruling elite – all these qualities facilitate the successful and brilliant performance of the task in hand.10 The Quartermaster-General suggested further providing Subbotich with a substantial maintenance allowance to let him stay in the best inns and get together with ‘intellectual circles of society’ without attracting the attention of the Japanese police. Subbotich ought to keep in touch with the intelligence section via the Russian financial representative in Peking, Leonid Davydov, ranked as State Counsellor. General Linevich endorsed this operation and credited an instant sum of 2,000 roubles to Subbotich, with consequent monthly allocations of 1,000 roubles to be spent on his sojourn in Tokyo. Regrettably, we know no further details of this secret mission. However, academics have examined the espionage career of another spy, a certain commercial traveller, Jose Maria Giddis, who was born Portuguese but later became a British subject. Giddis succeeded in volunteering for service, first, to the military attaché Colonel Ogorodnikov and then to the consul in Tientsin, Nikolai Laptev (who also held the office of Portuguese representative in this city). Giddis was arrested twice: by the Japanese and then by the Russian counter-espionage service, providing both belligerent sides with valuable data from April to December 1904. In his reports, this double agent stipulated the quantity and location of Russian or Japanese troop units, depending who he was working for. However, a coded telegram of 4 June from Ogorodnikov to QuartermasterGeneral Kharkevich quoted the data received from Giddis about the plotted attempts by some Japanese spies upon the lives of Kuropatkin and other high Russian commanders. It was Giddis who notified Ogorodnikov in advance that the Japanese were going to poison wells in the rear of the Manchurian armies. In

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a final count, the Russian counter-espionage service suspected him of double dealing. That is why his spying career ended in jail, where the Russian police put him in 1905. Later, the Warsaw Governor General Skalon, discharged him from prison on the request of the British consul.11 On 15 March 1905, i.e. a year after his arrival in the Far East and six months after he had assumed supreme military power in the region, Adjutant General Kuropatkin was dismissed from the command, though he remained by special order of the tsar in the highest post of the 1st Manchurian Army Commander in place of General Linevich. This reorganization was the last one in the course of the war. However, it could not bring any substantial amelioration in the performance of the intelligence cycle. The necessity for reforms in all spheres of both military and civil administration became obvious to everybody in Russia.

Russian strategic intelligence in Europe and in the Far East The previous agenda for Russian strategic intelligence developed new intricate problems. First, the higher command lacked more precise assessments of Japan’s capability to continue a drawn-out war. Second, the continuation of warfare threatened an eventual armed interference of European powers, namely the UK, in the conflict. Third, Russian intelligence officers were to trace supplies of provisions, arms, ammunition and horses to Japan from Europe and some other parts of the world. Finally, naval intelligence faced the task of safeguarding the 18,000-mile route of the Second and Third Pacific Squadrons dispatched as rescue expeditions to Port Arthur (see Chapter 8). According to archival records, the closest attention was devoted to Russia’s traditional geopolitical rival, the United Kingdom, because London and Tokyo had negotiated the prolongation of their alliance treaty, signed in 1902. During the war, London sought to prevent the Russians from redirecting auxiliary naval forces, especially those from the Black Sea, to the theatre of operations. Some influential British politicians and diplomatists still viewed Russia through the lens of the Great Game – a kind of traditional rivalry for the mastery of East Asia. On the other hand, the UK faced a German challenge in Europe and was attempting to restore the balance of powers by encouraging Russia to remain active on her Western borders. The British cabinet was well aware that with every Russian regiment dispatched to Manchuria from the European part of the empire, the situation in Europe became more and more aggravated. Because of the importance of the post, 15,000 roubles (25 per cent of the Main Staff overall expenses on strategic MI) went to Major General Nikolai Yermolov, the Russian military attaché in the UK, who kept watch on realignments in the British army, while his colleague, the naval attaché Captain 1st rank Ivan Bostrem, assembled findings on the plans of the Admiralty.12 However, Russian official military representatives in the capitals of the other major players likewise intensified their activity. For example, Colonel Vadim Shebeko, accredited in Berlin, reported to the Main Staff of his confidential contacts with a German, Bother by name, who imparted to him impressions of a trip

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along the neutral strip between the belligerents on the Manchurian front. ‘Bother concluded that one should not exaggerate the menace of inflicting blows upon Russian active troops by Chinese chunguses’, argued Colonel Shebeko in a missive of 3 March 1905, ‘the Japanese used them only occasionally for this purpose, but what is more important, they instigated hostility to the Russians and other Europeans among the local population.’13 Interestingly, the higher command responded to this message by sending off a number of cavalry expeditions to spy out the terrain as well as by intensifying HUMINT in Outer Mongolia and northern Manchuria. Meanwhile, Colonel Shebeko continued to monitor supplies of ammunition and arms fabricated at Germany factories on the orders of Japan. He regularly submitted minutes to the Main Staff with specifications of weaponry on the list of supply. Besides, he managed to copy a schedule of war orders placed by the Japanese with the Krupp enterprise. Shebeko procured an exact inventory of cargo vessels and the list of ports they were assigned to visit on the way to the Far East. His idea, which was supported by some admirals, was to intercept these ships and confiscate their loads with light cruisers controlling the main ocean routes. But all his attempts proved abortive, because the plan of the ocean cruise raiding adopted by the Main Naval Staff was finally rejected for fear of the negative reaction of the great powers, most of all that of the UK, and the lack of sufficient allocations (see Chapter 8).14 On the other hand, all appeals by the tsar in secret messages to his ‘cousin Willy’ to prohibit the placing of war orders by the Japanese with German companies ended in nought. In return, the Kaiser accused British and French correspondents of misinforming Nicholas on supplies to Japan from Germany to the benefits of their native companies, the rivals of German entrepreneurs.15 Similarly in the Far Eastern region, Russian ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomats intensified the collection of data on various strategic issues. Colonel Fedor Ogorodnikov and Major General Konstantin Desino were instructed to apply every effort to prevent Peking from gradual transition to armed confrontation with Russia. The telegram sent by Alexandr Pavlov, the Russian resident in Shanghai, to Count Lamsdorf, the head of the Foreign Ministry, evaluated the opportunity to start up an anti-Japanese rebellion on Formosa (Taiwan) by a certain Qing general, who had debated it secretly with a Russian emissary in January 1905.16 The general concept of destabilizing the situation in the deep rear of the Japanese armies originated from the analytical survey drawn up by staffers at the Supreme Headquarters on 11 December 1904. They came to the conclusion that the adversary’s strategy, aiming at the complete elimination of the Russian Pacific Fleet together with its naval bases, Port Arthur, Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk, threatened Russian positions on a global scale, i.e. not only in the Far East, but in the whole of Asia as well. Notably, on 18 December 1904, Kuropatkin made notes in the margin of this document: ‘Have read. Rather interesting. To be communicated to the commanders of armies.’17 By the beginning of June 1905, Russian staffers finally determined both the

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realms and functions of strategic intelligence, pursuant to the instructions issued by Quartermaster-General Vladimir Kharkevich: To develop distant intelligence on a more solid base and to set up closer liaison with the headquarters, I [Kharkevich] decided to conduct it in the following way. Geographically, it should cover three areas: 1 Japan and Korea; 2 Western Manchuria – to the west of Fenghuachen meridian; 3 Eastern Manchuria – to the east of Fenghuachen meridian including seaports of Yinkou, Talienwan, Pitzewo, Takushan, Datunhou, Shahotsi, etc. Herewith strategic intelligence is incumbent on: a the first military attaché in Tientsin [Colonel Ogorodnikov] for Japan and Korea with reducing monthly pay in advance of 15,000 roubles; b his assistant in Shanghaiguan [Captain Afanasiev] for Western Manchuria with monthly pay in advance of 7,500 roubles; c a special officer who is to reside in Chefoo [Staff Captain Rossov] for Eastern Manchuria and Chinese seaports with similar monthly pay in advance of 7,500 roubles. The reimbursements of telegraph expenditures are not included. To set up liaison links between the Supreme Headquarters and the mentioned officers as well as to cross-check their findings, they are supposed to exchange coded telegrams and situation reports. While notifying you on coming alterations, I ask you to take charge of strategic intelligence in Japan and Korea. It should embrace collecting data on Japanese armed forces, their composition, new formations, reserves, military and administrative preparations, army supply, garrisons, and troops’ realignment in Japan and Korea, and, last but not least, locals’ morale in both countries.18 The adoption of this scheme marked an evident progress of the organization of Russian strategic intelligence in the Pacific. For this reason Colonel Ogorodnikov and Major General Desino were prearranged to pass on their emissaries, accordingly to Captain Afanasiev and Staff Captain Rossov. To bring the scheme to life, Russian MI would send many spies to the Japanese rear via Shanghaiguan – a key stronghold on the way from Manchuria to Peking. Being recruited by Afanasiev and Rossov mostly from the local Chinese, they were instructed to get jobs with the Japanese army and, having stayed with them for a certain period of time, to go back across the front line to the Russians.19 Special instructions compiled by Captain Afanasiev stipulated the necessity of more precisely defining the routes and towns and villages, which spies were to pass by or halt in when sent on secret missions. They were further required to

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draw up schemes of routes as well as to review everything they would see in the environs. On getting jobs with the Japanese, they ought to offer their services to employers as scouts to insinuate into Russian positions, being a kind of alibi for crossing the front-line. If such agents could not use the planned routes, they had to reach Russian headquarters by some roundabout way. On 3 July 1905, Quartermaster-General Vladimir Oranovskii wired a cable to his subordinate Mikhail Alekseev, the Quartermaster-General of the 3rd Manchurian army: Captain Afanasiev, the assistant of the first military attaché in China, sent Chinese scouts from Shanghaiguan to the Supreme Headquarters through Japanese positions, where they are to be employed as carriers, servants, etc. They have a character ‘Fu’ (happiness) embroidered on the lining of their left sleeves to evade arrest by our sentry outposts.20 The total quantity of such ‘through’ agents amounted to 17 men in mid-1905, while monthly expenditures allocated to their missions amounted to 7,000–9,000 roubles. For the peace negotiations held in Portsmouth, Virginia, USA, however, the activities in this field were greatly reduced.21 The progress in HUMINT on a strategic level was developing contrarily not only to external but also to internal barriers, such as the perpetual reorganization in staffs. For example, the supreme command had completed the staff reshuffle in the 2nd and 3rd Manchurian armies only by April 1905. But despite this they assumed responsibilities on a full scale, most of newly appointed officers who still hesitated to take prompt operational decisions in situations demanding immediate reaction. According to memoirs of Major General Mikhail Alekseev, the Quartermaster of the 3rd Manchurian Army, the intelligence cycle, carried out by staffers, still lacked a strong united will, while nearly all nominations to higher posts at headquarters still suffered from nepotism, though, perhaps to a lesser extent than at the beginning of the war. His opinion is exemplified by Kuropatkin’s powerlessness to fill staff vacancies with his own appointees.22 A highly critical account compiled by the intelligence section of the 3rd Manchurian Army illustrated these flaws in an eloquent manner: ‘There were neither regulations, nor skilled officers or agents for intelligence; we also knew little of the adversary’s capacities and needed instruction on how to conduct reconnaissance.’23 The perpetual reorganizations of the Russian Far Eastern intelligence community lowered its potential. As a result of the Mukden debacle, for example, Vasilii Flug, the Quartermaster-General of the 1st Manchurian Army, was reappointed at the same rank, but in the 2nd Manchurian Army, while his former office was taken by Lieutenant General Vladimir Kharkevich, a trusted subordinate of Kuropatkin. In his turn, Flug succeeded Major General Grigorii Shvank as QuartermasterGeneral in the 2nd Russian Army. Only Mikhail Alekseev continued to superintend the quartermaster service in the 3rd Manchurian Army to the end of war.24 The staffers under the command of Alekseev put HUMINT to detailed analy-

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sis. The zone of their responsibility covered the 2nd and the 4th Japanese armies headed by General Oku and General Nozu respectively. It also covered terrain between Liaoyang and the river of Shaho where Marshal Oyama had concentrated his general reserves. Remarkably, the survey drawn up by these intelligence officers included the characteristics of Far Eastern peoples in their perception of the Russians, which seemed very true to life: A Chinese, like any other Asiatic, looks upon representatives of the white race as upon a person standing on a lower level: he believes each European to be a barbarian, he is eager, therefore, to get into trade contacts with them but to jealously keep his inner world closed. A Chinese is peaceful as much as one can distinguish peacefulness from cowardice. At the same time, he is susceptible to offence and is always in a position to take revenge, baulking at nothing, particularly when his family is offended. The Chinese courtesy and politeness, however, is far from cordiality. On the other hand, mildness and an open heart in dealing with him could make of him a faithful assistant. A Chinese skilfully hides his real way of thought and sticks to the ancient aphorism: ‘Heart is ice, and tongue is mead’. This Chinese proverb justifies the soul of a Chinese. They strive for and have the ability to gain profits from everything; hence, they are rather inclined to take bribes.25 In their further investigation of the Chinese mentality, the Russian staffers attempted to discern specific traits of native scouts: ‘cunning, versatility, inquisitiveness, power of observation, certain gentleness, unpretentiousness in foodstuffs’. That is why the division of agents into three categories depended on mental motivation: first, ‘volunteers’, second, ‘those recruited through bullying’, and, third, those ‘employed for awards’.26 As they pointed out in the survey, scouts used to creep up to Japanese positions along secret routes at intervals of 2–3 days. Each of them had to accomplish his own observation and bring with him collected artefacts. The usual practice was the recruitment of individuals, who acted as either resident spies or liaison messengers. Thus, the personnel of a small inn on the ancient road from Sinmintin to Mukden comprised four secret agents, who questioned travellers passing by this place.27 The intelligence section superintended by Major General Alekseev introduced a special register to list names of scouts, their tasks, their periods of mission and their anticipated time of return. They often also registered travelling costs and payment for data gathering. According to the survey, this intelligence section sent off 121 emissaries into the adversary’s rear from March to September 1905. But only 56 (about 46 per cent) returned back to convey 44 messages, which were not always detailed or valuable, to Russian echelons of command. The pinnacle of HUMINT proved to be August 1905, when a group of 21 resident agents and 46 orderlies were simultaneously dispatched on secret missions to southern Manchuria. The correspondence between headquarters displays the gradual increase in Russian allocations for HUMINT in the Far East. They actually more than doubled in the second half of 1905 compared with the beginning of that year.

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However, the intelligence section of the 3rd Army spent only 30,000 roubles from its total amount of 100,000 to finance HUMINT in the zone of its responsibility. An agent’s monthly award was less than that paid by staffers of the Supreme Headquarters: 15–50 roubles to liaison scouts and 50–100 roubles to residents; these generous compensations compared with only five roubles for a message delivery for the opposing side.28 The conclusive accounts compiled by staffers in the 1st and 2nd Manchurian Armies vindicate, with more or less variations, the similar developments of the tactical espionage network on the Manchurian front. The intelligence officers in the 1st Army, for example, differentiated Chinese emissaries into three categories: residents, agents on special errands and foot orderlies, these last being recruited from local peasantry, as the employment of educated individuals, merchants, officials and teachers proved less successful. Unfortunately, as mentioned in previous chapters, the Russians’ retreat from Mukden in March 1905 caused disarray in the espionage network. As a certain Russian observer remarked, ‘there were periods of time when hundreds of dispatched Chinese scouts vanished with their identification cards; incidents like these, for example, took place with the staff of the 1st Army’.29 However, owing to mass expenditures which amounted to 49,769 roubles, the reanimated ‘postMukden’ network of Russian HUMINT soon began to demonstrate more vigour than its predecessor did in 1904, albeit not at the pitch that the higher command had anticipated. The aforementioned Soviet military expert Konstantin Zvonarev claimed that Chinese emissaries kept on communicating messages, which were fed on discrepant data and full of contradictions. They could hardly lead to conclusions or substitute intelligence information, collected by combat-level, short-distance reconnaissance. Thus, agents attached to the 1st Army, for example, assured their patrons that the army headed by General Nozu was being positioned in front of the army under the command of General Kuroki. The 1st Army staffers relied upon these data and took appropriate measures. Nevertheless, the information proved to be false.30 As the conclusive account compiled by the 2nd Manchurian Army intelligence officers shows, their immediate goal became the formation of scouting group of 10–12 men, these being regarded as sufficient for conducting front-line observations in the sector of responsibility. Another objective after Mukden was to renovate a spy network, which should embrace residents linked with army headquarters via foot patrols, who used to insinuate into Japanese positions at a distance of 50–60 km. The compilers maintained in the survey, that ‘Chinese residents rendered great service and communicated valuable nuggets of information to us’. But emissaries in the service of different Russian staffs soon invented a simple method of how to save on time and effort by an ‘agreement’. To put it in a different way, they decided to organize themselves in advance of communicating data to Russians. Oddly, the agents of the Japanese counter-

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intelligence service began to instruct these double-agents of what pieces of misinformation should be delivered to their Russian bosses.31 An important innovation was also brought about by the intelligence staff of the 2nd Manchurian Army. They set up in mid-1905 a parallel espionage web to cross-check the earlier established structure. Nikolai Gomboev, Collegiate Secretary, attached to the staff as a non-commissioned officer, took control of this service. Another novelty the staffers attempted to put into operation, was taking photos of scouts with regular exchange of plates between corps and divisions in order to down with Chinese double-agents.32 According to calculations made by the intelligence section, its overall expenditures on HUMINT exceeded those in the 1st Army, and amounted to 52,013 roubles.33 In an earlier chapter we touched upon the conduct of tactical HUMINT through agents enrolled by Russian military commissars in the Manchurian provinces. As appropriate to their status, the General Staff Colonels Mikhail Sokovnin and Mikhail Kvetsinskii preserved close contact both with mandarins (Chinese government officials) and ordinary people, who rendered all their requests to them. In fact, they acted as intermediaries between the Russian occupation forces and the Qing authorities. The earlier regulations enacted first by Alekseev and then by Kuropatkin empowered commissars to perform ‘administrative reconnaissance’ on territories under the control of Manchurian armies or in the defence zone of the CER. At a late stage of the war, their personnel likewise suffered constant reorganizations, especially after the retreat of tsarist troops to the north of Manchuria. The centre of administrative reconnaissance was thus transferred from Mukden to Harbin, and new posts of commissars’ assistants (three senior officers per province) and district superintendents of military police (five staff officers per province) were incorporated in the staff schedule. These undertakings aimed at ‘harmonizing relations between troops and the population’, particularly, ‘in view of protecting ordinary people from offences and oppressions committed by occupation forces’. Another point of duties the commissars were charged with was ‘the promotion of Russian power image among Far Eastern nations’.34 Colonel Sokovnin made the regulations endorsed by higher command the basis of instructions intended for his assistants and district superintendents of military police. The document empowered them ‘to conduct open and covert reconnaissance through agents hired among locals or other individuals [of European origins], in order to fully realize current affairs in districts within their competence’. However, these regulations came into practice only at the very end of the war.35 Analogously, Colonel Kvetsinskii, aided by attached General Staff Captains (Mikhailov in 1904 and Sapozhnikov in 1905) set about recruiting scouts from the educated strata of the Mukden population. On the request of QuartermasterGeneral Alekseev, Kvetsinskii seconded a few Chinese scouts to the intelligence section under his command to act as orderlies attached to the army staff.36 Another valuable informant recruited by Commissar Kvetsinskii was a certain Qing official, who, in his turn, entered upon duties of employing new scouts. He personally taught neophytes, disguised as coolies or pedlars, the methods of

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spying out strategic positions in the Japanese rear. They ought to settle down at townships and likewise recruit foot orderlies to communicate intelligence gathered by residents. All the collected nuggets of information were to be transmitted to this mandarin, while the latter had to render weekly reports to the army headquarters. The most valuable data were counter-checked by MI officers in a way akin to the methods applied by the 2nd Army staff. This major resident of Russian MI was paid 5,000 roubles in advance, together with an extra 500 roubles to establish commercial enterprises in the townships where his emissaries settled. In addition, the sum of 1,800 roubles was allocated by the headquarters to reimburse scouts’ monthly expenses.37 In the final survey of his activities, Kvetsinskii estimated a total number of spies recruited and sent to the adversary’s rear during April to October 1905: it amounted to 885 couriers and liaison agents, but 797, or 90 per cent of them, failed to accomplish even a first mission, 59 men made two reconnaissance trips, 17 made three, six made four and only three made five tours or more with payments varying from five to ten roubles for each completed mission and from ten to 40 roubles for artefacts picked up in the rear of Japanese troops.38 To facilitate any scout’s pass through Russian advanced outposts, Colonel Kvetsinskii provided them with identification cards carrying the following: Herewith the Russian Military Commissar [his assistant or superintendent of police] certifies that this person [agent’s name and surname in Chinese] being on the service of the Military Commissariat in [name of place of residence], may pass free through the outposts of Russian troops. [Date and signature of the commissar, his assistant or superintendent of police]39 It would appear probable that Kvetsinskii in conjunction with the intelligence section of the 3rd Manchurian Army succeeded in updating HUMINT in the last months of hostilities. In his summary of administrative reconnaissance, the commissar argued that A year’s experience in HUMINT through locals could lead us to believe that it had met our expectations and demands; moreover, it needs further promotion in case of a new war in the Far East, but after a thorough analysis of its advantages and shortfalls needs to be made.40 Even the highly critical Soviet expert, Konstantin Zvonarev, acknowledged the progress in Russian HUMINT by the end of war: At first, information gathered by scouts seemed more or less invalid, besides it was scrappy. But then, in the process of cross-checking with data from other sources, Russian executives of intelligence managed to create a general view of both the location and realignments of the adversary’s troops.41

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But a really amazing creation, nourished by Colonel Kvetsinskii in Manchuria, was a special training school for scouts recruited from the Chinese. On 10 April 1905, Quartermaster-General Oranovskii responded to the suggestion of the Mukden Commissar in the following terms: ‘Provided that you have sufficient time and money to set up classes to train agents employed from the Chinese, the Commander-in-Chief endorses your suggestion, although he regards the publication of a periodical in the Chinese language to be of more importance.’42 However, the obstacles in the way of newspaper publication might have been what prompted Kvetsinskii to open his training centre. Enacted by order of General Linevich, it began to function on 14 April 1905. In fact, classes lacked skilled instructors and schedules of drilling scouts. Suffice to say, an alumnus of Vladivostok Eastern Institute, called Spitsyn, was appointed to superintend the centre, instead of taking the office of editor-in-chief for Shengjingbao. Although he had a good command of the Chinese language, his poor expertise of the Japanese army’s inner structure together with his inadequate knowledge in MI tradecraft reduced the proficiency of his training methods. Colonel Kvetsinskii narrated activities of his spy school in detail. According to his evaluation, from April to June 1905, 24 scouts were trained in reconnaissance operations, while each of them was paid 15 roubles a month and from 50 to 100 roubles after they finished classes. They obtained an extra 15 roubles to purchase fodder in addition to 75 roubles meant for horse equipment. However, in Kvetsinskii’s opinion, the initial optimistic expectations of the Russian command were very soon shattered to pieces, because those trained scouts ‘did not reveal any high pitch of intensity in spying in comparison with their untrained compatriots and, thus, did not warrant money to be wasted on their drill’.43 Attempts made by Russian intelligence officers to reorganize the centre, to shorten programmes or to shorten the period of drilling from three weeks to a few days appeared futile, so that in July 1905 the higher echelons of command ordered the centre to be closed, though all newly hired scouts continued to be instructed by staffers before they were sent off to spy on the territories controlled by the enemy. Estimations performed by modern historians indicate that about 600 Chinese scouts had passed through the centre in the period from April to September 1905.44 The final account of the Quartermaster-General at the Supreme Headquarters stated that Regrettably, training classes like this one were set up only after the Battle of Mukden, though one could be led to believe that the establishment of such ‘schools’ might contribute greatly to training reliable and skilled scouts [. . .]. As the war experience exemplifies, only those scouts who were drilled in a proper way, who were familiarized with the organization of Japanese troops and dispatched on special missions, submitted detailed, valid and valuable messages about the adversary and his plans, including artefacts:

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We can hardly agree, therefore, with the negative conclusions made by some present-day historians that the Russian defeat at Mukden inflicted a final strike upon the usage of Chinese volunteers as scouts by the tsarist MI.46 As David Wolff rightly maintained, ‘probably the greatest achievements of Chinese spies in Russian hire was gathering of information regarding the positions of the Japanese army after the Battle of Mukden, when the Russians’ retreat temporarily broke off all contact between the opponents’.47 The records and memoirs at our disposal corroborate the conclusion that the organization of intelligence services in the theatre of operations progressed while Russian staffers on the Manchurian front undoubtedly gained more professionalism and competence in the last months of hostilities.

Attainments and setbacks in operational intelligence on the flanks A new strategic situation that emerged on the front after the first stage of war compelled Russian staffers to intensify operational intelligence on both flanks: the right one stretching to Outer Mongolia and the left one extending to the Russo-Korean border. They actually apprehended an eventual roundabout manoeuvre by the enemy in combination with mass anti-Russian riots in the theatre of operations. The higher Russian command was well aware of proclamations disseminated by some adherents of the Boxers in China right after the war began. They appealed to the nation to stir up a mutiny against all Europeans and, foremost, the Russians occupying three northern provinces. ‘We must eliminate even traces of oversea devils, so that not a blade of grass remains’, wrote the chieftains of this anti-foreign movement.48 In this respect, the right wing of the Manchurian Armies, i.e. north-western Manchuria and Outer Mongolia, assumed predominant importance. The Russian military administration procured information about numerous bands of chunguses, headed by Japanese instructors, moving towards Qiqihar – a key transport point in the CER defence area. The situation became even more aggravated for lack of a strict demarcation between the theatre of operations and the neutral part of the Chinese provinces.49 One should also take into account the deterioration in the perception of the Russians by both nomadic nobility and ordinary cattle-breeders in Outer Mongolia with every victory gained by Japanese troops over their adversary and with the excesses committed by army foragers on a regular basis. On 19 July 1905, Lieutenant General Feodor Martson, the Chief of Staff in the 3rd Manchurian Army, reported to Kuropatkin that We are obtaining more and more messages in the recent period that certain subjects of the Mongolian princes have openly expressed their discontent

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with the Russians. Judging from their complaints, our foragers’ and cattlepurchasers’ repugnance to locals increases with the confiscations of cattle for miserable reimbursements. At present, it is determined to stop dispatching foragers to purchase cattle while their duties are incumbent upon special quartermaster commissars . . . Apart from this displeasure, the Mongolians do not accept our credit notes which are regarded by them as meagre receipts in comparison with the Japanese payments in silver cash.50 As a result, first Kuropatkin and then Linevich, issued orders to send off groups incorporating both military emissaries and civil officials to forage about Outer Mongolia. Each expedition was accompanied by an intelligence officer, who was instructed: 1

2 3 4

to spy out all impending acts of subversion in the rear of Russian active troops, especially in the close proximity of bridges, tunnels and depots in the defence zone of the CER and SMR; to procure statistics on cattle suitable for purchasing by Russian foragers; to realize the real intentions of Mongolian princes in order to prevent them from eventually joining the Japanese side; finally, to draw up a topographical description of the terrain.

We can find the surnames of those military and civilian individuals, who were sent on such scouting missions in the second stage of the war: they were Lieutenant Colonel Khitrovo (in December 1904) and Lieutenant Yakovlev (in February 1905), both frontier guard officers; Dolbezhev, a consulate official in Urga (also in February 1905); Staff Captain Guberskii (in April 1905), attached to the General Staff; the earlier-mentioned Staff Captain Rossov together with V. Shangin, an interpreter of the Mongolian language (also in April 1905); Moskvitin, an employee at the Russo-Chinese Bank (in April and May 1905); the forager Gromov whose activity we have considered in previous chapters; and Dmitrii Yanchevetskii, a war correspondent, also on intelligence duties from the fall of 1904 to the end of the war.51 All of them were disguised as priests or lamas, merchants or travellers. Their mission reports were usually communicated to the higher command by mounted Cossack liaison officers. The raid of Lieutenant Colonel Khitrovo and Captain Linitskii to the headquarters of the powerful Mongolian prince Udai exemplified this conclusion. Apart from other important tasks, the Russian officers were assigned to effect election of a new leader for ten hoshunes (or Mongolian tribes) by bribing Udai, a potential chieftain of this alliance. The sum of the bribe amounted to 5,000 roubles payment in advance. Similar monthly maintenances were to be allocated to the prince on condition of preserving benevolent neutrality in conjunction with safeguarding the defence zone of the CER, which was constructed partly across nomadic territories. To put it differently, Russian MI cooperated with diplomats not only to eliminate Japanese influence upon the local population but

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also to act for appanage princes as the real protectors of the Mongolians from colonization by the Qings.52 Interestingly, a future President of independent Finland, Field Marshal Karl Emil Gustav von Mannerheim, then an ordinary Lieutenant Colonel of the 52nd Nezhinskii Dragoon Regiment, also volunteered to conduct mounted reconnaissance around Outer Mongolia in February 1905. According to his memoirs, which were published in Helsinki many years later, The task was to scout the terrain on the western flank without being involved in frantic skirmish. In the spring of 1905 I commanded two hundred chunguses enlisted to Russian service. We have insinuated into the adversary’s rear at a distant range rounding about his right wing. Despite the fact that ‘my chunguses’ scorned discipline, the mission proved successful: I collected intelligence on the enemy troops’ location and even managed to break through the encirclement wherein we had been driven by a Japanese mounted troop unit.53 As archival records evince, Mannerheim was dispatched on several similar scouting missions to the right flank of the Russian front. On 7 March 1905, the Chief of Russian rear services, Lieutenant General Nadarov, submitted a report on tactical intelligence to Quartermaster-General Aleksei Evert. Notably, Nadarov projected 17 reconnaissance groups of two or three locals (including Buddhist lamas) to be sent to Outer Mongolia to crosscheck information. In their messages to Russian headquarters, the scouts in question were obliged to use countersigns and code symbols: e.g. a bullock-cart would signify a Japanese serviceman, a horse for a chungus, a mule for a cannon, wheat for infantry, kaoliang for cavalry. As Nadarov maintained in the report, In order to discern a Chinese scout from other locals, who may address themselves to the head of the garrison, each emissary of this kind is given a smoke pipe with engraved numbers on the metallic part: 001, 002, 003, etc. So when he asks the head of the garrison for permission to pass a food transport, he takes out his pipe to have a smoke. The number on it will certify the identity of the scout. More valuable nuggets of information will be transmitted by lamas themselves or through coded mails . . . To supervise lamas’ activity, special agents, nationals of Mongolia, are to stay at the mentioned seventeen points and report directly to the headquarters of rear services. Lamas should know nothing of ‘observers’ while the latter won’t have any idea of lamas in our service . . .54 The rumours of an eventual Japanese assault against Vladivostok after the fall of Port Arthur annoyed Russian staffs in the spring and summer of 1905. For these and other reasons, Kuropatkin decided to reinforce mounted reconnaissance on the left flank of the Manchurian front. Major Generals Petr Mitschenko

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and Pavel Rennenkampf, together with Colonel Madritov, were given orders to launch cavalry forays in the adversary’s rear. The staffers of the Priamur military district and intelligence sections in the 1st and 2nd Manchurian Armies likewise collected intelligence on distant ground approaches to Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Nickol’sk-Ussuriiskii, the key Russian stronghold in that region. As copious situational reports and minutes evince, Colonel Madritov, for example, did not baulk at taking hostages among locals or even setting their villages on fire as acts of terror and revenge for harbouring bands of chunguses committing excesses in the rear of the armies. According to records, however, such practice was a common thing on the Japanese side too.55 At the same time, the report submitted to Major General Andreev, the head of defence of the Priamur province, by an intelligence officer on 3 April 1905, stated developments in the order of HUMINT after the Battle of Mukden: I am reporting to Your Excellence that the leading of secret intelligence is drafted by me in the following order: 1 I have dispatched a special official with a message to a local chieftain Han Denggui [a former active Boxer chieftain who controlled the 10,000-strong peasant ‘army’] to persuade him to reconnoitre the area. 2 I propose to recruit a certain Chinese, Liu Danqi, a leader of imperial hunters in the Nanshan district, who is staying in Khabarovsk at present and who keeps various relations with locals . . . 3 I have assigned HUMINT in Korea to: 1 Staff-Captain Biriukov, who sojourns in Vladivostok; 2 Aide-de-camp of the Korean Emperor Pak Yu Pfun, who has been staying in Nilol’sk-Ussuriiskii; 3 Cadet Khion, who has been sent to Korea . . . 4 I have charged Captain of Khabarovsk Reserve Battalion Stelmashenko together with the General Staff Captain Tarakanov to conduct reconnaissance on the terrain between Vladivostok and the rivers of Bataliantsa and Bolotnaya . . . 5 I have given orders to Lieutenant of the 8th East Siberian Rifle Regiment Bakich to scout the terrain between the river of Suifun and the settlement of Novokievskoe . . . 6 And to the foreman of Qimukhin district, Pyrkov, to spy on the coast of Ussuriisk Bay towards Suchan . . . I believe it is necessary to commission the General Staff Captain Tomilin to coordinate the network of HUMINT at the headquarters of the Priamur province.56 Careful examination of this document reveals two things: first, the introduction of regional division in tactical intelligence by military planners, and second, the

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recruitment of local inhabitants for HUMINT on a massive scale, which somehow diminished the quality of findings assembled by untrained individuals, who might well be misinformed by Japanese provocateurs. Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Nadarov, the aforementioned Chief of rear services, who, at the same time superintended the Zaamur district of Frontier Guards, also contributed to the conduct of tactical intelligence. To this end, his staff drafted special instructions for frontier guards of how ‘to carry on intelligence missions and collect military statistics in Manchuria’. It stipulated in detail the means of spying out the enemy’s troop units, the morale of the local population, the sentiments of the Chinese authorities, activities of Christian missionaries, clandestine actions of native secret societies and sects, etc.57 Notably, the same Nadarov also enacted regulations on counter-espionage in the rear of Russian armies and within the defence zone of the CER at the very end of the war.58 The main task of the counter-intelligence service was to foil plotted acts of sabotage on railway and telegraph lines in Manchuria and Mongolia. In the report of 19 March 1905, rendered by the Commander of Zaamur district of the Corps of Frontier Guards, Lieutenant General Nikolai Chichagov, to Nadarov, the former general pointed to the exposure of ‘a regular espionage group, consisting partly of Chinese mandarins’ and partly of army deserters or Boxer insurgents supported by a numerous band of chunguses.59

Innovations in Russian combat reconnaissance Russian field staffs continued recruiting volunteers to reconnoitre the adversary’s positions during 1905 as they did at the initial stage of warfare. While foot patrols were capable of reaching the points at 10–15 km distance in the area occupied by the Japanese, mounted patrols used to launch forays at a range of 30 km, one of their main tasks being the search for documents and other artefacts and the capture of POWs (typically, at night), who might provide them with valuable information.60 Let us consider a specimen instruction issued by the commander of the 41st Infantry Division of the 10th Corps on 30 July 1905: Foot and mounted reconnaissance groups of volunteers are to be established on the front. In the offensive against enemy positions, a foot volunteer patrol ought to move forward in order to set up a sentry-line in front of a regiment to prevent any penetration of aliens; a mounted volunteer group ought to be stationed ahead of those on foot and on the flanks to keep watch on the surroundings. The best way of action for foot patrols is to camouflage themselves: they should open fire only in emergency, e.g. against the adversary’s patrols creeping up to the positions of our troops, or against the foe’s observers at outposts. If a regiment set up a sentry-line, and its artillery advances to positions, volunteers have to continue reconnaissance and observation (for instance, from behind trees, tombstones, etc.); the further from a sentry-line a reconnaissance group is staying, the more

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complex their task is, but, at the same time, the more trustworthy should be their reports and spoils.61 The Russian command endeavoured to introduce new methods of training reconnaissance rangers. On 24 May 1905, the commander of the 17th Corps endorsed the following schedule of exercises, according to which they were divided into three groups, the first one moving to the adversary’s front and the two others to the flanks. Each patrol was given landmarks to orient themselves on the terrain. All rangers were supposed to be equipped with a compass, a notepad and small signal flags.62 One could hardly expect, however, any immediate progress from hasty arrangements to perfect combatant reconnaissance. On the other hand, the Japanese reinforced counter-espionage measures, e.g. they elaborated an ever more strict order of keeping documents safe, re-clothed their troops in khaki uniform and commanded their military to take off shoulder straps to misinform Russian MI. Not surprisingly, material artefacts or documents delivered to Russian headquarters by foot scouts and mounted rangers were only occasional. In January 1905, the staffers of the 1st Manchurian Army captured the most impressive ‘spoils’: chancellery proceedings of the Japanese 2nd Reserve Regiment stationed at the village of Khekowtai and a disposition sketch-map found in the pockets of a dead officer belonging to the staff of the 42nd Infantry Reserve Regiment.63 As for letters or envelopes picked up by scouts, they seemed less informative, except for addresses and postmarks, which positioned the location of the adversary’s divisions and other troop units in the front area. Oddly, it became less difficult for Russian staffers to comprehend the operational situation, inasmuch as their opponents, unlike the erroneous practice by Kuropatkin in the Battles of Sandepu and, especially Mukden, abstained from splitting divisions, brigades and regiments for tactical purposes on the front.64 A good deal of supplementary data might also be extracted from questioning Japanese prisoners of war. In a previous chapter, we considered the attempts by the command to stimulate the capture of POWs with awards to active combatants, though many Russian officers gave this initiative the cold shoulder. In fact, it was hardly likely that there would be any influx of captives while the Russians were relinquishing one position after another. For example, the capture of 22 Japanese servicemen by a group of volunteers, on 8 August 1904, was regarded as a great event, which was reported to the Vestnik Man’chzhurskikh Armii and mentioned in a report to the sovereign.65 At the second stage of war the situation for the Russian side improved, though not to a great extent. Besides, when taken captive, the vast majority of Japanese officers used to commit suicide (hara-kiri), following the ritual ethics (bushido) of samurai. The occasional captives, generally rank-and-files, tried hard to abstain from any collaboration with Russian MI. Besides, they were often unable to present any valuable pieces of intelligence and answered, when interrogated by Russian staffers, in dubious manner.66

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In questionnaires for POWs, the individual items had taken their final shape only by the end of the war. Interestingly, the Russians did not differentiate between rank-and-files, subalterns, senior officers, and civil officials, captured by their troops. Apart from this, some queries on the list were incorrectly translated from Japanese into Russian. A typical questionnaire incorporated 17 items, but they also used briefer versions. Here is a specimen questionnaire, endorsed by the Chief of the 1st Army Staff, Lieutenant General Kharkevich, who dispatched it to the commander of the 8th Army Corps, Lieutenant General Skugarevskii, on 20 August 1905: Questionnaire for a Japanese POW 1 Name and number of troop unit; name, age and matrimonial status; profession; 2 By whom and where this man was taken captive; 3 Period of military service; 4 Period of stay in Manchuria; 5 Time and place of landing in Manchuria; 6 Name of company; 7 Names of officers; 8 Numerical strength of the company; 9 Quantity of platoons in the company; 10 Quantity of wounded or diseased persons in the company; what particular maladies they suffer; 11 Area of location; 12 Supply of provision; 13 Quantity of cartridges per combatant; 14 When did the latest reserves arrive? 15 Are they expecting new reservists? 16 How many reservists and experienced men are there in the troop unit? 17 Any pieces of additional information.67

At the outbreak of war, Russian MI officers beat and abused POWs in order ‘to loosen their tongues’. But these means proved ineffective. Then they sought to use other methods, e.g. they began to place captives among bogus prisoners, i.e. Chinese informants with a perfect command of the Japanese language, disguised as Japanese servicemen, who attempted to worm out secrets of their ‘friends in need’. These innovations proved more effective. ‘The war experience evinced’, stated the officers in the final account of the intelligence section at the Supreme Headquarters, ‘that we were able to attain more success in interrogating POWs by cordiality and soft treatment, particularly respecting their selfesteem, then by punishments and intimidations.’68 Based upon lists of POWs composed by the staffers of the 1st Manchurian Army in the period from 26 October 1904 to 1 September 1905, one may estim-

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ate their quantity as 366 servicemen. If we also consider 15 officers and 808 rank-and-files, taken captive by six army corps during the same period, it is not inappropriate to extrapolate the balance to the other two Manchurian armies. Thus, an overall sum of Japanese POWs on the front may amount to 3,000 to 3,500 active combatants during the war.69 The following anecdote illustrates the comparatively small number of POWs’ captured by the Russians. In the winter of 1904–5 Major General Dobrzhinskii paraded a Japanese prisoner carrying him along the front-line positions of his division all day long.70 To prevent their officers and soldiers from being taken by the Russians as POWs, the Japanese higher command undertook measures of precautionary measures on a regular basis. The story of volunteers from the 2nd Dagestan Regiment, incorporated in the so-called ‘Savage Caucasus Brigade’, exemplified this conclusion: On arriving at the front, they made a sortie on the first night. Having crept up to the sentry-line of the Japanese, they slaughtered several soldiers and caused great alarm. The highlanders enjoyed the sortie and asked for another one, this time on a greater scale. But the smart and swift adversary was not deceived twice. Having stationed hidden outposts, the Japanese could see the approaching ‘savages’ and opened such fire at them, that the latter lost 50 combatants as wounded or killed. From that night onward, they did not dare to embark on risky adventures of this kind.71 However, even in the intervals of relative tranquillity on the front, the Japanese used to protect their servicemen from instant attacks undertaken by the Cossacks or the Dragoons sent off on reconnaissance missions. We shall examine only one episode of hostilities, when a Cossack patrol unexpectedly appeared at a short distance from the Headquarters of Marshal Oyama, but was forced to hurriedly retreat.72 The staffers of the 3rd Manchurian Army reviewed the situation in the following way: Both cavalry and foot reconnaissance supplied data only on realignment of the adversary’s advanced troop units. The Japanese did not let our rangers insinuate into their cavalry sentry-lines which were bolstered by infantry with machine-guns. Our mounted groups proved incapable in intelligence gathering, but at the same time, because of their small numbers, they were likewise unable to fire at the foe when they dismounted.73 One of the actual combatants, Staff Captain Aleksandr Skosarevskii, reported a conversation between two cavalry subalterns, one of them preparing to undertake a reconnaissance trip, in his ‘psychological sketches’ published after the war: • •

And how will you start off? Which way have you chosen? I shall ride along the bank of the Taizsuho up to the Rocky Mountain, as I am instructed, and further to the northwest, towards the lake of Nansinhu.

