The Military Reforms of Nicholas I: The Origins of the Modern Russian Army

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I The Origins of the Modern Russian Army

Frederick W. Kagan

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

This page intentionally left blank

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I The Origins of the Modern Russian Army

Frederick W. Kagan

THE MILITARY REFORMS OF NICHOLAS I

Copyright © Frederick W. Kagan, 1999. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. ISBN 0-312-21928-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kagan, Frederick W., 1970– The military reforms of Nicholas I : the origins of the modern Russian army / Frederick W. Kagan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–312–21928–8 1. Russia. Armiia—History—19th century. 2. Russia. Armiia— Reorganization. 3. Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia, 1796–1855. 4. Russia—History—Nicholas I, 1825–1855. 5. Russia—History, Military. I. Title. UA772.K24 1999 355.3’0947’09034—dc21

Design by Letra Libre First edition: April, 1999 10 9 8 7 6 5 4

3

2

1

98–44711 CIP

To My Lady For beauty, love, and light, I thank you.

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments

ix xi

Introduction

1

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

Alexander’s Legacy: Russia’s AdministrativeFinancial Crisis to 1825 Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833 Two Failed Reforms, 1827–1828 Lessons Lost:The Problems of the 1828 Campaign in Turkey The War of Administration, 1828–1829 Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832 Finance and Administration, 1833–1836 The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838 The Unfinished Reform: Strategy and Manpower in the 1830s

11 37 61 77 101 133 163 189 209

Conclusion

237

A Note on Russian Laws A Note on Archival Materials Archival Sources Secondary Literature Notes Index

253 259 261 267 275 331

This page intentionally left blank

List of Figures

Figure 1.1: Administration of the Large Active Army

19

Figure 1.2: Organization of the War Ministry in 1812

23

Figure 3.1: Organization of the Military Administration Proposed by the Draft Law

65

Figure 4.1: Expenditures 1826–1831

97

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

I could never have completed this work without the support of a great number of people. From the outset, Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (U.S. Army, Ret.) has been a source of inspiration and encouragement. His enthusiasm and repeated reassurance that this was a valuable project that should be seen to its conclusion has been a mainspring of my efforts. Dr. Bruce Menning of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College has also provided invaluable encouragement and direct assistance, helping me here and in Russia to locate and gain access to important materials and, more important, helping me to see what was vital, what needed to be developed more, and what could be left out. Professor Dennis Showalter of Colorado College helped me to keep going when I had begun to doubt that perseverance was worthwhile, and he helped me see better exactly where I should be headed. This project would never have come to completion, and certainly not in any worthwhile form, without the assistance of these three men. I am also grateful to Professor Paul Kennedy of Yale University for his support throughout my graduate career and after, and for valuable advice and counsel, for which I must also thank Professor Paul Bushkovitch of Yale.To Vasily Rudich I am especially grateful for being a good friend and a good mentor throughout a trying time. Two research grants from the Bradley Foundation made possible the necessary researches in Moscow without which this topic could not have been pursued. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Director Olga Garkushe, Deputy Director Mikhail Ryzhenkov, and the entire helpful staff of the Russian State Military Historical Archive. The opportunity to work briefly at the Pentagon was invaluable in helping me to understand the workings of a large military bureaucracy, and I thank Eric Edelman, then Assistant Principal Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense for Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Affairs, for making that possible.The opportunity to work at an outstanding center of military

xii

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

history has also been extremely important. The entire faculty and staff of the Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy has helped in one way or another to educate me in the study of armies and of war, but I must especially thank Maj. H. R. McMaster and Lt. Col. David T. Fautua, with whom it was my great honor to teach and to work.The leadership of the Department has always been supportive and appreciative of my efforts on this and other projects, and I thank Cols. Robert A. Doughty, Charles F. Brower IV, Cole C. Kingseed, and James M. Johnson for their encouragement and assistance.This work, of course, is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of History, the U.S. Military Academy, or any other agency of the United States Government. Lastly I would like to thank my father, Donald Kagan, for patiently teaching me over the years what history should be, and for his support of this and all my other projects. And my highest gratitude goes to my wife, Kim, who has helped me at every step of the way. The completion of this work is due as much to her efforts as to mine. Any errors or omissions in this text remain, of course, my responsibility.

Introduction

The Napoleonic era was one of the most dramatic in European history. New ideas, social structures, military organizations, and, of course, exciting military campaigns, followed one another with bewildering rapidity. To many, and especially to modern students of those times, the drama that Napoleon brought with him was a breath of fresh air sweeping away the stagnation of the eighteenth century. By contrast, the period following the collapse of Napoleon’s empire seems a dark and dreary time. Bounded on the one hand by the drama of the Napoleonic era and, on the other, by that of the revolutions of 1848, the period from 1815 to 1848 was characterized by attempts to restore the status quo ante by unimaginative “reactionary” regimes, and by oppression, censorship, and persecution. This perception has seemed equally valid to many students of the military history of the period. It is a commonplace that Napoleon introduced radically new ways of waging warfare that put an end to the stagnant “limited war” of the previous century and pointed the way toward modern warfare: fast, mobile, decisive, and dramatic. Napoleon and his dashing marshals impressed themselves upon history in memorable campaigns such as Ulm, Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena. By comparison, both the generals and the limited conflicts of the next three decades would seem dull, pedestrian, and fruitless. It was as though generals and statesmen after Napoleon vied with each other to return to the old, futile ways, ignoring the path to the future he had shown them. That this was not entirely true is clear enough. Modern military historians have found in this otherwise apparently fruitless period a part of the development of the German General Staff system, widely held to be one of the most important military developments of modern times. So successful did that system appear to prove itself in the 1860s and 1870s that it has become the paradigm against which all military organizations are judged, and hindsight lends credence to the belief that its development was the only positive change in an otherwise sterile time.Yet Prussia was not

2

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

the only state to develop its army in this time, and the general staff system is not the only system possible, or even desirable. For even as the Prussians struggled to develop the system that would carry them to victory later in the century, developments no less fundamental and portentous were taking place in what was thought of then and since as the most backward of all the powers, the Russian Empire. For many of the major European states, including Prussia, the period 1815–1848 did see an attempt to return to the old ways of doing things. Armies that had expanded manyfold to confront the hordes of Napoleon contracted just as sharply when he had been defeated. Although in theory structures were put in place to re-form those armies in time of need, it is open to question how seriously anyone took the new systems for most of the period. In Russia, though, the story was quite different. Her army, swelled to three times its prewar size, did not contract in the aftermath of victory. Changes in the old ways of raising, maintaining, and commanding armies in Russia were, therefore, both necessary and urgent. For a time, the Russians adopted a system that looked astonishingly like what would become the German General Staff system, albeit with some important differences. By 1816 a general staff system had largely come into being in Russia and continued to guide the development of Russia’s armed forces for more than a decade. But by 1828 the utility of the system had come into question, and the reforms of 1832–1836 that are the subject of the present work were undertaken to replace it.The study of the flaws in the general staff system as the Russians saw it and the superiority of the ministerial system with which they replaced it sheds important light not only on what has hitherto seemed a dark and unexplored period, but also on the general question of the best way to organize a state and an army for war. One of the cornerstones of a general staff system is that the most important military leader is a “chief of the general staff,” his only superior being the head of state serving as real or nominal commander in chief. The prominence of a body of professional staff officers whose head has effective control over the army has numerous advantages. By requiring a high degree of professionalism and training among its members, it ensures that military commands are not executed by amateurs or dilettantes. The prominence and permanence of such a group makes possible serious thought in peacetime about training, national military strategy, doctrine, and, of course, war planning. All of these advantages assisted Prussia in its wars with Austria and France in 1866 and 1870–71. So decisive were the victories produced by this system at Königgrätz and in France that it is all