136 •

• • • •

Russian MI before and after Mukden Listen, it is a risky way, indeed! You will have to pass by Japanese outposts . . . You had better start off along the road used by our patrols for communications; it is absolute safe, and the Cossacks know it pretty well. But I am ordered to ride along the riverside; how can I go along another way? What does it matter? You will ride along a safer road, and make a report that everything is fine. Stop talking rubbish. It is a pity I have not enough time to talk to you on this matter, particularly about our intelligence officers reporting intuitively. Look, now almost everybody undertakes reconnaissance trips in this way!74

In addition, let us refer to an extract from an autobiographical novel by Pavel Daletskii Na sopkakh Man’churii (‘In the Mountains of Manchuria’). The author reflected the sentiments of a Cossack, who commented upon mounted troop reconnaissance in the following way: Here is a typical illustration of reconnaissance. I am not a newcomer to it. Where have our patrols penetrated today, what have they found out, what shall I report to the chief? They have collided with the adversary’s infantry in the mountains, they have been fired at, but whether there are few or many enemy troops, and what particular Japanese troop units they met – I have no idea.75 Such inadequate scouting greatly handicapped the conduct of the intelligence process. For example, Russian staffers simply missed the landing of three Japanese reserve divisions in Manchuria, so that their appearance on the front was a real surprise to the tsarist generals, who verified this information a month after they landed in China.76 According to Newton McCully, a US Navy Lieutenant Commander, assigned to the Russian side, due to a gap in operational intelligence, General Kuropatkin believed that the Japanese armies had seriously deteriorated before Mukden, since most of the samurai officers had been killed in earlier battles.77 According to memoirs and official correspondence, Russian cavalry reconnaissance lacked initiative as well as communication and command know-how even in calm intervals on the front. The situation, however, became more complicated on battlefields, when the rapid outflanking manoeuvres committed by the Japanese armies regularly stumped Russian staffs. The Battle of Sandepu in January and the great Battle of Mukden in March 1905 fully demonstrated the flaws of Russian cavalry reconnaissance. Both of these battles were typical for the Russians’ lack of coordination and disarray in intelligence procedures. A detailed narrative of fighting lies beyond the scope of this study. It should be mentioned, however, that Russian cavalry detachments headed by Generals Samsonov, Rennenkampf, Mitschenko and Colonel Madritov were used by the Commander-in-Chief almost solely for defensive operations or counter-attacks on the flanks. As John Steinberg correctly remarked in a

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brief overview of the Battle of Mukden, ‘between 1–13 March, Kuropatkin frantically threw hastily improvised formations against enveloping forces from the west’. Having failed to halt the advance of General Nogi’s army by this piecemeal commitment, Kuropatkin was forced to order a withdrawal, which ended in the remnants of the Russian troops ‘straggling up the Mandarin road toward Harbin to new defensive positions at Xipingkai’.78 In the train of the battle there emerged 16 independent Russo-Japanese fighting fronts. Many Russian troop units received orders directly from the Supreme Headquarters, while some army generals lost their troops and abstained from further active participation in the fighting. It was nonsensical to rely on cavalry reconnaissance under such circumstances. Years later, Lieutenant General Feodor Gershelman recalled that the higher command had stationed about 40 cavalry and Cossack squadrons on the left flank of the battlefield at Mukden to reconnoitre the adversary’s positions, but these preparations still did not guarantee comprehensive intelligence gathering on the foe’s outflanking manoeuvre or on the main directions of attacks from any of the Japanese armies.79 Besides, the limited quantity and inappropriate use of optical devices, mainly military binoculars and telescopes, significantly handicapped the collection of reconnaissance information in the course of the Mukden operation.80 As a result, one of the largest single battles in military history ended in the debacle of the defeat of the Russian ground forces in Manchuria. Apart from tremendous losses, the Russians suffered 90,000 casualties while the Japanese suffered only 70,000; the armies of the Mikado had inflicted another severe strike upon Russia’s prestige in the world. Sir Montague Gerard, the British military attaché in Manchuria, assigned to the Russian armies, reported to the War Office that all foreign officers, whom he met there, considered the defeat at Mukden to be absolutely decisive and that nothing short of a brilliant naval success could ever change the result.81 It is less known, however, that the Japanese tactical MI also contributed to this brilliant victory. First, their secret agents organized six platoons of active saboteurs in Peking disguised as Qing subjects and in perfect command of the Chinese language. The task that confronted these men was to blow up railroad bridges and tunnels on the CER and SMR, the main lines of communication in the rear of the Russian troops. Second, special secret provocateurs spread false rumours among the population about Marshal Oyama’s plans to launch on attack against Vladivostok after the capture of Port Arthur. For fear of eventual retreat from the last important naval base in the Pacific, Kuropatkin ordered 12 active infantry battalions and 35 cavalry companies to the defence of the city. As a result, these troops did not reinforce the Russian armies on the battlefield. Third, the misinformation about the numerous bands of chunguses preparing to assault the key strategic objects in Manchuria under Russian control likewise required extra troops to be held as reserve units in case of emergency.82 The evident increase in significance of short-distance reconnaissance may be explained by alterations in the organization of the tsarist military administration in the Far East. Another reason was the post-Mukden crisis in tactical HUMINT.

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Hence, the focus of the intelligence process, at least in spring 1905, moved to the headquarters of active corps and divisions, where senior aides-de-camp performed the functions of intelligence officers. Notably, their reports were later incorporated in digests, summarized by the staffers at the Supreme Headquarters in Manchuria. Inasmuch as the Quartermaster-General of the 1st Army actually reallocated the conduct of operational functions to staffers in corps, divisions and independent cavalry detachments, we begin the narrative with this large group of Russian troops headed by General Linevich and, from 15 March 1905 on, by Adjutant General Kuropatkin himself. The report of the interim chief of the First Corps staff, Colonel Stakhovich, submitted to the higher echelons of command, exposed some of the methods of hiring Chinese scouts applied by the intelligence officers at the corps’ headquarters: Thirteen emissaries tendered their service to the staff. They were not permanent. The best were doing the job for longer periods, whereas others, less capable, were dismissed right after their first mission . . . Intervals of return depended upon the nature of the mission they were assigned to conduct, and varied from six days to six weeks. Their awards did not exceed 60 roubles a month, though the ablest scouts might receive up to 120 roubles, not to mention an extra 30 roubles as reimbursements for various expenses on their routes; and if the mission proved successful each of them might also be granted additional bonuses of 25 roubles [. . .]. Inexperienced newcomers were paid at lower costs: they got 30–50 roubles for each mission, plus extra sums of 15 roubles as reimbursements for food, and additional bonuses of 10–25 roubles. A resident emissary was paid 10–15 roubles for each message delivered from places where they dwelt on a permanent basis.83 As shown by this report, the efficacy of combat intelligence depended upon sorting scouts into at least two categories: residents and liaison agents. In the Taulusk Independent Detachment, which was subordinated directly to the headquarters of the 1st Army, the officer of HUMINT employed a lecturer and a student at the Vladivostok Eastern Institute. Both of them had perfect command of Chinese and aided greatly in instructing as well as in interrogating more than ten scouts, who, in their turn, delivered 75 secret messages to the staff. Their monthly awards were increased to 30 roubles; however, the vast majority of scouts did not return after their first mission. On arresting Russian spies, the Japanese counter-intelligence used to hang them by the neck or bury them alive in the earth.84 Nearly each corps’ staff innovated their own, often original, methods of conducting short-distance reconnaissance. Thus, in the 2nd Siberian Corps, a newly appointed intelligence officer divided the area of his responsibility into two parts: some Chinese scouts were enjoined to permanently monitor manoeuvres

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of the Japanese troops in the closest proximity to the front line, while more trained emissaries were dispatched on special missions at long range. According to Konstantin Zvonarev, who presented a thorough study of this activity, The officer in charge of combat intelligence recruited six individuals as residents in six different townships. Each of them had three orderlies at his disposal, as did the Russian officer. The schedule was as follows: on this or that orderly returning to the corps headquarters, another emissary was sent off to get in touch with the appropriate resident. Due to this procedure, no reports or minutes were delayed in delivery, while the residents themselves regularly received instructions from the staff. Each resident also dealt with a handful of informants darting about the terrain and gathering data.85 It should be added that Russian echelons of command differentiated Chinese scouts into categories depending on the way of granting awards: some of them obtained monthly ‘salaries’, others were paid in advance or received moneys in several payments. An innovation made by the staff of the 2nd Corps is also worthy of mention. The staffers sent off special observers to secretly keep watch on realignments of Japanese troop units. The most suitable men assigned for such missions were blacksmiths or carpenters by profession, as were the two Chinese scouts on Russian service monitoring all manoeuvres of General Kuroki’s army. The process of intelligence collation and verification on the level of corps and divisions proved to be controversial. If delivered nuggets of information contradicted each other, one of the agents usually confided to the intelligence officers that he had not reached the appointed place and the data he had gathered were, therefore, invalid. This confession was followed by inevitable punishment, when a fraud was deprived of his award. As sources evince, the established scheme functioned efficiently towards the end of the war, compelling Chinese residents to communicate valid information to their Russian patrons.86 In other corps of the 1st Manchurian Army, HUMINT at the combat level was conducted in more or less the same manner, albeit with some essential differences. Thus, in the 3rd Siberian Corps, the number of locals scouting for the Russians fluctuated from ten to 25 men. The intelligence officer in the 4th Siberian Corps dispatched five scouts at any time to reconnoitre not only the disposition of the Japanese troops on the front, but also to monitor the situation on the flanks of neighbouring corps and divisions incorporated in the 1st Manchurian Army. The head of MI in the 7th Siberian Corps preferred to stay at a short distance from advanced outposts instead of biding his time at the headquarters. He himself recruited scouts in surrounding settlements, crossing the front line to check all the collected data. In total, 152 agents communicated more than 150 pieces of information and delivered 75 artefacts to the headquarters of this corps during ten months of trench warfare.87 A similar process was evident with combat HUMINT in the 3rd Manchurian Army. The officer responsible for the intelligence process in the 5th Siberian

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Corps, for example, elaborated a general system of motivation: each scout in Russian hire was assigned a concrete mission and dispatched on a definite route, where he was obliged to record everything he saw (fortifications, transports, troop units) and to collect artefacts, particularly those marked with insignia of Japanese troops. For all that, intelligence messages without associated artefacts were evaluated in lesser awards of 10–15 roubles. Besides, commanders of Russian sentry posts had to put special marks in the margins of scouts’ identification cards when they returned across the front line back to the Russians.88 As for corps and divisions incorporated in the 2nd Manchurian Army, the subaltern who was charged with intelligence duties in the 6th Siberian Corps, for example, hired 27 locals through one of his Chinese ‘moles’. The main problems he faced in the performance of the intelligence cycle were the lack of funds and the competition of neighbouring staffs.89 Summarizing this experience, a Soviet military expert wrote that Before being sent on a secret mission, a scout was instructed not to contact any person, not to be dressed in decent clothes, not to reveal his literacy; he ought to tell everybody that he was moving from the south, that he lived nearby; he should always have a plausible excuse for his staying in this particular area, or he should behave like an idiot.90 In case a scout did not have relatives or close friends on the territory occupied by the Japanese, he was even obliged to perform a symbolic Chinese ritual ‘kowtow’, i.e. to fraternize with an individual who could share information with him. Russian intelligence officers instructed him to frequently contact the Japanese. The best option for any spy might be an invitation of service to a Japanese commander. Russian spies were enjoined to visit opium and gambling dens, brothels, etc., to get in contact with Chinese valets or batmen in Japanese service. On returning to Russian headquarters, scouts should abstain from any contact with their compatriots. They were kept in isolated lodgings and saw nobody except intelligence officers. One of the Chinese interpreters, supervising scouts’ sojourn at the headquarters, blocked any personal contacts between them.91

Plate 1 Foreign military attachés on the Manchurian front.

Plate 2 Japanese making an ambush in kaoliang thickets.

Plate 3 Cossacks returning from reconnaissance raids.

Plate 4 The interrogation of Japanese POWs.

Plate 5 The interrogation of Chinese scouts.

Plate 6 The allegory of the Yellow Peril.

Plate 7 The front page of the Vestnik Man’chzhurskoi Armii.

Plate 8 Cossack patrol destroying telegraph wires in northern Korea.

Plate 9 The execution of chungus chieftains by the Chinese authorities.

Plate 10 Chinese soldiers.

Plate 11 Mounted Korean irregulars among Chinese peasants.

Plate 12 Major General V. A. Kosagovskii.

Plate 13 Commander-in-Chief A. N. Kuropatkin.

Plate 14 Lieutenant Colonel Colonel) K. P. Linda.

(then

Plate 15 Major General M. V. Alekseev.

Plate 16 Russian cavalry patrol.

Plate 17 The first Russian mini-submarine in the coastal waters of Vladivostok.

Plate 18 The lifting of a reconnaissance balloon on the Manchurian front, 18 January 1905.

Plate 19 Colonel Madritov.

Plate 20 The reception of radiograms on board a Russian battleship.

Plate 21 A skirmish between Russian frontier guards and chunguses.

Plate 22 Lieutenant General V. I. Kharkevich.

Plate 23 Chunguses captured by Russian frontier guards in the defence zone of the CER.

Plate 24 The Staff of the Supreme Headquarters Intelligence Section (from left to right): Captain Kuznetsov, Colonel Lomnovskii, Colonel Linda, Captain Mikhailov.

Plate 25 Major General G. M. Shvank.

Plate 26 A caricature. A Japanese soldier is addressing a Chinese: ‘Well, now I’ll punish you in my own way!’.

Plate 27 Japanese infantry and cavalry.

Plate 28 Japanese ruses of war: camouflaging troop manoeuvres.

Plate 29 A Japanese sentry post.

Plate 30 A Japanese observation post.

(All re-used plates are taken from the weekly publication Letopis voiny s Iaponiei, St Petersburg: Ministerstvo narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 1904–5, no. I–XL, XLI–LXXXIV)

8

The debacle in the Strait of Tsushima

The battle of Trafalgar broke the power of Napoleon; the battle of the Sea of Japan sealed the fate of Port Arthur. Two big results, worthy of being put side by side. Lord Redesdale, the British diplomatic emissary to Japan1

Russian MI on the eve of the voyage of the 2nd Pacific Squadron On 14 November 1904, the Japanese Emperor presided over a secret conference of two General Staffs at the royal palace. The task that confronted both ground forces generals and naval superiors was the interception and destruction of the 2nd Pacific Squadron, which had sailed from the port of Libau, the main Russian Baltic base, to the Far East just a month before. The participants drafted a programme of measures to be undertaken to prevent the Russian armada of battleships, cruisers, torpedoboats and auxiliary naval vessels from joining the 1st Pacific Squadron besieged at the roadstead of Port Arthur and the independent cruiser detachment stationed in Vladivostok. Apart from other means of destruction, the programme also incorporated some very important issues of reconnaissance. According to Richard Hough, the high-ranking staffers agreed on the formation of a Special Service Squadron of armed merchant vessels to patrol the distant approaches to the war zone. Pursuant to this plan, the whole of the Sea of Japan north to Vladivostok and the Korea Straits as far south as the island of Quelpart were divided into numbered squares, which were kept under constant monitoring by swift destroyers and light cruisers of this independent operational formation.2 In the meantime, the Japanese military attachés running espionage webs in European countries were given the order to keep close watch on the squadron under the command of Vice Admiral Rozhestvenskii,3 particularly at the coaling stations and those seaports, which his men-of-war visited on their unprecedented voyage to the other side of the world. In coded messages to the high command, Russian military and diplomatic agents in China reported many Japanese officers, disguised as civilians, departing to Europe.4 One of the ciphered telegrams to the Main Naval Staff ran as follows:

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The debacle in the Strait of Tsushima On the route of the [2nd] Squadron, the Japanese are preparing various obstacles. It is not easy to find out their intentions, albeit we know for sure that 27 officers have passed via Hong Kong, including 20 naval specialists. Japan is purchasing steamships, yachts, and of wireless telegraph stations for observation posts in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. The steamers will navigate under neutral disguise and be provided with mines of various types. Agents will stay in seaports. It is desirable to recruit our own agents to keep watch and to keep the Squadron informed.5

At the same time, Colonel Motojiro Akashi, the former military attaché to Russia, was appointed official representative of the War Ministry to Sweden, from where he superintended the HUMINT in European countries. After Rozhestvenskii’s squadron left Libau for the Far East, his principal duty became to report to Tokyo on all the manoeuvres of the Russian flotilla.6 With the departure of the 2nd Squadron on 15 October 1904, Nicholas II could, so to say, take a deep breath. At last his vacillations ended, to the benefit of the expedition. In fact, the prospect of sending another flotilla of naval vessels to the Sea of Japan was always on the agenda of Russian naval policy in the region. As pointed out in previous chapters, the detachment of cruisers which had already reached Port Said was recalled back to Sevastopol immediately after the Japanese attacked the harbour of Port Arthur in early February 1904. It should be emphasized, moreover, that according to the plan of maritime operations drafted by the staff of Admiral Alekseev as early as the spring of 1903, the reinforcements of battleships for the strategic naval group under his orders should come to the theatre of war in the offing just at the beginning of 1904.7 According to Petti Luntinen and Bruce Menning, in April 1904, the tsar conferred with his leading naval experts ‘to determine the viability of possible reinforcement for the Russian Pacific Squadron, whose arrival in theatre would tip the naval scales in Russia’s favour’.8 However, the tsar delayed the departure of the squadron for a number of reasons. First, the construction of new battleships in the Baltic shipyards, although proceeding with great hustle, had been accomplished only by the beginning of October 1904. Second, the tsar believed that the blockade of Port Arthur would be raised in the end by Kuropatkin’s ground forces.9 Third, the Russian government representatives were negotiating the purchase of seven armed men-of-war and cruisers in Argentina and Chile through 1904. Notably, they continued to confer with shipbuilding companies even in the period of the 2nd Squadron’s sea expedition. On 27 May 1905, the American Ambassador to Russia, George von Langerke Meyer, reported to the Secretary of State, John Hay: I cabled on April 26th, that Messrs. Schwab and Flint were here treating with certain Russian officials for the sale and building of battleships and cruisers. I did not refer to a rumour that the second gentleman named was supposed to be negotiating the sale of battleships from Chile and Argentina,

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as it appeared to me too sensational. I have, however, good evidence that this same gentleman was here before and during the war, and can come on a Russian passport, and that he showed to my informant a letter of credit for $35 million, in order to demonstrate that financially he was in a position to transact and carry out the purchase of any number of vessels that might be in the market.10 But this bargain was never concluded, probably because of the British Cabinet, which pressed the governments of both South American countries to abstain from dealing with the Russians. The archival records, accessible to modern historians, have revealed that, so to say, five protective spy rings set up by Russian intelligence community surrounded the voyage of Vice Admiral Rozhestvenskii. These were those of the War Ministry, the high command in Manchuria, the Department of Police and the Foreign Ministry.11 Judging from expenditures on spying and the number of persons involved, the operation to provide the squadron with protection from any hypothetical assault of the enemy actually became one of the most prolonged and large-scale counter-intelligence enterprises in the history of secret services. The War Minister relied upon military attachés accredited in European countries. However, with their motley scope of duties, this particular subject was of lesser significance to these personalities. The only sign of their activity in connection with Rozhestvenskii’s voyage was during the days of the Dogger Bank crisis, which we narrate below. In its turn, the Naval General Staff charged naval representatives with monitoring the situation in seaports and on main sea routes. But the lack of experience in the creation and administration of a special spy network diminished the efficiency of their actions. According to Pleshakov, Vice Admiral Rozhestvenskii, supervising the attachés himself as the Chief of the Naval General Staff, got enraged on learning about the lavish sums allotted to naval HUMINT conducted with miserable results.12 As a matter of fact, there were plenty of foreigners offering allegedly top secret information to military and naval attachés, which turned out to be incorrect or ‘kindly’ submitted by the Japanese intelligence service, e.g. by Colonel Akashi and his assistants. It is not surprising that the lion’s share of responsibility for the protection was assumed, therefore, by the Department of Police, whose agents quite often planned and performed secret operations in close cooperation with diplomatic officials, including Russian consulate staff. The task that confronted Russian counter-intelligencers was unprecedented. The whole operation was being supervised by a special police commissioner, Ivan Manusevich-Manuilov, who was quite a prominent figure in the staff of the Department during the reign of Nicholas II.13 His energetic activity resulted in the recruiting of several informants among the personnel of the Japanese diplomatic missions abroad, e.g. in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France. Apart from this, Manusevich-Manuilov contacted functionaries from the staff of the American Embassy in Belgium and the Italian Embassy in Paris. He put

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under his control an official correspondence of the Japanese with the help of Cavarre, the Chief of the French security police, and Moro, the Head of the Intelligence Agency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. To all appearances, Manusevich-Manuilov succeeded in breaking diplomatic codes used in Colonel Akashi’s reports to his superiors in Tokyo. In February 1905, Manusevich-Manuilov hired a maid working in the hotel where Akashi preferred to stay during his visits to the French capital. This undertaking enabled the Russian counter-intelligencer to be au courant with the diversionary acts plotted by Japan’s most active military diplomat. The total expenditure on monitoring Akashi’s contacts and correspondence amounted to 300,000 roubles.14 Opinions on the personality of Ivan Manusevich-Manuilov shared both by eye-witnesses and academic scholars seemed controversial. Numerous experts dealing with his activities viewed it with a good portion of scepticism too. We may only draw the reader’s attention to the fact that he handed over six boxes of secret documents in Japanese and Chinese to the official who succeeded him in charge of the Russian Security Police Bureau on the banks of the Seine.15 The Russian intelligence community worked hard to prevent acts of sabotage and diversions against Admiral Rozhestvenskii’s squadron on its way to the Far East. Suffice to say that they established a sequence of secret observation posts on the route of the tsarist armada. Another means to safeguard the flotilla was the raids of Russian cruisers in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, supervised by the Grand Duke Aleksandr Mikhailovich, a second cousin of the tsar. However, both official messages, contradicting each other, and motley rumours about a possible attack on the Russian battleships, which constantly reached Rozhestvenskii and his staffers, did not fall on deaf ears. Being nervous and alarmist by nature, Rozhestvenskii, whom Aleksandr Mikhailovich characterized as ‘a man with a suicidal psychology’,16 became more and more panicked. The alarmism of the admiral and his crews culminated in the famous Hull incident.

The Hull Incident and the cruiser war The episode which later became known as the Dogger Bank, or Hull incident occurred in coastal waters off the British port of Hull just as the British were celebrating the 99th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar and the Russian armies were fighting the Japanese in the Battle of Shaho. It evoked an outburst of public agitation in the UK and actually marked the last sharp crisis in RussoBritish relations. On 22 October 1904, the panicky Russian fleet mistook English fishing trawlers for Japanese torpedo-boats and fired on them in deep night-time mist, sinking one and damaging their own cruiser, Aurora. The furious British press called the Russians ‘this fleet of lunatics’. Although numerous authors have narrated the event in all its details, there still remained a misunderstanding of the motives that guided the admiral and the officers under his command on that memorable night. One apology was pre-

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sented to the reader by Richard Deacon. In his view, the Russians used as informant a smuggler who misinformed them on the Japanese torpedo-boats approaching the squadron. This smuggler, maintained Deacon, ‘had been cleverly planted’ on the Russians by Japanese intelligence through another smuggler working between Amsterdam and Vigo.17 Implicitly, this version was proved by Russian diplomats who, in response to the request of the Foreign Office, claimed that ‘the Japanese agents were visiting England for the purpose of organizing attacks on the Baltic Fleet [i.e. the 2nd Pacific Squadron] and in these circumstances it was perhaps not unnatural that the captains of the Russian ships should have been alarmed at finding these vessels [the trawlers] in close proximity to the men-of-war’.18 This concept of Richard Deacon’s is supported by the vast majority of modern scholars. One of them, for example, categorically maintains that ‘not a single spy or agent or vessel of any kind had been sent to this area by the Japanese, who possessed neither the means nor the experience for such a dangerous operation as the Russians feared’.19 Another opinion is shared by some Russian naval luminaries and scholars. They argued that the British provoked the incident with the help of two torpedoboats purchased by the Japanese and camouflaged as British trawlers. Baron Taube, the prominent expert in international law, wrote on 29 October 1904 to Count Lamsdorf, the Foreign Minister that ‘since the squadron under the command of Vice Admiral Rozhestvenskii was attacked by two enemy destroyers, the battleships were obliged to open fire on them, while the British trawlers suffered damages only by chance and because of the treacherous action of the Japanese’.20 Notably, the German Kaiser strongly supported the Russian interpretation. In his talk to Colonel Vadim Shebeko, the military attaché in Berlin, William II maintained that ‘Admiral Rozhestvenskii had actually nothing to do; the destroyers, which he noticed, were doubtlessly the British vessels [. . .]; it is possible that they were the ships that the Russian government was going to purchase some time ago’.21 An actual eye-witness of the incident, Captain 2nd rank Vladimir Semenov, also viewed it as a trap set up by the adversary’s intelligence service, referring to the testimony of a certain Japanese naval officer who allegedly had commanded one of the mysterious torpedo-boat in the engagement.22 The passivity of Russian military attachés in Europe obscured the issue. For example, Major General Yermolov, accredited in London, limited his activity on this occasion to reporting regular meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defence and the hasty war preparations of the British navy.23 Rendering his own vision of the situation on 11 November, i.e. a month after the Hull Incident, Yermolov explained the arguments of the British side: The eventuality of war, even in this case [if the ad hoc international arbitration called at the initiative of Russia failed to settle the dispute between London and St Petersburg], depends upon many preconditions, for example,

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The debacle in the Strait of Tsushima on the political situation in Germany, France, etc. Apart from this, as far as I can judge, there is no striving for war in financial and business milieu nor among the general public. The agitation stirred up by the incident in the North Sea has now subsided. But, I conjecture that we shall still keep in mind an unfavourable impression if ebullience rises again and affects the feeble Cabinet of Balfour.24

The high degree of the British naval forces’ combat readiness and the dispatch of their cruisers to keep watch upon Admiral Rozhestvenskii’s squadron through the Atlantic Ocean and round Africa revealed an aggravated tension in Russo-British relations. Their possible rupture became reality, since the Russophobe campaign ran rampant in the European press and numerous demonstrations of protest took place in London. Moreover, in November 1905 the Spanish government, instigated by the British, attempted to hold the Russian battleships at the port of Vigo.25 To conclude this discussion on the prospects of Russo-British conflict at the height of the war, it is necessary to refer to a coded telegram from the military attaché in France, Colonel Vladimir Lazarev, dated to late November 1904. He informed the Main Staff that Paris had turned a cold shoulder on Russia’s pursuit of support against London: ‘In view of our obscure relations with Britain, it is my duty to warn that France will in no case support any confrontation by force.’26 At the same time, Russian ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomats in the major powers continued to collect data on Tokyo’s strategic aims, ammunition supply and financial loans in the West. Thus, Colonel Lazarev, the attaché in Paris, submitted to the Main Staff a copy of a message delivered by one of his spies in Japan. The latter had witnessed the developments in Japanese artillery and investigated schemes of protracting reserve duty.27 Later, in the spring of 1905, Lazarev sent to St Petersburg valuable observations of a certain French officer who had returned home after a trip to the headquarters of Marshal Oyama: The Japanese fear ‘a new Port Arthur’, i.e. Vladivostok; they are hardly in a position to besiege it until they capture Harbin. They think we cannot make proper use of cavalry detachments and mounted artillery; the latter often lags behind, our lines are too deep and we shoot badly; the Japanese are afraid of war being prolonged for a lengthy period of time and of the construction of a second track for the Trans-Siberian Railway. The only tactics against them may be a war of attrition: we should beat separate detachments, split off from main forces, we should not rush into combat without confidence of victory; to this end, we should have a double superiority over the enemy. Vladivostok needs a garrison of 50,000 and stockpiles for two years.28 Although the Dogger Bank incident has not been properly investigated until now, it is clear that Russian MI committed an apparent blunder in the North Sea.

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In my opinion, the Japanese did not intend to intercept the Squadron at so great a distance from the theatre of war. Moreover, their objective was to let the tsar’s armada arrive at the Sea of Japan, where Admiral Togo was preparing to completely crush Russia’s naval power. Nevertheless, to save face and to promote the further voyage of the Second Squadron, the tsar had to agree on the convention of the International Commission to arbitrate the dispute. The crucial role played by France in mitigating the furious British reaction, however, enabled St Petersburg to avoid the conversion of the crisis into real hostilities between Russia and the UK.29 It is also odd how the Dogger Bank incident prompted the general public in London to vigorously protest against the voyage of the Squadron. A Russian diplomatic attaché recalled that the owner of the corner house situated between the two buildings that formed the Russian Embassy, refused to sell his property. This caused him much trouble, because most people mistook his entrance for the Embassy entrance. ‘Things went from bad to worse during the Dogger Bank incident’, continued the memoirist, ‘when a furious London crowd set out to attack the Russian Embassy, but by mistake bombarded the corner house with empty beer bottles and stones.’30 In the meantime, four Russian light cruisers, including Smolensk and Petersburg, raised steam and sailed off from Sevastopol to intercept war supplies bound for Japan. As mentioned earlier, the operation was supervised by the Grand Duke Alexandr Mikhailovich, who bought the vessels in Hamburg to set up the core of an independent cruiser detachment.31 Apart from the interception of smugglers on the open sea, the task it confronted consisted also in reconnoitring sea routes.32 But in reality, the first Russian attempts to arrange patrolling in the Mediterranean and Red Sea as well as in the coastal waters of Madagascar and north-western Africa in the summer of 1904 had already evoked energetic protests from European liberals, while the British proved to be the most decisive and persistent opponent to these activities. As a result the Admiralty ordered that the two battleships should observe all manoeuvres of Russian naval vessels on the approaches to the Suez Canal.33 Annoyed by the storms of protest in European capitals, the tsar soon ordered the end of the cruiser war, inasmuch as the opening of a second front on the Western borders of the empire threatened to ruin the regime completely. Hence, the Russian light cruisers of the independent detachment made their last patrol in the Atlantic in December 1904. However, the so-called reconnaissance detachment of six cruisers under the command of Captain 1st rank Shein continued to intercept enemy transports as well as to protect Russian battleships from attacks of Japanese destroyers and submarines in the Indian and Pacific Oceans on the route of the Second Squadron. One of them, Kuban, checked two cargo vessels near Yokohama but found no war smuggling; the other, Terek, sank two foreign cargo steamships without saving their crews. The third cruiser, Rion, also annihilated German and British vessels in the Yellow Sea, while the fourth, Dnepr, sank two more British cargo ships at a distance of 100 miles from Hong Kong. The debacle at Tsushima put an end to this activity.34

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In total, from the autumn of 1904 to June 1905, Russian battleships had inspected more than 50 cargo and passenger vessels belonging to neutral states, but only five of them were sunk and four were interned in Chinese ports. Obviously they proved incapable of inflicting any serious damage upon the Japanese fleet or to stop sea smuggling to the benefit of Tokyo.35 It should be noted, however, that the initial experience of Russian naval staffs to organize a cruiser war on sea communications was later copied by all the major maritime powers, especially by the Germans in the course of the First and Second World Wars.

Russian naval intelligence before and during the Battle of Tsushima Apart from the disturbance to diplomatic relations,36 the Hull incident resulted in spy mania, which overtook the officers and crews under the command of Vice Admiral Rozhestvenskii. One crew member depicted it in the following way: Japanese spies were everywhere. They were watching upon each manoeuvre of our squadron with the aid of submarines, balloons and neutral cargo vessels. They allegedly laid mines along the shores of the Netherlands. Some people swore that they had observed the Japanese destroyers stationed secretly in Dutch and British seaports.37 Naturally, Rozhestvenskii issued an order to intensify observation and keep high vigilance in case of attack. His instruction ran as follows: ‘Each boat that is about to approach the squadron must be fired at.’ Later, on 2 April 1905, he added to this instruction a new one. According to this, the battleships and auxiliary vessels had to be on constant alert, since the Russians expected to be attacked by Japanese submarines.38 In February 1905, the state of Rozhestvenskii’s health seriously deteriorated. ‘He developed terrible pain and was moaning through the night, unable even to doze’, argues a modern historian of the expedition.39 Despite some forced stops because of frequent damage and the necessity to add to the stockpiles of coal on board the ships at the coastal depots supplied by German merchants, the United Second Squadron (after the detachment of Rear Admiral Nebogatov joined the flotilla near Singapore) continued the voyage to the Yellow Sea, being under permanent watch of the Japanese observers and informants. On approaching Japan, the task that confronted the Russian Admiral was to choose the most appropriate way to Vladivostok, since the First Squadron had suffered total annihilation, except for the Vladivostok detachment of two armoured and one light cruiser together with a handful of torpedo-boats. In fact, Rozhestvenskii had no chance of winning the imminent battle; he might endeavour, nevertheless, to pass by Togo’s fleet undetected. The routes through the Japanese islands and the Straits of Tsugaru and La Pérouse seemed unacceptable, because the Japanese might easily have blocked them with mines and

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destroyers. Besides, there were suspicions among officers that some of the crews were plotting stirring up a revolt on board the battleships in order to surrender them to the Japanese. The only chance for the Vice Admiral was to deceive Togo, or in case of being detected by his reconnaissance vessels, to attempt to break through the Japanese squadron to the Vladivostok naval base. These arguments were incorporated in the instructions of Rozhestvenskii to the commanders of the battleships.40 The Admiral apparently decided not to send off his cruisers on long-distance reconnaissance raids. On the eve of the battle, he still believed that the Squadron would succeed in reaching Vladivostok through the Strait of Tsushima in deep mist, using the close concentration of his fleet, though the Japanese observation post stationed on the island of Quelpart was monitoring the entrance to the strait.41 As Julian Corbett has pointed out, the Russians would have had a chance to insinuate themselves through the guard line of Togo’s fleet, had not the hospital ship Oleg wandered from the main body of the squadron. And once across this line, ‘they would have found nothing between them and the Eastern channel of the strait, wholly unguarded by Japanese reconnaissance vessels’, emphasizes the American naval expert.42 It seems, therefore, unfair to blame Rozhestvenskii for not devoting attention to naval intelligence, claiming that the organization of reconnaissance at sea had proved totally inadequate.43 The Admiral actually chose the only appropriate tactical manoeuvre under the unfavourable circumstances, taking into account the official notification of the Admiralty that Britain had assumed responsibility to protect the neutral waters of China from any invasion of belligerent fleets.44 We should also bear in mind that the Naval Staff did not issue any special regulations concerning combat reconnaissance on the open sea. The only slip-up of Rozhestvenskii, in this view, was the decision not to send off all auxiliary vessels to neutral ports on the distant approaches to the Korea Strait. The debacle of Tsushima, which has been described in full detail by eyewitnesses, naval professionals and historians, needs no further investigation through the lens of MI.45 The surrender of the Squadron’s remnants to the Japanese countenanced by Nebogatov has also been profoundly analysed in numerous memoirs and treatises. It should only be mentioned that, according to some archival records, four British naval officers were staying on board the main Japanese battleships, for example the flagship Mikasa, during the fighting.46 Their instructions were probably one of the factors that facilitated the sons of the Mikado defeating the Russian fleet in the largest sea battle in history before the First World War.