Introduction

3

but heretical in the military and military history professions to challenge the excellence of the general staff system, or its place as the ideal basis for military organizations. Yet there are many flaws in this system, some of which have proved fatal for Germany over the years. The argument that raged during the FrancoPrussian War between Helmuth von Moltke the elder, then the chief of the German General Staff, and Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor, over the role of politics during the conduct of military operations, reflected an inherent tension in the general staff system. Chiefs of general staffs almost inevitably see themselves as technicians specializing in the art of war. Concerned as they are with the opportunities and dangers that face their military machines, and considering the difficulties of managing and perfecting the functioning of those machines, they naturally resent the interference of the “frocks,” “diplomats,” “bureaucrats,” or whatever derogatory names are used to describe those who concern themselves with politics. Such narrowness of view contributed to the political foolishness embodied in the Schlieffen Plan before World War I and to the willingness of the Wehrmacht to serve the Nazi regime before and during World War II. Hitherto it has been difficult to find an alternative to offer to the general staff system. So naturally and effectively did that system seem to serve the conditions of war in its time that it has seemed to many the only system that could have done so. But even as the Prussians were developing their system, Russia had already experimented with a version of it and found it wanting. The Russians, moreover, had gone even further by developing a carefully thought out and implemented system organized along entirely different lines—a ministerial system in which the most powerful figure in the military was not the chief of the general staff, but the war minister. The careful study of the development of this system is worthwhile for a number of reasons. In the first place, the Russians’ experience with a system approximating that of the German General Staff in the period during and after the wars with Napoleon, 1812–1832, revealed a number of serious defects in that system that are inherent in its concept and not merely the result of poor implementation. Above all, Russia’s experiences in the war with Turkey in 1828–1829 show how easily and naturally a general staff system leads to the development of a dual command structure that can cause confusion on the battlefield—a problem that the Germans were to experience most notably during World War I. In the second place, the fundamental reasons for Russia’s abandonment of the general staff system and adoption of a ministerial system were not,

4

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

strictly speaking, military. A general staff is the interface between the senior leadership of an army and the rest of that army. A war ministry is the interface between the army and the rest of society. General staffs, particularly as they arose in Russia after 1815 and in Prussia throughout the nineteenth century, usually seek to avoid thinking about the thornier issues surrounding the interface between army and society, especially those having to do with finance and military economy. In Prussia and Germany, the staff sections relating to logistics and military economy were explicitly differentiated from the general staff proper and were frequently even excluded from planning sessions. Prussia was a rich country relative to its size and population, at least as compared to Russia, and was experiencing the beginnings of an industrial revolution during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Its army, therefore, was not under greater pressure to maximize its efficiency and minimize its cost to the state than armies normally are, nor did it find critical the problem of finding the manpower and industrial resources necessary to carry out its mission. What the Prussian General Staff would find critical, however, was the problem of physically mobilizing those resources for war, a problem it solved by guiding the development of the Prussian railway system and by focusing on the preparation of elaborate railway mobilization plans. The lack of centralized control over military finance and logistics, functions split between the general staff and the war ministry, was not a problem in Prussia’s relatively resource-rich context.The general staff system made sense for Prussia. It did not, however, make sense for Russia. The industrial revolution reached Russia only late in the nineteenth century (if indeed it ever reached Russia at all), and the struggle to develop the industrial infrastructure necessary to support a large army was very acute. This story is well known to Russian historians, who hold it up as proof of Russia’s incredible “backwardness.” The story of the financial crisis that faced Nicholas I is also known, although less appreciated by historians.The story of Russia’s manpower crisis in the second quarter of the century has not, hitherto, been recognized at all. Yet all of these factors came together in the years following Nicholas’s ascent to the throne to show him and his advisors clearly that the disorganization and de-prioritization of economic control implicit in the general staff system was devastating for Russia at that time. The threats to Russia’s security arose precisely from Russia’s inability to tap the resources of the state fully and efficiently in a new and dangerous strategic environment. Finding an answer to these threats was not

Introduction

5

purely a technical matter: mobilization was relatively easier in Russia than in Germany because Russia’s was a standing force with little need to move reservists from the countryside to their units. Finding soldiers for that army, however, was much harder for the Russians than for the Germans because of the limitations the archaic system of serfdom imposed on the state and the army. Paying for such large forces was the hardest problem of all. Nicholas and his advisors recognized these problems, explicitly commented on them, and, quite unusually in history, wrenched the military system away from its established course in a series of reforms conducted not only in peacetime, but also following the successful conclusion of victorious wars against Napoleon, Persia, Turkey, and Poland. They abandoned the general staff system and established a new system in which the war minister presided over a unified military structure. The War Ministry would come to serve as the basis of Russia’s military organization through the end of the Romanov dynasty and for much of the Soviet Union’s history as well.The organizational reforms instituted by Dmitrii Miliutin, culminating with the establishment of the military districts system, were merely an elaboration of a basic pattern set by the reforms of Nicholas I, as Miliutin himself noted in 1882: “The basic principles established [by Nicholas I] in 1836 have been preserved with us even to this day. The reorganization of the War Ministry, begun in 1862 and completed in 1867, did not touch the previous fundamental principles and had as its goal only to bring the composition of the Ministry into a better organized form, to simplify its mechanism, to reduce paperwork [deloproizvodstvo]. . . . The war minister remained exactly as he had been established in 1836.”1 The reason for the longevity of the organizational pattern laid down by Nicholas I was not any excessive conservatism on the part of his successors, but the fact that Nicholas’s reforms addressed a basic problem of modern warfare: the efficient mobilization of the state’s resources and their transformation into effective military power. The reforms were ahead of those of the rest of Europe not because of any particular foresight on the part of Nicholas or his advisors, but because of the peculiar set of difficulties that beset Russia at the time: her extreme vulnerability due to her enormous size and the many potential invasion routes and raid sites; the weakness of her industrial and railway infrastructure, especially as compared with her size; and an archaic social structure that inhibited the efficient mobilization of her potentially vast manpower. These reforms merit study for another reason as well, then, for many of