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Oh, Russia! Forget your former glory: The two-headed eagle is crushed, And yellow kids for fun The remnants of your banners are given to. Vladimir Soloviev, ‘Pan-Mongolism’1

Russian MI in the Qing Empire by the end of the war As stated in the previous chapter, the efforts of Russian MI to recruit Far Eastern nationals, especially the Chinese, to conduct HUMINT collided with the antipathy among the local population of the Qing Empire, which increased with every defeat of the tsarist commanders. However, the Koreans, suffering the atrocities of Japanese occupation, still regarded the armies of the ‘White Suzerain’ as the guarantors of the restoration of sovereignty. To slow the Japanese advance to the Sino-Korean boarder and stir up rebellions in the rear, some Russian intelligence officers suggested to Alekseev, Linevich and Kuropatkin that they initiate the establishment of partisan detachments at an early stage of war. According to Pak Chon Ho, a modern Korean historian of the RussoJapanese War, the first partisan detachment of 1,000 rifles was established by a Korean, Li Bom Yun, as early as in March 1904. On the orders of Admiral Alekseev, the staff of the Priamur military district mustered an independent detachment of 3,000 cavalrymen equipped with light artillery guns to support the partisan movement on the Korean Peninsula. The commander of the detachment, Kim In Su (otherwise known as Victor Kim), liaised with the pro-Russian party at the court of the Korean Emperor, who was actually held by the Japanese as a hostage.2 After the Russians retreated from Korea, Victor Kim, together with Staff Captain Biriukov, the emissary of the Priamur district, drafted a plan of disposition of Korean irregular troops to bolster the Russian efforts in the rebuff of the Japanese offensive. On 7 July 1904, they mustered a united Russo-Korean detachment under the command of Major General Anisimov.3 Later, another unit of 300 Korean guerrillas set about committing acts of sabotage in the Japanese

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rear as well as reconnoitring the theatre of operations to the benefit of Russian MI.4 On 14 June 1905, Major General Mardanov, Quartermaster-General of Priamur province, countenanced regulations on the conduct of HUMINT by local inhabitants: the Russians, the Chinese, the Koreans and the Manchurians. Captain Tomilin, senior aide-de-camp of the staff and actual compiler of this document, envisioned a close cooperation of Korean partisan detachments with active Russian troops. Five days later, General Mardanov issued the order to set up a national battalion of Korean irregulars to support the Manchurian armies.5 Almost simultaneously, military planners began to train partisans in case there was a Japanese invasion of Priamur province or a landing on the island of Sakhalin. The tasks that confronted guerrillas were monitoring the coast, pursuing Japanese agents and exterminating chunguses. If Japanese troops landed on Russian territory, the partisans would have waged guerrilla war against the invaders. The drafted personnel of this detachment comprised 20 rangers and foot volunteers recruited from the 8th East Siberian Rifle Corps, the Cossacks’ troop, a platoon of peasant volunteers and a group of Chinese and Korean scouts. Major General Pavel Rutkovskii, the Chief of the Staff of Priamur province, allocated 500 roubles to complete the formation of this combined unit in June 1905.6 Later, in July, the Russian military authorities mustered four other partisan detachments, which were supposed to operate in Posiet, Huchun, Shkotov and Nikol’sk districts of the province. The preparations on the Russian side were intensified after the enemy had occupied Sakhalin.7 Judging from minutes submitted to the Priamur district headquarters by the aforementioned Staff Captain Biriukov, in the mid-1905 the established spy network on the Sino-Korean border regularly supplied the Russian military authorities with intelligence on the Japanese troops and the actions of chunguses on the left flank of the Manchurian front.8 Luckily, the Japanese Imperial Headquarters put off the planned invasion of Priamur province (they actually countenanced it 13 years later, in 1918). The tsarist troops in Manchuria, therefore, did not need the aid of partisans in the forests and mountains of the Far East. However, the landing of Japanese troops on Sakhalin in July 1905, envisioned by Russian strategic intelligence, forced the Russian command to withdraw ground forces off the island. The irregular detachments of locals and convicts under the orders of Lieutenant General Liapunov were incapable of rebuffing this assault. Naturally, any kind of resistance offered by poorly equipped people to elite Japanese landing troops was doomed to failure.9 As the American historian Norman Saul has correctly remarked, the occupation of Sakhalin ‘was considered by many as the last nail driven into the coffin of Russia’s early twentieth century Asiatic ambitions’.10 In the course of war, there also occurred numerous encounters between small Russian troop units and mounted bands of chunguses. For example, as early as August 1904, the bandits captured two subalterns of the 12th Orenburg Cossack Regiment: they were hanged upside down and executed by shooting from guns

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and bows.11 The staff of frontier guards decided to muster a special detachment headed by Captain Chesnokov, an experienced General Staff officer, to clear the territory of chunguses and eliminate groups of saboteurs.12 The dramatic deterioration of the situation both in the rear (where chunguses assassinated Colonel Bogdanov, the Military Commissar of Heilongjiang province, on 1 November 1904), and on the front (where the Russians relinquished positions at the river of Shaho), compelled them to undertake further steps to answer the challenge of the chunguses. In late December 1904, General Nadarov, the chief of the army rear, asked Kuropatkin for permission to organize so-called ‘native companies’ or troop subunits of Chinese militia. One could be led to believe that his request meant the eventual winning over of the chunguses to the Russian side on a massive scale using the approved methods of Colonel Madritov and some other semi-independent commanders.13 Another piece of evidence, the report by Quartermaster-General Oranovskii to his direct superior, Lieutenant General Kharkevich, revealed both pros and cons in leading troop subunits like the ones mentioned above, together with the suggested unification of their structure, staff, insignia and funds. To all appearances, this document was based on experience of Major General Nikolai Ukhach-Ogorovich who superintended military transport at the headquarters of the rear services, who was one of the initial managers of native militia. Thus, Oranovskii suggested the establishment of native ranger companies, each comprising 150 horsemen, two Russian officers, two non-commissioned clerks and 15 privates; and foot subunits, each of 250 riflemen with subsequent augmentation in the quantity of Cossacks up to 25 combatants.14 Later, in attempts to justify his initiative and protect his reputation from the claims of ill-wishers, Ukhach-Ogorovich described chunguses not simply as ordinary bandits but also as ‘industrious individuals feeling thirsty for activity’, or even as ‘distinctive Far Eastern condottieres’.15 On the other hand, the Japanese, not the Russians, were the first to promote the idea of recruiting chunguses to break transport communications in the foe’s rear. Some foreign military observers, for example an officer of the German General Staff, maintained that A series of measures taken by the Japanese to impart military organization to chaotic bands of chunguses with their submission to Japanese officers was of immense importance. Thus, all those fervent elements were neutralized on terrain occupied by the Japanese, and at the same time, they acquired new means to conduct reconnaissance and commit unexpected forays, which proved to be more efficient than the activities of Russian volunteers. But all the attempts of chunguses to destroy the railway to the north of Mukden in December 1904 failed owing to the high vigilance of the brave frontier guards.16 The operations in the winter of 1904–5 diverted the attention of Kuropatkin and his staff from this issue. But after the Mukden debacle the commander of the Zaamur district of frontier guards, Lieutenant General Chichagov, resumed

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attempts to set up native subunits. Not until mid-May 1905, did he obtain the endorsement of General Linevich; he was allocated funds for the establishment of five companies of Chinese rangers led by Russian instructors. According to the adopted regulations, a nominal commander of the company, i.e. a former chieftain of chunguses, was paid 200 roubles; his ‘subalterns’ received 150 roubles, while the salaries of rank-and-files were 50 roubles a month. A special directorate was commissioned to coordinate the activities of native militia. Linevich enacted the staff and schedule for this new body on 27 May 1905.17 Copious instructions disseminated by different echelons of command to active troop units reflected the real necessity of preserving high vigilance on the flanks and in the rear of Manchurian armies, especially in the surroundings of railway. One military topographer envisioned the eventual damage to Russian communications which might be caused by Chinese bandits: Numerous detachments of this kind, sometimes under Japanese guidance, wandered about western Manchuria, on the borderlands of Mongolia and China. They attacked our observation posts, transport hubs and other rear offices, obstructed the procurement of cattle in Mongolia, captured cattle herds, and even attempted to destroy railways. Less numerous gangs of chunguses were active in the suburbs of townships in Mongolia, often at a short distance from our troop units.18 Apart from the staffs of rear services and the frontier guards, Russian military administrators contributed likewise to the ‘appeasement’ of chunguses. In May to June 1905, Colonel Michail Sokovnin, the Military Commissar of Jilin province, made an attempt to bribe the powerful local chieftain, Han Denggui, negotiating the agreement of collaboration. The task that confronted Sokovnin was to protect Russian transport communications from forays committed by mounted bandits. The final account of the intelligence section on the Manchurian front summarized the issues of this agreement: the chieftain of chunguses ought to reject any request of Japanese emissaries to hire his men to perform acts of sabotage in the Russian rear. Besides, they were obliged to monitor the situation within the area of dislocation, delivering regular reports to the Quartermaster-General. Their insignia should be a three-coloured (white–blue–red after the national banner of Russia) chevron on the left sleeve.19 After enduring the talks and suffering enormous pressure from the Russians, Han Denggui accepted these terms and commenced, according to the account, ‘to dispatch his men for scouting Japanese positions’. One could be led to believe that Russian MI continued cooperation with this leader after the war.20 Another typical example was the story of Tifontai (otherwise Li Fengtai), a rich Chinese merchant baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church, who had taken Russian citizenship.21 Brought in from Khabarovsk to run his business networks located both in Port Arthur (where he possessed a shop and a theatre) and in the rear of the Japanese armies, he was recruited by the Russians to act as MI resident on the territory of the Qing Empire.22 In June 1905, Tifontai applied to the

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Commander-in-Chief with the suggestion that the merchant would fund the formation of a 500-man partisan unit to make reconnaissance and commit acts of sabotage in the Japanese rear. On 23 June 1905, Linevich permitted the establishment of the unit under the orders of the former Chinese colonel, Zhan Chenyuan, alias Bindui (in the Chinese language it means ‘the man who pushes down everything in front of him’). The 11th East Siberian Regiment Staff Captain Blonskii, who supervised Tifontai, reported to the command: ‘Zhan Chenyuan is absolutely devoted to the Russians. Being a man of mighty intellect, strong will and indefatigable vigour, he might be of great use to us.’23 The unit received, thus, the cognomen of its commander, the Bindui. It comprised three subunits, each of a hundred horsemen, and was submitted directly to the Supreme Headquarters. The men on Russian service were to operate on the left flank of the Russian armies in collaboration with the cavalry detachment headed by Major General Rennenkampf. Staff Captain Blonskii and his successor, Suslov, Lieutenant of the 35th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, were attached to the Bindui as instructors. Besides, ten Russian rank-and-files together with two medical attendants from the Cossack regiments joined the staff of this unit.24 ‘Although this detachment saw little action between its June 1905 formation and August dissolution’, argues David Wolff, ‘it was around long enough to draw complaints of harassment from numerous local inhabitants. On 15 September, the final report on its activities placed the blame squarely on the ‘lack of officers knowing Chinese to be assigned to these detachments to lead and supervise them’.25 However, despite formidable efforts and ample expenditures by the Russian command, the activities of native militia units proved inefficient. According to the account compiled by Captain Odintsov, an officer dealing with some chieftains of chunguses, these detachments lacked a general coordinator as well as skilled assistants who might have encouraged poor Chinese peasants to side with the Russians. While expressing scepticism even on ‘their ability to keep sentrylines’, Odintsov, perhaps, further laid it on thick when he claimed that Recruited from the scum of society, mostly from rascals or those horsemen who had been earlier on Japanese service, the detachments are known among the locals as ‘the Russian chunguses’. They do nothing except plunder local inhabitants on the terrain occupied by our troops, instigating indignation among them against us. The sole stimulus for them is spoils, and they served only for awards (from 40 to 60 roubles per person as compared with 35 roubles from the Japanese).26 Odintsov’s view might be confirmed by the opinion of Altukhov, the Sergeant Major of the combined infantry–cavalry detachment, upon one of such Chinese ‘commanders’ in Russian service: A former chieftain of chunguses, Xsiaobei, presently an officer of the 5th native ranger company, who had earlier terrorized local residents in Jilin

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and Heilongjang provinces, did not cease his robber activities after being employed by our officers, but on the contrary, he increased his plundering in daytime, in view of the inability of Chinese authorities to capture him because he is regarded as a person under Russian protection. At the end of his missive, addressed to Captain Odintsov, Altukhov suggested arresting Xsiaobei and deporting him to penal servitude in the Siberian town of Nerchinsk.27 It seems, however, that Staff Captain Blonskii, a real expert in the recruitment of native militia, produced a more unbiased survey to the intelligence section of the Supreme Headquarters in September 1905: As to practical involvement of Bindui in partisan undertakings or scouting, my experience of collaboration with native commanders led me to believe that detachments of this kind demonstrate plenty of useful features and might have benefited us greatly; if, in reality, they proved to be less capable then one should have expected, it occurred for external reasons, not because of their staff. The aforementioned advantages of Chinese militia are the following: 1 2 3 4 5

knowledge of rituals; skilful orientation on terrain; perfect command of local languages; the number of relatives or friends in the theatre of war; benevolent attitude of locals and their eventual aid in case of arrest.

The shortfalls are minimized to absolute ignorance of modern war in the European sense as well as adherence to Chinese daily routine. External factors of their poor combat potential might be explained by hasty formation and almost total unpreparedness for operations on a massive scale. They could hardly make reconnaissance, because they had not the faintest idea of the Japanese active army; on the other hand, they lacked drilling to oppose regular ground forces.28 Blonskii believed that proper training and instruction of such units would mellow their defects and increase the effectiveness of operations. However, the Russians’ dissatisfaction in mounted or foot scouting with the aid of chunguses only accentuated the role of HUMINT at the last stage of the war. It continued to be under the general patronage of the Quartermaster Department of the Commander-in-Chief, but in fact, staffs of armies, rear services (until July 1905), frontier guards, Priamur province headquarters and military commissars took over operational MI, while tactical intelligence was incumbent on the General Staff officers attached to active troop units. Many Western military observers stated later that the establishment of a three-level MI structure (strategic, operational, and tactical or combat) was not completed by the Russian higher command until mid-1905.

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A similar dynamic was evident with the differentiation between reconnaissance on the front and in the rear of Russian armies. It did progress rapidly after Kuropatkin had enacted new regulations to staffs on intelligence collection, verification and dissemination. The document argued for the acute necessity to preserve close contact between tactical HUMINT and short-range reconnaissance.29 Primary sources available to the author reveal that two experienced officers, Staff Captains Rossov and Blonskii, entered upon duties as HUMINT coordinators on the tactical level early in 1905. Both of them were experts in Far East politics and spoke fluently Chinese. The Southern Manchurian Railway divided the area of their responsibility into two zones. But, inasmuch as Rossov was dispatched to Outer Mongolia in March 1905, it was Blonskii alone who actually superintended tactical HUMINT from April onwards. His review of the means used by the Russians in the war of secret services is, therefore, of extreme importance. This document covers four issues: the recruitment of agents, the methods of training scouts, the procedure of penetration into the adversary’s rear across the front-line, and recommendations on granting awards. Blonskii wrote, for example, that The core contingents of spies were Chinese deserters, pedlars and ordinary villagers attracted by generous awards that greatly exceeded their daily income. Such agents do not have the slightest perception of the Japanese army, and were capable of getting little valuable information, e.g.: ‘There are 100 infantry soldiers in village X and 50 horsemen in township Y’, etc. Due to this fact, the agents in question had to be specially drilled in advance.30 According to Blonskii, a minimal curriculum of spy training incorporated military statistics of Japan in conjunction with insignia and inscriptions on specimens of Japanese official documents. One example of command know-how was the tabulation of Japanese active units and military institutions. Each agent insinuating into the adversary’s rear had to fill empty boxes in special tables with his assessments of quantity and location of Japanese troops. Blonskii handed over printed copies of these tables to agents before they were sent off across the front line. The task that confronted the agent responsible for a specific mission on the territory of the Japanese ground forces was to reconnoitre coordinates of strong points, depots, fords, etc. Apart from this task, he ought to notify all realignments of the Japanese in the area of scouting. A period of reconnaissance varied from two to four weeks, while each spy was furnished with minuscule documents that certified his surname and the scheduled time for his return back through Russian positions.31 The awards paid by Blonskii to his secret agents comprised travelling costs, which amounted to a rouble per day, and bonuses for intelligence messages, which ranged from 25 to 100 roubles, depending on urgency, accuracy and significance of information. In order to verify data, Blon-

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skii ordered his spies to bring back artefacts as evidence of reaching their destination: paper documents, banners, envelopes, sometimes vestiges of Japanese ammunition. He admitted, however, that forgeries were widespread among spies. On the one hand, as stated in previous chapters, there were cheats who exchanged such artefacts between themselves, while on the other hand, the Japanese counter-espionage service instituted a network of false ‘espionage agencies’, which fabricated these materials and disseminated them among the Chinese to misinform the Russians. Besides, one more obstacle to Russian HUMINT, in Blonskii’s view, proved to be the perpetual checking of inns and travellers committed by the adversary’s military police. He estimated that the overall number of Chinese spies on Russian service fluctuated from ten to 40 persons, their awards per month being from 25 to 70–80 roubles and occasional bonuses for findings being 5–30 roubles.32 The strengthening of Russian influence in China, to use modern parlance, also figured in the duties of MI. Dmitrii Pozdneev, the director of the Eastern Institute in Vladivostok, specified newspaper features in his report to Admiral Alekseev: To gain in popularity, the publication of a periodical is supposed to meet the following requirements: a b c

d e

it should be published in large format [. . .]; all articles should be lengthy and written in modern, accurate language [. . .]; newsprint paper should be of high quality, while type should be distinct and new, because the Chinese in the south devote more attention to a newspaper’s exterior; it should be cheap in retailing; the most interesting information for all educated Chinese remains the news of government administration and reportage submitted to the editor by provincial correspondents [. . .].33

In previous chapters we have considered the endeavours of some Russian superior commanders to incite public opinion in the Far East by publishing such periodicals as The China Review and the Shengjingbao, which were edited in Peking and Mukden during the fall and winter of 1904–5, not to mention the Vestnik Man’chzhurskoi Armii. The high activity was demonstrated by military attachés in the publication of The China Review – a weekly paper in English, which came out for the first time on 23 September 1904 in Peking. Colonel Ogorodnikov became the editor-in-chief of this periodical. His monthly expenditures amounted to 2,500 Mexican dollars. A conclusive survey by Kuroptakin’s intelligence staff reflected the true objectives of its publication: The edition of The China Review, based upon information from the Supreme Headquarters, our diplomatic mission in Peking, consuls, etc. was

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The dilemmas of Portsmouth aimed at correctly depicting war episodes, for the Anglo-Japanese press in the Far East always wants to exaggerate our flaws, to narrate the situation gloomily, with prodigious divergence from the truth.34

The fortune of another newspaper published by the Russian military administration, the Shengjingbao proved less favourable to its editors, albeit it was the only newspaper Chinese-language in Manchuria.35 The counteractions undertaken by the Japanese and the restrained attitude of the Chinese authorities handicapped the organization of newspaper publication on a regular basis with the help of Chinese employees at the printing house leased by the Russian military administration. In early 1905, Kuropatkin issued a special order to publish the Shengjingbao twice a week, but the catastrophe at Mukden and the Russian armies’ retreat to the north broke these plans. That is why the last issue was published on 9 March. Only in April did the editors resume publication. Now the Mukden province Commissar, Colonel Mikhail Kvetsinskii, headed the editorial board. On 10 April, Quartermaster-General Oranovskii instructed Colonel Kvetsinskii in the following way: The Commander-in-Chief [Linevich] regards it to be of tremendous importance to disseminate reliable and favourable pieces of information about the war among the Chinese population through periodicals. His Excellency believes it is urgent to resume Chinese publication under your guidance at present. This will counterbalance false, ambiguous publications unfavourable to us, which are disseminated by the Japanese among the locals to undermine our prestige. The Commander-in-Chief ordered, therefore, to commence immediately newspaper publication in Chinese on similar principles to those for the Shengjingbao, in Harbin or another town according to your own opinion.36 Despite generous funds procured by Kvetsinskii to purchase modern printing machines in Shanghai and employ 18 professional printers, the newspaper never resumed after the second hiatus in its publication, while the equipment and personnel were detained in Tientsin until the end of warfare. Only on 3 November 1905, did they arrive in Vladivostok by sea. Finally, the equipment was granted by the higher command to the directorate of the CER in January 1906. Thus, another favourable chance to convert Russophobes into Russophiles was again lost.37

The further progress of Russian MI in data processing and dissemination As was demonstrated in previous chapters, the system of data processing together with the dissemination of accomplished intelligence products lacked professionalism and competence at the early stages of the war. Those intelligence officers responsible for these phases of the process, often failed to

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compose operational summaries, the content of which might be controversial and even untrue.38 Naturally, this flawed system was sharply criticized by staffers in the final account of MI on the Manchurian front, who claimed that the staffs of active corps, divisions and detachments ‘had not received any official notifications on the adversary’s forces and actions from the headquarters of the Manchurian Army’, and that they ‘had available to them, therefore, only the piecemeal intelligence, which they obtained from combat or secret tactical reconnaissance, and which dealt with comparatively limited extracts from general strategic reviews.39 Analogously, some chiefs of corps’ staffs, for example Major General Briken, commented on the state of affairs in this branch of Russian MI: Before the October battle at the river of Shaho, the corps procured occasional information on the adversary from the headquarters of the Manchurian Army. Incomplete in nature, those wired summaries of intelligence highlighted only the general disposition of Japanese troops, without focusing upon petty details in their positions. Local skirmishes were commented on occasionally, but only large battles were covered fully. From that time on, summaries of operations, though in a limited quantity, began to be delivered more frequently, but they were given a needed regularity only after the staff of the 1st Army set about planning operations. Before the October battle, each corps had stationed liaison officers at their neighbour corps and detachments to receive intelligence on a broader scale. However, data collected by such means and by numerous mounted patrols often came in too late and proved both incomplete and one-sided, because the active liaison officers, charged with intelligence, lacked experience and training. Taking into consideration this lively exchange of correspondence, the corps’ staffs had available to them insufficient equipment for immediate data processing and copying; hence, staffs on lower levels were deprived of intelligence they were in great need of. All the information disseminated to active troops did not go over the fixation of adversary’s sentry-lines and distribution of his forces.40 The chief of another corps staff, Major General Tumanov, reviewed current flaws of the intelligence process in a report to the Quartermaster-General of the same 1st Army: The headquarters of the Manchurian Army dispatched only short tables of the composition of Japanese troops and types of uniform. In late 1904, we received stitched copies of intelligence summaries on the adversary for the period of September–November, which had lost any operational meaning and surely become useless to us; hence, corps’ staffers were doing their best to fill the gap with data gathered by their own scouts or exchanged it for intelligence collected by staffers at neighbouring troop units.41

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As different historical sources evince, Russian MI was faced with the need to improve all links in the intelligence cycle, i.e. data collection, collation and processing in conjunction with keeping operational liaison with troops in the field. It would appear probable that Russian staffers made a real breakthrough in the winter of 1904–5, though the setback at Mukden somehow torpedoed all the innovations. The dissemination schedule, therefore, assumed its final shape only in the last summer months of the war. According to the adopted regulations, the intelligence section of the Supreme Headquarters diverted intelligence reports submitted from lower staffs into several groups dealing with ‘distant’ and ‘short-range’ reconnaissance. They incorporated official summaries, maps, questionnaires from POWs and internees, and digests from newspapers.42 All the findings were sorted into reliable or hypothetical. The former were mentioned in summaries of operations, while the latter material supplemented the summaries, with reservations on their validity. Notably, vast amounts of open data were extracted from Japanese, Chinese and European (British, French and German) periodicals. In 1905, intelligence digests from the Oriental and Western press became regular and wideranging, when they covered more items than at the initial stage, though Russian staffs still lacked qualified interpreters, particularly in the Japanese and Chinese languages. Military observers noted such tendencies in Russian MI as decreasing accuracy of collected information about the adversary when it dealt with front-line positions or distribution of troops in the rear. Judging from primary sources, one should conclude that analysis performed by the General Staff officers on logistics, not to mention the interior situation in the Land of the Rising Sun, appeared often far from reality. This statement could be exemplified by Russian MI’s failures to reconstruct the disposition of Japanese armies immediately after the Battle of Mukden. We earlier considered the post-Mukden syndrome: it took staffers more than two months merely to sketch the adversary’s new positions, while a full disposition of ground forces under the command of Marshal Oyama crystallized in their view as late as August 1905. Summaries of operations were regarded by staffers as accomplished intelligence. From May 1905 onward, staffers had multiplied them in quantity sufficient for dissemination to practically all active corps, brigades and regiments. In addition, they initiated the delivery of intelligence digests to central and district headquarters in the Russian Empire. To this end, technicians assembled and put into operation modern field printing presses with an output of 500 paper copies. Now, for the first time in the history of the Russian army, the command enjoined the regular study of the operational situation on its active officers.43 However, the staffers charged with printing intelligence materials ran up against the necessity of multiplying sketch-maps and other sketches as appendices to reports and summaries of the situation because the machines could produce no more than 70 high-quality two-colour prints a day. Accordingly, to multiply copies, a printer had to draw lines by hand and then resume printing. Not each copy of a summary, therefore, was supplemented with appropriately

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coloured schemes. The staffers in corps and divisions, therefore, used to re-draw them by hand to pass new copies on to field units under their command.44 Nearly every operational summary of intelligence incorporated the following items: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Location of the adversary’s troops. Japanese reserves. The situation in Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia and Ussuriysk province. The situation on the island of Sakhalin. Recent developments in tactics on the front. The state of affairs in the rear of Japanese armies. Extracts from questionnaires of POWs. Newspaper digests. Miscellaneous data. Maps, sketch-maps, sketches, tables and figures as appendices.45

The very composition of summaries also suffered alterations. ‘As practice revealed’, maintained the contributors to the final account of the Supreme Staff in the Far East, ‘it was not easy to look through summaries overfilled with a myriad of items. They approached perfection if they covered one or several issues of intelligence at a time; such brief and accurate summaries won over other kinds and met the approval of the Commander-in-Chief.46 To put it in a different way, thematic summaries completely replaced the ones of general context at the trench stage of war. At the same time, however, some staffers still attempted to add miscellaneous data (e.g. naval intelligence) and even simply rumours in these products of intelligence. Besides, they sometimes miscalculated the numerical strength of Japanese troops, for example, overestimating it by 25 per cent.47 The sequence of errors in estimations might badly influence the process of decision-making in the course of war, when ‘tens of thousands of Japanese, armed to the teeth’ constantly haunted the minds of Russian commanders, from Kuropatkin himself to battalion and company staffers. This fiction often caused diffidence, reduced initiative, diminished fighting spirits, necessary to launch counter-attacks against the enemy, or even led to panic during unnecessary retreats. There were plenty of commanders who became unmanned through incorrect estimations produced by intelligence officers; it happened in the Battle of Mukden, when Russian miscalculations of the Japanese false manoeuvre on the left flank of the tsarist armies, which was reflected in the summary of 21 February 1905, foiled a return strike against the enemy positions.48 A similar dynamic was evident with the circulation of correspondence and documents between staffs on different levels. They inaugurated various registries (e.g. of daily reports of scouts), thematic notebooks of observations (of positions, fortifications, depots, bridges, ferries, etc.), newspaper digests and questionnaires of POWs in the daily intelligence cycle. According to the account

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of the 2nd Manchurian Army intelligence section, the master inventory of files, which were held at the headquarters, incorporated 15 items.49 In addition, the General Staff officers continued to prepare analytical surveys, published later as handbooks or digests for official use only. They were such editions as Organization of Japanese Armed Land Forces, A Brief Description of Japanese Uniforms, List of Japanese Higher Commanders, some of them produced twice in 1905. In a comparatively short period of a few months, Russian MI progressed to a larger extent in data gathering from different sources, as well as in a comprehensive up-to-date analysis of information. Regrettably, however, their intensive activities might bear first fruit only at a time when the autocratic regime had lost nearly all chances to crush Japan.

The role of Russian MI in peace negotiations It is well known that initial diplomatic soundings of opportunities for peace in the Far East were made by Japan as mid-1904, when Sergei Witte, the Chairman of the Committee of Ministers, obtained an informal proposal of the Japanese Plenipotentiary Minister in London, Tadesu Hayashi, to exchange opinions on the current state of affairs in the course of negotiations with the German Chancellor, Bernhard Bülow. To investigate the real intentions of the Japanese, Witte used his own secret channels of communication, e.g. the European and Asiatic network of financial attachés, who were obliged to dispatch regular reports on current affairs to his superior. In fact, the all-powerful minister drew up an ambitious plan to establish a system of financial intelligence under his own patronage. But the omnipotent Bezobrazov clique at the court of Nicholas II obstructed these intentions, persuading the autocrat to cancel any official or covert contacts with Tokyo through financial attachés under the auspices of Witte.50 Pressures for peace increased after the crucial Russian defeats in the Battles of Mukden and Tsushima and with the spread of revolutionary disorders in Russia. These added to the Western powers’ disfavour towards the continuation of the war by the autocratic regime. All these events split the imperial elite into two main groups: the vast majority of generals supported the tsar in his obstinate intention to protract hostilities, while most politicians together with naval officer corps spoke in favour of initiating immediate peace negotiations. One of such sober minded politicians, Sergei Witte, focused on this theme in his humble report to the tsar on 13 March 1905. From his point of view, the prolongation of this war of attrition might upset the financial conditions of the country and prompt drastic turmoil in society, discontent among European financial creditors and loss of territories – Sakhalin, Kamchatka and Priamur province. ‘We must not tarry any more’, the Chairman of the Committee of Ministers appealed to the sovereign, ‘we should start peace negotiations right now, and it is necessary to bring to life your order to Bulygin [to convene the first legislative Duma].’51 The initial endeavours of the French and American diplomatists to act as

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intermediaries between St Petersburg and Tokyo met a negative reaction from the tsar.52 However, the stunned shock produced by the collapse of the 2nd Pacific Squadron in May forced the tsar to benevolently accept Theodore Roosevelt’s friendly mediation in peaceful negotiations on 7 June 1905. Apart from geopolitical calculations, the president of the USA viewed the war through a domestic lens of economic competition, taking into consideration the threat that Japanese immigration to the west coast of America posed to white-skinned workers.53 In the meantime, the later Japanese invasion of Sakhalin, which they overran within July 1905, strengthened the will of the tsar to start this dialogue, in spite of the opposition of ‘Manchurian generals’ (Linevich, Kuropatkin, etc.). Witte’s appointment to the post of the First Plenipotentiary Representative of Russia at the Portsmouth conference marked a transition towards a real peaceful settlement of the bloody conflict.54 While preparing for his mission in America, Witte gave prior attention to intelligence flowing to him from different sources: military, diplomatic and financial. In particular, he required the evaluations of the higher military superiors: the War Minister, Vladimir Sakharov, the Chairman of a newly established Defence Council, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the younger, and the Commander-in-Chief, Nikolai Linevich. It would appear probable that they drew conclusions based, in their turn, on reports and assessments of military intelligence officers, both in the theatre of operations and in the major powers. Russian MI, thus, definitely played a significant role in this process. Despite the fact that Russian active ground forces substantially outnumbered the Japanese armies, any prospects of war, not to mention a decisive victory in it, seemed obscure to the majority of Russian higher military administrators. Though Sakharov and Nikolai Nikolaevich expressed hopes that the adversary would eventually be forced out of Manchuria, both of them were apprehensive about an eventual Japanese attack against Vladivostok in the situation, when their fleet dominated in the Pacific. For these and other reasons, the Russians were regarded as hardly capable of reconquering Korea and Kwantung from their adversary. As for Linevich, he preferred to waive any precise estimation of the Japanese potential, though, as acting Commander-in-Chief, he apparently could not support the idea of instant peace at any price. The prospects of prolongation of the war seemed even gloomier to Admiral Birilev, the Naval Minister, who believed that insofar as the Russian fleet had been annihilated, Japan would command the Far Eastern seas.55 At the same time, Kuropatkin, however, strongly criticized the sentiments in favour of peace among the military. Years later, he maintained that the reinforced Russian army might have launched a devastating offensive against the enemy, using its superiority in numerical strength, weaponry and ammunition. ‘Never in the history of Russia, had she possessed such powerful forces as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Manchurian armies in August 1905’, the commander pathetically commented on the state of affairs.56 According to memoirs of the members of the Russian delegation, both Witte

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and the tsar’s other representatives at the conference in Portsmouth took MI into consideration.57 Symptomatically, the staff of the delegation incorporated Captain 2nd rank Rusin and the General Staff Colonel Samoilov, the experienced military intelligence officers, whom we met in the earlier chapters of our narrative. As to Rusin, Witte had a long discussion with him on the situation in Manchuria. Regarding Witte’s impression of this conversation, Ivan Korostovets, the secretary of the Russian delegation, wrote in the diary: ‘In any case, the report of Rusin influenced the conduct of diplomatic talks’. This eye-witness recalled that Rusin opposed the idea of peace and continued to believe in the final victory of Russia.58 On the contrary, Colonel Samoilov shared the opinion of Witte and another member of the Russian delegation, Major General Yermolov, at that period the head of the Military Statistical Section of the Main Staff, that Russia had no chance to win over Japan, and the prolongation of hostilities would inevitably lead to substantial loses in Russian possessions in the Pacific.59 Interestingly, the signing of the peace treaty might have been foiled, owing to an incident which occurred just on the eve of the ceremony. This was the episode in late August, when Lieutenant General Nadarov, the commander of rear services, who had established his own espionage network in Outer Mongolia, received a confidential message concerning a group of strangers who were suspected of being Japanese students in disguise. They arrived in Urga, the administrative centre of the region, allegedly for practice in the Mongolian language. Nadarov gave an order to his subordinates to arrest the unexpected visitors on suspicion of planning acts of diversion with the participation of chunguses in the defence zone of the CER. However, Count Lamsdorf, the tsarist Foreign Minister, raised a categorical protest against the arrest in the offing, motivating it by the annoyance of dissatisfaction on the Japanese side conferring with the Russians in Portsmouth. The question was debated in a lively fashion in official correspondence between the military and diplomatic chancelleries. In the final count, the arguments presented by diplomatists overweighed the suspicions of their military colleagues. In order to avoid any new scandal in foreign relations and not to frustrate the eventual signing of the peace treaty, the Japanese ‘students’ were released from the jail in Urga.60 Any detailed narrative of the Portsmouth conference lies beyond the scope of this study, although an object of particular study might be the strict security measures undertaken by the American naval intelligence service in Portsmouth.61 It should be noted, however, that despite the officially declared diplomatic victory, Russia had to pay an indemnity to Japan in the form of reimbursement for the maintenance of Russian POWs in the Land of the Rising Sun. In fact, the overall sum of indemnity, camouflaged as financial compensation owing to Roosevelt’s intermediary service, amounted to seven million British pounds, or 70 million Russian roubles, which was approximately sufficient for building seven armed cruisers.62 It would also appear interesting to point out the endeavours of Russian higher commanders in China to ‘save face’ at the end of the war. The conversation of a tsarist general with the Chinese Governor of Jilin province fully illustrates the state of affairs. The general argued that

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Our sovereign [Nicholas II] and all the Russian people always spoke in favour of general peace, and the representatives of the great powers debated this question in The Hague. The tsar and the Russian people believed that war would never break out; rearmament and military training were stopped, they even began to reshuffle some regiments, while, at the same time, Japan made secret preparations for war within a decade and suddenly annihilated our fleet at Arthur. [. . .] You, the Chinese, as well as the kindness of the tsar and of all the Russian people, are really the causes of war. Your ministers outwitted us so, why should we continue to struggle for you?63 The majority of academic scholars believe that the mass of the active Russian military were delighted by the news of peace. In fact, however, the reactions to the Portsmouth conference varied not only among military commanders but also among the other ranks. Mikhail Alekseev, the Quartermaster-General of the 3rd Manchurian Army, recalled later that many officers felt oppressed with ‘a decadent idea of all Russians striving for peace, lacking will and resources to fight Japan any longer’.64 A bitter disappointment and weariness of war calamities surpassed joy and exultation in intensity. One eye-witness in charge of the photographic laboratory at the Supreme Headquarters and used to undertaking long journeys along the front line, confided to his companion: I would not say that active troops were very excited at the news of peace: one could hear neither music nor shouts of hurrah! anywhere. Everybody felt dissatisfaction; everybody was oppressed with the thought of fruitless casualties and labours, which meant to us not glory but nearly disgrace.65 As David Wolff argued in the book on the history of Harbin, the rank-andfiles’ ‘dissatisfaction with the officer corps that had led them to defeat combined with inactivity to induce an extremely virulent and contagious form of homesickness’. But the officers did not focus their attention on maintaining the morale of their troops, ‘since they themselves were demoralized by the sudden armistice that had cheated them of victory’.66 Being very much to the point, this apology corroborated the arguments put forward by another officer, the aforementioned Staff Captain Petr Rossov, who reported to the Chief of the Supreme Staff on 12 April 1906 that ‘the conclusion of the peace treaty to our disadvantage may be regarded as a fallacy, while its maintenance would mean a crime and ignominy to forthcoming generations of the Russian people’.67 Anton Kersnovskii, the military historian of the tsarist army, sincerely believed that the Manchurian army had been resoundingly defeated by the Land of the Rising Sun. In is emotional depiction of the Portsmouth negotiations, he stated that The peace talks, instead of stimulating energy for prolongation of the war, lowered further the weak and flabby will of the Russian military commanders

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The dilemmas of Portsmouth in the period of decay. None of these public figures realized that it depended on them to replace that shameful peace treaty with an honourable one and in this way save Russia from incipient disturbances.68

Notably, Nicholas II wrote in his diary after he had received a wire from the Russian delegation on 31 August 1905: ‘Only today am I beginning to realize the conclusion of the peace treaty and its positive nature, for it is inevitable.’69 Naturally, the reaction in Russian society contrasted sharply with the overall burst of enthusiasm in Japan. Staff Captain Vasilii Blonskii characterized the sentiments of ordinary people: Everybody is inspired by the termination of war, though it is finished without material handicaps to the country, but with glory. European states finally recognized Japan as a great power, one they should reckon with and one to be taken into account in the process of making political decisions.70 With the termination of hostilities, the time had come to thoroughly analyse the reasons for defeat, to learn its lessons and to reform the Russian armed forces in anticipation of new battles. The reorganization of MI was, thus, followed by the reverberations of the war in Manchuria, the first modern war that greatly affected all spheres of public life.

10 The repercussions of the war A thorny path of reforms

Vacillations and fears – here are our ailments and maladies; we are not about to risk even a bit, and strike our forehead against fortified settlements. Minor aims, huge casualties, marking time; the adversary dominates over the state of affairs, while, to the contrary, not he but we should control the situation. Mikhail Alekseev, Quartermaster-General of the 3rd Manchurian Army, 19051

General lessons of the Manchurian campaign for MI While making this research, there have been available a number of final surveys compiled by senior experts in Russian MI. These documents, some already published by academic scholars but most frequently preserved as typescripts by archivists, shed light on the reflection of the Russo-Japanese War by Russian military intelligencers. Thus, the General Staff officers who were the contributors to the conclusive account of the activities of the Supreme Headquarters Quartermaster Department, dated 14 September 1905, commented on MI operations in the course of war, summarizing their recommendations of improvements necessary to develop the intelligence cycle on three levels of spying: strategic, operational and tactical. They stated the need of the following measures to be taken in order to escape the errors of the recent hostilities in the Far East: 1

2

scrupulous MI planning long before the outbreak of any armed conflict, taking into view the incipient cooperation of the adversary with inimical secret services, as occurred with the Japanese intelligence service, which interacted with the British, American and sometimes German ‘friendly’ spy agencies on matters of common concern, e.g. the unprecedented voyage of the Russian Second Pacific Squadron from October 1904 to May 1905; the training of appropriate secret agents in conjunction with the creation of a multi-level system of residents, liaison scouts and informants to spy out conscription and mobilization procedures, the enrolment of reservists, the formation of new troop units, the dispatch of reinforcements to the front, the introduction of railway timetables, etc.;

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Repercussions of the war the appointment of an official military attaché or his deputy, who sojourned in the country, which is at present Russia’s adversary, as the head of the intelligence section at the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief in case of hostilities, to let him grasp the state of current affairs without delay; the assumption of precautionary measures in order to censor publications in periodicals as the Japanese did in the course of war, as well as the funding of newspapers edited in local languages to influence public opinion; in the view of military spymasters, ‘whoever our potential adversary in a future war may be, the intelligence section should not let the enemy play its trump cards, since our periodicals did not keep the necessary secrecy’.2

Touching upon the operational level of intelligence, they proposed the following undertakings: 1

2

3

4

5

to devote specific attention to training staffers in intelligence sections, e.g. teaching them oriental languages, in both written and spoken forms, in order to prepare qualified interpreters for staffs in armies, corps and divisions; according to the account in question, ‘only graduates from the Eastern Institute in Vladivostok together with a coterie of a few individuals born in wealthy Chinese and Korean families performed their duties in a more or less proper way’.3 to recruit scouts and drill them in covert centres, like the one instituted by Colonel Kvetsinskii, the Mukden Military Commissar, as well as to pay sufficient awards for intelligence messages to scouts without strict limits; to improve means of liaison between resident agents and orderlies (on foot or on horse) in the front area, i.e. to create mobile liaison patrols acting on a permanent basis; to prepare our own rear service for reconnaissance beforehand, for example, to muster groups of diversionists and partisan detachments which should employ the regular military, volunteers (Cossacks) and local inhabitants (Koreans, Manchurians and Mongols); to expose acts of espionage committed by the adversary in our rear more actively and purposely through employing special platoons of field gendarmes.