6

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

the conditions that the reforms of the 1830s aimed to solve still bedevil Russia today. The historian who wishes to argue for the equality of the Russian system to the German general staff system, let alone the former’s superiority, faces a challenging task, for within a decade of the utter failure of the Russian army even to defend its own territory against the French and the British in 1856, the Prussian army shattered the forces of Austria in one of the most decisive victories in modern history. The keys to resolving this apparent paradox lie in an understanding of the enormous difficulties that confronted Russia in the 1830s and an acceptance of the fact that the reforms of Nicholas I were a critical first step, but only that.As one historian has noted, “It would have required a titanic effort to bring Russia up to mid-nineteenth-century European standards, to realize the dreams of Peter the Great in a world that no longer resembled his.”2 Nicholas laid the groundwork for the development of the Russian army and set the course for that development along an entirely new path, but he was neither willing nor able to carry through the transformation to completion—having created the basis for Russia’s success in the long run, he helped to ensure Russia’s defeat in the shorter term. Before exploring the reasons for the incompleteness of the reform of Russia’s army in the 1830s, we must first ask how there came to be any reforms at all under Nicholas I, let alone fundamental ones, and how it can be claimed that Russia’s military administration was not just improved, but revolutionized by Nicholas’s policies. It is almost an article of faith in the historiography of Nicholas’s reign that his administration was the epitome of stagnation, mindless bureaucracy, and the stifling of initiative at every level. Russian administration at all times is considered backward, inefficient, corrupt, and laughable, but Nicholas is thought to have taken these traits to absurd levels. One of the most prolific historians of Nicholas’s reign, Bruce Lincoln, has argued,“The mid-nineteenth-century Russian bureaucracy suffered an increasing paralysis because of inertia and because officials at lower levels passively resisted any change whatsoever.”3 In a monograph devoted to aspects of the bureaucracy under Nicholas, Lincoln argued that, aside from a small group of “enlightened bureaucrats,” the Russian administration was a sea of conservatism and mediocrity (or worse), and that all notion of change was anathema, especially to Nicholas himself.4 One of the foremost authorities on the Russian administration under Nicholas, Hans-Joachim Torke, reinforces this view, stating that in the his-

Introduction

7

tory of Russian administration, “until the Great Reforms of the 1860s there was much continuity, and the changes were trivial, touching only formalities. A change in the nature of the Russian bureaucracy . . . came about only in the second half of the nineteenth century.”5 Other students of Russian bureaucracy have argued, however, that important changes took place in various aspects of Nicholas’s administration, especially in the judicial administration.6 One historian has stated, in actuality, civil officialdom was transformed in a major way between the end of the eighteenth century and the death of Nicholas I in 1855. Major and rapid change occurred not in the pedigree and economic background of officialdom, but in the nature of their service experience and in the training officials underwent as preparation for it. Put very briefly, what happened was that in the course of the first fifty years of the nineteenth century civil service became a distinct professional career requiring specialized training prior to entry. The life patterns and experience of officials came to be essentially the same as those of the bureaucrats of contemporary Western European states.7

According to another historian, the changes in the Russian administration under Nicholas were so important that they laid the essential groundwork without which the reforms of Alexander II would not have been possible.8 Whatever the resolution of this debate concerning the civil administration, the scholarship on changes in the Russian administration under Nicholas sheds little or no light on the military administration in that period. There is no study devoted to the development of the Russian military administration. Not one of the works on Russia’s “administration” or “bureaucracy” even includes information on or data drawn from the military administration.9 The only monograph written about Russia’s army under Nicholas I hardly discusses the military administration at all.10 Similarly, excellent studies of the relationship between Russia’s army and Russian society and of Russia’s strategic perceptions over time also ignore almost completely the military administration under Nicholas.11 Such a total failure to explore the development of the military administration under Nicholas is surprising and serious, not merely from the standpoint of military history, but from the standpoint of Russian history as well. In the first place, the Russian army received by far the largest portion of the state budget for every year of the first half of the nineteenth century, and it was the military administration that determined how large the army’s portion would be and whether that money was well or badly

8

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

used.The study of the military administration is essential even for the study of the “civil” administration under Nicholas, furthermore, because the War Ministry was the third largest ministerial employer of civil officials, after only the Ministries of Finance and of Internal Affairs.12 Now that sources for the study of the military administration in the Imperial period are available, it will clearly be necessary to revisit the study of administration in general under Nicholas I so as to take account of the important developments that occurred in the military administration. In the second place, the study of the military administration under Nicholas is essential because, unique among all of the major institutions of government in that reign, the War Ministry conceived and carried through to completion a fundamental reform. Considering the historiographical ambivalence concerning the administration of Nicholaevan Russia, the fact that such an administrative reform did occur is important, and it is essential to understand precisely how and why it came about. In particular, the reforms of the 1830s were characterized by a high degree of initiative on the part of junior officials, and a high degree of flexibility and openmindedness on the parts of Nicholas and his War Minister, Aleksandr Ivanovich Chernyshev. The story of the reforms is the story of a much more vibrant administration staffed by much more competent and devoted officials than is usually thought to have been the case, and it will shed a great deal of light on all aspects of the study of Russian administration and the development of a modern Russian state. That the significance of the reforms has largely escaped the notice of historians is not surprising. There can be no doubt that in ideology, rhetoric, and action Nicholas was among the most conservative autocrats ever to wear the Romanov crown.The reforms of his reign, accordingly, pose a riddle: Why does a conservative defender of the status quo conduct important reforms that necessarily change the status quo? The answer lies in part in the nature of the reforms themselves, and in part in the situation that faced Nicholas when he ascended the throne and for years thereafter. There is an unfortunate tendency in modern Russian historiography to equate “reform” with “liberal reform,” and to define “progress” and “modernization” as movement toward constitutional and representative government in the pattern of the states of Western Europe, or, on the military side, toward the Prussian model.13 Some historians have explicitly challenged this view: “Looked at from another perspective, “europeanization” or “westernization” and “modernization” may themselves prevent the structuring of society and enhance political and cultural repression. What

Introduction

9

is here suggested is that in Russia the very process of “westernization” helped preserve autocracy and repression.”14 The reason for this apparent paradox is that the first part of “westernization,” the creation of the rechtstaat, the state ruled by law, in fact strengthens the autocrat’s ability to control his state, implement his will, and crush other opinions if he so chooses. The development of modern, efficient, “western” methods of government, in other words, can serve an autocrat just as well as a democrat. This is precisely the reason why the reforms of Nicholas’s reign were not reforms in any liberal sense. Nicholas inherited an inefficient, corrupt administration that cost the state an enormous amount of money it could ill afford to waste. He may or may not have cared that the administration did not serve Russia’s people well; he certainly cared that it did not serve him well. His reforms, as we shall see, were aimed almost entirely at bringing into being an administration that would be an effective extension of his will.They were conservative reforms, therefore, aimed only at increasing the autocrat’s ability to maintain the status quo. Their conservative nature has helped obscure them from the view of historians who find it difficult to reconcile Nicholas’s devotion to order and the status quo with a desire for changes that were, in fact, fundamental. Nicholas undertook these reforms because of the pressing nature of the crisis Russia faced throughout the first half of his reign.The urgency of this crisis has also almost entirely escaped historians, perhaps because Nicholas dealt so effectively with it. After all, it is difficult to argue that a state that had defeated Persia, Turkey, and Poland in quick succession could have faced a serious crisis. Informed observers at the time, from Palmerston to de Tocqueville, certainly did not believe it. De Tocqueville wrote in 1835 that Russia, together with America, “proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived . . . seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”15 Palmerston so doubted the urgency of any crisis in Russia that he conducted English foreign policy throughout his tenure as foreign secretary on the premise that Russia was the single largest threat to England’s security around the globe.16 Yet even as de Tocqueville wrote of the “ease and celerity” with which Russia advanced along her path, the Russian government was almost in despair. For more than a decade the most senior officials of the tsarist government, and especially of the army that inspired fear throughout Europe, had pointed to the impending collapse of the state and petitioned the Tsar to make urgent and necessary changes. In 1829 Count I. I. Dibich, the