It is important also to spotlight propositions referring to tactical or combat reconnaissance: 1

2 3

to incorporate independent troop subunits – cavalry squadrons and infantry companies into battalions and regiments (brigades) to chase and capture prisoners of war as well as to gather artefacts on a systematic basis; to carry out infiltration through the adversary’s sentry-lines at the stage of trench warfare; to put new optical devices, novel technical devices like balloons or dirigibles, telephones and wireless telegraphy into practice in all troop units as soon as possible;

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to update target charts and improve topographic investigation, passed by intelligence officers.4

The document under consideration analysed inter alia, the rich experience of data processing and the collation of operational summaries. The staffers suggested a procedure of thorough verification of reports and minutes submitted to intelligence sections by attachés and secret agents. It incorporated the crosschecking of information from various sources, the implementation of notebooks to register all current developments, the use of codes for oral, written and wire messages and telephone calls. They emphasized that Any summary of intelligence should be short and objective; it should be supplemented with sketch-maps and tables. It is necessary to present a summary disposition of the adversary from time to time, in order, on the one hand, to disseminate it to active troops, and on the other, to facilitate the understanding of the situation by newly arrived troop units. Such summaries, in particular, should not be obscured by petty detail and endless military statistics: the best solution proves to be a single blueprint of positions without any commentaries or a table.5 Apart from this conclusion, they argued for the necessity to disseminate intelligence digests to line troops on a regular basis and to supply staffs with modern printing presses. One of the most significant means to increase efficiency of MI might be the removal of auxiliary functions, for instance, the censorship of foreign correspondents or the supervision of foreign military attachés and observers, from intelligence officers’ duties. At the same time, the task of conducting counterintelligence operations should be laid upon an independent counter-espionage service keeping in touch with MI in the front area and in military districts. Critical considerations and positive arguments expressed by senior staffers of the supreme command in Manchuria were augmented by reports from naval officers, for example by that of the aforementioned Lieutenant Boris DolivoDobrovolskii, the chief of the intelligence section at the Vladivostok base. According to his system of terminology, the principal means of maritime reconnaissance should be: signal stations on the coast; cruisers and torpedo-boats equipped with special radio transmission devices; patrolling coastal waters in conjunction with submarines and dirigibles; secret agents stationed in ports and on board of cargo vessels; radio interception and code breaking.6 Interestingly, Russian naval staffers also had to take into account the rules drawn up by the experts at the Institute of International Law at the annual meeting in 1906. For the first time in the history of war, they defined the proper status of persons sending wireless messages in war whether for legitimate or illegitimate purposes. By article 7 of these rules it was provided that Individuals who, in spite of the prohibition of the belligerents, engage in the

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Repercussions of the war transmission or reception of messages by wireless telegraphy between different sections of a belligerent army or territory are, if captured, not to be considered as spies, but to be treated as prisoners of war. It is otherwise, however, if the communication is conducted under false pretence or fraud.7

The Manchurian campaign prompted substantial alterations in naval strategy and tactics. While in wars of earlier epochs there was a lasting hiatus between general battles, when belligerent naval staffs had nothing to do but repair their battleships or to go ashore, such temporal gaps in the Russo-Japanese naval struggle were filled with constant exercises of the fleets to dispatch sea patrols, reconnoitre coastal traffic, take measures against mines, or intercept the adversary’s transports and neutral smugglers on ocean communications.8 In his study of maritime operations, Curt von Maltzahn, the prominent German naval strategist of the early twentieth century, pointed out the new features of war at sea: the combined actions of ground and naval forces, the increased role of technical means of spying, the decisive significance of laying mines in roadsteads and in main fairways, the first endeavours of belligerents to put submarines into tactical reconnaissance in coastal waters.9 Despite the backwardness and inertia of the autocratic regime, the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War to Russia’s military gave a tremendous impetus to the reforms in the Russian army and navy on a massive scale. Notably, officers of MI greatly contributed to this process, which altered the organization of secret service on the eve of the First World War.

Innovations in Russian MI after 1905 The connection between military collapse in the Far East and the mass revolutionary upheaval in 1905, accompanied by setbacks in foreign policy, forced Nicholas II and his closest circle to conduct reforms in almost all branches of government. Under such unfavourable circumstances, Russian MI was to keep watch upon the attempts of other great powers to encroach on the territory and interests of the tsarist empire. Hence, even before the two opponents had signed the Treaty of Portsmouth, but particularly immediately after the end of warfare, the General Staff received a great number of projects, programmes and drafts of MI reorganization. According to staffers’ memoirs, documents of such a kind overflowed the central military offices, so that general-staffers were compelled to start up special files of their authors, either of former actual combatants or of other military experts.10 In corroboration of this argument, on 20 March 1905, Colonel Aleksandr Mikhelson, assistant of the chief of the General Staff Military-Statistical Department, produced a memorandum on improvements in intelligence gathering with regard to combat practice in Manchuria. He argued, first, that ‘current events in the Far East compelled us to reflect on circumstances which might arise in the event of war on our other frontiers, especially in the west’.

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Viewing the European theatre of operations, Mikhelson further wrote: The comprehensive study of the armed forces and territory of any great power takes a few years of painstaking work and embraces some peculiar sorts of exploration, since only several experts, supplementing each other, are capable of researching all issues.11 As for the plan of reorganization drafted by Mikhelson, it incorporated a series of concrete propositions. In his opinion, all sections of military statistics should subordinate directly to the 2nd Directorate of quartermaster service in military districts; the Military-Statistical Section of the General Staff should be divided into three elements, in accordance with the main fronts in Europe: western, southern and eastern; the General Staff should convoke annual conferences of senior aides-de-camp of military districts and attachés accredited in major powers to discuss questions of mutual concern and coordinate activities in this field; finally, monthly salaries of intelligence officers should be raised and the prestige of their service should be augmented. On 30 November 1905, another staffer at the Military-Statistical Department, Captain Nikolskii, submitted to his superiors ‘A brief survey of the current state of affairs in military HUMINT and recommendations on its proper reorganization’. In fact, Nikolskii formulated the means to be used to obtain, collate and disseminate information about neighbouring states or strategically important regions. He regarded centralization of command, competence of leading experts and counter-checking spies as basic principles to increase the efficiency of MI.12 On 28 June 1906, one of the prominent intelligence executives, Colonel Mikhail Adabash, the chief of the 5th section incorporated in the Main Directorate of the General Staff, rendered a memorandum to the 1st QuartermasterGeneral. While reviewing Russian MI achievements and setbacks in the course of war, he argued for the establishment of vertical subordination structures of intelligence, adequate organization of intelligence missions, constant monitoring of developments in adjacent countries and the maintenance of confidentiality in official correspondence. Notably, Adabash initiated a scrupulous differentiation between external and internal reconnaissance, i.e. between the collection of information on potential adversaries and undertaking preventive counterespionage measures to foil their plots.13 One could be led to believe that, although the 1st Section within the Main Staff responsible for counter-intelligence operations was set up on 9 July 1903,14 only the experience of a bitter struggle with bands of diversionists, headed by Japanese agents in Manchuria proved a decisive factor that prompted the implementation of a new system. As documents reveal, the seminar of district senior aides-de-camp, held in Kiev on 23–27 July 1908, countenanced the institution of the so-called Inter-Departmental Commission on Counter-Espionage, which proceeded to work out secret regulations for counter-espionage sections, at first under the traditional auspices of the Police Department, which had gained a lot of practice in political persecution of the regime’s opponents in the period of the

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1905 revolution, and then under the control of the War Ministry. By 1911 these sections were introduced in all military districts.15 Another key point of reform was the reshuffle of the central military administration. It was recognized by the officer corps that the General Staff necessitated its real formalization. Hence, the establishment of the State Defence Council on 21 June 1905 in conjunction with the introduction of the post of Chief of the General Staff on 4 July and the implementation of its Main Directorate four days later, met almost universal support in Russian society.16 Pursuant to the minister’s order, dated 5 May 1906, the Main Directorate of the General Staff was charged with the duty of setting up a central organ of MI – its 5th Section, superintended by the 1st Chief Quartermaster. In addition, MI functions were divided into two groups: operational and analytical. While personnel of the 5th Section became responsible for collection data from various sources, analytical functions were laid upon staffers at the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Sections controlled by the 2nd Chief Quartermaster, as well as on officers at the 1st, 2nd and 4th Sections subordinated to the 3rd Chief Quartermaster. The staff of these structures studied information about great powers or whole regions, e.g. North America.17 It should be emphasized that the General Staff officers – veterans of the Manchurian campaign, ‘Manchurians’ as they were called in public, took the lion’s share of posts in the newly shaped military organs. For example, Colonels Petr Riabikov and Oskar Enkel, who had been involved in intelligence operations in wartime, became deputies of the head of the Main Directorate 5th Section.18 Apart from realignments in higher echelons of command, the staff of military districts underwent dramatic reorganization. In previous chapters, we have seen how statistical sections performed functions of reconnaissance before the war. From 1906–7 on, intelligence sections were instituted in all military districts, their staff being charged with gathering and initial verification of ‘raw’ facts which they obtained from adjacent countries or regions.19 In this respect, all the levels of intelligence gradually assumed accurate distinction: central bodies conducted strategic reconnaissance while district or regional structures were responsible for tactical or operational missions, though in reality they were often faced with problems far beyond their scope of competence, for instance, they had to promote regional HUMINT in case of war. It meant a strict tabulation of liaison links, secret outposts, codes and special signals for scouts. Owing to the reorganization of the whole system of secret service, the composition of functions performed by Russian military attachés abroad also suffered modification. Since higher echelons of command had considered the regulations for ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomatists adopted in 1880 and amended in 1905–9 to be out of date, these documents were amended and corrected in 1912. From that date onward, legal military agents had been subordinated to the 5th Section of the Main Directorate and, later, to the Special Section of the Quartermaster Department incorporated in the same structure.20

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As regards military districts, prior attention was granted to the drafting of the office agenda compulsory for organs of intelligence. To put it differently, the experience of keeping registers on data collection and processing by staffers in the Manchurian armies was also used after the war. At the same time, the system of control over secret agents was passed to counter-espionage sections. Thus, in January 1910, the Main Directorate prescribed that district staffs implement card indexes in order to record individuals suspected of espionage or persons in whom the intelligence services had lost confidence. Their personal cards were supplemented with fingerprints and photographs, while military districts commenced to exchange these cards with one another.21 The programme envisioned measures to improve the operational level of intelligence service in the Far East. First of all, Russian MI proceeded to gather and analyse data on Far Eastern countries (Japan and China), as well on their ground and naval forces. Second, they planned to eliminate competition between departments by subordinating all regional intelligence agencies to the central echelon of command – the Main Directorate of the General Staff. Although the process of realignment proved far from a conclusion on the eve of the First World War, the recruitment of Consulate staffers, merchants and journalists accredited in the Far Eastern states by Russian MI progressed rapidly.22 On 23 October 1909, Colonel Nikolai Monkevits, the new chief of the 5th Section of the Main Directorate, submitted to the 1st Chief Quartermaster, Major General Yurii Danilov, a memorandum which incorporated both a summary of the attainments and the project of MI’s further reorganization, with regard to potential adversaries. Having reviewed a preliminary stage of reorganization, Monkevits pointed to the implementation by the staffs of Omsk, Irkutsk and Priamur military districts as well as by Zaamur district of Frontier Guards as a regulated cycle of intelligence. He also supported the appointment of General Staff officers to consular service in Mongolia, Manchuria and Korea and the transfer of a deputy military attaché to Mukden on a permanent basis.23 In Monkevits’s view, however, the successes of Russian MI after the war had laid foundations for the attainment of the principal objective, which was the provision of government with regular and comprehensive pieces of information on current events in East Asia. A key preposition put forward by the officer referred to further development of a web of espionage, comprising residents, liaison emissaries, scouts and reserve orderlies. He supposed that the stock of secret agents employed to collect, communicate and verify information should not exceed 138 men in the period of peace and 410 in wartime. In a final statement, Colonel Monkevits claimed that While presenting this memorandum to Your Excellency after scrupulous consideration, I believe that the drafted measures may be regarded as a master index for our MI and HUMINT, in particular in Manchuria and Korea. In view of the alarming rumours about Japan’s preparations for a new war, we ought to be extremely conscious of the measures undertaken in

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To put this draft into practice, one of Monkevits’s assistants, Lieutenant Colonel Oskar Enkel, made a trip to the Far East in early 1910, inspecting the newly established intelligence sections at the district headquarters. On returning to St Petersburg, Enkel produced a comprehensive survey on the structure of MI, which seemed to be of a controversial nature. Thus, a thorough analysis of operations carried out by the staff of Omsk district, who monitored the situation in Sinkiang and western Mongolia, revealed their enthusiasm for promoting spying on a modern basis. The chief of the staff there recruited not only Qing officials but several prominent Russian and Chinese merchants together with individuals crossing the Russo-Chinese border on private business. A glaring example of reconnaissance missions to China committed by General Staff officers with the recourse to the district intelligence section was the expedition of Colonel Karl Gustav Emil Mannerheim, the future Marshal and President of Finland, across eastern Turkistan and Tibet to Kalgan from August 1906 to June 1908. Mannerheim collected valuable data on the situation in the Qing Empire on the eve of its collapse in 1911–12.25 Reverting to the survey by Lieutenant Colonel Enkel, it should be emphasized that, in his opinion, the staffers in Omsk military district ‘were fully aware of everything that occurred within the area of their responsibility’.26 While the intelligence section of Irkutsk military district was charged with the supervision of the state of affairs in the territories of eastern Mongolia and northern Manchuria, the local quartermaster service focused attention upon the former region, practically ignoring the latter. According to Enkel, this commander failed to set up the network of HUMINT in China or Korea. The staffers remained idle in the employment of Chinese and Mongolian interpreters, regarding reconnaissance trips over borderlands of ineffective and useless. Naturally, one could only dream of any thorough study of this potential theatre of operations.27 Reconnaissance by the intelligence section of Priamur military district proved likewise unsatisfactory. The staff ought to oversee current developments in the greater part of Manchuria, Korea and Japan, i.e. on the battlefields of the recent war. The collection of intelligence on the location of Japanese and Chinese troop units in this area was incumbent on the Cossack chieftains (or atamans), who did not receive extra money for this job. To add to non-professional informants, the intelligence section employed former Korean subjects as scouts liaising between Priamur headquarters and underground partisan bodies operating against the Japanese occupational administration in north Korea and south Manchuria (it should be noted in parenthesis that Japan proclaimed the protectorate of Korea in 1910). The staffers were making military statistical studies of the region on an irregular basis, while the vast amount of budget allocations on MI was simply a gravy train for the chief of the staff.28 Fortunately, Lieutenant Colonel Enkel fixed in the survey some progress in

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the conduct of intelligence by the staff of Zaamur district frontier guards. They continued to coordinate operations against Japanese diversionists and bands of chunguses in the defence area of the CER. The directorate of the railroad subsidized the staff with annual sums of 7,000 roubles to fight Chinese bandits. As Enkel reported, a number of officers from the frontier guards were charged with data gathering and were engaged in the collation of summaries of the situation in Manchuria. They had recourse to cavalry patrols, which regularly guarded the defence area of 25 km on either side of the CER. The latter reported to the echelons of command on everything they heard or observed during their reconnaissance raids. Because of the necessity to accompany diplomatists or functionaries of the CER far inland, they appointed a skilled intelligence officer as head of a convoy party with a group of attached rankers. Complementary to the security measures assumed by Zaamur district, the military administration interposed secret bureaux located in Mukden and at the railway station of Kuangchenzy. The heads of bureaux were handpicked from officers capable of conducting reconnaissance and having command of Oriental languages, principally Chinese and Japanese. The district intelligence section established training centres for scouts and liaison agents. The staffers arranged a regular exchange of intelligence between Russian attachés in China and Japan and consuls in key strategic ports and the headquarters of Siberian military districts. They made both short-range reconnaissance trips and longer expeditions across the Manchurian hills and forests on a regular basis, using small gunboats to patrol the rivers of Sungari and Nonni when they were navigable.29 Looking through this part of the survey written by Enkel, one regrets that a multi-level and well coordinated intelligence system like that in Zaamur district had been put into operation not before but only after the Russo-Japanese War! Transformations in military districts were reflected in the Basic Regulations on the Organization and Conduct of Military Intelligence by Staffs of Frontier Districts. Two General Staff officers, Colonels Sergei Rozanov and Petr Riabikov, drafted this document in November 1912. A further parlous acceleration of the arms race made the Main Directorate of the General Staff use the Basic Regulations as a specimen for new instructions, which were circulated to all military districts to be used in the planning of spying.30 One of the key premises for the development of the intelligence cycle proved to be the funding of operations. The newly established Main Directorate of the Russian General Staff claimed a substantial increase in budget allocations to MI. The military analysts argued: Before the war with Japan, the Main Staff was annually allocated the negligible sum of 56,950 roubles to the military secret service. That sum was distributed among district staffs, each of them receiving allocations of 4,000–12,000 roubles. The Military-Statistical Section obtained 1,000 roubles annually. Such inadequate refunding handicapped the conduct of the intelligence cycle on a systematic basis. The espionage activity of foreign states, on the other hand, increased, since our counter-intelligence

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The substantial growth of the allowance on Russian MI was evident in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War. Pursuant to a secret paragraph of the budget estimate, the Main Directorate of the General Staff was allocated 156,950 roubles a year.31 However, though three times greater than the funds on MI in 1903, this allowance did not satisfy the appetites of the military secret service. Some champions of further increase argued for limitless financing of the intelligence service, taking into account the following calculations: • • •

•

the extraordinary allocation of 5,000 roubles to the 5th Section of the Main Directorate; the annual subsidy of 40,000 roubles to each military district; the grants of 15,000–20,000 roubles to each military district a year on counter-espionage service (and 5,000 roubles at a time to finance district training centres for scouts); 15,000 roubles on the intelligence service of the frontier guards.

The funds for Omsk, Irkutsk, Priamur and Turkistan military districts were distinguished from the allocations destined for central districts. They did not incorporate extra expenses to purchase findings received from recruited spies or legal agents – attachés, consuls and emissaries of governmental departments. Thus, the total balance of allowance to maintain intelligence and counter-espionage services was 370,000 roubles of annual allocations and 30,000 of extraordinary funds.32 Such a profound increase in financing MI, notwithstanding, some highranking military officials claimed further capital investment in this realm. They pointed out the aggravation of international tension caused by a series of local wars and crises as a sine qua non principle of Realpolitik. The chief of the 5th Section of the Main Directorate, Colonel Mikhail Adabash, emphasized, for example, that ‘the reorganization of MI, staffed with well-paid officers, would require annual funds of approximately 1,800,000 roubles’.33 In reality, the budget allocations on MI were calculated for 1906–9 as 344,000 roubles, and for 1910–12 as 700,000–800,000 roubles a year. It was only in 1914 that the allocations reached the amounts that Colonel Adabash had envisaged in his programme. Thus, the State Duma allotted 1,947,850 roubles on secret operations in 1914–15. According to calculations made by one Russian historian, the total expenditures on Russian MI demonstrated a growth of 1,600 per cent in 1911 compared with the funds in 1905!34 In contempt of the inertia and delay in reforms conducted by tsarist military officials, even initial actions undertaken by the General Staff after the RussoJapanese War, altered the state of affairs to the better. As the annual account of the 5th Section accentuated in 1907, ‘the passed period marked a new epoch in data gathering’, since ‘all the steps were taken in strict adherence with the drafted plan on a systematic basis’.35

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The improvements in data processing enabled the General Staff analysts to issue a monthly periodical, The Proceedings of the General Staff Main Directorate. It incorporated the most important and interesting findings, digests of reports submitted by military attachés to the Main Staff, extracts from accounts on intelligence missions, commentaries on precedents and current developments composed by military observers, usually anonymous. The circulation of The Proceedings did not exceed 1,000 copies. In total, 62 monthly numbers were published in the interval from March 1909 to July 1914. The copies were delivered to high-ranking military and civil functionaries, including Grand Dukes and the tsar himself.36 Apart from the mentioned periodical, general-staffers published military-statistical surveys of foreign countries, especially of Russia’s neighbours.37 Finally, it is necessary to shed light upon the promotion of naval intelligence in the aftermath of war. On 18 June 1906, Nicholas II countenanced the establishment of the Naval General Staff, a quite new structure in the imperial bureaucratic apparatus, comprising Operational Division, two sections of statistics, one for Russia and the other for the major naval powers, a militaryhistorical section and a section of mobilization. The personnel was limited to 15 officers.38 The statistics sections superintended the conduct of strategic intelligence and contacted Russian naval attachés stationed in foreign countries. On 1 July 1908, this structure suffered further moderations. The Naval General Staff was divided into four new Directorates of Mobilization, Operations, Military Statistics and Foreign Affairs. The last-named took over all the functions of its predecessor – the Section of Foreign Statistics, headed by the aforementioned Lieutenant Captain Boris Dolivo-Dobrovolskii. On that very day, they set up Operational Sections in all the fleet headquarters. In a final count, on 10 October 1908, the Naval Minister countenanced The Instructions to Naval Attachés, which included combat experience of the 1904–5 war together with the latest developments in naval intelligence.39 According to new Regulations for the Naval General Staff, the Foreign Directorate should collect and process data on the political situation, capacities and means of leading sea powers in anticipation of new hostilities. The staff of the Directorate controlled channels of communications through naval attachés, secret agents and the staffers of the intelligence sections at the headquarters of the fleets and squadrons. In data verification and analysis, before their intelligence products were submitted to superiors, naval experts attempted to tabulate information resources. For instance, the officers of the so-called 3rd sub-section were responsible for the study of the Pacific powers – Japan, China and the USA.40 Similar to other Russian secret structures, the central organ of naval intelligence assumed its final shape only on the eve of the First World War, or, precisely, in October 1911, when a special Section of Naval Statistics of foreign countries was established within the cognominal Directorate. This structure, like its predecessors, performed analytical collation of intelligence obtained through the mentioned channels, submitting surveys of the naval strategic situation to the Main Naval Staff to be used for planning maritime operations.41

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A generalized study of reforms in the armed forces under the last Russian tsar lies beyond the scope of this study. But even a brief review of the most important changes they underwent after the Manchurian campaign, shows how the MI community turned into self-regulating, multi-functional military organs from feeble appendages of staff structures.

Epilogue

The struggle of Russian MI against Japan, which had started long before they heard the initial cannon volleys in the Far East, did not come to an end with the peace conference in Portsmouth. Its forms and means, however, suffered profound moderation. As one combatant recalled in his memoirs, ‘the campaign in Manchuria revealed more clearly then all previous armed clashes that war had ceased to be the concern just of the army but had turned into one for the whole nation, the nation-at-arms. From this point of view, you will see that the Japanese exemplified like-mindedness and collective sacrifice.’1 It is no exaggeration to conclude that the Russo-Japanese War opened a final stage of MI’s transition into a unique, self-sufficient branch of leading troops on battlefields. Paradoxically, provided St Petersburg and Tokyo abstained from hostilities in Manchuria on such a massive scale, the political elite would not have grasped the significance and practical use of MI, while the ruminations of the military leaders on the conduct of MI as a basic component of national security in the epoch of industrial modernization would never have ended. It would also appear probable that the Russo-Japanese collision refuted the arguments of those experts, in both Russia and Europe, that active spying might be carried out only in a period of war. The majority of high-ranking commanders came to the conclusion in the aftermath of the war that ‘modern intelligence is an essential branch of military science; it reflects new means of strategy and tactics and constitutes a subject of special comprehensive study’.2 In evaluation of Russian MI’s progress over the period of hostilities, we may compare dilettantism at an early stage of 1904 with the professionalism in the last months of 1905, when collaboration and systematic efforts replaced the mutual repugnance of departments to each other, and of disarray and impulsiveness in the intelligence cycle. By initiating new means of reconnaissance, and innovating a better method of recording and compiling the data received, the Russian military intelligence community, which emerged in the course of hostilities, improved in both quantity and quality. As a result of the war, lots of staffers gained practical experience in MI performance on three main levels: strategic, operational and tactical. Some MI executives implemented new methods of data collection, verification and dissemination. For the first time in the history of secret services, they set up

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regional networks of HUMINT in Manchuria, Korea, Mongolia and Japan. Different nationalities recruited by Russian MI were provided with specific instructions and obtained special drill in ‘spy schools’, or training centres, stationed near the front line. By the start of 1905, corrected and supplemented topographic maps and charts became available to active officers, who gained sufficient experience to use them in daily practice. At the same time, technical innovations were put into operation by reconnaissance groups and patrols, i.e. telegraph and radio stations, powerful binoculars, searchlights and balloons. Eye-witnesses even reported on the first lorry used by the defenders of Port Arthur. A talented Russian engineer also endeavoured to construct the first military helicopter to reconnoitre the Japanese positions at this fortress. On the opposing side, active troops commenced to camouflage observation posts and artillery positions, while both officers and rankers were dressed in khaki uniform. At sea, battle fleets applied new tactics of mine and torpedo warfare in coastal waters in conjunction with cruise raids on sea communications to intercept enemy convoys. In the realm of strategic intelligence, the staffers established a sophisticated system of data processing and cross-checking. They attempted to verify pieces of information delivered either by ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomats, military and naval attachés, or by civil officials on secret service. It followed that, on 6 November 1905, Lieutenant General Vladimir Kharkevich wired to Feodor Palitsyn, the Chief of the General Staff: ‘The data reported by military attachés, in particular by Colonel Ogorodnikov, contain valuable facts and figures [. . .], the most significant strategic data on Japan were received through former Minister Pavlov from Shanghai and State Councillor Davydov from Peking.’3 Implicitly, foreign subjects recruited by Russian MI played a crucial role in the collection of information. They usually conducted intelligence under the guise of correspondents, merchants or travellers. Frenchmen and Germans were hired as Russian spies more frequently than other nationalities. Secret information collected by military and civil officials in the Far East was augmented by data gathered by secret agents in European capitals. They imparted confidential findings to Russian residents, who, in their turn, collated them for the Main Staff. The key issues in the collation were war supplies for Japan from European and American countries, such as the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, the USA, Argentina and Chile. In the course of the unprecedented voyage of the Second Squadron under the command of Admiral Rozhestvenskii, prior attention was also devoted to information on Japanese plots to intercept the Russian battleships either in neutral ports or on the open sea. Many Russian intelligence officers, for example, Major General Nikolai Yermolov, Colonels Konstantin Vogak, Vadim Shebeko, Alexandr Alekseev, Vladimir Roop and Ivan Bostrem, Lieutenant Colonels Grigorii Yepanchin and Aleksandr Dolgorukov, to mention but a few, contributed greatly to the conduct of the intelligence process during the war. This nominal roll would be incomplete without Colonel Vladimir Lazarev, the Russian attaché in Paris. According to James Haldane, actual chief of British MI before the First World War, it was Lazarev who coordinated intelligence functions both with the Russian Depart-

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ment of Police and with the ‘friendly’ spy service of France in the most efficient way.4 One should also bear in mind that Russian MI succeeded in preventing the Celestial Empire from breaking its neutral status and allying itself with Japan. Tens of skilled intelligence staff were seconded on secret missions to Manchuria, Korea, Mongolia and Sinkiang to foil Tokyo’s plans of stirring up anti-Russian revolts and committing acts of sabotage on a massive scale in the rear of the Manchurian armies. Diversions and sabotage became an important weapon of war, which was, probably, used for the first time in such a big way by both belligerent sides. To neutralize groups of diversionists insinuated into the territory under the control of the Russian military authorities, a few detachments of national militia were mustered by staffers at the headquarters on different levels of leading troops. The task that confronted all these detachments was to patrol borderlands and capture provocateurs instigated by the Japanese. Such means, however, proved ineffective. As the USA naval attaché, Lieutenant Commodore Newton McCully, reported to Washington, the bands of chunguses, provided with ammunition either by the Russians or by the Japanese, continued to pillage the local population. The only difference between them was in the colours of their uniform: while ‘Japanese’ chunguses were dressed in red-and-black striped regimentals, their ‘Russian’ opponents wore black coats with white insignia.5 As regards operational intelligence, the Russo-Japanese War was distinguished by unprecedented developments in HUMINT, for example, the division of secret agents into different categories: residents, liaison scouts and emissaries who were assigned special missions, etc. This differentiation enabled Russian MI to intensify the intelligence process both on the Manchurian front and in the deep rear of the adversary. It would appear probable that espionage has become integral and regular business of war since 1904–5. On the other hand, the Japanese intelligence officers often proved more successful than their Russian ‘colleagues’, taking into consideration the constant defeats suffered by the tsarist army and navy in the course of hostilities. According to calculations made by gendarmes, the total number of spies from the Land of the Rising Sun amounted to 500 persons before the war. However, this numerical superiority had vanished by the middle of 1905, owing to the great efforts of staffers at army and district headquarters. They intensified activities on the recruitment of hundreds of scouts from local inhabitants: the Manchurians, the Chinese, the Koreans and the Mongolians. Russian MI also managed to employ numerous informants on diplomatic missions or on state service in Europe, China and Korea, including a handful of Japanese nationals. They even succeeded in hiring some lamas, mullahs and Christian missionaries in Far Eastern countries. Although most of them actually contributed little to the conduct of MI, some nuggets of information gathered by them proved valuable and useful. On the level of tactical or combat reconnaissance, the Japanese apparently surpassed their counterparts. The tsarist generals clearly overestimated the

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capabilities of their foot and especially mounted patrols to reconnoitre the theatre of war. This resulted in heavy casualties suffered by voluntary scouts and disarray among the leading troops either on battlefields or in numerous skirmishes. The staffs of active corps, divisions and brigades accentuated, therefore, the recruitment of Chinese scouts, who often merely surrendered to the Japanese or vanished in the rear of the Mikado’s armies immediately after crossing the front-line. However, there existed some other premises for the employment of Chinese scouts: poor knowledge of terrain on the part of Russian commanders and other ranks in conjunction with the efficient system of camouflage applied by the enemy to hide its sentry-lines. One could be led to believe, as one military historian did, that Combat reconnaissance, either on the Russian or the Japanese side, failed to properly perform operations in the course of war. Mounted scouts attached to headquarters proved incapable to reconnoitre any object when under heavy rifle and cannon fire. To collect the required data, to penetrate through the adversary’s endless sentry-lines, to capture prisoners of war, a scout had to dismount his horse, then to camouflage his observation post perfectly and keep watch on troop manoeuvres, while investigating terrain; the conclusion is that active troop units needed special well-trained reconnaissance groups, which were set up only in the last weeks of war.6 Unfortunately, a series of initial steps undertaken by Vice Admiral Stepan Makarov to constitute a multi-level scheme of naval reconnaissance in the First Pacific Squadron had not been accomplished before this commander’s sudden death on board the Petropavlovsk in April 1904. He had time, nevertheless, to put into operation a unique system of interception of radio signals and a series of measures to protect the outer roadstead of Port Arthur together with main fairway with mines and anti-torpedo nets. He also started to dispatch torpedoboats and light cruisers on reconnaissance on the open sea. It should also be noted that the staff of the Vladivostok naval base, particularly Lieutenant Boris Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, worked hard to introduce submarines for naval reconnaissance. The study of primary and secondary sources, which we have available to us, refutes the arguments of some academic scholars that ‘the Russian army commenced as well as terminated the war with Japan without the use of MI or any knowledge of its adversary’, or that ‘the Russian side did not conduct strategic intelligence during the war at all’.7 It appears doubtless, however, that MI under the last Romanovs lacked adequate organization, especially in the first period of the Manchurian campaign, constituting, therefore, a permanent target for invective from contemporaries and historians. The comparative study of the history of intelligence communities in major powers shows, however, that the Russian MI was not inferior to any foreign secret service, except, possibly, that of Japan. It also reveals that it was the sovereign himself and some of the closed minds among his retinue, who

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must be regarded as culpable for the Manchurian debacle. General Aleksandr Rediger, the successor of Sakharov in the post of War Minister in 1906–8 critically commented on the situation in the higher echelons of command in the reigns of both Alexander III and Nicholas II: They did not replace commanders who had proved incapable or out of date, they appointed generals to offices by seniority in service and they did not promote talented individuals, who henceforth lost interest in service, initiative and energy, while, on attaining higher posts, persons of this type did not distinguish themselves from the milieu of mediocrities. Because of this absurd system, the command staff proved inadequate both at the end of Alexander III’s reign and in the period of the Russo-Japanese War.8 Ignorance and even repugnance of ‘senile military chiefs’ to intelligence presented by official and secret agents, particularly on the eve of the conflict in the Far East, resulted in a dramatic underestimation of the adversary’s potential and morale. It sharply contrasted with the situation in the Japanese army and navy, when Marshal Yamagata, the Commander-in-Chief of the expeditionary troops, announced that ‘his main service would be the collection of data on Russian forces’.9 With the outbreak of war, the tsarist generals demonstrated some problems of another kind – the overestimation of the Japanese fighting capabilities. Unmanned by fears of the adversary, indecisive with their troops and obsessed by fearful spirits with every aggravation of the situation, the commanders on different levels often mistakenly judged the numerical strength and intentions of Japanese troop units on battlefields. Aleksei Ignatiev, a staffer at the Supreme Headquarters, whose critical remarks concerning Russian MI on the Manchurian front were quoted in earlier chapters, later recalled that the personnel of the intelligence section were frequently provided with controversial orders and instructions from Kuropatkin, Linevich, the Chief of Staff, QuartermasterGeneral or other superiors. On the other hand, one of the section heads, Colonel Sergei Liupov, ‘saw the Japanese everywhere’, while his successor in office, Colonel Konstantin Linda, instead of collating pieces of raw information, ‘led field battalions in counter-attacks in the Battle of Tiurenchen’.10 Russian intelligence officers lacked a general plan of operations, a strict regulation of functions, and a thorough pre-war analysis of the theatre of operations. They inadequately commanded Oriental languages, being very badly informed in local traditions and practices. But most of all, they proved unfit to conduct MI in the hell of modern war. Naturally, the vast majority of foreign observers concluded that any other European army together with its secret service would have inevitably suffered an absolute collapse under such unfavourable circumstances!11 However, the actual Russian combatants fulfilled their duty to the end. They gained an immense experience, which prompted further modernization of army and navy, not to mention the establishment of the secret service on up-to-date foundations. The abundance of documents reveals that nearly all structures of

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Epilogue

the late imperial armed forces were undergoing reorganization, which, regrettably, had not been accomplished by the outbreak of the First World War. According to General Max von Hoffman, one of the most eminent German strategists of the first quarter of the twentieth century, In the war with Japan, the Russians undoubtedly learned a lot. If they had acted so irresolutely in the campaign against us, if they had attacked our positions so indecisively, if they had reacted to any outflanking threat so timidly, while keeping out of battle such numerous reserves, as they did in the fields of Manchuria, then the war with them would have been much easier for us.12 As we have seen in the previous chapter, the Russo-Japanese clash prompted a series of reforms in secret military service. In 1905–6, a special organ was set up to lead MI – the Main Directorate of the General Staff. From that time the intelligence cycle assumed a long-term, systematic character. The agenda of the Main Directorate incorporated the whole intelligence cycle of gathering information on potential adversaries, allies and neutral states with particular attention devoted to current political and economic affairs. Interestingly, the Russian General Staff officers embarked on scrupulous research of military logistics and communications, especially in the borderlands of the empire in the aftermath of the war. These new disciplines were added to the ordinary curriculum at the General Staff Academy. One of the principal MI communities – the corps of military diplomats – also suffered reorganization. At the annual seminars held by the General Staff Main Directorate in 1906–11, military attachés and district staffers responsible for MI enthusiastically debated the lessons of the Manchurian campaign. The seminars resulted in the elaboration of new regulations for ‘shoulder-strapped’ diplomats accredited in all major states in conjunction with the adoption of instructions for the conduct of combat reconnaissance which were countenanced by the War Minister in 1908–14. The General Staff Main Directorate together with the Naval General Staff was empowered to coordinate data gathering with data processing, though stereotypes and ethics of the old days still handicapped the objective analysis of information. The establishment of intelligence sections in military districts on the whole territory of the Russian Empire was of great importance. Henceforth, district staffs set about monitoring developments in pertinent areas. Their methods of reconnaissance incorporated innovations made by their compatriots in Manchuria, for example, in the organization of HUMINT or in the institution of special training centres for scouts. Besides, more profound attention was paid to newspaper digests and the interception of wires. The district intelligence sections commenced to exchange findings with their colleagues on a regular basis. In this view, it seems impossible to support the conclusion of some historians that ‘the Russian General Staff deprofessionalized itself during the decade before the Great War’.13

Epilogue

185

The daily routine in intelligence structures was augmented with practice of counter-espionage, when independent counter-espionage sections were established in military districts and fleets, demonstrating more skill than ever in the exposure and elimination of enemy spy communities on the eve of and during the First World War (one may briefly recall the case of Colonel Alfred Redle14). In a final count, it should be noted that the majority of intelligence officers who had survived the crucible of the Russo-Japanese War later usually took high commanding posts in the army and navy. Some of them, for example Alekseev, Kornilov, Denikin, Drozdovskii, Mannerheim, Enkel and Rusin, to mention but a few, headed armies, fleets, and supreme staffs in Russia and foreign countries in the course of both world wars. The Far Eastern military campaign of 1904–5 gave a mighty impetus to renovations in the methods used by the intelligence service. For example, data crosschecking and the use of coded names for scouts together with the composition of situational summaries and the selection of artefacts to substantiate their oral messages – all these new means considerably enriched the daily practice of MI. That is why, despite all setbacks and flaws in the organization of the intelligence process conducted by the tsarist MI in the war with Japan, Helmut von Moltke, the younger, the Chief of the German General Staff, warned some of the Kaiser’s diplomats in a secret memorandum, dated to 1908, that ‘the Russian intelligence machinery comprises a well-ordered, widely dispersed system, which has considerable funds’.15 It would appear very probable that many other experts shared this authoritative opinion of one of the most prominent military strategists. Russia’s collapse in the Far East, which cost her more than 2,500,000 roubles, influenced greatly her subsequent world policy. In fact, the RussoJapanese War marked a watershed between the Great Game of the nineteenth century and the modern epoch of industrialized espionage. The apparent underestimation of Russian war capabilities and combat-readiness by the Central Powers resulted in the latter’s simultaneous bloody fighting on two fronts in 1914–17. In a broader sense, the experience gained by Russian MI during the Manchurian campaign laid the cornerstone of the establishment of one of the most powerful secret services in the history of the twentieth century.

Appendix The nominal roll of the Russian military intelligence staff in the Manchurian campaign, 1904–5

Intelligence section

The Headquarters of the Manchurian Army

Lieutenant Colonel, senior aide-de-camp of the staff Lieutenant Colonel, senior aide-de-camp of the staff Lieutenant Colonel, senior aide-de-camp of the staff Captain, senior aide-de camp of the staff

Liupov, S. N.

Linda, K. P.

Mikhailov [?]

Major General, Quartermaster-General

Evert, A. E.

Slesarev, K. M.

Major General, Quartermaster-General

Captain, senior aidede-camp of the staff; officer on special commissions

Major General, Quartermaster-General

Military rank

Kharkevich, V. I.

Bolkhovitinov, L. M.

Intelligence section

2

Flug, V. E.

The Headquarters of the Viceroy in the Far East

1

Surname, initials

Military establishment

No.