10

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty, effective commander in chief of the Russian army, wrote a memorandum suggesting major reforms; General I.V. Sabaneev, Commander of VI Corps, pointed to problems in discipline and command and control;17 the Directors of the Commissariat and Inspectorate Departments of the War Ministry called for the codification of military law to clear up the anarchy that existed in the military administration; P. D. Kiselev, Chief of Staff of Second Army from 1819 to 1829, aimed a veritable barrage of complaints about discipline, training, organization, and administration at then Chief of the Main Staff P. M.Volkonskii; Prince E. F. Kankrin, the Minister of Finance, informed the Tsar that for the period 1823–1831 expenditures had exceeded income by over 70 million rubles, concluding that “the needs of the state exceed its current financial resources” and that “only with the greatest effort and with the gradual increase of various forms of income will it be possible to avoid large arrears or a permanent deficit in the budget.”18 Russia indeed faced a crisis.The army was poorly organized, its administration was underdeveloped, inefficient, and corrupt, and the state was too poor to bear the strain. The shrill cries of his senior military and financial advisors alerted Nicholas to the crisis, but few others then or since have recognized it, partly because Nicholas deliberately tried to conceal it. The crisis nevertheless was the principal driving force behind the reforms of the 1830s, and Nicholas’s policies can only be understood within the context of that crisis. Nicholas, the foe of change, undertook major changes in his own administration because he felt that he had no choice. Nicholas believed that only significant reforms would restore the fiscal health and maintain the military might of Russia. Still, the reforms of the 1830s were conservative, intended to allow Nicholas to preserve and strengthen the status quo in Russia and abroad. They would lead, nevertheless, to more fundamental changes that Nicholas probably did not foresee; they would bring about the birth of the modern Russian army and create an alternative to the general staff model that they explicitly rejected. This work is the story of those reforms and of their causes.

Chapter I

Alexander’s Legacy: Russia’s Administrative-Financial Crisis to 1825

The French Revolution brought about a rapid and dramatic increase in the size of Europe’s armies.This increase posed a number of difficult problems for the European states, especially how to recruit soldiers, how to administer them, how to command them in such large groups as came into being after 1792, and, not least, how to pay for them.1 Austria, Prussia, and France chose systems of recruitment that allowed them largely to ignore the new problems of administration and command: after 1815 armies of about 200,000 men each—the administration, command, and maintenance of which was not beyond the means of already existing structures—served as cadres for reserve armies that would provide mobilized strengths in excess of 400,000 each. Russia, however, did not adopt a reserve system2 and so faced the daunting task of administering and paying for an army that came to number over 800,000, in peacetime and in war. The size of Russia’s post-Waterloo army strained the resources of the state to the breaking point. By 1825 it would bring about the near collapse of Russia’s military administrative system and would nearly bankrupt the Russian state. Alexander I’s definition of Russia’s security requirements, combined with the incompleteness of his reforms of Russia’s governmental, social, and economic institutions, brought about a severe financial-administrative crisis that necessitated Nicholas I’s military reforms. To understand this background we must examine the military-financial and military-administrative policies of Alexander I. We must understand why and how he created and maintained an army of a size far beyond what Russia’s financial and administrative structure could support, the army of which Nicholas I took command in 1825.

12

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Russia’s Finances under Alexander I Poverty had been the main cause of Russia’s military weakness before Peter the Great.3 Peter nearly bankrupted the state to pay for his wars at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and his successors faced the tasks of reducing military expenditures without compromising military effectiveness and of finding better ways to pay for the army. By the time of Catherine the Great, however, efforts to do so had failed:“the government had come to despair of most orthodox methods of balancing income and outgo; increasingly it took to financing itself with foreign loans and unbacked paper assignats, of which some 20 million were in circulation by the middle of the [1770s].”4 Russia financed its eighteenth-century army at great cost to the longrange well-being of the state.5 Catherine the Great and Paul had assumed a total of more than 82 million rubles in internal debt and 132 million rubles in foreign debt by the end of Paul’s reign in 1801.6 In the last 15 years of Catherine’s reign alone (1781–1796), the budget showed a surplus only once and added over 180 million rubles to the deficit. Since the deficits of these years reflected the Russian government’s failure to raise the money through loans and taxes, they meant that the state faced an actual inability to pay its bills for almost every year for the last quarter of the eighteenth century. To cope with this situation, Catherine and Paul issued more than 194 million paper rubles to offset budget deficits that totaled 190 million in 1796.7 In that same period military expenditure was never less than half of the net revenues of the state, although it was rarely more than half of the gross expenditures. In 1791 military expenditures constituted 101.47 percent of net revenues, although they were only 53 percent of expenditures.8 Russia did not finance its army in the eighteenth century by harnessing the strength of a growing economy, but instead by inflating the currency and by floating loans. Alexander inherited a military structure that was larger than the state could comfortably support, as well as a large foreign debt and an inflated currency.9 In the first decade of his reign, however, Russia fought France, Sweden,Turkey, Persia, and Austria.10 As a result, expenditures on the War Ministry, which in 1804 had been 40 percent of normal revenues (revenues from ordinary and extraordinary taxes, tariffs, and other sources that do not add to the state’s debt, as opposed to revenues from loans and the floating of paper money), rose to 93 percent in 1808 before dropping back into the 60 percent range. Such high rates of expenditures on the armed forces predictably pushed overall state expenditures well beyond

Alexander’s Legacy

13

what the normal revenues of the state could support.11 In 1808 and 1809 expenditures were 195 percent and 205 percent of normal revenues respectively.12 The state made up the differences sometimes by floating loans, but usually by issuing more paper money. In 1808 and 1809 alone Russia issued over 200 million new paper rubles.13 The amount of paper money in circulation in 1810 was almost twice what it had been in 1805.14 The resultant damage to the currency was predictable: the paper ruble on the London and Amsterdam markets in December 1810 was worth less than 24 percent of what it had been worth in January 1806,15 and a silver ruble that had fetched 1.25 paper rubles in 1805 was worth two paper rubles in 1810.16 Alexander achieved increases in normal revenue that helped keep the situation from getting completely out of hand, but he did so by steadily increasing the tax burden on the peasantry. Since that peasantry was also supplying tens of thousands more troops yearly to the army than it had before in peacetime, the actual state of the Russian economy in these years was much worse than the data can show. Russia’s adherence to the Continental System between 1807 and 1810,17 moreover, cut the state off from its best source of hard currency: customs revenues in 1808 were half of what they had been in 1806.18 Russia, finally, experienced no economic boom of the sort that accompanied the industrial revolution in England and softened the impact of the wars with Napoleon on the English economy,19 for the industrial revolution had not yet reached Russia. It is no surprise, then, that the budget for 1810 “presented disquieting figures: 125 million in income, 230 million in expenditures, 577 million in debt, not the slightest reserve fund and not a single ready source of income!”20 Russia had come to the end of her resources. Alexander and his ministers, taking advantage of the relative peace resulting from the Treaty of Tilsit, acted energetically to manage the financial crisis. A manifesto of February 2, 1810, implemented a plan developed by State Secretary M. M. Speranskii that banned the further issuance of paper money. The state then set about using silver rubles to purchase and destroy paper rubles and thereby revalue them. At the same time Alexander established a formal procedure for requesting and receiving “extraordinary” expenditures in order to prevent ministries and the army from circumventing the fiscal bureaucracy.21 Some of Alexander’s advisors felt, however, that even such drastic measures would not be sufficient. Prince V. P. Kochubei, a member of the Department of State Economy of the State Council, sounded an alarming and prophetic note:

14

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I The reduction of expenditures is an absolutely essential condition, not only for the alleviation of our difficult situation, but also for keeping us in future from various difficult conditions. But by reduction of expenditures I do not mean any sort of reduction of expenditures in the current disposition of affairs. This would comprise a completely trivial sum: eight or nine million rubles do not even comprise an account [ne mogut . . . sostavliat’ schetu] where accounts are figured by tens of millions and where they may be figured, possibly, by hundreds of millions if we do not stop in time.22

Kochubei saw the problem as arising not from Russia’s financial policy, but from its foreign and military policies. He argued that the financial crisis could only be resolved by dramatically reducing Russia’s military power: Russia must end the wars with Turkey and Persia at once, cease inducting recruits into the army, maintain the army permanently below its normal complement and set up auxiliary bodies for border regions to reduce it still more, and, above all, cut the navy to the bone. He argued that the navy was not needed any longer against Sweden or Denmark, whose naval strengths had been smashed, and that against Britain no Russian navy stood a chance anyway.23 Kochubei, then, thought that in a moment of almost unprecedented tension in the European diplomatic and military situation, Russia had to withdraw from European affairs almost completely in order to repair the damage already done to her economic base. Withdrawal, however, was not an option. A precondition of any plan to resurrect Russia’s economic strength was the abandonment of the Continental System, which Alexander did in 1810. That move, however, undermining as it did Napoleon’s main effort to force England, his last remaining foe, to submit, was bound to destroy the Franco-Russian accord created by Tilsit. It was, in fact, almost certain to bring about another Franco-Russian war. Alexander understood the consequences of abandoning the Continental System. He continued to strengthen his armed forces after 1810, and in every way to prepare his country for a war he was sure would come, rather than cutting back his military expenditures and taking advantage of the improvement in the economic situation that followed the withdrawal from the Continental System to strengthen Russia’s economy, as Kochubei had advised. He was forced, instead, to finance the expansion of his military after 1810 as he had before with the issue of yet more paper money, in spite of his own proclamation against such a policy. As a result, although the changes introduced in 1810 produced a small improvement in the strength of the ruble, they also helped to bring about the war that swept it away.24

Alexander’s Legacy

15

The war of 1812–1815 did far more damage directly to the Russian economy than had previous wars.25 Napoleon’s army and the Russians’ scorched-earth tactics together devastated Smolensk and Moscow and all that lay between.Tax arrears in 1812 rose to 120 million rubles, to which another 60 million were added in the first third of 1813. Alexander was obliged to forgive these and other arrears, but at the end of those amnesties in 1816 another 60 million rubles worth of arrears had appeared.26 The reconstruction of the ravaged cities and countryside cost tens of millions of rubles more. Moscow alone received over 15.6 million rubles between January 1815 and June 1816.27 These costs, together with the arrears in taxes and the increased costs of Russia’s army, which was almost twice as large in 1815 as it had been in 1812, combined to produce budget deficits that only loans and more paper money could offset. By 1817 there were more than 836 million paper rubles in circulation28 (as opposed to the 580 million of 1810 or the 290 million of 1805), and the internal state debt stood at more than 153 million rubles.The value of the paper ruble in December 1815 was only 32 percent of what it had been in January 1806, and it would remain at this low level for the rest of Alexander’s reign. The advent of a stable peace in the last decade of Alexander’s rule made possible a serious attempt at least to avoid doing further damage to the Russian economy, if not actually to resolve the underlying financial crisis. 1818 saw not only the end of the practice of issuing paper money, but also the inauguration of a policy of borrowing silver rubles by means of internal loans and bonds to purchase and destroy paper rubles. This policy resulted in a reduction of the money supply from 836 million paper rubles in 1817 to 595 million paper rubles in 1823 but had very little positive effect on the value of the currency: whereas in 1818 one silver ruble had purchased four paper rubles, in 1823 it purchased 3.73 paper rubles—only a moderate deflation of a badly inflated currency. It increased the state’s debt, however, to almost 590 million paper rubles—almost one and a half times the annual budget—at the end of Alexander’s reign.29 The decision to stop issuing paper rubles was wise; the attempt to deflate the currency was probably less so. Neither measure, however, as Kochubei had pointed out eight years before, was enough to solve a crisis that did not arise from financial policies. Alexander decided in 1818 that the state would not inflate the currency to pay its bills but would assume more debt if its normal income did not suffice, and Nicholas I would maintain this policy to his death.The problem was that both Alexander and Nicholas also felt it necessary to support the military posture and complement of 1815, and that structure was well beyond the means of the state—

16

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

it was, indeed, the principal reason for the inflation of the currency in the first place. Neither Alexander nor Nicholas came quickly to that conclusion, however, for by 1818 it seemed clear that Russia’s military administration, which had never been properly reformed to cope with the enormous new responsibilities entrusted to it, was on the verge of collapse, and that the resolution of that problem might avert the financial crisis that threatened the state.

Military Administration under Alexander I Like most eighteenth-century European armies, the Russian army had been administered indifferently in the pre-Napoleonic era. In the period between 1805 and 1815 the army tripled in size, and the eighteenth-century administration could not cope with the increased burden, as the wars of 1805–1809 revealed. Failures of the military administration were not the primary causes for the defeats and difficulties in those wars, but they were bad enough to provide the Russian army with a reputation for being illtrained, ill-equipped, ill-supplied, ill-staffed, and ill-commanded. The key question for Russian military administration, as it was for Russian state finance, was how far the state could change to meet the challenges of the new era. In 1812 the administration of the army still consisted of the subordinate elements of the War College that Peter the Great had founded almost a century before.30 The creation of the War Ministry in 1802 had done little to change this situation. The manifesto of September 8, 1802, On the Establishment of Ministries,31 simply consigned intact the organization and function of the War College to the new War Ministry. Its only real effect was to eliminate de jure the “collegial” system of government which had de facto largely disappeared already in the reigns of Catherine II and Paul. Even this effect, moreover, was muted by the fact that the War College continued to exist in name and function until the reforms of 1812. In the strained peace and financial crisis that followed the settlement at Tilsit, therefore, Alexander supported the efforts of General Michael Barclay de Tolly, war minister from 1810 to 1812, to establish the military administration on a sounder footing even as he supported Speranskii’s efforts to reform the administration of the rest of the state. Barclay looked to the French system as his model. His reforms, implemented in 1812, divided the Russian military administration into a field administration and a central administration.They abolished the War College once and for all and uni-