12 February– 26 October 1904

4 September– 26 October 1904

9 April– 4 September 1904

3 February– 9 April 1904

October 1904– March 1905

March–October 1904

28 January– 3 March 1904; 3 March 1904– 5 July 1906

February–October 1904

Tenure in office

continued

A general supervision of MI in the Manchurian Army A general supervision of MI in the Manchurian Army The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section Liaison with the staffs of corps and divisions; the collation of operational summaries

A general supervision of MI in the Kwantung area The organization of MI in the Kwantung area

Duties in MI process

No.

Military establishment

Appendix continued

Captain, Lieutenant Colonel, senior aidede-camp of the staff Major General, the commander of the independent brigade Captain, Lieutenant Colonel, senior aidede-camp of the staff Lieutenant Colonel, senior aide-de-camp of the staff Lieutenant Colonel, staff officer on special commissions Lieutenant Colonel, staff officer on special commissions Captain of the 12th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, senior aidede-camp of the staff Staff Captain, officer on special commissions at the Headquarters of the 3rd Siberian Corps, then at the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief

Vineken, A. G.

Kosagovskii, V. A.

Odintsov, S. I.

Nechvolodov, A. D.

Val’ter, R.-K. F.

Romeiko-Gurko, V. I.

Panov [?]

Potapov, A. S.

Military rank

Surname, initials

June 1904– 5 August 1905, 5 August 1905– 19 August 1906

June 1904–August 1905

1905–6

12 February– 26 October 1904

June 1904–August 1905

June 1904–August 1905

April–November 1904

14 May– 31 October 1904

Tenure in office

Special commissions on orders of the command

Special commissions on orders of the command

Special commissions on orders of the command

Special commissions on orders of the command

The organization of HUMINT in Korea

Liaison with the staffs of corps and divisions; the collation of operational summaries The coordination of operational and tactical MI in the theatre of war The organization of HUMINT in Korea

Duties in MI process

The Headquarters of the Eastern Detachment

The Headquarters of Colonel Madritov’s Independent Detachment

3

4

Section of censorship

Madritov, A.

Kuz’min [?]

Captain of the 7th East Siberian Rifle Corps, attached to the Headquarters of the Eastern Detachment Colonel, the commander of the Detachment

Captain, staff officer on special commissions

Bazarov, P. A.

Ignatiev, A. A.

Rossov, S. V.

Staff Captain of the 18th East Siberian Rifle Regiment attached to the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief Staff Captain of the 20th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, attached to the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief Captain, senior aidede-camp of the staff

Afanasiev, S. V.

1904–5

February–May 1904

1904–5

13 May– 24 November 1904

1904

1904

continued

The organization of cavalry reconnaissance on the left flank of the Manchurian Army

The supervision of foreign war correspondents in the theatre of war The supervision of foreign war correspondents in the theatre of war The organization of operational intelligence and combat reconnaissance

Special commissions on orders of the command

Special commissions on orders of the command

Intelligence section

The Headquarters of Mitschenko’s Independent Detachment The Supreme Headquarters (after the division of the Manchurian Army into three armies)

5

6

Military establishment

No.

Appendix continued

Lieutenant Colonel, senior aide-de-camp of the staff, officer on special commissions Captain, assistant senior aide-de-camp of the staff Lieutenant Colonel, staff officer on special commissions Captain, officer on special commissions Captain, officer on special commissions Staff Captain

Vineken, A. G.

Levandovskii [?]

Penevskii [?]

Gerua, B. V.

Mikhailov [?]

Ignatiev, A. A.

Colonel, senior aidede-camp of the staff

Major General, Quartermaster-General

Oranovskii, V. A.

Linda, K. P.

Major General, Quartermaster-General

Major General

Military rank

Evert, A. E.

Mitschenko, P. I.

Surname, initials

7 July 1905– 2 January 1906 26 January–May 1904

26 October 1904–5

28 October 1904– 11 March 1905

24 March– 5 August 1905; 5 August 1905– 2 November 1906 24 November 1904– 1 May 1905

26 October 1904– 10 March 1905

March 1905–6

October 1904– March 1905

1904–5

Tenure in office

Special commissions of the command Special commissions of the command The organization of HUMINT

A general supervision of MI in the Kwantung area The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section Liaison with the staffs of corps and divisions; the collation of operational summaries Special commissions of the command

The conduct of cavalry raids in the deep rear of the enemy A general supervision of MI in the Kwantung area

Duties in MI process

8

7

Intelligence section

The Headquarters of the 1st Manchurian Army

The Department of Military Communications

The Headquarters of the rear of the Manchurian Army

Lieutenant Colonel, senior aide-de-camp of the staff Lieutenant Colonel, assistant of the senior aide-de-camp of the staff

Posokhov [?]

Lieutenant General, Quartermaster-General

Kharkevich, V. I.

Vineken, A. G.

Major General, Quartermaster-General

Lieutenant Colonel, senior aide-de-camp of the staff Major General, the head of the Department

Staff Captain of the 11th East Siberian Rifle Regiment Major General, Quartermaster-General

Flug, V. E.

Ukhach-Ogorovich, N. A.

Panov [?]

Dobrovolskii [?]

Blonskii, V. V.

15 April– 13 August 1905

31 October 1904– 24 March 1905

1905

October 1904– January 1905

February 1904– July 1905

1904–5

1904–5

May 1904– August 1905

continued

The organization of intelligence on military communications, the establishment of partisan detachments and national militia A general supervision of MI, conducted by the army’s staff A general supervision of MI conducted by the army’s staff The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section

The coordination of HUMINT and counterintelligence in the rear of the Manchurian armies The organization of HUMINT

The organization of HUMINT

No.

Yaron [?]

Krymov [?]

Gudim-Levkovich, P. P.

Povarinskii [?]

The 3rd Siberian Corps

The 4th Siberian Corps

The 1st Army Corps

Taulusskii Detachment

Captain, Lieutenant Colonel, officer, staff officer on special commissions Captain, staff officer on special commissions

Lieutenant Colonel, officer on special commissions Captain, officer on special commissions

Lieutenant Colonel, staff officer on special commissions Lieutenant Colonel, staff officer on special commissions Captain, officer on special commissions

Romeiko-Gurko, V. I.

Bulgarin, F. B.

Staff Captain, assistant of the senior aide-decamp of the staff

Goleevskii, N. L.

The 2nd Siberian Corps

Staff Captain, assistant of the senior aide-decamp of the staff

Gerua, B. V.

Vertsinskii, E. A.

Military rank

Surname, initials

The 1st Siberian Corps

Military establishment

Appendix continued

1904–5

1904–5

1904–5

1904–5

1904–5

1904–5

28 October 1904– 25 March 1905

28 April– 13 August 1905

31 October– 14 May 1905

Tenure in office

The coordination of MI at the headquarters of the Detachment

The coordination of MI at the headquarters of the corps The coordination of MI at the headquarters of the corps The coordination of MI at the headquarters of the corps The coordination of MI at the headquarters of the corps The coordination of MI at the headquarters of the corps

The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section Special commissions of the command

Duties in MI process

9

Intelligence section

The Detachment of Major General Rennenkampf The Headquarters of the 2nd Manchurian Army

Lieutenant Colonel, senior aide-de-camp of the staff Captain, assistant senior aide-de-camp of the staff; officer on special commissions Captain, officer on special commissions; assistant senior aidede-camp Captain, assistant senior aide-de-camp of the staff Captain, assistant senior aide-de-camp of the staff Captain, staff officer on special commissions

Rosanov, S. N.

Izmestiev, P. I.

Zundblat, A. O.

Batiushin, N. S.

Enkel, O. K.

Riabikov, P. F.

Captain, senior aide-decamp of the staff

Major General, Quartermaster-General

Flug, V. E.

Val’ter R.-K. F.

Major General, Quartermaster-General

Captain, officer on special commissions

Shvank, G. M.

Shnabel’ [?]

1904–5

1904–5

1904–5

19 October 1904– 7 March 1905; 7 March– 15 July 1905 19 October 1904– 14 August 1906

1905

19 October 1904–5

January–March 1905

November 1904– January 1905

1904–5

continued

Special commissions of the command Special commissions of the command Special commissions of the command

The coordination of MI at the headquarters of the Detachment A general supervision of MI, conducted by the army’s staff A general supervision of MI conducted by the army’s staff The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section The coordination of the intelligence cycle conducted by the intelligence section Special commissions of the command

10

No.

Lieutenant Colonel, senior aide-de-camp of the staff Captain, senior aide-decamp of the staff

Parskii, D. P.

Major General, Quartermaster-General

Captain, staff officer on special commissions

Kortatsi, G. I.

Safonov [?]

The 8th Army Corps

Captain, staff officer on special commissions

Intelligence section

Pellenberg [?]

The 10th Army Corps

Captain, staff officer on special commissions

Alekseev, M. V.

Myslitskii [?]

The 6th Siberian Corps

The Headquarters of the 3rd Army

Rasha, N. K.

1st United Rifle Corps

Captain, staff officer on special commissions Lieutenant Colonel, staff officer on special commissions Staff Captain, officer on special commissions

Novitskii, V. F.

Shokorov [?]

Military rank

Surname, initials

The 16th Army Corps

Military establishment

Appendix continued

23 May– 23 August 1905

6 November 1904– 23 May 1905

November 1904–6

1904–5

1904–5

1904–5

1904–5

12 October 1904– 1 May 1905 1904–5

Tenure in office

Special commissions of the command The coordination of the intelligence conducted by the staff of the corps The coordination of the intelligence conducted by the staff of the corps The coordination of the intelligence conducted by the staff of the corps The coordination of the intelligence conducted by the staff of the corps The coordination of the intelligence conducted by the staff of the corps A general supervision of MI conducted by the army’s staff The coordination of the intelligence conducted by the intelligence section The coordination of the intelligence conducted by the intelligence section

Duties in MI process

Captain, senior aide-decamp of the staff Staff Captain, assistant senior aide-de-camp of the staff Colonel, Military Commissar of Jilin province Colonel, Military Commissar of Mukden province

Tomilin [?]

Military commissariats of the Manchurian provinces

12

Kvetsinskii, M. F.

Sokovnin, M. A.

Lebedev, D. K.

Mardanov [?]

Tigranov [?]

The 4th Army Corps

The Headquarters of Priamur military district

Tarchevskii [?]

The 5th Siberian Corps

11

Mirbakh [?]

The 17th Army Corps

Svechin, A. A.

Captain, staff officer on special commissions Staff Captain, officer on special commissions Lieutenant Colonel, staff officer on special commissions Lieutenant Colonel, staff officer on special commissions Lieutenant Colonel, staff officer on special commissions Major General, Quartermaster-General

Romeiko-Gurko, D. I.

2 June 1901–5

1904–5

4 January 1905– 10 January 1906

1904–5

1904–5

1905

1905

2 May 1905– 23 September 1907 1905

1905

continued

The conduct of HUMINT on the territory of the province

The conduct of HUMINT on the territory of the province

A general supervision of MI conducted by the staff of the district The coordination of operational HUMINT The coordination of operational HUMINT

Special commissions of the command

Special commissions of the command Special commissions of the command The coordination of intelligence conducted by the staff of the corps Special commissions of the command

Military establishment

Military attachés and their assistants in the Far East

No.

13

Appendix continued

Captain, assistant of the Mukden Commissar Captain, assistant of the Mukden Commissar Colonel, the Military Commissar of the Qiqikar (Heilongjang) province Colonel, the Military Commissar of the Qiqikar (Heilongjang) province Staff Captain, assistant of the Qiqikar Commissar

Mikhailov [?]

Sapozhnikov, A. V.

Bogdanov, A.

Colonel, military attaché in Korea Colonel, 1st military attaché in China Major General, 2nd military attaché in China Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, military attaché in Japan

Nechvolodov, A. D.

Ogorodnikov, F. E.

Desino, K. N.

Samoilov, V. K.

Penevskii [?]

Linda, K. P.

Military rank

Surname, initials

28 August 1902– 27 January 1904; 10 January 1906–14

28 October 1899– 9 September 1906

4 October 1903– 1 April 1907

29 November 1903– 28 September

1905

February 1904– July 1904 (killed by chunguses) 10 March 1905–6

1905

1905

Tenure in office

The conduct of HUMINT on the territory of the province The conduct of HUMINT on the territory of the province The conduct of HUMINT on the territory of the province The conduct of HUMINT on the territory of the province The conduct of HUMINT on the territory of the province The coordination of strategic intelligence and HUMINT The coordination of strategic intelligence and HUMINT The coordination of strategic intelligence and HUMINT The coordination of strategic intelligence and HUMINT

Duties in MI process

Von-der Khoven, S. V.

Edrikhin, A. E.

Rossov, P.

Afanasiev, S. V.

Rusin, A. I.

Lieutenant, Captain 2nd rank, naval attaché in Japan Staff Captain, assistant of Ogorodnikov Staff Captain, assistant of Ogorodnikov Captain, assistant of Desino Captain, assistant of Desino 1905

1904–5

1905

1905

1899–February 1904

The coordination of strategic intelligence and HUMINT Assistance in HUMINT coordination Assistance in HUMINT coordination Assistance in HUMINT coordination Assistance in HUMINT coordination

Notes

Introduction 1 See the compendium of papers, presented by academic historians at the international conference in Keio University (Tokyo) in May 2005: J. Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective. World War Zero, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. 2 See the recent discussion on the origins of the Russo-Japanese War, ibid., pp. 3–101. 3 M. Alekseev, Leksika russkoi razvedki, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1996, p. 22. 4 Quoted in M. Alekseev, op. cit., pp. 25–6. 5 Peter Hamilton, Espionage and Subversion in an Industrial Society. An Examination and Philosophy of Defence for Management, London: Hutchinson, 1967, p. 22. Interestingly, the same author derives the word espionage from an old French verb espier meaning to see at a distance, or to see or discover something intended to be hidden, ibid., p. 22. 6 RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 15, d. 26, l. 125. 7 R. Hilsman, Strategic Intelligence and National Decisions, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1956, p. 22. 8 F. Hitz, The Great Game. The Myth and Reality of Espionage, New York: Vintage Books, 2005, p. 4. 9 T. N. Dupuy (ed.), International Military and Defense Encyclopedia, Washington and New York: Brassey’s, 1993, vol. 3, pp. 1280–3. In the quoted essay by Peter Hamilton, he mentioned four instead of five stages in the continuous intelligence process (collection, collation, assessment and dissemination), actually overlapping each other in practice. For further information, see Peter Hamilton, op. cit., pp. 16–17. 10 Ibid.; see also J. Haswell, Spies and Spymasters. A Concise History of Intelligence London: Thames and Hudson, 1977, pp. 10–11. 11 T. N. Dupuy, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 1290. 12 I. Nish, ‘Japanese Intelligence and the Approach of the Russo-Japanese War’, in C. Andrew, D. Dilks (eds) Governments and Intelligence Communities in the 20th Century, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984; Chiharu Inaba, ‘The Politics of Subversion’, in Akashi Motojiro, Rakka ryusui. Colonel Akashi’s Report on His Secret Cooperation with the Russian Revolutionary Parties during the RussoJapanese War, Helsinki: Societas Historica Finlandie, 1988, pp. 69–84; D. B. Pavlov, ‘Rossiiskaia kontrrazvedka v gody russko-iaponskoi voiny’, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1996, no. 1, pp. 14–28; idem, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Sekretnye operatsii na sushe i na more, Moscow: Materik, 2004, especially chs. 1, 3; A. V. Alepko, ‘Iaponskaia razvedka na rossiiskom Dal’nem Vostoke v kontse XIX – nachale XX vekov’, in Vzaimootnosheniia narodov Rossii, Sibiri i stran Vostoka: istoriia i sovremennoste, Moscow: Rossiiskií universitet druzhby narodov, 1997, vol.

Notes

13

14

15 16 17 18

199

2, pp. 138–49; J. Daly, Autocracy under Siege. Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866–1905 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998); N. S. Kirmel, ‘Organizatsia russkoi kontrrazvedki i eio bor’ba s iaponskim i germanskim shpionazhem v Sibiri (1906–1907 gg.)’, Diss. Irkutsk: Irkutskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1999; Z. I. Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk Rossii (1880–1917), Moscow: Veche, 2000; N. V. Grekov, Russkaia kontrrazvedka v 1905–1917 gg.: shpionomaniia i real’nye problemy, Moscow: Moskovskii obtschestvennyi nauchnyi fond, 2000; idem, ‘A kak zhe sledit’ za iapontsami, gospoda? Nabliudeniia za peredvizheniem inostrantsev po Transsibu v 1906–1910 gg.’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, 80–3; I. O. Ermachenko, ‘V bor’be s kakoi-to aziatskoi drian’iu . . . Shpionomaniia v gody russkoiaponskoi voiny’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, 76–9; Antti Kujala, ‘Japanese Subversion in the Russian Empire’, in J. Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 261–80; etc. P. V. Kondratenko, ‘Rossiiskie morskie agenty ob usilenii iaponskogo flota v kontse XIX – nachale XX veka’, in O. A. Airapetov (ed.) Russko-iaponskaia voina, 1904–1905: vzgliad cherez stoletie, Moscow: Tri kvadrata, 2004, pp. 62–110; N. Papastratigakis and D. Lieven, ‘The Russian Far Eastern Squadron’s Operational Plans’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 203–28; P. Luntinen and B. Menning, ‘The Russian Navy at War’, in J. Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 229–60. On the details about the route of the Second Pacific Squadron, see R. Hough, The Fleet that Had to Die. Edinberg: Birlinn, 2000; C. Pleshakov, The Tsar’s Last Armada. The Epic Journey to the Battle of Tsushima. New York: Basic Books, 2002. See also two recent works rich in important details on the Russian navy, V. Yu. Gribovskii, Flot v russko-iaponskoi voine 1904–1905 gg., St Petersburg: Vysshee voenno-morskoe uchilitsche im. Frunze, 1997; I. M. Koktsinskii, Morskie boi i srazheniia russkoiaponskoi voiny, ili prichina porazheniia: krizis upravleniia, Moscow: Fond Andreiia Pervozvannogo, 2002. See, for example, Russko-iaponskaia voina na sushe i na more. Khudozhestvennyi al’bom s tekstom, St Petersburg, 1904, vols 1–8; Russko-iaponskaia voina i eio geroi. Illustrirovannaia chronika voiny, St Petersburg, 1904, vols 1–6; Letopis voiny s Iaponiei, St Petersburg: Ministerstvo narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 1904–5, no. I–XL, XLI–LXXXIV; The Russo-Japanese War Fully Illustrated, Tokyo: Kinkodo and Maruia, 1904–8, vols 1–8; The Russo-Japanese War; A Photographic and Descriptive Review of the Great Conflict in the Far East, New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1905; N. Samokish, 1904–1905. Voina. Iz dnevnikov khudozhnika, St Petersburg: Izdanie ekspeditsii zagotovleniia gosudarstvennykh bumag, s. a. A. K. Baiov (ed.) Russko-Iaponskaia voina v soobshcheniiakh v Nikolaevskoi Akademii General’nogo shtaba, St Petersburg: Nikolaevskaia Akademiia, 1906–7, pts 1–2. As a typical publication of this kind, see Great Britain. War Office. General Staff. The Russo-Japanese War: Reports from British Officers Attached to the Japanese Forces in the Field, London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1908, vols 1–3. P. Towle, ‘The Russo-Japanese War and the Defence of India’, Military Affairs, 1980, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 111–17. B. I. Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, ‘Razvedochnaia sluzhba vo flote i eio organizatsiia’, Morskoi sbornik, 1904, no. 1, 1–14; N. L. Klado, Sovremennaia morskaia voina. Morskie zametki o russko-iaponskoi voine. St Petersburg: Suvorin, 1905; D. P. Parskii, Vospominaniia i mysli o poslednei voine (1904–1905), St Petersburg: Rabotnik, 1906; V. Semenov, The Battle of Tsushima, New York: Dutton, 1906; idem, Rasplata. London: Murray, 1909; I. K. Shakhnovskii, Ocherk deiatelnosti Zaamurskogo okruga Otdelnogo korpusa pogranichnoi strazhi v period minuvshei russko-iaponskoi voiny (1904–1905 gg.), St Petersburg: Energiia, 1906; E. A. Vertsinskii, Usilennaia razvedka chastei I-go Sibirskogo korpusa (v doline reki Sidalihe), St Petersburg:

200

19 20 21

22 23 24

25 26 27 28

Notes

Glavnyi shtab, 1907; M. Bubnov, Port-Artur. Vospominaniia o deiatel’nosti 1-oi Tikhookeanskoi eskadry i morskikh komand na beregu vo vremia osady Port-Artura v 1904 g. St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1907; M. Grulev, V shtabakh i na poliakh Dal’nego Vostoka. Vospominania ofitsera General’nogo shtaba i komandira polka o russko-iaponskoi voine, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1908; P. I. Izmestiev, O nashei tainoi razvedke v minuvshuiu kampaniiu, Warsaw: Ruskoe Obtschestvo, 1910; A. A. Svechin, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg., Oranienbaum: Ofitserskaia strelkovaia shkola, 1910); idem, Takticheskie uroki russko-iaponskoi voiny, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1912; A. Skosarevskii, Iz boevoi zhizni ofitsera-razvedchika v russko-iaponskuiu voinu (psikhologicheskii etiud), St Petersburg: P. Sinchenko, 1911; N. A. Ukhach-Ogorovich, Man’chzhurskii teatr voennykh deistvii v russko-iaponskuiu voinu 1904–1905 gg., Kiev: S. Kulzhenko, 1911; M. Tyvder, Na podvodnoi lodke. Iz dnevnika uchastnika minuvshei voiny, Moscow: Shtab Moskovskogo voennogo okruga, 1912. V. V. Buniakovskii, Sluzhba bezopasnosti voisk. Okhranenie i razvedyvanie po opytu i s primerami iz russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Russkii Trud, 1909. A. A. Ignatiev, Piat’desiat let v stroiu Moscow: Voennoe izdatelstvo, 1998, 3rd ed. M. Behrman, Hinter den Kulissen des mandschurischen Kriegstheaters, Berlin: Verlag von S. Sehwetschke und Sohn, 1905; F. Unger, Russia and Japan, and A Complete History of the War in the Far East, Washington: Harper, 1906; R. Kahn, Iz vrazheskogo stana, St Petersburg: I. Lagov, 1905; F. Immanuel, Russko-iaponskaya voina v voennom i politicheskom otnoshenii, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1906, pts I–IV; L. Naudeau, Pisma o voine s Iaponiei, St Petersburg: I. Goldberg, 1906; Asiaticus, ‘Razvedka vo vremia russko-iaponskoi voiny’, in Russko-iaponskaia voina v nabludeniyakh i suzhdeniyakh inostrantcev, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1907, vol. 12; I. Hamilton, Zapisnaia knizhka shtabnogo ofitsera vo vremia russko-iaponskoi voiny, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1906; repr. ed., Moscow: Voennoe izdatelstvo, 2000; R. Raculli, Desiat’ mesiatsev na iapono-russkoi voine 1904–1905 gg., St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1907; E. von Tettau, Vosemnadtsat’ mesiatsev s russkimi voiskami v Man’chzhurii, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1908; etc. W. Greener, A Secret Agent in Port Arthur, London: Constable, 1905. A. N. Kuropatkin, Zapiski o russko-iaponskoi voine. Itogi voiny, Berlin: J. Ladyzhnikov, 1908; 2nd ed., 1909; 3rd ed., St Petersburg: Poligon, 2002. P. F. Riabikov, Razvedyvatelnaia sluzhba v mirnoe i voennoe vremia, Tomsk: Akademiya Generalnogo shtaba, 1919, vols 1–2; K. K. Zvonarev, Agenturnaia razvedka Moscow: Upravlenie shtaba RKKA, 1929–31, vols 1–2, repr. ed. Moscow: BDTs-Press, 2003, vols 1–2. K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 31, 37, 43, 65, 74–5, 77, 79. Ibid., p. 81. A. P. Votinov, Iaponskii shpionazh v russko-iaponskuiu voinu 1904–1905, Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Voennoe Izdatelstvo, 1939; I. Nikitinskii (ed.), Iaponskii shpionazh v tsarskoi Rossii. Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow: Voenizdat, 1944. N. A. Levitskii, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe voennoe izdatelstvo, 1938; V. V. Luchinin, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Voennoe Izdatelstvo, 1940; A. I. Sorokin, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Voenno-istoricheskii ocherk, Moscow: Voenizdat, 1956; I. I. Rostunov (ed.) Istoriia russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Nauka, 1977; V. A. Zolotarev, I. A. Kozlov, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Bor’ba na more, Moscow: Nauka, 1990; V. K. Shatsillo, L. A. Shatsillo, Russko-iaponskaia voina. 1904–1905. Fakty. Dokymenty, Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 2004; E. Hoyt, The Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, London: Macmillan, 1967; C. Martin, The Russo-Japanese War, London: Routledge, 1967; Russ. ed., Moscow: Zentrpoligraf, 2003; F. Knight, Russia Fights Japan, London: Macdonald, 1969; D. Walder, The Short Victorious War. The Russo-Japanese Conflict, 1904–1905, London: Hutchin-

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30 31

32 33

34

35

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son, 1973; D. and P. Warner, The Tide at Sunrise. A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, London, etc.: Cassel, 1974; J. Westwood, Russia against Japan, 1904–1905. A New Look at the Russo-Japanese War, London: Macmillan, 1986; Richard Connaughton, The War of the Rising Sun and the Tumbling Bear: A Military History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, London: Routledge, 1991; G. Jukes, The Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905, Oxford: Osprey, 2002. I. V. Derevianko, ‘Russkaia agenturnaia razvedka v 1902–1905 gg.’, VoennoIstoricheskii zhurnal, 1989, no. 5, 76–8; A. Iu. Shelukhin, ‘Razvedyvatelnye organy v structure vys’shego voennogo upravleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii nachala XX veka (1906–1914 gg.)’, Vestnik MGU, 1996, ser. 8. Istoria, no. 3, 17–31; I. S. Makarov, ‘O protsesse formirovaniia organizatsionnoi struktury voennoi razvedki Rossiiskoi Imperii (posledniaia tret’ XIX – nachalo XX v.)’, in Mnogolikaia istoriia. Collection of papers Moscow: Rossiiskii universitet druzhby narodov, 1997, pp. 202–20; M. Alekseev, Voennaia razvedka Rossii ot Riurika do Nikolaia II, Moscow: Russkaia razvedka, 1998), vols 1–2; I. N. Kravtsev, Tainye sluzhby imperii, Moscow: Rossiskaia Akademiia gosudarstvennoi sluzhby, 1999; V. V. Glushkov, A. A. Sharavin, Na karte Generalnogo shtaba – Man’chzhuriia. Nakanune russko-iaponskoi voiny, Moscow: Institut politicheskogo i voennogo analiza, 2000; D. B. Pavlov, Russko-Iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Sekretnye operatsii na sushe i na more, Moscow: Materik, 2004. E. M. Primakov (ed.) Ocherki istorii rossiiskoi vneshnei razvedki, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1995, vol. 1. V. Petrov, ‘Iz predystorii russko-iaponskoi voiny. Russkie voenno-morskie agenty v Iaponii (1858–1917)’, Russkoe proshloe. Istoriko-dokumental’nyi al’manakh, 1996, vol. 6, 52–94; P. E. Podalko, ‘Iz istorii rossiiskoi voenno-diplomaticheskoi sluzhby v Iaponii (1906–1913)’, Iaponiia. Ezhegodnik, Moscow: Institut Dal’nego Vostoka, 2002, 362–87; E. V. Dobychina, ‘Razvedka Rossii o iaponskom voennom vliianii v Kitae na rubezhe XIX–XX vv.’, Voprosi istorii, 1999, no. 10, 127–31; idem, ‘Russkaia agenturnaia razvedka na Dal’nem Vostoke v 1895–1897 gg.’, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2000, no. 4, 161–70; V. B. Kashirin, ‘Russkii Moltke smotrit na Vostok: dal’nevostochnye plany Glavnogo Shtaba’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, 38–44. B. Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets, 1861–1914, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992, p. 32. See, especially, the recent journal article by B. Menning on the strategic MI at the start of the twentieth century, B. Menning, ‘Miscalculating One’s Enemies: Russian Military Intelligence before the Russo-Japanese War’, 2006, War in History, 13 (2), 141–70. D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan, Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001; idem, ‘The Russo-Japanese War’, in F. Kagan and R. Higham (eds) The Military History of Tsarist Russia, New York: Palgrave, 2002; idem, ‘The Immediate Origins of the War’, in J. Steinberg et al., eds, The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 23–44. On the pre-war origins and developments of the Russian MI, see D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, ‘Reforming Military Intelligence’, in D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and B. Menning (eds) Reforming the Tsar’s Army. Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution. Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; some interesting episodes of the Russo-Japanese War are also surveyed in D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, ‘Russian Military Intelligence on the Manchurian Front, 1904–05’, 1996, Intelligence and National Security, vol. XI, no. 1, 22–31. On the failures of Russian military intelligence by the same author in Russian translation, see D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, ‘Shapkami ne zakidali. Russkaia voennaia razvedka na Man’chzhurskom fronte’, 2004, Rodina, no. 1, 34–7.

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36 D. Rich, The Tsar’s Colonels: Professionalism, Strategy and Subversion in Late Imperial Russia, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998; idem, ‘Building Foundations for Effective Intelligence. Military Geography and Statistics in Russian Perspective, 1845–1905’, in D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and B. Menning (eds) Reforming the Tsar’s Army, pp. 168–85. 37 Chiharu Inaba, ‘Iz istorii razvedki v gody russko-iaponskoi voiny (1904–1905). Mezhdunarodnaia telegrafnaia sviaz’ i perekhvat protivnikom’, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1994, nos 4–5, 222–7; idem, ‘Franco-Russian Intelligence Collaboration during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905’, Japanese Slavic and East European Studies, 1998, vols 19, 1–24. 38 V. I. Gurko (ed.) Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Rabota Voenno-istoricheskoi komissii po opisaniiu russko-iaponskoi voiny, St Petersburg: Glavnyi shtab, 1910–14), vols 1–8; I. K. Grigorovich, (ed.) Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Deistviia flota. Dokumenty. Rabota Istoricheskoi komissii po opisaniiu deistvii flota v voinu 1904–1904 gg. pri Morskom General’nom shtabe, St Petersburg: Glavnyi Morskoi shtab, 1907–14, pts I–IV. 39 Svodki svedenii o protivnike, 1904–1905 gg., Harbin: Shtab Glavnokomanduiutschego voiskami na Dal’nem Vostoke, 1905, vols 1–2. 40 See, A. I. Kuprin, Staff Captain Rybnikovi Moscow: Veche, 1998; P. Daletskii, Na sopkakh Man’churii. Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1954, vols 1–2; A. N. Stepanov, Port-Artur, Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1978, bks 1–2; A. S. Novikov-Priboi, Tsushima, Moscow: Pravda, 1984, bks 1–2; B. Akunin, Almaznaia kolesnitsa. Moscow: Zakharov, 2004, vols 1–2. 1 Russian military intelligence at the start of the twentieth century 1 B. I. Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, ‘Razvedochnaia sluzhba vo flote i eio organizatsiia’, Morskoi sbornik, 1904, nos. 1, 2. 2 A. Ind, A History of Modern Espionage, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965, pp. 22–3. 3 Richard Deacon, A History of the British Secret Service, New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1970, p. 3 4 J. Haswell, Spies and Spymasters. A Concise History of Intelligence, London: Thames & Hudson, 1977, p. 7. 5 Jock Haswell, op. cit., p. 11. 6 R. Deacon, The Chinese Secret Service, New York: Taplinger, 1974, pp. 1–2. 7 Idem, The Silent War. A History of Western Naval Intelligence, New York: David & Charles, 1978, p. 9. 8 R. Hilsman, Strategic Intelligence and National Decisions, p. 18; on W. Stieber’s activity, see A. K. Graves, The Secrets of the German War Office, London: Platt, 1914; J. Dyssord, L’Espionage allemande a l’oeuvre, Paris: Trues, 1915; R. Seth, Secret Servants. The Story of Japanese Espionage, London: Macmillan, 1937; W. Goerlitz, Der deutsche Generalstab. Geschichte und Gestalt, 1657–1945, Frankfurt on Main: Haude und Spuner, 1950. Richard Deacon seemingly exaggerates the role played by this person in the establishment of the ominous tsarist secret civil police, Okhranka, see R. Deacon, op. cit., New York: Taplinger, 1970, p. 127. 9 M. Alekseev, Voennaia razvedka Rossii, Moscow: Russkaia razvedka, 1998, bk 1, p. 10; E. M. Primakov (ed.), Ocherki istorii rossiskoi vneshnei razvedki, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1995, vol. 1, pp. 13–20. 10 See, especially, M. Alekseev, op. cit., bk 1; E. Primakov (ed.) op. cit., vol. 1; D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, ‘Reforming Military Intelligence’, in D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and B. Menning (eds) Reforming the Tsar’s Army. Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution, Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 133–50.

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11 On military reforms in Russia, see B. Menning, Bayonets before Bullets, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992; D. Rich, The Tsar’s Colonels: Professionalism, Strategy and Subversion in Late Imperial Russia, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998; D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and B. Menning, (eds) Reforming the Tsar’s Army; M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 51–73. 12 G. A. Leer (ed.) Entsiklopediia voennykh i morskikh nauk, St Petersburg: Glavnyi shtab, 1883–97, vol. 6, pp. 243–4; F. A. Brockgaus and I. A. Efron (eds) Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, St Petersburg: Brockgaus and Efron, 1899, vol. 26, pp. 136–7. 13 J. Haswell, op. cit., p. 16. 14 K. K. Zvonarev, Agenturnaia razvedka, Moscow: BDTs-Press, 2003, vol. 1, pp. 24–6; Alekseev M., op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 84–6, 306–13; E. Yu. Sergeev and A. A. Ulinian, Ne podlezhit oglasheniiu: Voennye agenty Rossiiskoi imperii v Evrope i na Balkanakh, 1900–1914 gg., Moscow: Realii-Press, 2003, pp. 22–3. 15 On the establishment of organizational structure of military intelligence in Russia, see I. S. Makarov, ‘O protsesse formirovaniia organizationnoi struktury voennoi razvedki Rossiiskoi Imperii (poslednyaia tret’ XIX – nachalo XX vv.)’, Mnogolikaia Rossiia Moscow: Rossiiskii universitet druzhby narodov, 1997, pp. 202–20. 16 Glavnyi Shtab, Alfavitnyi ukazatel’ prikazov po voennomu vedomstvu i tsirkuliarov Glavnogo shtaba za 1903 g., St Petersburg: Glavnyi shtab, 1903, no. 133; Glavnyi Morskoi shtab, Svod morskikh postanovlenii, St Petersburg: Glavnyi Morskoi shtab, 1901, vol. 1, pt 2, p. 2. 17 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 25; M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 85–6. 18 See K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 26. 19 For typical examples of such surveys, see especially P. N. Krasnov, Po Azii: putevye ocherki Manchzhurii, Dal’nego Vostoka, Kitaia, Iaponii i Indii, St Petersburg: Glavnyi Shtab, 1903. 20 A. A. Svechin, Russko-iaponskaia voina, 1904–1905 gg., Oranienbaum: Ofitserskaia strelkovaia shkola, 1910, p. 16; also, see V. V. Glushkov and A. A. Sharavin, Na karte General’nogo shtaba – Man’chzhuriia, Moscow: Institut politicheskogo i voennogo analiza, 2000, pp. 14–15, 340. 21 One recent study in this politics is the book by D. Wolff, To the Harbin Station. The Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria, 1898–1914, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999, especially, pp. 49–77. 22 I. K. Shakhnovskii, Ocherk deiatel’nosti Zaamurskogo okruga Otdel’nogo korpusa pogranichnoi strazhi v period minuvshei russko-iaponskoi voiny (1904–1905 gg.), St Petersburg: Energiia, 1906, pp. 5–35. 23 A. A. Kersnovskii, Istoriia russkoi armii, Moscow: Golos, 1994, vol. 3, pp. 47–50. 24 A. V. Remnev, Rossiia Dal’nego Vostoka. Imperskaia geoographiia vlasti XIX – nachala XX vekov, Omsk: Omskii gosudarsvennyi universitet, 2004, pp. 362, 384. 25 A. Khvostov, ‘Russkii Kitai. Nasha pervaia koloniia na Dal’nem Vostoke’, Vestnik Evropy, 1902, no. 2, pp. 653–4. 26 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 74–5; M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 143. 27 I. K. Grigorovich (ed.), Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Deistviia flota. Dokumenty. Rabota Istoricheskoi komissii po opisaniiu deistvii flota v voinu 1904–1904 gg. pri Morskom General’nom shtabe (IKpriMGSh), St Petersburg: Glavnyi Morskoi shtab, 1907–14, pt I, p. 16; M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 102–3. 28 De-A. L. ‘Razvedochnye suda’, Morskoi sbornik, 1904, no. 1, 15–29. 29 V. A. Zolotarev and I. A. Kozlov, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Bor’ba na more, Moscow: Nauka, 1990, p. 31. 30 R. Deacon, A History of the British Secret Service, p. 137; idem, A History of the Russian Secret Service. London: Frederick Muller, 1972, p. 132. 31 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA), f. 401, op. 5, d. 195, ll. 30–1; K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 41; M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 145; A. Iu. Shelukhin, ‘Razvedyvatel’nye organy v structure vys’shego voennogo

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40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

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upravleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii nachala XX veka’, Vestnik MGU, 1996, Ser. 8. Istoria, no. 3, 24. K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 42; A. A. Ignatiev, Piat’desiat let v stroiu, Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1998, p. 301; E. Yu. Sergeev and A. A. Ulunian, op. cit., p. 40. A. Khvostov, op. cit., pp. 186–7. RGVIA, f. 14926, op. 1, d. 22, l. 43. A. A. Ignatiev, op. cit., p. 104. Ibid., p. 151; for further information, see E. Yu. Sergeev, Inaia zemlia, inoe nebo . . . Zapad i voennaia elita Rossii, 1900–1914 gg., Moscow: Institut vseobshchei istorii, 2001, pp. 41–2. A. Samoilo, Dve zhizni. Memoirs, Moscow: Voenizdat, 1963, p. 55. C. Benckendorf, Half a Life. The Reminiscences of a Russian Gentleman, London: The Richards Press, 1954, p. 40. Glavnyi shtab, Spisok generalov po starshinstvu na 1 (14) iiulia 1906 g., St Petersburg: Glavnyi shtab, 1906, p. 936; Glavnyi shtab, Spisok polkovnikov po starshinstvu na 1 (14) noiabria 1906 g., St Petersburg, Glavnyi shtab, 1906, p. 225; General’nyi shtab, Spisok chinov General’nogo shtaba na 1917 g., Petrograd: Petrogradskii voennyi okrug, 1917, pp. 20, 25. See, also K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., bk 1, p. 20; B. Menning, ‘Miscalculating One’s Enemies: Russian Military Intelligence before the Russo-Japanese War’, War in History, 2006, no. 13 (2), 143. M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 113. J. Rollane, Voenno-razvedyvatel’naia sluzhba v mirnoe i voennoe vremia, St Petersburg: Peterburgskii voennyi okrug, 1909, p. 5. M. Ronge, Voina i industriia shpionazha, Moscow: Pravovoe prosvetschenie, 2000, p. 251. R. Rowan, Secret Service. Thirty Three Centuries of Espionage, New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967, pp. 336–7. For a more comprehensive narrative on David Livkin’s activity, see I. Simbirtsev, Na strazhe trona, Moscow: Zentrpoligraf, 2006, pp. 341–2; E. Primakov (ed.) op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 172–82. B. Menning, op. cit., p. 144. This point of view is expressed in the book by I. Simbirtsev, op. cit., p. 343. The author argues that it was Samoilov who warned St Petersburg of the impending attack on Port Arthur. B. Menning, ‘Miscalculating One’s Enemies’, p. 148. The balance of their activities can be found in the recent article by I. V. Lukoianov, ‘The Bezobrazovtsy’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 65–86. M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 251. Ibid., pp. 272–3. I. A. Strel’bitskii, Iz Khunkhuna v Mukdeni obratno po sklonam Chanbaishanskogo khrebta (otchet o semimesiachnom puteshestvii po Man’chzhurii i Koree v 1895–1896 gg.), St Petersburg: Glavnyi Shtab, 1897. E. V. Dobychina, ‘O proiskakh Tokyo v Koree na rubezhe XIX – nachala XX vekov’, Voenno-Istoricheskii zhurnal, 2004, no. 3, 43–7. M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 316, 319, 322. V. I. Gurko, ed., Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Rabota Voenno-istoricheskoi komissii po opisaniiu russko-iaponskoi voiny (VIK), St Petersburg: Glavnyi shtab, 1910–14, vol. 1, p. 156. M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 420. K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 130–1. R. Rowan. Secret Service. Thirty Three Centuries of Espionage, New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967, p. 16.

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58 C. Fitzgibbon, Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century, New York: Stein and Day, 1977, p. 26. 59 R. Deacon, A History of the British Secret Service, p. 123. 60 T. Fergusson, British Military Intelligence, 1870–1914. The Development of a Modern Intelligence Organization, Frederick, Md: University Publications of America, 1984, pp. 15–34; C. Andrew, Secret Service. The Making of the British Intelligence Community, London: Heinemann, 1985, pp. 11–14. 61 R. Deacon, op. cit., p. 134. 62 I. Nish, ‘Japanese Intelligence and the Approach of the Russo-Japanese War’, in C. Andrew and D. Dilks (eds) The Missing Dimension. Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984, p. 8. 63 Quoted in C. Andrew, op. cit., p. 24. 64 R. Deacon, op. cit., pp. 146–7. 65 C. Andrew, Secret Service. The Making of the British Intelligence Community, op. cit., p. 28. 66 Ibid., p. 29. 67 R. Deacon, Spyclopedia, London and Sydney: Macdonald, 1988, p. 84; on Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s activities as the founder of scouting, see the recent publication by David Jones, ‘Forerunners of the Komsomol. Scouting in Imperial Russia’, in D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and B. Menning (eds) Reforming the Tsar’s Army, pp. 56–81. 68 T. Fergusson, op. cit., pp. 101–28, especially p. 112. 69 R. Rowan, op. cit., p. 403. 70 C. Fitzgibbon, op. cit., pp. 46–7. 71 W. Robertson, From Private to Field-Marshal, London: Constable, 1921, p. 131. 72 For a concise history of the American intelligence community, see the recent work by C. Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only. Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush, New York: Harper Collins, 1995. 73 A. Ind, op. cit., p. 42; J. Haswell, op. cit., p. 115; R. Deacon, A History of the British Secret Service, p. 134; for further details about the Deuxième Bureau, see M. Gauche, Le Deuxième Bureau au travail, Paris: Gravier, 1954. 74 R. Deacon, The Silent War. A History of Western Naval Intelligence, New York: David & Charles, 1978, pp. 59–60. 75 Idem, A History of the British Secret Service, pp. 135, 422. 76 Ibid., p. 134; a detailed survey of the German military intelligence service may be found in the book by A. K. Graves, The Secrets of the German War Office, London: Platt, 1914; G. Buchheit, Der deutsche Geheimdienst, Munich: List, 1966; and in the recent article by L. Richter, ‘Military and Civil Intelligence Services in Germany from the First World War to the End of the Weimar Republic’, in H. Bungert et al. (eds) Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century, London: Cass, 2003, pp. 1–22. 77 M. Ronge, Voina i industriia shpionazha, Moscow: Pravovoe prosvetshenie, 2000, pp. 11–20. 78 I. Nish, op. cit., p. 6. 79 Quoted in R. Seth, op. cit., pp. 111–16; see also V. V. Petrov (ed.) Entsiklopedia voennogo iskusstva. Operatsii voennoi razvedki, Minsk: Literatura, 1997, pp. 247–54; Ian Nish wrote that ‘there were communities of Japanese merchants in each port, who doubtless kept their eyes open. But the prime source of information about movements of naval ships in and out of Port Arthur was the Japanese consulate at Chefoo, from which steamers plied regularly to Port Arthur until the outbreak of war’, see Ian Nish, op. cit., p. 29. 80 P. N. Simanskii, Sobytiia na Dal’nem Vostoke, predshestvuiutschie russko-iaponskoi voine. 1891–1903, St Petersburg: Voennaia Tipographiia, 1910, pt 1, p. 33. 81 B. Burleigh, Empire of the East, or Japan and Russia at War, 1904–5, London: Chapman & Hall, 1905, pp. 72–3.

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82 R. Deacon, Kempei Tai. A History of the Japanese Secret Service, New York and Toronto: Beaufort Books, 1983, p. 57. 83 Inaba Chiharu, ‘Franco-Russian Intelligence Collaboration against Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–05’, Japanese Slavic and East European Studies, 1998, vol. 19, p. 18. 84 R. Hough, The Fleet that Had to Die, Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000, p. 225. 85 P. N. Simanskii, op. cit., pt 2, p. 345; the British Minister in China, Sir John N. Jordan, wired the Foreign Office on 11 January 1904 that the Japanese had ‘a large and fully trained intelligence staff at their disposal’, in Seoul, see I. Nish, op. cit., p. 30. 86 Ibid. 87 A. Khamadan, Iaponskii shpionazh, Moscow: Partizdat, 1937, p. 7. 2 Japan’s war capability through Russian eyes 1 E. Yu. Sergeev and I. V. Karpeev (eds) ‘Iaponskie dnevniki A. N. Kuropatkina’, Rossiiskii archive, 1995, vol. VI, p. 410. 2 David Wells (ed.) Russian Views of Japan, 1792–1913. An Anthology of Travel Writing, London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004, pp. 81–102, 103–17, 148–61, 176–86; it should be noted that the references to the Japanese in the second half of the nineteenth century as ‘child-like’ people originated in the concept of the French anatomist Etienne Serres who advanced an earlier hypothesis that higher creatures repeat the adult stage of inferior beings during their own growth. He argued, in accordance with this theory, that black adults resemble white children, and Mongolians resemble adolescents, see R. Kowner, ‘ “Lighter than Yellow, but not Enough”: Western Discourse on the Japanese “Race”, 1854–1904’, The Historical Journal, 2000, vol. 43, no. 1, 111–12. 3 Quoted in Paul Bushkovitch, ‘The Far East in the Eyes of the Russian Intelligentsia’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective. World War Zero, Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2005, p. 359. 4 L. N. Kutakov, Russia and Japan, Moscow: Nauka, 1988, p. 213. 5 D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun. Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan, Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001, p. 28. 6 Quoted in P. N. Simanskii, Sobytiia na Dal’nem Vostoke, predshestvuiutschie russko-iaponskoi voine. 1891–1903 gg., St Petersburg: Voennaia Tipographiia, 1910, pt 1, p. 27. 7 R. Rosen, Forty Years of Diplomacy, London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Alfred Knopf, 1922, vol. 1, pp. 135–6. 8 G. Lensen, ‘Japan and Tsarist Russia – the Changing Relationships, 1875–1917’, Jahrbuecher fuer Geschichte Osteuropas, 1962, vol. 10, pt 3, p. 339. 9 Quoted in R. Kowner, op. cit., p. 129. 10 See A. V. Remnev, Rossiia Dal’nego Vostoka, Omsk: Omskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2004, p. 354. 11 On Esper Ukhtomskii’s essays see M. Hauner, What Is Asia to Us? Russia’s Asian Heartland Yesterday and Today, Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990, pp. 49–52, 56–60; D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, op. cit. 12 A. I. Kuprin, Staff-Captain Rybnikov, Moscow: Veche, 1998; D. Wells and S. Wilson (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Cultural Perspective, 1904–1905, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999, pp. 126–7. 13 For further details about the graphic images of Japan, see R. Stites, ‘Russian Representations of the Japanese Enemy’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The RussoJapanese War in Global Perspective. World War Zero, pp. 395–410. 14 Quoted in R. Kowner, op. cit., p. 119.

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207

15 Quoted in V. E. Molodiakov, Rossia i Iaponiia: poverkh bar’erov. Neizvestnye i zabytye stranitsy rossiisko-iaponskikh otnoshenii, Moscow: AST-Astrel’, 2005, p. 25. 16 Quoted in J.-P. Lehman, The Image of Japan. From Feudal Isolation to World Power, 1850–1905, London: Allen & Unwin, 1978, pp. 145–6. 17 Quoted in A. Kalmykov, Memoirs of a Russian Diplomat. Outposts of the Empire, 1893–1917, New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1971, p. 186. 18 Aleksandr Mikhailovich, Velikii kniaz’. Vospominaniia, Moscow: Zakharov-AST, 1999, p. 171. 19 R. Esthus, ‘Nicholas II and the Russo-Japanese War’, Russian Review, 1981, vol. 40, no. 4, p. 397; see also an interesting historical comparison between Nicholas and Meidzi in the recent book by A. Metscheriakov, Iaponskii imperator i russkii tsar’: elementnaia baza, Moscow: Natalis, 2004. 20 Quoted in V. P. Semennikov, Za kulisami tsarizma: arkhiv tibetskogo vracha Badmaeva, Leningrad: Politizdat, 1925, p. 10. 21 A. V. Remnev, op. cit., p. 345. 22 Quoted in D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, op. cit., p. 80. 23 Rosssiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Voenno-Morskogo Flota (RGA VMF), f. 763, op. 1, d. 42, ll. 7–48. 24 For further information see Igor Lukoianov, ‘The Besobrasovtsy’, in John W. Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 65–86; Lukoianov, however, mistakenly claimed that V. M. Vonliarliarskii became the only member of the ‘Bezobrazov circle’ to publish memoirs about the origins of the Russo-Japanese War as a rebuttal to Witte’s memoirs in 1939. It was Bezobrazov himself who edited the interpretation of events in question long before his colleague, see A. M. Bezobrazov, ‘Les premières causes de l’effondrement de la Russie. Le conflit russo-japonais’, Le Correspondent, Paris, 1923, t. 291, 557–615. 25 V. Gurko, Features and Figures of the Past. Government and Opinion in the Reign of Nicholas II, New York: Russel & Russel, 1939, p. 264. 26 Sbornik geograficheskikh i statisticheskikh materialov po Asii, St Petersburg: Glavnyi shtab, 1895, no. 61, pp. 107–9; also see E. V. Dobychina, ‘Russkaia agenturnaia razvedka na Dal’nem Vostoke v 1895–1897 gg.’, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2000, no. 4, p. 163. 27 RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 6535, ll. 11–11ob. 28 A. A. Polivanov, Iz dnevnikov i vospominanii po dolzhnosti voennogo ministra i ego pomoshchnika, 1907–1916 gg., Moscow: Vys’shii voennyi redaktsionnyi sovet, 1924, pt 1, p. 87; see also M. Alekseev, Voennaia razvedka Rossii ot Riurika do Nikolaia II, Moscow: Russkaia razvedka, 1998, vol. 1, p. 147. 29 K. K. Zvonarev, Agenturnaia razvedka. Moscow: BDTs-Press, 2003, vol. 1, pp. 28–9. 30 Quoted in B. Menning, op. cit., 156–7. 31 A. A. Polivanov, op. cit., p. 87. 32 A. N. Kuropatkin, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Itogi voiny, St Petersburg: Poligon, 2002, p. 186. 33 S. Iu. Witte, Izbrannye vospominaniia (1849–1911), Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1991, p. 465; P. E. Podalko, ‘Iz istorii rossiiskoi voenno-diplomaticheskoi sluzhby v Iaponii (1906–1913 gg.)’, Iaponiia. Ezhegodnik, 2001–2002. Moscow: Institut Dal’nego Vostoka, 2002, pp. 365–6. 34 M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 141–2. 35 Ibid., p. 154. 36 RGVIA, f. 451, op. 1, d. 1595, l. 35. 37 Ibid., f. 400, op. 4, d. 108. l. 9. 38 Ibid., f. 448, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 353–61; for further details see P. N. Simanskii, Sobytiia na Dal’nem Vostoke, predshestvuiutschie russko-iaponskoi voine 1891–1903 gg., St Petersburg: Voennaia Tipographiia, 1910, pt 1, pp. 138–55.

208

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39 RGVIA, f. 400, op. 4, d. 108, ll. 41–2. 40 M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 149–50; E. M. Primakov (ed.) Ocherki istorii rossiskoi vneshnei razvedki, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1995, vol. 1, p. 199. 41 AVPRI, f. 150, Iaponskii stol, op. 493, d. 189, ll. 2–3. 42 E. Yu. Sergeev and I. V. Karpeev (eds) ‘Iaponskie dnevniki A. N. Kuropatkina’, Rossiskii Arkhiv, 1995, vol. VI, 399. 43 V. A. Petrov, ‘Iz predystorii russko-iaponskoi voiny. Russkie voenno-morskie agenty v Iaponii (1858–1917)’, Russkoe proshloe, Istorko-dokumental’nyi al’manalch, 1996, vol. 6, pp. 52–94. A. Buiakov (ed.) ‘Predmet detal’nogo izucheniia’, Morskoi sbornik, 1995, no. 3, p. 91. 44 RGA VMF, f. 763, op. 1, d. 44, ll. 38–40ob.; f 32. op. 1, d. 489, ll. 77–82ob.; f. 417, op. 1, d. 2486, ll. 153–9ob., 170–4ob.; also see A. Buiakov (ed.) op. cit., p. 91. 45 IKpriMGSh, pt III, vol. 1, pp. 125–32. 46 Ibid., p. 135. 47 I. L. Bunich, Dolgaia doroga na Golgofu. Vospominaniia. Istoricheskaia khronika, St Petersburg: Energiia, 2000, p. 363; also see V. A. Shtenger, Podgotovka Vtoroi eskadry k plavaniiu’, in S eskadroi admirala Rozhestvenskogo. Sbornik vospominanii, St Petersburg: Oblik, 1994, p. 34. 48 A. I. Rusin, ‘K istorii mirnykh peregovorov v Portsmute v 1905 g.’, in Port Artur. Vospominaniia uchastnikov (New York: Izdatel’stvo im. Chekhova, 1955), p. 404. 49 VIK, vol. 1, p. 167. 50 RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 6530, l. 9. 51 E. V. Dobychina, ‘Russkaia agenturnaia razvedka na Dal’nem Vostoke v 1895–1897 gg.’, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2000, no. 4, p. 162. 52 E. M. Primakov (ed.) op. cit., vol. 1, p. 193; P. E. Podalko, op. cit., p. 373. 53 P. E. Podalko, op. cit., p. 372. 54 V. A. Petrov, op. cit., p. 57; A. Buiakov (ed.), op. cit., p. 92. 55 Alexandr Pavlov’s activity in Korea was studied in the recent book by D. Pavlov, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Sekretnye operatsii na sushe i na more, Moscow: Materik, 2004, pp. 262–86. 56 R. Faligot, R. Kauffer, Histoire mondiale du renseignement, Paris: Fayazd 1993, t. 1, p. 46. 57 RGVIA, f. Voenno-Uchenogo arkhiva (VUA), d. 29091, ll. 103–3ob. 58 V. Gurko, Features and Figures of the Past. Government and Opinion in the Reign of Nicholas II, New York: Russel & Russel, 1939, p. 271. 59 Quoted in A. V. Remnev, op. cit., p. 332. 60 RGVIA, f. 400, op. 4, d. 107, ll. 1–11ob. 61 Ibid., f. 165, op. 1, d. 1064, ll. 1–3. 62 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 35. 63 Chiharu Inaba, op. cit., 225–6. 64 B. I. Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, ‘Razvedochnaia sluzhba na flote i eio organizatsiia’, Morskoi sbornik, 1904, no. 1, 1–14. 65 C. Martin, The Russo-Japanese War, London: Routledge, 1967, p. 16. 66 A. I. Sorokin, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Voenno-istoricheskii ocherk, Moscow: Voenizdat, 1956, p. 16; I. I. Rostunov (ed.) Istoriia russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Nauka, 1977, p. 93. 67 RGVIA, f. 14326, op. 1, pp. 1–2. 68 VIK, vol. 1, pp. 176–223, 252–3. 69 A. A. Kersnovskii, Istoriia russkoi armii, Moscow: Golos, 1994, vol. 3, p. 55. 70 A. N. Kuropatkin, op. cit., pp. 116–17. 71 See, V. Kashirin, ‘Russkii Moltke smotrit na Vostok. Dal’nevostochnye plany Glavnogo shtaba’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, 41–4. 72 E. Yu. Sergeev and I. V. Karpeev (eds) ‘Iaponskie dnevniki A. N. Kuropatkina’, Rossiiskii arkhiv, 1995, vol. VI, 395.

Notes 73 74 75 76 77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91 92 93 94 95 96

209

Ibid., 403. Ibid. Ibid. 439. D. MacDonald, United Government and Foreign Policy in Russia, 1900–1914, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 65–6. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 4, d. 500, ll. 239–40; also see B. Menning, ‘Ni Moltke, ni Mahan: strategiia v russko-iaponskoi voine’, in O. R. Airapetov, (ed.) Russkoiaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Vzgliad cherez stoletie, Moscow: Tri Kvadrata, 2004, pp. 15–37; idem, ‘Neither Mahan nor Moltke: Strategy in the Russo-Japanese War’, in J. Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 129–56. VIK, vol. 1, p. 250. Quoted in V. I. Semenov, Rasplata, St Petersburg: Wolf, 1907, pt 1, p. 3. Nicholas II, Dnevnik imperatora Nikolaia, 1890–1906 gg., Moscow: Polistar, 1991, p. 137; VIK, vol. 1, p. 275. It was planned that 90 million roubles would be spent on the construction of five battleships and five cruisers of the first class, see RGA VMF, f. 417, op. 1, d. 1728, ll. 65–75. Alexandr Mikhailovich, Velikii kniaz’, op. cit., p. 171. N. L. Klado, L. F. Kerber (comp.) Voina Rossii s Iaponiei v 1905 g. Otchet o prakticheskikh zaniatiakh po strategii v Nikolaevskoi Morskoi Akademii. 1902–1903 gg., St Petersburg: Tipogragiia Morskogo ministerstva, 1904, pp. 17, 21–2, 136. Ibid., p. 152. IKpriMGSh, vol. 1, pp. 65–71; also see J. Corbett, Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, Annapolis, Md: US Naval Institute Press, 1994, vol. 2, pp. 399–403. Ibid., pp. 404, 405–7. Yoshihisa Matsusaka, ‘Human Bullets, General Nogi, and the Myth of Port Arthur’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, p. 185. AVPRI, f. 150, Iaponskii stol, d. 914, l. 9. Quoted in Russko-Iaponskaia voina. Osada i padenie Port-Artura. Opisanie voennykh deistvii na more v 37–38 gg. Meidzi (1904–1905 gg.), Moscow: AST, 2004, pp. 532–6. VIK, vol. 1, pp. 419–20; F. Unger, Russia and Japan, and A Complete History of the War in the Far East, Washington: Harper, 1906, p. 312; A. N. Kuropatkin, op. cit., p. 187; A. A. Kersnovskii, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 54; M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 150, 153. For recent discussions on the strength of Russia and Japanese troops, see A. A. Smirnov, ‘Nedorazumeniia iz Interneta. Novye mify o russko-iaponskoi voine’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, 63–5. A. V. Shishov, Rossiia i Iaponiia. Istoriia voennykh konfliktov. Moscow: Veche, 2000, p. 311. Alexandr Mikhailovich, Velikii kniaz’, op. cit., p. 205. E. Rewentlov, ‘Soobrazheniia po predmetu russko-iaponskoi voiny’, Morskoi sbornik, 1904, no. 1, p. 40. F. McCormick, The Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia, London: Grant Richards, 1909, vol. 1, p. 232. L. V. Zhukova, ‘Ideologicheskoe obosnovanie russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg. v Rossii’, Diss., Moscovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1996, p. 20; E. A. Drozdova, ‘Obraz Iaponii i iapontsev v russko-iaponskuiu voinu 1904–1905 gg. (po materialam dal’nevostochnoi periodiki i arkhivnym fondam Priamurskogo generalgubernatorstva)’, Piataia Dal’nevostochnaia konferentsiia molodykh istorikov, Vladivostok: Dal’nevostochnyi gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1998, 38–42.

210

Notes

97 O. R. Airapetov, ‘Besshabashnaia bestoloch. Armiia, obstchestvo i “kolonial’naia voina” ’, 2004, Rodina, no. 1, p. 54. 98 A. A. Riabinin, Na voine v 1904–1905 gg. Iz zapisok ofitsera deistvuiushchei armii, Odessa: Iuzhno-Russkoe obshchestvo, 1909, p. 3; for further information, see E. Yu. Sergeev and A. A. Ulunian, op. cit., pp. 46–7. 99 A. A. Ignatiiev, Piat’desiat let v stroiu, Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1998, p. 143. 100 E. I. Martynov, Vospominaniia o iaponskoi voine komandira pekhotnogo polka, Plotsk: Tipografiia gubernskogo pravleniia, 1910, p. 5; also see B. Menning, op. cit., p. 162. 101 A. N. Kuropatkin, op. cit., pp. 188–9. 102 See A. Svechin, Voina v gorakh. Takticheskoe issledovanie po opytu russko-iaponskoi voiny, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1906–7, pt 1, pp. 1–2. 3 The Japanese attack against the Pacific Squadron 1 I. Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book, London: Longman & Green, 1912, p. 121. 2 Yoshihisa Matsukata, ‘Human Bullets, General Nogi and the Myth of Port Arthur’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2005, p. 182. 3 A. L. Sidorov (ed.) ‘Dnevnik polkovnika S. A. Rashevskogo (Port-Artur, 1904)’, Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1954, vol. X, p. 117. 4 There are a lot of studies on the diplomatic history of the Russo-Japanese War. For the most recent bibliographical survey in general and on the problem of the lease of Port Arthur by Russia in particular, see D. Schimmelpennick van der Oye, ‘The Immediate Origins of the War’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 23–44. 5 A. N. Golitsinskii, Na pozitsiiakh Port-Artura. Iz dnevnika rotnogo i batal’onnogo komandira, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1907, pp. 3–4. 6 Ibid., p. 5; also see Russko-iaponskaia voina. Osada i padenie Port-Artura. Opisanie voennykh deistvii na more v 37–38 gg. Meidzi (1904–1904 gg.), Moscow: AST, 2004 p. 439; for a more detailed survey, see F. I. Bulgakov, Port-Artur. Iaponskaia osada i russkaia oborona ego s moria i sushi, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1905–6, 2 vols. 7 C. de Grandprey, Le Siège de Port-Arthur, Paris and Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1906, p. 22. 8 Russko-iaponskaia voina. Osada i padenie Port-Artura, p. 71. 9 Ibid. 10 N. Papastratigakis, D. Lieven, ‘The Russian Far Eastern Squadron’s Operational Plans’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, p. 220. 11 B. Menning, ‘Miscalculating One’s Enemy’, War in History, 2006, vol. 13, no. 2, p. 163. 12 T. N. Dupuy et al. (eds), International Military and Defense Encyclopedia, Washington and New York: Brassey’s, 1993, vol. 3, pp. 1302–3. 13 Port-Arthur. Vospominaniia uchastnikov, New York: Izdatel’stvo im Chekhova, 1955, pp. 37–41. 14 V. I. Semenov, Rasplata, London: Murray, 1909, vol. 1, p. 42. 15 ‘Akazuki’ pered Port-Arturom. Iz dnevnika iaponskogo morskogo ofitsera Nirutaka, St Petersburg: Novyi zhurnal literatury, iskusstva i nauki, 1905, pp. 4–5. 16 R. Rowan, Secret Service. Thirty Three Centuries of Espionage, New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967, p. 411. 17 The Russo-Japanese War. Fully Illustrated, vol. 1, p. 47; A. V. Shishov, Rossiia i Iaponiia. Istoriia voennykh konfliktov, Moscow: Veche, 2000, pp. 121–2. 18 Port Arthur. Vospominaniia uchastnikov, pp. 89–90; the Russian historians Vladimir Zolotarev and Iurii Sokolov mistakenly argued that the warships in Port Arthur were

Notes

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

211

equipped with transmitters capable of sending radio messages a distance of 100 miles, see V. A. Zolotarev, Yu. F. Sokolov, Tragediia na Dal’nem Vostoke. Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Animi Fortitudo, 2004, p. 188. ‘Akazuki’ pered Port-Arturom, p. 126. Quoted in B. Menning, op. cit., p. 167. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 4, d. 500, ll. 239–40. B. Menning, op. cit., p. 168. IKpriGMSh, Russko-iaponskaia voina, bk 1, p. 174. M. I. Lill’e, Dnevnik osady Port-Artura, Moscow: Olma-Press, 2002, p. 13. C. Benckendorf, Half a Life. The Reminiscences of a Russian Gentleman, London: The Richards Press, 1954, p. 52. ‘Akazuki’ pered Port-Arturom, p. 26. See, for example, B. Burleigh, Empire of the East or Japan and Russia at War, 1904–5, London: Chapman & Hall, 1905, pp. 102–3. P. Larenko, Stradnye dni Port-Artura. Khronika voennykh sobytii i zhizni v osazhdennoi kreposti s 26-go ianvaria 1904 g. po 9-oe ianvaria 1905 goda, St Petersburg: Tipografiia Shredera, 1906, p. 47. A. Popov (comp.), ‘V shtabe admirala E. I. Alekseeva (iz dnevnika E. A. Plansona)’, Krasnyi Arkhiv, 1930, nos. 41–2, p. 163. See A. N. Stepanov, Port-Artur, Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1978, bk 1, p. 103. IKpriMGSh, Russko-iaponskaia voina, bk 1, p. 119. C. Benckendorf, op. cit., pp. 52–3. VIK, Russko-iaponskaia voina, vol. 1, pp. 273–4; IKpriMGSh, Russko-iaponskaia voina, bk 1, p. 175; also see V. I. Semenov, Rasplata, pt 1, pp. 42–3. Port-Artur. Vospominaniia uchastnikov, p. 51. V. K. Shatsillo, L. A. Shatsillo, Russko-iaponskaia voina. 1904–1905. Fakty. Dokumenty, Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2004, p. 215. Some scholars give the number of 19 torpedoes loosed by the Japanese boats, see P. Luntinen and B. Menning, ‘The Russian Navy at War, 1904–05’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, p. 233. Ibid., p. 121; also see V. Yu. Gribovskii, Flot v russko-iaponskoi voine 1904–1905 gg., St Petersburg: Vysshee voennomorskoe uchilitsche im. Frunze, 1997, pp. 17–18. Inaba Chicharu, ‘Iz istorii podgotovki Iaponii k russko-iaponskoi voine’, in O. R. Airapetov (ed.) Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Moscow: Tri kvadrata, 2004, pp. 55–6. A. Kalmykov, Memoirs of a Russian Diplomat. Outposts of the Empire, 1893–1917, New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1971, p. 158. Nicholas II, op. cit., pp. 138–9. RGVIA, f. 165, op. 1, d. 1085, l. 5ob. I. I. Rostunov (ed.) op. cit., p. 96. L. N. Sobolev, Kuropatkinskaia strategiia. Kratkie zametki byvshego komandira 6-go Sibirskogo armeiskogo korpusa, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1910, p. 272. Moskovskie Vedomosti, 9 (22) February 1904. See O. R. Airapetov, ‘Bes’shabashnaia bestoloch’. Armiia, obshchestvo i “kolonial’naia voina” ’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, p. 52.

4 Russian military intelligence in the first months of war 1 I. Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book, London: Longman & Green, 1912, p. 122. 2 War Ministry, Sbornik prikazov po voennomu vedomstvu za 1890 g., St Petersburg: Peterburskii voennyi okrug, 1891, pp. 110–11. 3 Ibid.; see also K. K. Zvonarev, Agenturnaia razvedka Moscow: BDTs-Press, 2003, vol. 1, p. 150. 4 RGVIA, f. 14390, op. 1., l. 2.

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5 Quoted in Anatolii Utkin, Russko-iaponskaia voina. V nachale vsekh bed, Moscow: Eksmo-Algoritm, 2005, pp. 151–2. 6 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 27514, ll. 1–583; this file incorporates the bulk of petitions by Russian officers to high-ranking commanders with requests to be sent to the Manchurian front. 7 A. Svechin, Voina v gorakh. Takticheskoe issledovanie po opytu russko-iaponskoi voiny, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1906–7, p. 13. 8 A. A. Ignatiev, Piat’desiat let v stroiu, Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1998, p. 165. 9 L. Naudeau, Pis’ma o voine, St Petersburg: I. Gol’dberg, 1906, pp. 64–5. 10 On the perception of war by some scholars see L. V. Zhukova, ‘Ideologicheskoe obosnovanie russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg. v Rossii’, Diss., Moscow: Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1996, pp. 1–22; on the attitude to war on the part of Russian peasantry, see O. R. Airapetov, ‘Bes’shabashnaia besnoloch. Armiia, obshchestvo i “kolonial’naia voina” ’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, p. 55. 11 E. I. Martynov, Vospominaniia o iaponskoi voine komandira pekhotnogo polka, Plotsk: Tipografiia gubernskogo pravleniia, 1910, p. 24. 12 A. A. Riabinin, Na voine v 1904–1905 gg., Iz zapisok ofitsera deistvuiutschei armii, Odessa: Yuzhno-Russkoe obtschestvo, 1909, p. 5. 13 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 27554, l. 17. 14 See, for example, K. Mannerheim, Memoirs, Moscow: Vagrius, 1999, p. 20. 15 A. N. Kuropatkin, Zapiski o russko-iaponskoi voine. Itogi vioiny, Berlin: Ladyschnikov, 1909; St Petersburg: Poligon, 2002, pp. 381, 383. 16 See M. A. Pavlovich, Russko-iaponskaia voina, St Petersburg: Russkii trud, 1905, p. 85. 17 I. Hamilton, op. cit., p. 151. 18 L. Naudeau, op. cit., p. 46. 19 R. Kahn, Iz vrazheskogo stana, St Petersburg: I. Lagov, 1905, p. 20. 20 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt I, ll. 1–15ob. 21 Quoted in P. Hamilton, Espionage and Subversion in an Industrial Society, London: Hutchinson, 1967, p. 26. 22 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt I, ll. 16–56ob. 23 AVPRI, f. 130, op. 470, 1904, d. 129, pt I, ll. 40–2ob. 24 For more details see P. I. Ostrikov, ‘Angliiskaia pomotsch’ Iaponii vo vremia russkoiaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg.’, Kurskii gosudatstvennyi pedagogicheskii institut. Uchenye zapiski, 1961, vol. XIII, pp. 91–116. 25 See E. Yu. Sergeev and Ar. A. Ulunian, Ne podlezhit oglasheniiu, Moscow: RealiiPress, 2003, p. 77. 26 Ibid., pp. 66–79. 27 RGVIA, f. 432, op. 1, d. 277, ll. 180–2ob. 28 RGA VMF, f. 417, op. 1, d. 26574, ll. 12–13; also, see V. A. Zolotarev and I. A. Kozlov, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Bor’ba na more, Moscow: Nauka, 1990, p. 142, 29 RGVIA, f. 432, op. 1, d. 277, ll. 180–2ob. 30 See D. B. Pavlov, Rusko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Sekretnye operatsii na sushei i na more, Moscow: Materik, pp. 50–160. 31 RGVIA, f. 400, op. 4, d. 691, ll. 5, 9–11; it should be stressed that the clandestine activity of the retired Captain Bouguenne in Japan ended in a short period of time. He was arrested on 10 July 1905, and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment; see RGVIA, f. 400, op. 4, d. 691, l. 36. As to Dori, there are no valid data on his espionage for the Russians. 32 Ibid., f. 2000, op. 1, d. 460, ll. 1–3. 33 Ibid., d. 6552, ll. 39, 161. 34 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 27506, l. 47. 35 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 33. 36 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt. 1, ll. 1–15ob.

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37 Ibid., ll. 60–1. 38 Ibid., ll. 16–56ob; however, Pavlov, the former Minister in Korea, spoke in favour of Jean Shaffangeune and Oskar Barbier: ‘I can attest that both agents have been worked very hard in recent months and sent a lot of accurate and important reports’, see V. Lebedev, ‘Razvedka vinovna menee vsekh . . . O maloizuchennykh urokakh i opyte russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg.’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 22 November 2002. 39 RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 6551, l. 176. 40 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 27506, l. 308. 41 A. Popov (comp.) ‘V shtabe admirala E. I. Alekseeva (iz dnevnika E. A. Plansona)’, Krasnyi Arkhiv, 1930, nos 41–2, 170. 42 National Archives of the USA (NA US), RG 59, M 115, R 6, ll. 1–2. 43 P. N. Simanskii, Sobytiia na Dal’nem Vostoke, predshestvovavshie russko-iaponskoi voine. 1891–1903 gg., St Petersburg: Voennaia Tipographiia, 1910, pt 3, p. 402. 44 Quoted in David Wolff, ‘Intelligence Intermediaries: The Competition for Chinese Spies’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, p. 328. 45 V. Lebedev, op. cit. 46 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 27506, l. 194. 47 D. B. Pavlov, op. cit., pp. 263–86. 48 AVPRI, f. 143. Kitaiskii stol, op. 491, d. 41, ll. 9–11; also see Pak Chon Hoe, Russkoiaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. i Koreia, Moscow: Vostochnaia literatura, 1997, p. 223. 49 AVPRI, f. 143. Kitaiskii stol, op. 491, d. 2973, l. 10. 50 AVPRI, f.143. Kitaiskii stol, op. 491, d. 2973, l. 14. 51 Quoted in D. B. Pavlov, op. cit., p. 290. 52 R. Deacon, The Chinese Secret Service, New York: Taplinger, 1974, p. 203. 53 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 27506, ll. 1–15 ob. 54 Ibid., d. 28803, ll. 271–1ob. 55 Ibid., d. 29090, pt 1, ll. 16–56ob. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., d. 29289, ll. 422–2ob. 58 Ibid., l. 439. 59 See D. B. Pavlov, op. cit., pp. 352–6. 60 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt 1, ll. 16–56ob. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 W. Greener, A Secret Agent in Port Arthur, London: A. Constable, 1905, p. 4. 64 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt 1, ll. 16–56ob. 65 Ibid., d. 29076, l. 74. 66 Ibid., f. 76, op. 1, d. 217. 67 Ibid., l. 278. 68 Ibid., l. 285ob. 69 See V. Lebedev, op. cit. 70 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, ll. 56–61ob. 71 Ibid., ll. 1–15ob. 72 Ibid., f. 14926, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 66–6ob., f. VUA, d. 29289, ll. 70–1. 73 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, pt. 1, ll. 65–6; General Kuropatkin wrote in the margin: ‘Not successful. You ought to give a report’, 7 (20) August, 1904. 74 D. B. Pavlov, A. S. Petrov and I. V. Derevianko (eds) Tainy russko-iaponskoi voiny, Moscow: Progress-Akademiia, 1993, pp. 244–6. 75 Svodka takticheskikh ukazanii dannykh nachal’nikami v voinu 1904–1905 gg., St Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia Pol’za, 1906, pp. 306–7. 76 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt. 1, ll. 70–1ob., 1–15ob. 77 See K. P. Linda (ed.), Man’chzhuriia. Geograficheskii ocherk s kartoi, St Petersburg: Glavhyi Shtab, 1900.

214 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

Notes

RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt 1, ll. 1–15ob. Ibid., ll. 1–15ob. Ibid., ll. 16–56ob. Ibid., ll. 1–15ob.; d. 29091, l. 136ob. The first chunguses appeared in China in the course of the Taiping rebellion after 1870, see A. Ular, A Russo-Chinese Empire, Westminster, Md: Archibald Constable, 1904, pp. 262–3. RGVIA, f. 14390, op. 2, d. 15, ll. 3–14a. D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, ‘Shapkami ne zakidali. Russkaia voennaia razvedka na Man’chzhurskom fronte’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, 37. RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt 1, ll. 1–15ob. Ibid. P. I. Izmestiev, O nashei tainoi razvedke v minuvshuiu kampaniiu, Warsaw: Russkoe obtschestvo, 1910, p. 11.