Alexander’s Legacy

17

fied the central administration under the War Ministry.32 The Establishment of the War Ministry33 was based upon the General Establishment of Ministries that had been issued six months earlier.The central military administration and the other central government agencies that were also formed on the basis of the General Establishment of Ministries, therefore, shared a common set of structures, procedures, and principles.34 After 1812 it became possible to speak of a central state administration in Russia that included the military administration. Throughout Nicholas’s reign improvements made to the civil administration frequently would have their reflection in the military administration, and vice versa. Prince Kochubei had proposed that the reform of 1802 that established the ministries in Russia abolish the colleges altogether and move entirely to a ministerial system. Alexander compromised, however, by allowing the colleges to continue to exist and function under the nominal control of “ministers,” and Kochubei continued to argue for the completion of the reform. Speranskii’s reforms, therefore, were the continuation of the introduction of the ministerial system into Russia that had been begun but halfheartedly in 1802, and they resulted in the final abolition of the colleges by 1812. The ministries in Russia in 1812 were not ministries in any western sense.The three “main attributes” of ministries that Kochubei outlined in 1806 were “unity and speed of action,” “responsibility of the ministers,” and “overall conformance of all parts” (obshchoe vsekh chastei soobrazhenie), and these became the bases for the General Establishment of Ministries of 1811.Although the “responsibility of ministers” of which Kochubei wrote sounds like a Western concept, the wording is misleading, for Alexander’s ministers were responsible only to him. They served only at his pleasure and at his direction, and no one but he could force an accounting of them. In the West, on the other hand, ministers were responsible both to king and to parliament, and, since they possessed a certain measure of their own power due to their positions in parliament, they retained some independence from the king. Russia’s ministries, however, were, from the outset, purely executive departments, with no independent authority whatsoever, and the War Ministry was no exception. The War Ministry controlled only the central administration of Russia’s armies. It collected grain, inducted recruits, purchased supplies, and received pay from the Ministry of Finance.The field administration of those armies, including the tasks of actually distributing to the soldiers the food, materiel, and pay that the central administration had collected, was the responsibility of the commanders of the armies until 1812. In that year, the

18

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army entrusted the field administration to a Commander in Chief (glavnokomanduiushchii) of the Large Active Army and the Main Staff (glavnyi shtab) of that army.35 Although this reform occurred in peacetime, it had been clear for many months before it was drafted that war between Russia and France was imminent.The reform, furthermore, was based on the French system of military administration that had seen 20 years of almost continuous warfare. The law of 1812, therefore, defined a field administration for an army on a mobilized war footing and made no provision for the field administration of the army in peacetime conditions. This omission would have important consequences that would last well into the reign of Nicholas I, and it would greatly contribute to the confusion in the administration of the army that was so prominent in the years following the Congress of Vienna.

The Field Administration The Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army vested all command authority over the Large Active Army in the Commander in Chief of the Large Active Army (CINC/LAA), whom the tsar appointed in an Imperial order issued simultaneously to the army and to the Senate.36 The term “large active army” (bol’shaia deistvuiushchaia armiia) was never defined in this or subsequent laws, nor did it have any legal standing independent of the authority vested in its commander. A large active army, rather, existed if and only if there was a Commander in Chief appointed to command it and explicitly vested with the powers of a Commander in Chief of the Large Active Army (CINC/LAA) by Imperial decree. The powers of the CINC/LAA, on the other hand, were explicit and extensive:“The Commander in Chief of the Large Active Army represents the person of the Emperor and is vested with the power of His Majesty.”37 The CINC/LAA, however, lost his powers and ceased to command the army immediately upon the tsar’s arrival at headquarters, unless the tsar issued an order to the contrary.38 Theoretically, these provisions ensured that orders of the CINC/LAA could not be disputed except by reference to the tsar; the practical consequences were somewhat less clear.39 The CINC/LAA commanded and administered his forces through the Main Staff of the Army. The staff consisted of four sections (see figure 1.1): (1) Chief of the Main Staff ’s Section, (2) Engineers Section, (3) Artillery

Alexander’s Legacy

Figure 1.1

19

Administration of the Large Active Army

Section, and (4) Logistics Section, each headed by a Chief and controlling an administration of a size and organization appropriate to its function.40 The Chief of the Main Staff ’s Section consisted of the administrations of the Duty General (dezhurnyi general),41 which controlled the personnel management of the army, and of the Quartermaster General, charged with gathering and sorting topographical and statistical information about the theater of operations and with forming and implementing dispositions. The Logistics Section, headed by the Intendant General, consisted of the Provisions Administration, headed by the Field Provisions-Master-General, and the Commissariat Administration, headed by the Field War-Commissary-General. The Provisions Administration provided the army and its horses with foodstuffs, while the Commissariat Administration supplied equipment, clothing, ammunition, and pay. The seemingly foolish division of the logistics administration made a certain degree of sense in campaigns in Europe: foodstuffs could be obtained as easily in Germany as in Ukraine, and the Field Provisions Administration was to be almost completely independent of the central administration, acquiring necessary supplies from local sources wherever

20

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

the army happened to be stationed; commissariat goods, however, including uniforms, guns, ammunition, and, especially, pay, could not readily be acquired locally, and so the Field Commissariat Administration had to connect with the central administration.42 In order to ensure that supplies from local sources would be forthcoming, the Intendant General was to become effective governor-general of all territories occupied by the army, and the law described an elaborate system of land administrations that would support his efforts to extract supplies needed for the army from the countryside. Upon the declaration of war, all magazines maintained in the area occupied by the army came under the Intendant General’s jurisdiction, and the central administrations that had built and supplied those magazines lost all control over them. When the supplies in those magazines were exhausted, it was the Intendant General’s responsibility to replenish them.The law’s detailed description of the methods of extracting necessary supplies from the local countryside was not matched by detailed dispositions for transporting supplies to the army’s vicinity in the event that local supplies proved insufficient. Although this lapse would not be important as long as the army was campaigning in the rich and fertile regions of Germany and France, it would be critical (and almost fatal) when the army was operating in the inhospitable areas of the lower Danube and the Balkans. The Russian Chief of the Main Staff ’s responsibilities were much like those of the chiefs of the German General Staff in the second half of the century. He oversaw the Quartermaster General’s administration and the Duty Administration of the army, which were charged collectively with planning and operations.The Russian Main Staff executed the duties that the Germans would come to consider the essential elements of the work of a General Staff: 1. Working out all arrangements necessary for quartering, security, marches, and battle; 2. Communicating the necessary orders, either verbally or in writing, at the right time and place, and in sufficient detail; 3. Obtaining, collecting, and compiling in order all information concerning the nature and the military character of the theatre of war, providing maps and plans; 4. Collecting and estimating the value of information received concerning the enemy’s forces; 5. Watching over the fighting condition of the troops, and keeping . . . posted as to their efficiency in every respect;

Alexander’s Legacy

21

6. Keeping journals and diaries, drawing up reports on engagements, and collecting important materials, for the subsequent history of the war; 7. Special duties, particularly reconnaissances.43 The Main Staff was also similar to the German General Staff in what it did not do: logistics.The Intendant General was not attached to the Chief of the Main Staff ’s Section but answered directly to the CINC/LAA, just as the logistics officers of the German Army were not part of the General Staff.44 The Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army also provided for corps and division staffs that were suitably reduced versions of the Main Staff and were capable of administering their units either as parts of higher units or, with appropriate additions that the law designated, as detached units on independent operations.45 The development of corps and division staffs was a critical component of the Napoleonic revolution in military affairs, as it made possible the coordinated independent action of army corps and divisions that was the hallmark of Napoleon’s fighting style.46 The Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army endowed Russia’s fighting forces with this advantage, but in a manner again reminiscent of the later development of the German General Staff. The Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army envisioned a general staff corps that consisted of the Main, corps, and division staffs and constituted a unified whole.47 The chiefs of these staffs were to have continual contact one with the others, and the staffs themselves formed a command hierarchy: division subordinate to corps, corps subordinate to army.48 This provision resulted in a duplicate chain of command, for the chiefs of staff were obliged to report to their superior chiefs of staff if they felt that their commanders had given them orders conflicting with “procedure and regulations,” although they had to carry out those orders nevertheless.49 The specialties on the staffs were arranged in a similar fashion: the Duty Officer of the corps staff was responsible both to his commander and to the Duty General of the army; logistics, artillery, engineering officers, and officials of the quartermaster’s administration likewise reported both to their commanders and to their specialty chiefs in the Main Staff.50 By these regulations the Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army aimed to create a “general staff ” consisting of all of the staff officers of division, corps, and army staffs that was not only the machine, “with the help of which the power of the CINC, of Corps and Division Chiefs, is brought into action in all details by rapid and precise execution,”51 but was also a unified body that provided means of checking on commanders and of providing information

22

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

to the central staffs in greater detail than the commanders were likely to see fit to forward. This arrangement was similar to that of the Prussian and German armies. The Prussian General Staff was divided into the “Great General Staff,” which served as the central staff administration, and the “Army General Staff,” which served on corps, division, and, sometimes, brigade staffs. This tradition continued into the German Empire: The Chief of the General Staff is at the same time Chief of the whole Staff. As in peace time, not only are the officers of the General Staff and Routine Staff under his immediate orders, but also, so far as all office duties actually connected with the Army Corps are concerned, the Corps Judge-Advocate, the Corps Field Intendant, and the Corps Surgeon-General (as heads of their respective departments). . . . He was in direct communication with the Officers Commanding the Artillery and Engineers of the Army Corps. . . . 52

The Chief of the Main Staff (CMS) served, in effect, as the CINC’s deputy—in the event of the CINC’s incapacitation, the CMS was authorized to give orders in his name; in the event of the CINC’s death, the CMS was to take his place until the tsar designated a replacement.53 Russia in 1812 was well on its way toward the development of a Prussian-style general staff organization. The principal structural difference between the two systems lay in the fact that in Russia in 1812 the staff structure was not reflected in the central administration.54 In Prussia, after the creation of the system in 1809, the chief of the General Staff was attached to the king and a component part of the War Ministry; in Russia CMSs were attached to army commanders and had no clearly defined relationship to the War Ministry. No CMS received authority over the CMSs of the other active armies, and the staff had no central administration charged with the whole of Russia’s armed forces. As a result, the Main Staff could not have had the organizational independence that was one of the salient features of the German General Staff because it did not have that institution’s degree of unity.The next step toward the creation of a general staff would have to await the coming of peace and the reforms of 1815–1816. The Central Military Administration The Establishment of the War Ministry55 of 1812 created a new structure for the central military administration based on the General Establishment of

Figure 1.2

Organization of the War Ministry in 1812

24

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Ministries to replace the antiquated organization the War Ministry had inherited from the War College.The departments (departamenty)56 of the War Ministry mirrored the major elements of the Main Staff: the Artillery, Engineers, Provisions, and Commissariat Departments corresponded to the equivalent administrations under the CINC/LAA, while the Inspectorate Department corresponded to the administration of the Duty General.The duties of the ministerial departments and the field administrations had little in common, however (see figure 1.2). The Provisions Department,57 for example, had no responsibility for supplying any of the active armies; those responsibilities lay with the Intendants-General of the armies, who had full powers to compel local civil authorities to comply with their requisitions. Instead, the Provisions Department gathered supplies for all military units that were not attached to active armies.This task was not easy: The organization of supply for reserves encountered serious difficulties in the beginning. Plans for their formation had not been worked out before the war [of 1812]. In consequence of this several concentration points of reserve units had no magazines; in others, supplies on hand of provisions and forage were insufficient for fulfilling current needs. Inadequacies in supply were made the more intractable because the size of the reserves being formed was extremely high.58

By the end of 1812, 157 infantry battalions and 92 cavalry squadrons had been formed, with a complement of over 165,000 men.59 The Provisions Department scrambled to keep these forces supplied. The Commissariat Department faced an even harder problem, for it not only had to equip all of the reserves called up in the course of the war (and more than 680,000 peasants joined the colors between 1812 and 1815),60 but it also had to supply the commissariat administrations of the active armies with necessary equipment that could not be obtained locally, especially weapons and ammunition.The problem intensified when the armies crossed the frontier in 1813, requiring the Commissariat Department to supply several hundred thousand Russian troops spread out across Europe. It undertook to accomplish this task by sending supplies by sea from St. Petersburg and Riga to Königsberg, where field commissariat commissions, controlled by the Intendants-General of the active armies, took charge of distributing the supplies to troops deployed throughout Europe. The Commissariat Department also established land supply routes to depots first in Grodno and Brest, then in Breslau and Prague.61 Making such

Alexander’s Legacy

25

a system work at all, in the complete absence of steamships and railways, was an impressive accomplishment. The key to the smooth functioning of the system was the distinguishing of the areas under the War Ministry’s authority from those under the CINC/LAA’s. The ministerial departments did not have any functions in the territories occupied by the active army beyond bringing supplies in amounts designated by the Intendant General to locations assigned by him. Even this function was curtailed during the Russian army’s retreat in 1812, for the Intendant General had the powers of a governor-general in the areas occupied by the army and could—and did—simply confiscate necessary supplies from homes, farms, and factories located in those regions. The central military administration, moreover, suffered not only from the vague delineation of its responsibilities vis-à-vis the field administration, but also because its own organization and functioning had never been clearly defined.The Establishment of the War Ministry was little more than a description of the ministry’s structure, insofar as it differed from the general structure outlined in the General Establishment of Ministries. A Charge to the Minister (Nakaz) should have followed the Establishment (Uchrezhdenie) in order to define clearly and in detail the responsibilities of the various officials of the ministry as well as the specific procedures and paperwork processes.62 Such a Charge was an integral part of the process of reforming the ministries, and the Ministries of Finance and of Police received both Establishments and Charges in 1811.63 A draft Charge was drawn up for the War Ministry, but its inadequacies were glaring: basing the administration on the General Establishment of Ministries, the Charge undertook to spell out the modifications to the general rules necessary for the smooth operation of the War Ministry. Its complete lack of specificity rendered it useless, however—the ministry’s operations would probably have been much the same even if it had been approved, for their essential aspects were all contained in the General Establishment of Ministries, to which the Charge made frequent reference. It utterly failed to describe a coherent set of procedures for running the newly created War Ministry, and Alexander saw no point in promulgating it.64 As a result, although the General Establishment of Ministries outlined the basic forms and procedures, descriptions of processes critical to the functioning of the central military administration were lacking. Above all, the basic provisions for bookkeeping, control (kontrol’), and review of accounts that the General Establishment of Ministries laid out were not modified to suit the greater scale and complexity of the War Ministry.65 These deficiencies could well have been made good if the first War Minister had been