5 Inside the bastions of Port Arthur 1 E. K. Nozhine, Pravda o Port-Arture, St Petersburg: Artem’ev, 1906–7, p. 13. 2 See S. O. Makarov, Rassuzhdeniia po voprosam morskoi taktiki, Petrograd: Glavnyi Morskoi shtab, 1916. 3 There were, however, unsuccessful attempts to lay mines in Talienwan Bay by the destroyer Enisei and the cruiser Boyarin in the first days of hostilities, see V. Iu. Gribovskii, Flot v russko-iaponskoi voine 1904–1905 gg., St Petersburg: Vysshee voennomorskoe uchilitsche im. M. Frunze, 1997, pp. 24–5. 4 V. A. Zolotarev and I. A. Kozlov, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Bor’ba na more, Moscow: Nauka, 1990, pp. 104–5. 5 E. K. Nozhine, op. cit., pt 1, p. 67. 6 A. L. Sidorov (ed.), ‘Dnevnik polkovnika S. A. Rashevskogo (Port-Artur, 1904)’, Istoricheskii arkhiv, vol. X (1954), 65–6; V. A. Zolotarev and I. A. Kozlov, op. cit., pp. 97–8. 7 Nicholas II, Dnevnik imperatora Nikolaia II. 1890–1916 gg., Moscow: Polistar, 1991, p. 147. 8 A. L. Sidorov (ed.), op. cit., pp. 80–4; E. K. Nozhine, op. cit., pt 1, p. 72; W. R. Smith, The Siege and Fall of Port Arthur, London: Eveleigh Nash, 1905, p. 50. 9 L. F. Dobrotvorskii, Uroki minuvshei voiny, Kronstadt: Tipographiia morskoi gazety Kotlin, 1907, p. 130. 10 Quoted in G. Jukes, The Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905, Oxford: Osprey, 2002, p. 79. 11 Quoted in V. I. Semenov, Rasplata, London: Murray, 1909, pt 1, p. 59. 12 Quoted in P. Luntinen and B. W. Menning, ‘The Russian Navy at War, 1904–05’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, p. 237. 13 For further details, see P. D. Bykov, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Deistviia na more, Moscow: Voenmorizdat, 1942; A. I. Sorokin, Oborona Port-Artura. Russko-iaponskaia voina, 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Voenizdat, 1952; V. A. Zolotarev, I. A. Kozlov, op. cit.; J. Corbett, Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, Annapolis, Md: US Naval Institute Press, 1994, vols 1–2; Girard Piouffre, La guerre russo-japonaise sur mer, Nantes: Marines, 1999; for a concise, but up-to-date, analysis, see P. Luntinen and B. Menning, op. cit. 14 G. Piouffre, op. cit., p. 154; P. Luntinen and B. Menning, op. cit., p. 240. 15 Instead of 615 naval guns which should be stationed on board the Russian battleships, they were equipped with only 76 naval guns of larger calibres and 194 naval guns of smaller calibres on 10 August. All the other ordnance was removed to support ground defences on the orders of Lieutenant General Anatolii Stessel,

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22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

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the head of the Liaodong fortified region, see NA US, RG 80, M 1052, no. 17537–60. Ibid. For the general picture of Russian military cruising in the Pacific during the war, see V. E. Yegoriev, Operatsii vladivostokskikh kreiserov v russko-iaponskuiu voinu 1904–1905 gg., Moscow and Leningrad: Voenmorizdat, 1939. V. A. Zolotarev, I. A. Kozlov, op. cit., p. 147. A. Popov (comp.) ‘V shtabe admirala E. I. Alekseeva (iz dnevnika E. A. Plansona)’, Krasnyi Arkhiv, 1930, nos 41–2, p. 177. V. E. Yegoriev, op. cit., pp. 64–6; V. A. Zolotarev, I. A. Kozlov, op. cit., p. 136. NA US, RG 80, M 1052, no. 17537–30; for further information about Russian submarines in 1904–5, see M. Tyvder, Na podvodnoi lodke. Iz dnevnika uchastnika minuvshei voiny, Moscow: Shtab Moskovskogo voennogo okruga, 1912; E. Kelle, ‘Podvodnye lodki Rossii v 1904–1905 gg.’, Morskoi sbornik, 1934, nos 11, 13; G. M. Trusov, Podvodnye lodki v russkom i sovetskom flote, Leningrad: Voenizdat, 1963, pp. 131–3; the records of the Russian submarine activities undertaken in 1905 refuted the statements by some less informed scholars that neither side used submarines during the Russo-Japanese War, see, for example, G. Jukes, op. cit., p. 90. See M. Bubnov, Port-Artur. Vospominaniia o deiatel’nosti 1-oi Tikhookeanskoi eskadry i morskikh komand na beregu vo vremia osady Port-Artura v 1904 g., St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1907; N. McCully, The McCully Report. The RussoJapanese War, 1904–1905, Annapolis, Md: US Naval Institute Press, 1977. P. Luntinen and B. Menning, op. cit., p. 235. N. Bentwich, ‘Espionage and Scientific Invention’, Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, 1910, vol. 10, no. 2, 244–5. Chiharu Inaba, ‘Iz istorii razvedki v gody russko-iaponskoi voiny (1904–1905 gg.), Mezhdunarodnaia telegrafnaia sviaz’ i perekhvat protivnikom’, Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1994, nos 4–5, 224–5. C. de Grandprey, La Siège de Port-Arthur, Paris and Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1906, p. 94. On the submarine cable, see D. B. Pavlov, op. cit., p. 292. RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt 1, ll. 1–15ob. Port-Arthur. Vospominaniia uchastnikov, New York: Izdatel’stvo Chekhova, 1955, pp. 80–1. N. Bentwich, op. cit., p. 247. I. O. Ermachenko, ‘V bor’be s kakoi-to aziatskoi drian’iu’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, 77. R. Rowan, Secret Service. Thirty Three Centuries of Espionage, New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967, p. 403. Port-Arthur. Vospominaniia uchastnikov, p. 81; P. Larenko, op. cit., p. 296. RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt 1, ll. 10–15ob. Port-Arthur. Vospominaniia uchastnikov, p. 91. Russo-Japanese War. Osada i padenie Port-Artura, pp. 289–90. A. Buiakov (ed.) ‘Predmet detal’nogo izucheniia’, Morskoi sbornik, 1995, no. 3, 92. RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 31903, l. 17. R. Hargreaves, Red Sun Rising: The Siege of Port Arthur, Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1962, p. 23. A. N. Stepanov, Port-Artur, Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1978, bk 1, p. 12. A. L. Sidorov (ed.), op. cit., 121. Ibid., 316. V. I. Semenov, op. cit., pt 1, p. 126. A. L. Sidorov (ed.), op. cit., p. 122. A. I. Utkin, Russko-iaponskaia voina. V nachale vsekh bed, Moscow: EksmoAlgoritm, 2005, p. 291.

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Notes

46 P. Larenko, op. cit., p. 286. 47 A. N. Golitsynskii, Na positsiiakh Port-Artura. Iz dnevnika rotnogo i batal’onnogo komandira, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1907, p. 12. 48 W. R. Smith, op. cit., p. 3. 49 A. L. Sidorov (ed.), op. cit., p. 154; P. Larenko, op. cit., p. 255. 50 E. K. Nozhine, op. cit., pt 1, p. 229. Nozhine, who witnessed the siege of Port Arthur as the correspondent of the daily paper Novyi Krai, closed down by order of Stessel on 8 September 1904, mentioned only one skilled officer of combat reconnaissance – Lieutenant Bitsoev, who was killed in a skirmish on the Japanese positions in early June 1904. 51 P. E., ‘Vozdushnye shary v polevoi voine’, Letopis’ voiny s Iaponiei, 1904, no. 24, 447–8. 52 Otchet o deiatel’nosti Upravleniia general-kvartirmeistera 3-ei Man’chzhurskoi armii za vremia voiny 1904–1905 gg., St Petersburg: Glavnyi Shtab, 1907, p. 217; D. Parskii, Vospominaniia i mysli o poslednei voine (1904–1905 gg.), St Petersburg: Rabotnik, 1906, p. 23; E. Tettau, 18 mesiatsev s russkimi voiskami v Man’churii, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1908, pp. 156–7. 53 A. L. Sidorov (ed.), op. cit., 173. 54 Ibid., 149, 203; E. K. Nozhine, op. cit., pt 1, p. 38; P. Larenko, op. cit., p. 328. 55 V. Mikheev, ‘Na nebo pod vintom’, Vokrug sveta, 2006, no. 4, 188. 56 A. L. Sidorov (ed.), op. cit., 235. 57 W. R. Smith, op. cit., pp. 462, 473. 58 Ibid., pp. 454–5. 59 B. Burleigh, op. cit., p. 417. 60 W. Greener, A Secret Agent in Port Arthur, London: A. Constable, 1905, p. 45. 6 Russian military intelligence in the Battles of Liaoyang and Shaho 1 Quoted in D. Wolff, ‘Intelligence Intermediaries: The Competition for Chinese Spies’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, p. 305. 2 G. Jukes, The Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905, Oxford: Osprey, 2002, p. 84. 3 RGVIA, f. 76, op. 1, d. 217, ll. 288–8ob. 4 See, for example, correspondence by Admiral Alekseev and Lieutenant General Sakharov on this problem, RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 27504, ll. 132, 137; l. 29090, pt 1, ll. 1–15ob. 5 I. Nish, ‘Japanese Intelligence and the Approach of the Russo-Japanese War’, in Christopher Andrew and David Dilks (eds) The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984, p. 29. 6 N. A. Ukhach-Ogorovich, Man’chzhurskii teatr voennykh deistvii v russko-iaponskuiu voinu 1904–1905 gg., Kiev: S. V. Kul’zhenko, 1911, p. 17. 7 D. Wolff, To the Harbin Station. The Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria, 1898–1914, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 121–2. 8 N. A. Ukhach-Ogorovich, op. cit., p. 17. 9 E. M. Primakov (ed.) Ocherki istorii rossiiskoi vneshnei razvedki, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 172–82. 10 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt 1, ll. 1–15ob. 11 Ibid., ll. 16–56ob. 12 K. K. Zvonarev, Agenturnaia razvedka, Moscow: BDTs-Press, 2003, vol. 1, p. 76. 13 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29289, ll. 234–52ob. 14 RGVIA, f. 76, op. 1, d. 358, ll. 1–6. 15 On participation of cavalry units in conflicts during the last third of the nineteenth and twentieth century, including the Russo-Japanese War, see A. F. Matkovskii, Razvedy-

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vatel’naia deiatel’nost’ konnitsy i vzgliady na nee v Rossii, Germanii i Frantsii, St Petersburg: Petersburgskii voennyi okrug, 1910; P. N. Bazhenov, Sandepu – Mukden. Vospominaniia ochevidtsa – uchastnika voiny, St Petersburg: Severnoe knigoizdatel’stvo, 1911; F. K. Gershel’man, Konnitsa v iaponskoi voine i v byloe vremia, St Petersburg: Glavnoe upravlenie udelov, 1912. VIK, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg., vol. 2, pt 1, p. 55. A. A. Ignatiev, Piat’desiat let v stroiu, Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1998, p. 151. V. D. Kozlov, V tylu u iapontsev (nabeg partisan v Koreiu). Ocherki, St Petersburg: M. Vilenchik, 1904, pp. 56, 67. VIK, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. vol. 2, pt 1, p. 357. D. I. Anichkov, Piat’ nedel’ v otriade generala Mishchenko, St Petersburg: I. Levenshtein, 1907. F. Gershel’man, op. cit., pp. 4–5; K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 52–3. F. Gershel’man, op. cit., pp. 12, 17. RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29289, ll. 121–1ob. See K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 53. See F. Gershel’man, op. cit., pp. 29–50. K. I. Druzhinin, Vospominaniia o russko-iaponskoi voine 1904–1905 gg. uchastnikadobrovoltsa, St Petersburg: Russkaia Skoropechatnia, 1909, p. 48. I. V. Derevianko, ‘Russkaia agenturnaia razvedka v 1902–1905 gg.’, in D. B. Pavlov, A. S. Petrov and I. V. Derevianko (eds) Tainy russko-iaponskoi voiny, Moscow: Progress-Akademia, 1993, p. 78. A. A. Svechin, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg., Oranienbaum: Ofitserskaia strelkovaia shkola, 1910, p. 14. M. Grulev, V shtabakh i na poliakh Dal’nego Vostoka, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1908, p. 197. K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 53; M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 197; A. V. Shishov, Rossiia i Iaponiia. Istoriia voennykh konfliktov, Moscow: Veche, 2000, p. 244. RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, part 1, ll. 1–15ob; K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 73. A. A. Ignatiev, op. cit., p. 201. The US War Department. Office of the Chief of Staff, Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1906, pt 1, p. 11. RGVIA, f. 14926, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 71–1ob. A. Shtakelberg, Vafangou, Russkii Invalid, 1906, no. 51. M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 195. F. Knight, Russia Fights Japan, London: Macdonald, 1969, p. 9. P. Daletskii, Na sopkakh Man’chzhurii, Leningrad: Sovjetskii Pisatel’, 1954, vol. 1, p. 103. V. V. Buniakovskii, Sluzhba bezopasnosti voisk. Okhranenie i razvedyvanie po opytu i s primerami iz russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Russkii trud, 1909, pp. 108–9. Asiaticus, ‘Razvedka vo vremia russko-iaponskoi voiny’, Russko-iaponskaia voina v nabliudeniakh i suzhdeniakh inostrantsev, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1907, p. 57. A. A. Kersnovskii, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 63. A. A. Ignatiev, op. cit., p. 182. F. de Negrier, Lessons of the Russo-Japanese War, London: Hugh Rees, 1906, pp. 19–20. John Steinberg, ‘The Operational Overview’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, p. 119. F. de Negrier, op. cit., p. 21. RGVIA, f. 487, op. 1, d. 432, ll. 23–3ob. Svodka takticheskikh ukazanii, dannykh nachal’nikami v voinu 1904–1905 gg., p. 254.

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Notes

48 Ibid., p. 171. 49 See A. A. Svechin, Evoluitsiia voennogo iskusstva, Moscow and Leningrad: Voenizdat, 1927–8, vol. 2, p. 508. 50 R. Harrison, The Russian Way of War. Operational Art, 1904–1940, Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2001, p. 16. 51 A. A. Svechin, Voina v gorakh. Takticheskoe issledovanie po opytu russko-iaponskoi voiny, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1906, pt 1, pp. 2, 4, 14–15. 52 A. A. Svechin, op. cit., pp. 31–3. 53 P. D. Girs, Konno-okhotnich’i komandy v russko-iaponskuiu voinu, St Petersburg: Voennoe knigoizdatel’stvo V. K. Shneur, 1906, p. 14. 54 Quoted in Russko-iaponskaia voina. Osada i padenie Port-Artura, p. 683. 7 Realignments in Russian military intelligence before and after the Battle of Mukden 1 I. Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book, London: Longman & Green, 1912, p. 122. 2 See S. S. Oldenburg, Tsarstvovanie imperatora Nikolaia II, Rostov-na-Donu: Foenix, 1998, p. 208. 3 Nicholas II, Dnevnik imperatora Nikolaia II, 1890–1906 gg., Moscow: Polistar, 1991, p. 188. 4 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29085, l. 180; see also I. N. Kravtsev, Tainye sluzhby imperii, Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia gosudarstvennoi sluzhby, 1999, p. 181. 5 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29056, l. 12. 6 As David Wolff mentioned in his article on Chinese espionage in the war, these materials showed the Russians to be fairly well informed regarding the Japanese positions, see David Wolff, ‘Intelligence Intermediaries’, in John Steinberg et al., The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, p. 316. 7 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 8 Ibid., f. 2000, op. 1, d. 6549, l. 79. 9 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 1–15ob., 16–56ob., 94–4ob. 10 Ibid., d. 29090, vol. 2, ll. 95–6ob. 11 For a publication of archival documents on the case of Jose Maria Giddis, see D. B. Pavlov, A. S. Petrov and I. V. Derevianko (eds) Tainy russko-iaponskoi voiny, pp. 274–306. 12 K. K. Zvonarev, Agenturnaia razvedka, Moscow: BDTs-Press, 2003, vol. 1, p. 78. 13 See M. Alekseev, Voennaia razvedka Rossii ot Riurika do Nikolaia II, Moscow: Russkaia razvedka, 1998, vol. 1, p. 216. 14 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 78–9. 15 Ibid., p. 79. 16 RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 6554, ll. 9–9ob. 17 Ibid., ll. 26–9ob. 18 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 96–7ob. 19 Ibid., ll. 16–56ob. 20 Ibid., f. 487, op. 1, d. 489, l. 15. 21 V. Lebedev, ‘Razvedka vinovna menee vsekh . . . O maloizuchennykh urokakh i opyte russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg.’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 22 November 2002. 22 See O. R. Airapetov, ‘Russkaia armiia na sopkakh Man’chzhurii’, Voprosy istorii, 2002, no. 1, p. 73. 23 Otchet o deiatel’nosti Upravleniia general-kvartirmeistera 3-ei Man’chzhurskoi armii za vremia voiny 1904–1905 gg., p. 163 24 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29085, l. 180; for further reorganization of high-ranking commanders, see I. N. Kravtsev, op. cit., p. 181.

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25 Otchet o deiatel’nosti Upravleniia general-kvartirmeistera 3-ei Man’chzhurskoi armii za vremia voiny 1904–1905 gg., p. 160. 26 Ibid., p. 161. 27 Ibid., pp. 164, 168–9. 28 Ibid., p. 165; on the Japanese ‘generosity’ towards native spies, see R. Rowan, Secret Service. Thirty Three Centuries of Espionage, New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967, pp. 219–23, particularly, p. 221. 29 P. I. Izmestiev, O nashei tainoi razvedke v minuvshuiu kampaniiu, Warsaw: Russkoe obtschestvo, 1910, p. 9. 30 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 64. 31 RGVIA, f. 14926, op. 1, d. 26, ll. 3–6ob., 13–14. 32 Ibid., l. 13; P. I. Izmestiev, op. cit., p. 13. 33 RGVIA, f. 14926, op. 1, d. 26, l. 21. 34 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 35 Ibid., f. 14390, op. 2, d. 29, ll. 108–8ob. 36 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 37 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 57. 38 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29093, ll. 85–7ob. 39 Ibid., f. 14378, op. 2, d. 14, ll. 2–4ob. 40 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29093, ll. 85–7ob., 89. 41 K. K. Zvonarev, vol. 1, pp. 57–8. Positive assertions given by Zvonarev, however, did not prevent him from many invectives, often false, against allegedly unmethodical activities of staffers at all levels of Russian MI. For example, Zvonarev obviously repudiated the so-called ‘administrative reconnaissance’ when he remarked on p. 75 that: ‘Reconnaissance undertakings conducted by the military Commissar [Kvetsinskii] were separate from the activities of army headquarters. The Commissar was unaware of areas and purposes of their reconnaissance, so were staffers of his plans and activities.’ 42 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29050, ll. 1–1ob. 43 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 76. 44 See A. V. Shishov, Rossia i Iaponiia. Istoriia voennykh konfliktov, Moscow: Veche, 2000, p. 292. 45 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 46 M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 199. 47 D. Wolff, ‘Intelligence Intermediaries’, p. 316. 48 N. Kravchenko, Na voinu! Pis’ma, vospominaniia, ocherki voennogo korrespondenta, St Petersburg: Tovaritschestvo R. Gelike i A. Vil’borg, 1905, pp. 19–20. 49 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 15–56ob. 50 Ibid., d. 29054, ll. 22–3. 51 Ibid., d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 52 See I. K. Shakhnovskii, Ocherk deiatel’nosti Zaamurskogo okruga Otdel’nogo korpusa pogranichnoi strazhi v period minuvshei russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg., St Petersburg: Energiia, 1906, pp. 82–96. 53 Karl Mannerheim, Memoirs, Moscow: Vagrius, 1999, pp. 25–6. 54 RGVIA, f. 14390, op. 2, d. 15, ll. 314–14ob. 55 Ibid., d. 30, ll. 181–2ob. 56 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 31898, ll. 93–4. 57 Ibid., d. 29055, ll. 87–8. 58 Ibid., d. 29548, ll. 115–18ob. 59 Ibid., f. 14390, op. 2, d. 15, ll. 362–5. 60 A. A. Riabinin, op. cit., pp. 144–5. 61 Svodka takticheskich ukazanii, dannykh nachal’nikami v voinu 1904–1905 gg., p. 473. 62 Ibid., pp. 609–10.

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63 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 64 Otchet o deiatel’nosti razvedyvatel’nogo otdeleniia Upravleniia general-kvartirmeistera shtaba 1-oi Man’chzhurskoi armii, pp. 42–3. 65 N. Voronovich, Russko-iaponskaia voina. Vospominaniia, New York: no publisher, 1952, p. 52. 66 See A. Liubitskii, Vospominaniia iz russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg., St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1906, pp. 29–38. 67 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29058, ll. 11–12ob. 68 Ibid., d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 69 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 53. 70 Ibid., p. 54. 71 A. Kosmatov, ‘S orovaitsami. Vospominaniia topographa o russko-iaponskoi voine’, in M. N. Levitskii (ed.) V trushchobakh Man’chzhurii i nashikh vostochnykh okrain, Sbornik ocherkov, rasskazov i vospominanii voennykh topographov, Odessa: Shtab voennogo okruga, 1910, p. 425. 72 S. Dobson (ed.) ‘Iz istorii razvedyvatelnoi deiatelnosti Iaponii i Rossii’. Lecture delivered by J. Haldane, Colonel of the British War Ministry, Istoricheskii archiv, 1997, no. 1, p. 165. 73 Otchet o deiatel’nosti Upravleniia general-kvartirmeistera 3-ei Man’chzhurskoi armii za vremia voiny 1904–1905 gg., p. 214. 74 A. Skosarevskii, Iz boevoi zhizni ofitsera-razvedchika v russko-iaponskuiu voinu, St Petersburg: P. Sinchenko, 1911, pp. 18–19. 75 P. Daletskii, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 107. 76 M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 201–2. 77 Newton A. McCully, The McCully Report. The Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, Annapolis, Md: US Naval Institute Press, 1977, p. 254. 78 See John Steinberg, ‘The Operational Overview’, in John Steinberg et al., The RussoJapanese War in Global Prospect, p. 125. 79 F. K. Gershel’man, op. cit., p. 64. 80 Otchet o deiatel’nosti Upravleniia general-kvartirmeistera 3-ei Man’chzhurskoi armii za vremia voiny 1904–1905 gg., p. 214. 81 PRO, War Office papers/106/38, Gerard report, 30 March 1905. 82 A. A. Svechin and Yu. D. Romanovskii, Russko-iaponskaia voina, St Petersburg: Ofitserskaia strelkovaia shkola, 1910, pp. 342–3. 83 Otchet o deiatel’nosti razvedyvatel’nogo otdeleniia Upravleniia general-kvartirmeistera shtaba 1-oi Man’chzhurskoi armii, pp. 70–1. 84 K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 68. 85 Ibid., p. 69. 86 Ibid., pp. 69–70. 87 Ibid., pp. 71–2. 88 Ibid., p. 67. 89 Ibid., p. 67. 90 Ibid., p. 72. 91 Ibid., pp. 72–3. 8 The debacle in the Strait of Tsushima 1 Lord Redesdale, The Garter Mission to Japan, London, 1906, p. 50. 2 R. Hough, The Fleet that Had to Die, Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000, p. 151. 3 On the biography of Admiral Rozhestvesnskii, see V. Yu. Gribovskii and V. P. Poznakhirev, Vitse-Admiral Z. P. Rozhestvenskii, St Petersburg: Vysshee voennomorskoe uchilitste im. Frunze, 1999. 4 RGA VMF, f. 417, op. 1, d. 3015, ll. 401–2. 5 Ibid., l. 330.

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6 For further details on the energetic activities of Colonel Akashi, a key figure in the Japanese strategic intelligence in Europe, see Antii Kujala, ‘The Japanese General Staff and the Issue of Concerted Anti-Government Action in the Russian Empire, 1904–5’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 261–80. 7 See J. Corbett, Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, Annapolis, Md: US Naval Institute Press, 1994, vol. 1, pp. 399–403; N. Papastratigakis and D. Lieven, ‘The Russian Far Eastern Squadron’s Operational Plans’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in the Global Perspective, pp. 203–27. 8 P. Luntinen and B. Menning, ‘The Russian Navy at War, 1904–05’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in the Global Perspective, p. 245. 9 Aleksandr Mikhailovich, Velikii kniaz’, Vospominaniia, Moscow: Zakharov-AST, 1999, pp. 213–14. 10 NA US, RG 80, M 1052, f. 19849–1. 11 See C. Pleshakov, The Tsar’s Last Armada, New York: Basic Books, 2002, pp. 75–6. 12 Ibid., p. 78. 13 RGA VMF, f. 417, op. 1, d. 3017, l. 251. For a good summary of this institution, see Jonathan W. Daly, ‘Autocracy under Siege. Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866–1905’, Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998, pp. 98–123, and D. Pavlov, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Materik, 2004, pp. 55–159. 14 K. K. Zvonarev, Agenturnaia razvedka, Moscow: BDTs-Press, 2003, vol. 1, pp. 79–81; for a more profound narration, see K. Betskii and P. Pavlov, Russkii Rokambol’: prikliucheniia Manasevicha-Manuilova, Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1925. 15 V. Lebedev, ‘Razvedka vinovna menee vsekh . . .’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 22 November 2002. 16 Aleksandr Mikhailovich, Velikii kniaz’, op. cit., p. 209. 17 R. Deacon, Kempei Tai. A History of the Japanese Secret Service, New York and Toronto: Beaufort Books, 1983, p. 65. 18 The Times, 25 October 1904; quoted in R. Deacon, op. cit., p. 65. 19 R. Hough, op. cit., p. 45 20 Quoted in A. Mogilevich and M. Airapetian, ‘Legenda i pravda o “Gull’skom intsidente” 1904 g.’, Istoricheskii zhurnal, 1940, no. 6, 52. 21 Ibid., 49. 22 V. Semenov, Rasplata, London: Murray, 1909, pt 1, pp. 256–7. 23 RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 970, l. 35. 24 Ibid., ll. 33–40. 25 F. Knight, Russia Fights Japan, London: Macdonald, 1969, p. 79; V. A. Zolotarev and I. A. Kozlov, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Bor’ba na more, Moscow: Nauka, 1990, pp. 157–8. 26 RGVIA, f. 440, op. 1, d. 209, l. 221. 27 M. Alekseev, Voennaia razvedka Rossii ot Riurika do Nikolaia II, Moscow: Russkaia razvedka, 1998, vol. 1, p. 216. 28 RGVIA, f. 440, op. 1, d. 209, l. 221. 29 On the Hull incident, also see V. A. Teplov, Proisshestvie v Severnom more, St Petersburg: Berezovskii, 1905; N. V. Novikov, ‘Gul’skii intsident i tsarskaia okhranka’, Morskoi sbornik, 1935, no. 6, 38–49; J. Corbett, Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, Annapolis, Md.: US Naval Institute Press, 1994, pp. 27–40. 30 D. I. Abrikosov, Revelations of a Russian Diplomat. The Memoirs of Dmitrii Abrikosov, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964, p. 90. 31 Aleksandr Mikhailovich, Velikii kniaz’, op. cit., p. 211. 32 V. A. Zolotarev and I. A. Kozlov, op. cit., pp. 133–42. 33 RGA VMF, f. 417, op. 1, d. 26614, ll. 5–225; d. 26628, ll. 16–241.

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34 Ibid., f. 531, op. 1, d. 93, ll. 2–10; on secret instructions given to these cruisers by Rozhestvenskii, also see A. S. Novikov-Priboi, op. cit., bk. 2, p. 322. 35 V. A. Zolotarev and I. A. Kozlov, op. cit., pp. 142–3. 36 V. A. Zolotarev and I. A. Kozlov, op. cit., pp. 157–8; J. Corbett, op. cit., pp. 17–26. 37 F. Knight, op. cit., p. 77. 38 V. Semenov, op. cit., p. 378. 39 C. Pleshakov, op. cit., p. 195. 40 G. Aleksandrovskii, Tsusimskii boi, New York: Rossiia Publishers, 1958, p. 257. 41 S eskadroi admirala Rozhestvenskogo, Paris: no publisher, 1930, p. 79. 42 J. Corbett, op. cit., p. 227. 43 See, for example, A. Baiov, ‘Prichiny porazheniia admirala Rozhestvenskogo’, Letopis’ voiny s Iaponiei, 1905, no 62, 1264–5; V. A. Zolotarev and Yu. F. Sokolov, Tragedia na Dal’nem Vostoke. Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg., Moscow: Animi Fortitudo, 2004, bk 1, pp. 169, 171. 44 V. I. Semenov, op. cit., p. 402. 45 N. Bush, The Emperor’s Sword: Japan versus Russia in the Battle of Tsushima, New York: Longman, 1969. 46 RGA VMF, f. 763, op. 1, d. 66, ll. 1–2.

9 The dilemmas of Portsmouth 1 V. Soloviev, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, Moscow: Veche, 1999, p. 345. 2 Pak Chon Hoe, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. i Koreia, Moscow: Vostochnaia literature, 1997, p. 211. 3 Ibid., p. 218. 4 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, ll. 50–0ob. 5 Ibid., d. 31903, ll. 20–2ob., 25. 6 Ibid., ll. 31–2. 7 Ibid., ll. 67–8; f. 487, op. 1, d. 432, ll. 69–9ob. 8 Ibid., f. 487, op. 1, d. 439, ll. 1–65. 9 Ibid., d. 916, ll. 1–25ob.; see also: M. Kinai (ed.) Russko-iaponskaia voina. Ofitsial’nye doneseniia iaponskikh komanduiushchikh sukhoputnymi i morskimi silami, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1909, vol. 2, pp. 177–202. 10 Norman E. Saul, ‘The Kittery Peace’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, p. 485. 11 A. Ganin, ‘Zazhglas’ krovavaia zaria . . . Orenburgskie kazaki na sopkakh Man’chzhurii’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, p. 71. 12 I. K. Shakhnovskii, Ocherk deiatel’nosti Zaamurskogo okruga Otdel’nogo korpusa pogranichnoi strazhi v period minuvshei russko-iaponskoi voiny (1904–1905 gg.), St Petersburg: Energiia, 1906, pp. 50–68. 13 RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 1647, ll. 122–3. 14 Ibid., f. 14926, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 123–4ob. 15 N. A. Ukhach-Ogorovich, Man’chzhurskii teatr voennykh deistvii, Kiev: S. V. Kul’zhenko, 1911, pp. 69–74. 16 F. Immanuel, Russko-iaponskaia voina v voennom i politicheskom otnosheniiakh, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1906, pt 2, p. 83. 17 RGVIA, f. 14390, op. 2, d. 26, ll. 237–8ob., 803–9. 18 Y. Alekseev, ‘V Man’chzhurii. Zametki’, in M. N. Levitskii (ed.) V trushchobakh Man’chzhurii i nashikh vostochnykh okrain. Sbornik ocherkov, rasskazov i vospominanii voennykh topographov, Odessa: Shtab voennogo okruga, 1910, p. 316. 19 D. B. Pavlov, A. S. Petrov and I. V. Derevianko, (eds) Tainy russko-iaponskoi voiny, Moscow: Progress-Akademiia, 1993, pp. 195–6. 20 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob.

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21 A. L. Sidorov (ed.) ‘Dnevnik polkovnika S. A. Rashevskogo’, Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1954, vol. X, 338. 22 The pre-war activities of Tifontai are thoroughly explored by D. Wolff, To the Harbin Station, pp. 15–17, 198–9. 23 RGVIA, f. 14926, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 131–2. 24 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 25 Ibid.; also quoted in D. Wolff, ‘Intelligence intermediaries’, p. 314. 26 RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 1647, ll. 122–3. 27 Ibid., f. 14390, op. 2, d. 26, ll. 448–8ob. 28 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 108–11. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., ll. 108–11. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 AVPRI, f. 326, op. 928, l. 114. 34 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, pt 1, ll. 16–56ob. 35 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 36 Ibid., d. 29050, ll. 1–1ob. 37 Ibid., ll. 2–3, 173–4; d. 29093, ll. 94–106. 38 D. B. Pavlov, A. S. Petrov and I. V. Derevianko (ed.) Tainy russko-iaponskoi voiny, p. 153. 39 Otchet o deiatel’nosti razvedyvatel’nogo otdeleniia Upravleniia general-kvartirmeistera shtaba 1-oi Man’chzhurskoi armii, p. 10. 40 Ibid., p. 64. 41 Ibid., p. 65. 42 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., f. 14378, op. 1, d. 123, ll. 4–8ob., 159–232, 233–47. 46 Ibid., f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 47 Ibid. 48 A. A. Ignatiev, op. cit., p. 176; A. V. Kaul’bars, 2-ia armiia pod Mukdenom, Odessa: Shtab voennogo okruga, 1908, pt 1, p. 38; P. N. Bazhenov, op. cit., pp. 243–88. 49 RGVIA, f. 14926, op. 1, d. 26, ll. 9ob.-10; f. VUA, d. 10243, ll. 1–616 [the register books of the 2nd Manchurian Army intelligence section, 1905]. 50 A. V. Ignatiev, S. Yu. Witte – diplomat, Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1989, p. 196. 51 S. Yu. Witte, Vospominania, Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1960, vol. 2, pp. 573–4. 52 For a detailed survey of these attempts, see R. Esthus, ‘Nicholas and the Russo-Japanese War’, Russian Review, 1981, vol. 40, no. 4, 396–411 and N. Saul, ‘The Kittery Peace’, in John Steinberg et al. (eds) The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective, pp. 485–507. 53 R. Kowner, ‘ “Lighter than Yellow, but not Enough”: Western Discourse on the Japanese “Race”, 1854–1904’, The Historical Journal, 2000, vol. 43, no. 1, 129. 54 On the tsar’s vacillations before and during the Portsmouth conference, see R. Esthus, op. cit. 55 See A. V. Ignatiev, op. cit., p. 212. 56 Quoted in Russko-iaponskaia voina. Osada i padenie Port-Artura, Opisanie voennykh deistvii na more v 37–38 gg. Meidzi (1904–1904 gg.), Moscow: AST, 2004, p. 551. 57 See, for example, R. Rosen, Forty Years of Diplomacy, London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Alfred Knopf, 1922, vol. 1, pp. 253–73. 58 I. Ya. Korostovets, Stranitsy iz istorii russkoi diplomatii. Russko-iaponskie peregovory v Portsmute v 1905 g., Peking: Tipographiia Rosiiskoi Dukhovnoi missii, 1923, pp. 41, 95–6.

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59 See Port-Arthur. Vospominania uchastnikov, New York: Izdatel’stvo im. Chekhova, 1955, pp. 400–1. 60 See N. V. Grekov, Russkaia kontrrazvedka v 1905–1917 gg.: shpionomaniia i real’nye problemy, Moscow: Moskovskii obtschestvennyi nauchnyi fond, 2000, p. 41. 61 NA US, RG 80, M 1052, f. 20183-1–5. 62 M. N. Pokrovskii (ed.) Russko-iaponskaia voina. Iz dnevnikov A. N. Kuropatkina i N. P. Linevicha, Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1925, p. 96; D. I. Abrikosov, Revelations of a Russian Diplomat. The Memoirs of Dmitrii Abrikosov, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964, p. 122; F. P. Roerberg, Istoricheskie tainy velikikh pobed i neobjasnimykh porazhenii. Zapiski uchastnika russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg. i chlena Voenno-istoricheskoi komissii po opisaniiu russko-iaponskoi voiny, Alexandria: P. Roerberg, 1925; P. Roerberg: Madrid, 1967, pp. 351–2. 63 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29055, l. 50. 64 See O. R. Airapetov, ‘Besshabashnaia bestoloch’, Rodina, 2004, no. 1, p. 55. 65 A. Liubitskii, op. cit., pp. 230–1. 66 D. Wolff, To the Harbin Station, p. 125. 67 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29076, ll. 217–18. 68 A. A. Kersnovskii, Istotriia russkoi armii, Moscow: Golos, 1994, vol. 3, p. 83. 69 Nicholas II, op. cit., p. 230. 70 RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 7000, l. 68. 10 The repercussions of the war: a thorny path of reforms 1 Otchet o deiatel’nosti Upravleniia general-kvartirmesitera 3-ei Man’chzhurskoi armii za vremia voiny 1904–1905 gg., St Petersburg: Glavnyi Shtab, 1907, p. 5. 2 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob.; Yu. N. Kriazhev, Voenno-politicheskaia deiatel’nost’ tsaria Nikolaia II v period 1904–1914 gg., Kurgan: Voennyi institut, 2000, p. 105. 3 RGVIA, f. VUA, d. 29090, vol. 1, ll. 16–56ob. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 See B. I. Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, ‘Razvedochnaia sluzhbana flote i eio organizatsiia’, Morskoi sbornik, 1904, no. 1, 1–14. 7 Quoted in N. Bentwich, ‘Espionage and Scientific Invention’, Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, 1910, vol. 10, no. 2, 246. 8 V. A. Zolotarev and I. A. Kozlov, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Bor’ba na more., Moscow: Nauka, 1990, pp. 187–90. 9 Curt von Maltzahn, Der Seekrieg zwischen Russland und Japan. 1904 bis 1905, Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1912–13, vol. 1–2. 10 N. V. Grekov, Russkaia kontrrazvedka v 1905–1917 gg.: shpionomaniia i real’nye problemy, Moscow: Moskovskii obtschestvennyi nauchnyi fond, 2000, p. 109. 11 See C. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 36–7. 12 Ibid., pp. 86–8. 13 M. Alekseev, Voennaia razvedka Rossii ot Riurika do Nikolaia II, Moscow: Russkaia razvedka, 1998, vol. 2, pp. 36–7. 14 RGVIA, f. 400, op. 4, d. 695, ll. 44–53ob. It should be mentioned that the Department of Police established another section of counter-espionage headed by Captain of Cavalry Komissarov, who failed to attain mutual agreement with the military. After the Main Directorate of the General Staff had been set up, both sections (i.e. the one commanded by Lavrov and another by Komissarov) were disbanded. For an exhaustive analysis, see M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 48–50; N. V. Grekov, op. cit., pp. 109–10. 15 A. Yu. Shelukhin, ‘Razvedyvatelnye organy v structure vysshego voennogo upravleniia Rossiiskoi imperii nachala XX veka’, Vestnik Moskovskogo gosu-

Notes

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

225

darstvennogo universiteta, Ser. 8. Istoriia, No. 3 (1996), pp. 19–20; N. S. Kirmel’, ‘Organizatsiia russkoi kontrrazvedki i eio bor’ba s iaponskim i germanskim shpionazhem v Sibiri (1906–1917 gg.)’, Diss., Irkutskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1999, p. 15; N. V. Grekov, op. cit., pp. 110–41. A. G. Kavtaradze, ‘Iz predystorii russkogo General’nogo shtaba’, Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1972, no. 7, 87. Ibid., 89. E. Yu. Sergeev, Ar. A. Ulunian, Ne podlezhit oglasheniiu, Moscow: Realii-Press, 2003, p. 25. RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 4410, ll. 3–3ob.; M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 175. RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 4410, ll. 106–14ob.; for further information, see E. Yu. Sergeev and Ar. A. Ulunian, op. cit., pp. 41–2. N. V. Grekov, op. cit., p. 125. RGVIA, f. 487, op. 1, d. 439, ll. 70–7ob.; K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 95. See K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 175–8. Ibid., p. 179. See Karl Mannerheim, op. cit., pp. 30–44. K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 150–1. Ibid., p. 146. Ibid., pp. 149–50. Ibid., pp. 147–8. See M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 256–8. RGVIA, f. 487, op. 1, d. 2, l. 1. Ibid., ll. 5–12. Ibid., f. 2000, op. 1, d. 6761, l. 6. Ibid., d. 110, l. 316; d. 7516, l. 1; see also A. Yu. Shelukhin, op. cit., 25–6. See K. K. Zvonarev, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 97. RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 4289, l. 1; A. G. Kavtaradze, op. cit., 84; M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 280–1. E. Yu. Sergeev and Ar. A. Ulunian, op. cit., pp. 28–9. M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 83. Ibid., p. 84. A. Buiakov, op. cit., p. 93. M. Alekseev, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 84.

Epilogue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Karl G. Mannerheim, Memoirs, Moscow: Vagrius, 1999, p. 48. A. Buiakov (ed.) ‘Predmet detal’nogo izucheniia’, Morskoi sbornik, 1995. no. 3, 92. RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 1, d. 6549, l. 144. S. Dobson, (ed.) ‘Iz istorii razvedyvatelnoi deiatelnosti Iaponii i Rossii’, Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1997, no. 1, 165. N. McCully, The McCully Report. The Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, Annapolis, Md: US Naval Institute Press, 1977, p. 172. A. I. Sorokin, Russko-Iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Voenno-istoricheskii ocherk, Moscow: Voenizdat, 1956, p. 324. K. K. Zvonarev, Agenturnaia razvedka, Moscow: BDTs-Press, 2003, vol. 1, p. 81; A. A. Kersnovskii, Istoriia russkoi armii, Moscow: Golos, 1994, vol. 3, p. 106. A. F. Rediger, Istoriia moei zhizni. Vospominaniia voennogo ministra, Moscow: Kuchkovo pole, 1999, vol. 1, p. 158. Frank Knight, Russia Fights Japan, London: Macdonald, 1969, p. 9. A. A. Ignatiev, Piat’desiat let v stroiu, Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1998, p. 176. F. Immanuel, Russko-iaponskaia voina v voennom i politicheskom otnoshenii, St Petersburg: V. Berezovskii, 1906, pt 4, p. 110.

226

Notes

12 Quoted in O. R. Airapetov (ed.) Russko-iaponskaia voina, 1904–1905 gg. Vzgliad cherez stoletie, Moscow: Tri kvadrata, 2004, p. 12. 13 D. Rich, The Tsar’s Colonels. Professionalism, Strategy, and Subversion in Late Imperial Russia, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 39. 14 See R. Deacon, A History of the Russian Secret Service, London: Frederick Muller, 1972. 15 See D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and B. Menning (eds) Reforming the Tsar’s Army, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Selected bibliography

Principal archival sources Archiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Imperii (AVPRI), Moscow Fond 133, Kantseliariia ministra Fond 143, Kitaiskii stol Fond 148, Tikhookeanskii stol Fond 150, Iaponskii stol Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voenno-Istoricheskii Arkhiv (RGVIA), Moscow Fond 76, V. A. Kosagovskii Fond 165, A. N. Kuropatkin Fond 451, Japan Fond 487, Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg. Fond 400, Glavnyi shtab Fond 1558, Shtab Priamurskogo voennogo okruga Fond 2000, Glavnoe upravlenie General’nogo shtaba Fond 13057, Polevoi shtab Man’chzhurskoi armii Fond 14378, Upravlenie voennogo komissara Mukdenskoi provintsii Fond 14390, Shtab tyla voisk Dal’nego Vostoka Fond VUA, Kollektsiia Voenno-Uchenogo Archiva Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Voenno-Morskogo Flota (RGA VMF), St Petersburg Fond 32, E. I. Alekseev Fond 417, Glavnyi Morskoi Shtab Fond 531, 2-ya Tikhookeanskaia eskadra National Archives of the United States (NA US), Washington, DC. RG 38, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations RG 59, Department of State. Dispatches from US Consuls RG 80, Secretary of Navy RG 165, War Department General and Special Staffs Public Record Office (PRO), London Foreign Office Papers in the PRO War Office Papers in the PRO Cabinet Papers (Committee of Imperial Defence) (C.I.D.)

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Index

Abaza A. M. 36 Adabash, Mikhail 38, 44, 171, 176 Afanasiev, S. V. 86, 121, 189, 197 Afghanistan 21 Africa 146–7 Akashi, Motojiro 142–4 Aleksandr Mikhailovich, Velikii Kniaz’ 34, 49, 51, 73, 144, 147 Alekseev, Aleksandr 72, 75, 180 Alekseev, Evgenii 9, 15, 21, 38–43, 46, 48–50, 54, 56, 59–60, 62, 64, 66–7, 69, 71–2, 75–9, 83, 87, 89–90, 94, 97–8, 106, 115–16, 125, 142, 150, 157 Alekseev, Mikhail (academic scholar) 8–9, 20 Alekseev, Mikhail (General) 117, 122–3, 125, 165, 167, 185, 194 Alexander I 12 Alexander II 12 Alexander III 183 Alexander the Great 12 Al’ftan, Vladimir 43–4 Altukhov 154–5 American Civil War 105 Amsterdam 145 Amur 14, 104 Andreev 131 Andrew, Christopher 7 Anglo-Boer War 17, 25, 72–3, 95 Anglo-Japanese Alliance 35, 37 Anichkov, Dmitrii 107 Anisimov 150 Anshan 59 Ardagh, Sir John 25 Argentina 142, 180 Army Corps (Russian): 8th 134; 17th 133 Asia 13, 34, 43, 47, 72, 120 Asian General Element (Aziatskaia Chast’) 12

Associated Press 99 Atlantic Ocean 74, 146 Aurora 144 Austria–Hungary 24, 27, 35, 49, 72, 75; General Staff of 27 Baden-Powell, Sir Robert 25 Baikal Lake 30, 47 Baiov, Aleksei 5 Bakich 131 Balè 80, 117 Balfour, Arthur 146 Balkans 64 balloons 99–100, 148 Baltic provinces 71 Baltic Sea 13, 21, 49 Barbier, Oskar 75–6, 83 Bataliantsa 131 Batavia 76 Batiushin, N. S. 193 Bazarov, P. A. 189 Becker 80–1 Beklemishev 92 Belgium 143 Belyi, Andrei 33 Benckendorf, A. K. 18 Benckendorf, Constantine 60 Berlin 73–4, 80, 145 Bessarabia 71 Bezobrazov 36, 40, 43, 46, 162 Bezobrazovtsy 22, 36, 47 Bindui 154–5 Birilev 163 Biriukov 131, 150–1 Black Dragon patriotic association 29 Black Sea 13, 73, 119 Blonskii, Vasilii 86, 154–6, 166, 191 Boer republics 26 ‘Boforts’ 75

Index 243 Bogdanov, Aleksandr 66, 86, 152, 196 Boissier, Jacques 42 Bolkhovitionov, L. M. 187 Bolotnaya 131 Bonaparte see Napoleon Bosnian crisis 28 Bostrem, Ivan 72–3, 119, 180 Bouguenne 74 Boxer: insurgents 2, 86, 128, 131–2; rebellion 14–15, 45, 51, 66, 106 Briken 159 British Admiralty 73, 101, 119, 147, 149 British Cabinet 143 British Committee of Imperial Defence 145 British Foreign Office 26, 71, 83, 145 British War Office 24–5, 137; Field Intelligence Department of 25; Foreign Intelligence Committee of 25; Intelligence Branch of 25; Naval Intelligence Department of 25, 27; Topographical and Statistical Department of 24 Britain see Great Britain Briusov, Valerii 33 Brockhaus: dictionary by 3 Brusilov 50 Bubnov, Mikhail 6, 90 Buddhist lamas 130, 181 Budilovski, Ivan 21 Bukhovetskii 23 Buller, Sir Redvers 25 Bulygin 162 Buniakovskii, Vladimir 6, 111 Burleigh, Bennet 29 bushido 133 Butusov, Petr 99 Bülow von, Bernhard 33, 162 Byzantium 12 carrier pigeons 95–6 Cassini, Arthur 72, 78 Catherine the Great 12 Caucasus 46 Cavarre 144 censorship on the Manchurian front 82 Central Asia 32, 46, 62–4, 73 Central powers 3, 185 Chagin, Ivan 21 Chechnya 62 Chefoo 15, 40, 55, 57, 80–1, 94, 96, 118 Chembarskii Regiment (284th) (Russian) 108 Chemulpo 15, 58, 67

Chesnokov 152 Chichagov, Nikolai 115, 132, 152–3 Chile 142, 180 China 14–15, 17, 21–2, 25, 28, 30, 32, 35–6, 40, 43–4, 47, 49, 52, 54, 56, 62, 66–7, 73, 77, 83, 87, 103, 105, 114, 122, 128, 141, 149–50, 157, 173–5, 177, 181 China Review 157 Chinampo 39, 67 Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) 14, 46–7, 86, 104, 125, 128–9, 132, 137, 158, 164, 175 Chinese mentality 123 Chinese militia 152-5 Christian missionaries 22, 84, 132, 181 Christophorov 95 Chrysantemum Dynasty 2 chunguses 14, 86, 151–62 code-breaking 71 Collins 83 Columb, P. H. 16 condottieres 152 Corbett, Julian 149 Corvisaire, Charles 42 Cossacks: in the Battle of Liaoyang 114; in the Battle of Mukden 137; chieftains of 174, forays of 4, 85, 111–12, 134, 151; reconnaissance trips of 14, 107 counter-espionage see counter-intelligence counter-intelligence 4–5, 7–8, 23, 74, 99, 143–4, 171–2 Crimean War 24 Croule 78 Cuba 87 Curzon, George 73 Cyril Vladimirovich, Velikii Kniaz’ 90 Dagestan 62 Dagestan Regiment (2nd) (Russian) 134 Daily Telegraph 29 Dakar 74 Daletskii, Pavel 136 Danilov, Yurii 173 Datunhou 121 Davydov, Leonid 81, 87, 96, 118, 180 Deacon, Richard 11–12, 16, 25, 27, 30, 79, 145 Denikin, Anton 185 Department III B (Germany) 27 Department of Police (Russia) 12, 16, 19, 44, 74, 143, 171, 180–1 Derevianko, Ilia 8 Desino, Konstantin 22, 27, 40, 66, 72, 76, 78, 120–1, 196

244

Index

Deuxième Bureau (France) 26–7 Diana 90 Dnepr 147 Dobrovolskii 191 Dobrzhinskii 135 Dobychina, Yelena 8, 20, 22 Dogger Bank incident 143–8 Dolbezhev 129 Dolivo-Dobrovolskii, Boris 6, 11, 17, 45, 96–7, 169, 177, 182 Dologorukov, Aleksei 72, 180 Dolphin 92–3 Donghans 104 Donskaia Cossack Division: 4th 85 Dori 74 Dragomirov, Petr 64 Dreyfus case 27 Drozdovskii 185 Druzhinin 108 Ducat 30 Dutch Telegraphic Company 44 East Asia 2, 22, 32–3, 35, 119, 173 ‘East-Asian Shipping Society’ 83 East Siberian Field Balloon Battalion (Russian) 100 East Siberian Infantry Regiment (11th) (Russian) 86 East Siberian Rifle Corps (8th) (Russian) 151 East Siberian Rifle Regiment (Russian): 7th 84; 8th 131; 11th 118, 154; 12th 83; 35th 154 Eastern Vanguard Detachment (Russian) 79, 109 Echare 117–18 Eckgarde 95 Edrikhin, A. E. 197 Edward VII 73 Efron: dictionary by 3 Egypt 20 Eliseev 90 Enkel, Oskar 172, 174–5, 185, 193 Enlightment 35 Entente Cordiale 3, 27, 74 espionage see intelligence, reconnaissance Essen 73 Euphrates 11 Europe 2, 13, 26, 33, 71–3, 75, 94, 119, 141, 145, 179 Evert, Aleksei 117, 130, 187, 190 Fakumyn 4 Faligot, Pierre 42

Far East 1–2, 5, 7–10, 13–15, 17, 21–2, 28–9, 32–3, 35–8, 40, 42–5, 47, 52, 61–4, 69, 72, 74–5, 82, 88, 105–6, 116–17, 119–20, 126, 137, 141–2, 144, 151, 156–7, 161–2, 167, 170, 173–4, 179–80, 183, 185 Feklin 97 Fenghuachen 121 Finland 71, 130, 174 Fitzgibbon, Constantine 26 Flint 142 Flug, Vasilii 9, 69, 71, 76, 117, 122, 187, 191, 193 Formosa see Taiwan France 19, 35, 51, 54, 72, 143, 146–7, 180–1; Academy of the General Staff in 18; alliance with Russia 74; Ministry of Internal Affairs Intelligence Agency 144 Frederick the Great 12, 27 ‘friendly’ secret service 167, 181 Fridberg 81 fudutunes 15 Fukushima, Yasumasa 103 Fuzan 39, 44, 57 Gai-Klar 78 Gansu 44 Garin-Mikhailovskii, Nikolai 31 Gasanov, Mohammed 20 Geberskii 129 General Staff (Nicholas) Academy 5, 7, 9, 18, 21–2, 69–70, 184 General Staff Main Directorate (Russia) 171–2, 175–6, 184; budget allocations on 176–7; periodicals of 177; sections in 172–3, 176 General Staff Military-Statistical Department (Russia) 170–1 General Staff Military-Statistical Section (Russia) 171 General Staff Officer Corps (generalstaffers, generalists, genshtabisty) (Russia) 5–9, 17–24, 43, 50, 66, 97–8, 109, 117, 155, 160, 167, 172, 174, 184 Genghis Khan 33 Genzan 39, 47–8, 78 Gerard, Sir Montague 5, 137 Germany 19, 24, 49, 51, 54, 72, 146, 180; Academy of the General Staff in 18; Admiralty in 27; General Staff in 27, 152, 185 Gershelman, Feodor 137 Gerua, B. V. 190, 192 Gibraltar 74

Index 245 Giddis, Jose Maria 118–19 Glushkov, Vladimir 8 Golden Hill 58, 89, 94 Goleevskii, N. L. 192 Golovnin, Vasilii 31 Gomboev, Nikolai 125 Goncharov, Ivan 31 Great Britain 2, 18–19, 22, 24, 36, 51, 53, 71–4, 119–20, 143–5, 149, 180 Great Game 2, 21, 25, 63, 119, 185 Greener, William 6, 82, 101 Grevs 97 Grodekov, Nikolai 46 Gromoboi 92 Gromov 105 Grosse 85 Grulev, Mikhail 6, 17 Gudim-Levkovich, P. P. 192 Gurko, Dmitrii 95 Hagino 70 Hague, The 165 Haimun 94 Hakodate 32 Haldane, James 180 Hall, William 25 Hamburg 74, 147 Han Denggui 131, 153 Hapsburg Empire see Austria–Hungary hara-kiri 133 Harbin 55, 104, 125, 137, 146, 158, 165 Haushofer, Karl 28 Hay, John 142 Hayashi, Tadesu 162 Hazuse 89 Heilongjiang 15, 152 helicopters 100 Henderson, David 25 Herodotus 51 Hess, Rudolf 28 Hilsman, Roger 12 Hoare, Sir Samuel 71 Hoffman von, Max 184 Holy Alliance 24 Holy Synod 14 Home 5 Hong Kong 29, 73, 142, 147 Hough, Richard 141 Hull incident see Dogger Bank incident Ianzhul, Nikolai 21, 23, 37, 42 Iessen, Konstantin 92 Ignatiev, Aleksei 6, 18, 67, 109–10, 183, 189–90

Ignatiev, Nikolai 32 Inaba, Chiharu 8, 44 India 20, 25, 36; Russian threat to 5 Indian Mutiny 24 Indian Ocean 142, 147 Infantry Division (Russian): 9th 84; 41st 132 Infantry Reserve Regiment (Japanese): 2nd 133; 42nd 133 Institute of International Law 169 intelligence: collation and dissemination 87–8, 158–62; communities 2, 7, 12; cycle 4, 7, 12–13, 17, 122, 184; funding 16–17; human (HUMINT) 3, 6, 15, 17, 20, 23, 38–9, 42, 74, 76, 78–86, 107, 110, 117–18, 122–6, 137–40, 142, 150, 155–7, 171–4, 180–1; inadequacies of 6; innovations in 170–8; lessons of the Manchurian campaign 167–70; lexicon of 2–3; literature on 5–9; mapping, charting and geodesic (MCGINT) 3, 7, 14; naval 4, 13, 15, 42, 45, 72, 89–93, 143, 169–70, 182; operational 4, 8, 83–6, 102–10, 128–32, 168, 181; organization on the Manchurian front 65–70, 116–17; personnel of 11–17, 15, 42; progress in the course of the RussoJapanese War 179–83; signal (SIGINT) 4, 8, 44, 58, 93–7, 169–70; sources on the history of 9–10; strategic 4, 8, 71–82, 119–28, 167–8, 180–1; structure 11–17; summaries 87–8, 160–1; tactical 4, 8, 83–6, 132–40, 156–7, 168–9, 181–2; technical (TECHINT) 3; training schools 127–8, 180; warning 56–62; see also reconnaissance intelligentsia 34 International Commission on arbitrage 147 Irkutsk 14, 173, 176 Italy 28 Ivanov 109 Izauma, Hasiguchi 103 Izmestiev, Petr 6, 88, 193 Izvolskii, A. P. 37 Japan 7, 14–15, 20, 23–4, 182; as area of military intelligence 121, 173–4, 180; expansion of 1; Foreign Ministry of 71; General Staff of 29–30, 50, 77; Main Staff of 82; as a nominee for great power status 17; as Pacific power 7, 14–15, 20, 23–4, 177; partners of 6; Supreme Imperial Headquarters of 40–1, 53, 57, 62, 73, 96, 151; Supreme

246

Index

Japan continued Naval Council of 41; war capabilities of 36–45; War Ministry 142 Japan Times 81 Japanese Army: 1st 70, 75, 77; 2nd 123; 3rd 99; 4th 75, 123 Japanese Empire see Japan jiangjunes 15 Jilin 15, 153, 164 Jinzhou 43 Jukes, Geoffrey 102–3 junks 90, 95 Kahn, Reginald 70 Kalgan 174 Kamchatka Peninsula 101, 162 kamikaze 29 Kamimura, Hikonojo 92, 96 Kansk 105 Kapnist, Aleksei 72 Kasatka 93 Kashirin, Vladimir 8 Kauffer, Roger 42–3 Kazan 27 Kazan military district 46 Kazan Seminary 109 Keller, Feodor 107, 114 Kersnovskii, A. 46, 165 Keta 93 KGB 12 Khabarovsk 14, 21, 80, 118, 131, 153 Khabarovsk Reserve Battalion 131 Kharkevich, Vladimir 66, 71, 79–81, 83, 85, 87, 105, 107, 110, 117–18, 121–2, 134, 152, 180, 187, 191 Khekowtai 133 Khion 131 Khitrovo 129 Khvostov, A. 15, 17 Kiaochow 54 Kiev 171 Kiev military district 46 Kim In Su (Victor) 79–80, 150 Kitchener, Horatio 73 kites 99 Klado, Nikolai 6 Kleimenov, Konstantin 42, 80 Kodama, Gentaro 30 Kondratenko, Robert 8 Kondratovich 84 Korea 1–2, 14–15, 22–3, 30–1, 35–7, 39, 42–4, 46–50, 56, 61, 67, 77–9, 87–8, 92–3, 106–7, 111, 121, 131, 150, 161, 163, 173–4, 180–1

Korea Bay 50 Korea Strait 92, 149 Korean Peninsula see Korea Korean Royal War Chancellery 39 Koreets 58, 61 Kornilov, Lavr 185 Korostovets, Ivan 164 Kortatsi, G. I. 194 Kosagovskii, Vladimir 9, 66, 68, 82–7, 103, 105, 188 Kostlivtsev 95 Kovan’ko 99–100 kowtow ritual 140 Kozlov 106 Kravtsev, Ivan 8 Kreso 74 Kristi 80 Krupp 73, 120 Krymov 192 Kuangchenzy 175 Kuban 147 Kundschaftsstelle (Intelligence Bureau) (Austria–Hungary) 27–8 Kuprin, Aleksandr 33 Kurils 49 Kuroki, Tametomo 77, 86, 106, 124, 139 Kuropatkin, Aleksei 6–9, 15–16, 31, 38–40, 43, 46–50, 59, 62–4, 66–9, 71, 74, 78, 80–2, 84–7, 95, 98, 103, 105–7, 109, 112–20, 122, 125, 128–30, 133, 136–8, 142, 150, 152, 156–7, 161, 163, 183 Kuz’min 84, 189 Kvetsinskii, Mikhail 15, 66, 86–7, 125–7, 158, 168, 195 Kwantung military administration 21, 45 Kwantung Peninsula (Area) 15–16, 41–2, 45, 47, 54, 94, 98–9, 163 La Pèrouse Strait 148 Labri 74 Lamsdorf, Vladimir 35, 43, 59, 72, 79, 103, 120, 145, 164 Land of the Rising Sun see Japan Langerke Meyer von, George 142 Laptev, Nikolai 80, 96, 118 Lavrov, Mikhail 100 Lazarev, Vladimir 72, 74, 146, 180 Lebedev 56, 195 Lensen, George 33 Lessar, Pavel 42 Levandovskii 190 Levitov, Ivan 33 Li Bom Yun 150

Index 247 Liaodong Peninsula 14, 48–50, 54–5, 78, 89–90, 97 Liaohei Detachment 82, 105 Liaonin 15 Liaoyang 63–4, 69, 78, 86, 95, 114–15, 123; Battle of 4, 102, 105, 110, 112–13 Liapunov 151 Libau 141–2 Library of Congress 10 Lieven 18 Linda, Konstantin 85–6, 117, 183, 187, 190, 196 Linevich, Nikolai 14, 46, 84, 117–19, 127, 129, 138, 150, 153, 158, 163, 183 Linitskii 129 Lippenov 78 Lippovskii, Iosif 100 Liu Danqi 131 Liupov, Sergei 85, 183, 187 Livkin, David 20, 104 London 16–17, 73, 94, 119, 145–7 Loris-Melikov 12 Louis of Battenberg 27 Luntinen, Petti 142 Lushun see Port Arthur Ma Sayuan 77, 103–4 Macao 76 McCormick, Francis 51 McCully, Newton 136, 181 MacDougall, Sir Patrick 25 Madagaskar 147 Madritov, Aleksei 105–6, 131, 136, 152, 189 Mafeking 25 Mahan, A. 16 Maidel Cape 97 Main Artillery Department (Russia) 13 Main Department of Fortresses (Russia) 13 Main Engineer Department (Russia) 13 Main Naval Staff (Russia) 12–13, 40–1, 45–6, 50, 61, 73–4, 90, 92, 120, 141, 149 Main Staff (Russia): calculations of Japanese forces 50–1; correspondence on helicopters 100; correspondence with military attaches 29, 36, 40–2, 74–5, 78, 120, 146, 177, 180; documentary collections of 9; funding 16, 119, 175; plans for war 45–52, 87; Statistical Section of 73, 164; structure and functions 12–13, 22, 109, 117 Makarov, Stepan 16, 59, 89–90, 93, 96, 182 Maltzahn von, Curt 170

Manchuria 1–2, 5, 14, 20, 29–31, 35, 40, 42–4, 46–8, 50, 61–2, 67–8, 74, 77–80, 86, 88, 102, 105, 107, 111, 115–17, 119–21, 123, 125, 127–8, 132, 136–7, 143, 153, 158, 161, 163–4, 166, 169–71, 173–4, 179–81, 184 Manchuria (cargo ship) 100 Manchurian Army (Russian): 1st 119, 124, 122, 131, 133–4, 138–9, 159, 163; 2nd 7, 122, 124–6, 131, 140, 162–3; 3rd 69, 100, 122, 124, 126, 128, 131, 134, 139, 163, 165, 167 Mandarin road 137 Mannerheim, Karl Emil Gustav 130, 174, 185 Manusevich-Manuilov, Ivan 44, 143–4 Maodao Islands 61 March, Peter 110 Mardanov 151, 195 Mari 11 Marinkovich 118 Martini, Pierre 42 Martson, Feodor 128 Martynov, Evgenii 52, 68 Mazanpo 58 Mediterranean Sea 147 Meidzi Restoration 31 Meier, Otto 75–6 Memptah 11 Menning, Bruce 8, 20–1, 56, 59, 93, 142 Miagkov 105 Mikado see Mutsuhito (Meidzi) Mikasa 58, 149 Mikhailov 109, 125, 187, 190, 196 Mikhelson, Aleksandr 170–1 Military Academic Committee (VoennoUchenyi Komitet) (Russia) 12, 36 military agents (attachés) (Russian) 3, 9, 16, 20–4, 180; activities in China 22–3, 75–7, 79–81, 120–1; activities in Europe 72–5, 119–20; activities in Japan 23, 42; activities in Korea 75, 78–9; instructions for 13; qualities of 19; regulations for 172 Military Chancellery of Quantung province (Russian) 9 Military-Historical Commission on description of the Russo-Japanese War 41, 107 military mind 17 Miliutin 8 Mirbakh 195 Mitschenko, Petr 105, 107–8, 113, 130, 136, 190

248

Index

Moltke von, Helmut 27, 185 Mongolia 1, 88, 103–5, 115, 120, 128–30, 132, 153, 156, 161, 164, 173, 180–1 Monkevits, Nikolai 173–4 Moro 144 Morrison, George 30 Morskoi Sbornik 45 Moscow 18, 33 Moscow Gazette 63 Moscow military district 46 Moskvitin 129 Moulenne 74 Mukden 10, 41, 43, 47, 50, 77, 96–7, 104, 109, 115–16, 118, 123, 125, 131, 152, 157, 168, 173–4; Battle of 4, 100, 106, 112, 116–17, 122, 124, 127–8, 133, 136–7, 152, 158, 160–2 Munich Institute of Geopolitics 28 Muslim minorities 62 Mutsuhito (Meidzi) 2, 29, 52, 58–9, 62–3, 83, 141, 149 Myslitskii 194 Nadarov 130, 132, 152, 164 Nagasaki 31 Nanshan: Battle of 95, 112; district 131; position of 90 Nanshan district 131 Napoleon Bonaparte 26, 48, 141 Napoleonic Wars 24 Natal 26 nationalism 1 Naudeau, Ludovico 68, 70 Naval Academy (Russia) 91 Naval Committee of the American Congress 93 Naval General Staff (Russia) 21, 45, 71, 143; structure and functions of 177, 184 Naval Military Academic Section (Russia) 12–13 Naval Staff Conference (Russia) 50 Naval Strategic Directorate (Russia) 13 Naval Supreme Headquarters (Russia) 21 Nebogatov 148 Nechvolodov, Aleksandr 39, 66, 75–6, 83, 87, 196 Nechvolodov, Aleksei 83, 85, 188 Negrier de, François 112 Nerchinsk 155 Netherlands 143, 148 Newchwang 77 Nezhinskii Dragoon Regiment (52nd) (Russian) 130 Nicholas I 12

Nicholas II: character of 34, 90, 142; circle of 54, 62, 162, 170; correspondence with William II 74, 120; intentions and plans 2, 43, 46, 48–9, 51, 116; policy of 71, 165–6, 177; reign of 8, 15, 104, 143, 183 Nicholas Cavalry High School 22 Nicholas High School of Military Engineers 21–2 Nicolai, Walter 27–8 Nikolai Nikolaevich, Velikii Kniaz’ 163 Nikolskii 171 Nikol’sk-Ussuriiskii 47, 131, 151 Nirutaka 58 Nish, Ian 25, 28 Nobuzumi, Aoki 103 Nogi, Maresuke 99, 137 Nonni 175 North America 172 North Sea 146 Novitskii, V. F. 194 Novoe Vremia 82 Novokievskii region 47 Novokievskoe 131 Novyi Krai 91 Nozu, Michitsura 123–4 Obruchev, Nikolai 46 October Revolution in Russia 22 Odessa 71 Odintsov, S. I. 83, 154, 188 Office of Naval Intelligence (USA) 26 Ogorodnikov, Feodor 22, 66, 76, 78, 118, 120–1, 157, 180, 196 Okhranka 12, 16 Oku, Yasukata 123 Oleg 149 Omsk 173–4, 176 Oranovskii, Vladimir 117–18, 122, 152, 158, 190 Orenburg Cossack Regiment: 11th 107; 12th 151 Osoboe Soveshchanie (Special Conference) 45 Oyama, Iwao 81, 103, 115, 134, 137, 146, 160 Pacific Ocean 1, 14, 17, 29, 34, 45–6, 50, 64, 72–3, 76, 90, 92, 94, 101, 121, 137, 147, 163–4, 167 Pak Chon Ho 150 Pak Yu Pfun 131 Palitsyn, Feodor 180

Index 249 Panov 83–4, 188 Paris 16, 18, 27, 44, 72, 74, 143, 146, 180 Parskii, Dmitrii 6, 69, 194 partisan detachments 151–2 Passek 85 Pavlov, Aleksandr 23, 39, 42, 67, 78–81, 87, 94, 96, 120, 180 Pavlov, Dmitrii 8, 20 Peking 10, 14, 30, 42, 44, 54, 77, 103, 118, 121, 137, 157, 180 Pellenberg 194 Penevskii 86, 190, 196 Peresvet 91 Persia 20 Persson, Gudrun 20 Peter the Great 12 Peterhof 100 Petersburg (cruiser) 147 Petropavlovsk 16, 120 Petropavlovsk (battleship) 90, 182 Petrov, Vladimir 8 Petukhov 97 Philippines 29 Piouffre, Girard 91 Pitzewo 121 Plare 117–18 Pleshakov, Constantine 143 Podalko, Petr 8 Poland 71 Polivanov, A. I. 37 Poltava 18 Popov 58, 104 Port Arthur 4, 6, 14–16, 23, 39–40, 42–3, 45, 47–50, 53–63, 67, 76, 80, 82–3, 89–101, 106, 116, 119–20, 130, 137, 141, 146, 153, 165, 180, 182 Port Said 61, 142 Portsmouth 10, 21, 122; peace conference in 162–6, 179; Treaty of 170 Posen 33 Posiet 151 Posokhov 191 Potapov, Aleksei 23, 39–40, 66, 83, 188 Povarinskii 192 Pozdneev, Dmitrii 157 Priamur military district 9, 14, 16, 21–2, 46, 117, 131, 150, 173–4, 176; headquarters of 44, 66, 80, 151, 174 Priamur province 131, 151, 155, 162 Primakov, Evgenii 8 prisoners-of-war (POWs) 3, 9, 65, 92, 99, 108–9, 132–5, 160–1, 164 Prussia 27 Pushtun tribes 21

Putilov plant 100 Pyongyang 47 Pyrkov 131 Qi 86 Qimukhin district 131 Qing Empire see China Qiqihar 128 Quelpart Island 141, 149 Raaben von, Leonid 23, 39 Radzivil 95 Rasha, N. K. 194 Rashevskii, Sergei 53, 97–8, 100 razvedka 3 reconnaissance: administrative 125–8; cavalry 6, 110–15; combat 4, 97–101, 132–40, 181–2; see also intelligence Red Sea 61, 142, 147 Redesdale, Lord 141 Rediger, Aleksandr 183 Redle, Alfred 28, 185 ‘Regulations for the Army in the Field’ 65–6, 113 ‘Regulations for the Naval General Staff’ 177 Reichstag 74 Reilly, Sidney 71 Reis 97 Rennenkampf, Pavel 131, 136, 154 Retvizan 60–1 Reuter’s Telegraph Company 99 Rewentlov, E. 51 Riabikov, Petr 7, 172, 175, 193 Riabinin 69 Riabov, Vasilii 108 Rich, David 8, 20 Rion 147 Riurik 92 Robertson, William 26 Romeiko-Gurko, Dmitrii 95, 195 Romeiko-Gurko, Vladimir 41, 188, 192 Ronge, M. 19, 28 Roop, Vladimir 72, 75, 180 Roosevelt, Theodore 163–4 Rosen, Roman 32, 35–6 Rossiia (battleship) 92 Rossiia (cargo ship) 57 Rossov, Petr 86, 104, 121, 129, 156, 165, 189, 197 Rowan, R. 19, 24, 26, 57 Rozanov, Sergei 175, 193 Rozhestvenskii, Zinovii 29, 50, 73, 76, 141–9, 180

250

Index

Rudnev, Vsevolod 58 Rus 106 Rusin, Aleksandr 21, 40–2, 164, 185, 197 Russia: allies of 6; borderlands of 13; budget spending 16; Civil War in 7; defeat in the Russo-Japanese war 1; diplomatic initiative by 54; image of 17; impression of Japan 31–6; military colleges in 6; reforms in 10; special government commissions instituted in 9; war preparedness of 2 Russian Baltic Sea Fleet 116 Russian Black Sea Fleet 116 Russian Empire see Russia Russian Manchurian Armies: 1st 119; 2nd 88; 3rd 69 Russian Ministries: of Commerce and Industry 14; of Court 14; Finance 14, 17; for Foreign Affairs (Foreign Ministry) 14, 20, 22, 40, 78–9, 120, 143; for Internal Affairs 14; Naval 45, 92; War 14, 16, 20, 45, 100, 108, 143 Russian Orthodox Church 32, 35, 153 Russian Pacific Fleet 8, 45, 49, 54, 89, 120 Russian Pacific Squadrons: 1st 4, 41, 53–62, 89–97, 141, 182; 2nd 4, 29, 73–4, 97, 119, 141–9, 163, 180; 3rd 119 Russian periodicals 17, 157–8 Russian Security Police Bureau 144 Russian State Military-Historical Archive 9 Russian State Naval Archive 9 Russian Timber & Mining Trade Society 106 ‘Russian Timber Partnership’ 39 Russian Viceroyalties: Caucasian 15; FarEastern 15; Turkistan 15 Russo-Chinese Bank 42, 81, 129 Russo-Turkish War (1877-8) 105 Rutkovskii, Pavel 151 Rybnikov 33 Ryzhov 69 sabotage: acts of 81, 105, 137, 181 Safonov 194 St Petersburg 1, 14–15, 17–18, 20, 22–3, 29, 32, 37–9, 43–5, 47, 50, 52, 59, 61, 69, 72–7, 82, 91, 99, 145–7, 163, 174, 179 Sakhalin 14, 31, 40, 93, 118, 151, 162 Sakharov, Victor 38, 46, 61, 183 Sakharov, Vladimir 66, 79, 83, 86, 163 Sambia 74 Sammons, Thomas 77

Samoilov, Vladimir 21, 23, 38–9, 41–2, 164, 196 Samsonov, Aleksandr 112–13, 136 samurai officers 136 Sandepu: Battle of 112, 133, 136 Sapozhnikov 125, 196 Sasebo 41 Saul, Norman 151 Savage Caucasus Brigade 134 Scalon 119 Scandinavia 75 Schedule for General Mobilization 46 Schimmelpenninck, David 8, 20 Schwab 142 Scotland Yard 11 ‘scramble for China’ 45, 54 Sea of Japan 41, 141–2, 147; the Sea of Japan Battle see the Battle of Tsushima Second Opium War 54 Second Pacific War 26 secret service: American 26; Austrian 27–8; British 4, 24–6; French 26–7; German 27; Japanese 28–30; Russian 8 Seine 144 Seistan 73 Semenov, Vladimir 6, 98, 145 Seoul 22, 39, 59, 67, 78 Serbia 28 Sevastopol 142, 147 Shaffangeune, Jean 75–6 Shaho 123; Battle of 4, 110, 112, 114–16, 144 Shahotsi 81, 121 Shakhnovskii, Igor 6 Shandong 30, 43, 96 Shanghai 22, 42, 44, 67, 73, 75–6, 79–80, 83, 94, 96, 118, 120, 158, 180 Shanghaiguan 121–2 Shangin, V. 129 Shansi 44 Sharavin, Aleksandr 8 Shebeko, Vadim 72–4, 80, 119–20, 145, 180 Shein 147 Shelukhin, Yurii 8 Shengjingbao 127, 157–8 Shensi 44 Shershov 99 Shkotov 151 Shnabel’ 193 Shokorov 194 Shtenger 95 Shvank, Grigorii 117, 122, 193 Siberia 47, 50, 67

Index 251 Siberian Army Corps: 2nd 138; 3rd 113, 139; 5th 139–40; 6th 63, 140; 7th 139; 10th 132 Siberian Cossack Division: 12th 82 Siberian military district 46, 62, 175 Siberian Rifle Divisions: 3rd 21 Singapore 41, 73, 148 Sinkiang 44, 103, 174, 181 Sinmintin 78, 123 Sino-Japanese War 17, 32, 36, 42–3, 54, 59, 81 Skobelev, Mikhail 63 Skosarevskii, Aleksandr 6, 134 Skrydlov 80, 91–2 Skugarevskii 134 Slavs 12 Slesarev, K. M. 85, 187 Smirnov 89 Smith, W. R. 99 Smolensk 147 Sobolev 63 Sokovnin, Mikhail 66, 125, 153, 195 Soloviev, Vladimir 33, 150 Som 93 South Africa 25–6, 87 Southern Manchurian Railway (SMR) 14, 105, 108, 129, 137, 156 Soviet Union 7–8 Spanish–American War 15, 17, 26 Special Committee on the Far East (Russia) 15, 36, 48 spying see espionage Stakhovich 138 Stark, Oskar 15, 50, 56, 59–61, 89 State Defence Council (Russia) 172 State Duma 162, 176 Steinberg, John 136 Stelmashenko 131 Stessel’, Anatolii 95, 97, 99, 101 Stieber, Wilhelm 12 Stockholm 75 Stolovaia Hill 109 Strashnyi 90 Strel’bitskii, Ivan 22, 39, 110 Subbotich, Dmitrii 15 Subbotich (Marinkovich) 118 submarines 16, 92–3, 148 Suchan 131 Suez Canal 147 Suifun 131 Sumarokov, Nikolai 22 Sun Tzu 11–12 Sungari 175 Suslov 154

Suvorov 29–30 Svechin, Aleksandr 6, 17, 67, 108, 114, 195 Sweden 22, 72, 142, 180 Taiwan (Formoza) 75, 120 Takhe Bay 61 Takushan 121 Talienwan 54–5, 59–61, 121 Tarakanov 131 Tarchevskii 195 Taskentsy (Tashkents) 64 Taube 145 Taulusk Independent Detachment 138 Telefunken Company 94 Teleshev 85 Terek 147 Thomson, Sir Basil 11 Tibet 174 Tideman 80, 94, 96 Tientsin 22, 40, 76, 78, 96, 118, 121, 158 Tifontai (Li Fengtai) 153–4 Tigranov 195 Times, The 6, 30, 34, 82, 101 Tiurenchen: Battle of 183 Togo, Heihachiro 41–2, 48, 58–9, 61, 67, 81, 91, 96, 147–9 Tokyo 2, 16, 21, 23, 29, 32, 40, 48, 50, 59, 62, 91, 94, 119, 142, 146, 148, 162–3, 179, 181 Tomilin 131, 151, 195 Tonghuaxian 78 Trafalgar: Battle of 141, 144 Trans-Siberian Railway 29, 32, 45–6, 92, 116, 146 Trilateral Alliance 47 Tselebrovskii, Vitalii 73 Tsesarevich 61, 91 Tsugaru Strait 92, 148 Tsushima Islands 44, 49 Tsushima Strait 4, 44, 73–4, 97, 141; Battle of 141, 147, 148–9, 162 Tumanov 159 Tumen 36 Turkistan 174, 176 Tyvder, Mikhail 6 Udai 129 Ukhach-Ogorovich, Nikolai 6, 105, 152, 191 Ukhtomskii, Esper 33 Ukhtomskii, Pavel 91 Ukraine 71 United Kingdom (UK) see Great Britain

252

Index

United States of America (USA) 2, 24, 33, 35, 53, 71–2, 92, 94, 122, 163, 177, 180 Ural 74 Urals 70 Urga 129, 164 Urihu 58 Ussuriisk Bay 131 Ussuriiskii province 115, 161 Val’ter, R.-K. F. 188, 193 Vannovskii, Boris 18 Vannovskii, Gleb 18, 21, 37–9, 41, 110 Vannovskii, Petr 18 Variag 58, 61 Veniukov, Mikhail 32 Vertsinskii, Edward 6, 192 Vestnik Evropy 15 Vestnik Man’chzhurskoi Armii 133, 157 Vienna 28, 75 Vigo 145–6 Vineken, Aleksandr 118, 188, 190–1 Virginia 122 Vitgeft, Vil’gelm 56, 91–2 Vladivostok 4, 16, 40, 47, 49, 78, 86, 91, 93, 115, 117–18, 120, 130–1, 137, 141, 146, 149, 158, 163, 169, 182; Eastern Institute in 86, 94, 96, 109, 138, 157, 168; Squadron (cruisers) 80, 91–2, 96 Vlas’ev, Sergei 58 Vogak, Konstantin 22, 36–7, 40, 43, 72–3, 180 Von-der Khoven, S. V. 197 Voronin, Stepan 44 Wafangou: Battle of 107, 112 Waldersee, A. 14 war: belletristic works on 10; of cruisers 144; First World 3, 7-8, 21, 25, 27–8, 71, 104, 148, 170, 173, 177, 180, 184–5; games at the General Staff Academy (Russia) 9, 49; logic of 4; perception of 2; plans 45–9; Second World 148; supplies 74; types of 1 Washington 17, 94, 181 Waters, H. H. H. 5 Weber, Konstantin 78 Weihaiwei 29, 54, 73, 94

White Guardians (Russia) 7 ‘White Russia’ (Byelorussia) 15, 71 William (Wilhelm) II 33, 74, 116, 120, 145 Witte, Sergei 21, 35, 49, 162, 164 Wolff, David 128, 154, 165 Wolf’s Hills 100 Xipingkai 137 Xsiaobei 154–5 Yakovlev 129 Yalu 36, 77, 80, 106, 112; Battle of 112 Yamagata, Aritomo 28, 183 Yanchevetskii, Dmitrii 129 Yaron 192 Yasima 89 Yellow Bosphorus 33 ‘Yellow Peril’ 33–5, 68 ‘Yellow Race’ 33, 35 ‘Yellow Russia’ (‘Zheltorossiia’) 15, 33, 49 Yellow Sea 56, 93, 97, 147–8; Battle of 91–3 Yepanchin, Grigorii 72, 74, 180 Yermolov, Nikolai 72, 119, 145, 164, 180 Yinkou 15, 43, 85, 121 Yokohama 21, 40–1, 73, 147 Yuan Shik’ai 30, 43, 103–4 Yung 95 Zaamur District of Special Corps of Frontier Guards 9, 14, 66, 86, 117, 132, 152, 173, 175 Zabaikal Cossack Brigade 107 Zaraiskii Regiment 140th 52, 68 Zarubin, Ivan 31 Zasulich 79 Zhan Chenyuan 154 Zhili Gulf 94–6 Zhilinskii, Iakov 37, 51, 75, 79, 89 Zhukovskii, Nikolai 100 Zimmerman 4 Zulu tribesmen 25 Zundblat, A. O. 193 Zvonarev (Zvaigzne), Konstantin 7, 42, 75, 105, 124, 126, 139