26

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

intelligent and energetic enough to set about determining and establishing bureaucratic and fiscal procedures appropriate to his ministry. Unfortunately, the talented Barclay de Tolly left the ministry upon the outbreak of hostilities in 1812 and turned it over to the listless and incompetent A. I. Gorchakov. Disaster followed quickly. The War Minister answered for the resources allocated to his administration, but he did not have officials directly subordinate to him to check on the income and expenditures of the departments of the War Ministry. Review of those expenditures was entrusted to special control bureaus (kontrol’nyi stol or kontrol’ny otdel) attached to each department that handled fiscal affairs.66 In the confusion of wartime, however, financial review did not receive high priority in the overworked central logistics departments, and by 1817 over 32,000 unreviewed financial documents had accumulated; not a single account had been reviewed in the four years of the war.67 Problems in procedure appeared at once, as well: by 1816 over 8,300 matters lay unresolved in the Provisions Department.68 The significance of these problems lay in the fact that the Provisions and Commissariat Departments, employing together more than 2,000 people and costing annually more than 277,000 silver rubles,69 disposed of budgets totaling over 152 million rubles annually between 1815 and 1825.70 These two departments, therefore, disposed of about 87 percent of the War Ministry budget and about 34 percent of total state revenues.71 Assuring their efficient and accurate functioning should have been a matter of first importance to a state preoccupied with financial difficulties, but Alexander would not bring himself to solve this problem. The reforms of 1812 also failed to solve the problem of commanding and administering Russia’s large and growing forces in several other respects, the most important of which was their failure to address the problem of command and administration in peacetime. This problem presents difficulties for every army, and if Russia’s failure to address it in 1812 was understandable, it nonetheless remained the most urgent and serious issue facing Alexander after 1815. The bifurcation of the military administration that these reforms solidified posed additional obstacles to military and financial efficiency. Both the War Minister and the CINCs/LAA had the right to report directly to the tsar. When Napoleon attacked in 1812, accordingly, Alexander alone had to coordinate the activities of five separate officials, all independent of each other, each of whom had the legal right to insist upon presenting his views directly to the tsar.72 The tsar had a large headquarters staff, it is true, that could theoretically have managed the task of coordination, but for one

Alexander’s Legacy

27

critical problem: by law, no one other than the tsar had the authority to issue orders, even orders in the tsar’s name, to the CINCs. The practical problem was even more important: the tsar had too many other things on his mind to concentrate on keeping the military administration running smoothly. Since he was the only one who could keep the machine running, without his oversight there was no reason for it to function well—and it did not.The rivalry between Barclay and P. I. Bagration, so well known to historians of this campaign, gives testimony to weaknesses in the laws and to Alexander’s unwillingness or inability to correct them: Alexander did not name Barclay overall Commander in Chief, and so Bagration’s reluctance to obey the instructions of a man who was his junior in rank was in accord with the letter of the law.73 Relations between the field administration and the central administration, each of which was independent of the other and reported separately to the tsar through its chief, the CINC for the former, the War Minister for the latter, were no better. In December 1812, M. I. Kutuzov wrote to Acting War Minister Gorchakov,“[B]ecause of the failure to establish to date any sort of internal supply in the provinces, various military teams passing through collect from the inhabitants all of their provisions and forage without paying and that because of this the inhabitants are so exhausted that many of them are left without any sustenance at all and, abandoning their homes, depart to wherever they may.”74 The situation did not improve when the responsibilities of the Provisions Department again included the territories retaken from Napoleon.The central logistics administration fell into a state of complete disorder in 1813 and 1814, and when the army started to return from abroad in 1814 further problems of coordination arose:“the troops either did not find in their new locations the requested amount of provisions and forage, or they received money designated for their supplies belatedly.”75 Two factors combined with problems of coordination to destroy the efficiency of the central administration: first, because of its novelty and the lack of a clearly defined set of administrative procedures and responsibilities, it was not able to begin operating normally before Napoleon’s onslaught pushed it beyond its capacities; second, because of the pedestrian and unexciting nature of a central military administration that by law was completely separated from the field forces, the talented Barclay de Tolly left the ministry to take the field when war came. His replacement, Gorchakov, a man who had had an uninspired career and was made War Minister simply because he was the most senior general then in the ministry, was not up to the task of keeping his newly formed ministry functioning under the strains of war.76

28

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Alexander made no attempt to supervise Gorchakov directly, entrusting this task to the already overworked Count S. N. Saltykov, Chairman of the State Council. Although Alexander gave Saltykov supreme oversight over the extraordinary expenditures required by the war and thereby theoretically put him in a position to demand an accounting from Gorchakov, in reality Saltykov had no way to check on anything Gorchakov might report to him, and he did not have the authority to demand to see reports from Gorchakov’s subordinates. The results were as might have been expected: the Logistics Department discharged its responsibilities not only with great inefficiency, but also with the high degree of dishonesty that the lack of effective oversight made possible. Gorchakov’s death in 1817 saved him from a trial for corruption; the state recovered the funds in question from his estate.77

The Reforms of 1815–1816 While the war ended with the problem of commanding and administering Russia’s enormous army still unresolved, the peace that followed presented Russia with another challenge: making the transition from a large wartime army to a peacetime establishment. Other European states made this transition by reducing the rank-and-file of their armies while keeping their command and administrative organs fundamentally intact. In Russia it was the rank-and-file that remained on a war footing and the supreme military institutions that changed. The decree of December 12, 1815, On the Administration of the War Department,78 changed the basis of Russia’s military administration from a division between central and field administration to one between the “economic” and the “operations” aspects of command and administration.79 The War Minister retained control over economic matters, while a new Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty (CMS)80 took charge of all operations.The two armies returning from the war remained intact, commanded by CINCs whose power still came from the Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army, through the staffs created by that law.81 On the Administration of the War Department aimed at rationalizing and unifying the military administration: on the one hand, the Inspectorate and Judicial82 Departments of the War Ministry, which performed only “operational” functions, became administrations of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty under the direction of the Duty General. On the other hand,

Alexander’s Legacy

29

the War Ministry itself became simply an administration of the Main Staff, which now consisted of the CMS, the War Minister, the Inspector of Artillery, and the Inspector of the Corps of Engineers.The War Minister lost his right to report directly to the tsar, and the Chief of the Main Staff became the only official with the right to report on or receive imperial orders concerning the army; he passed the War Minister’s reports to the tsar, and the tsar’s instructions to the War Minister. The structure of the Main Staff, aside from the expansion of the Duty Administration, was exactly the same as that of the Main Staff outlined in the Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army, except that the War Minister stood in place of the Intendant General as the chief logistics officer.83 In fact, as a result of this law, the War Minister really was only a logistics officer: the War Ministry consisted of the Provisions, Commissariat, and Medical Departments, and the Artillery and Engineering Administrations reported to the War Minister only about their finances and the economic aspects of their functions. This arrangement was not satisfactory because the War Minister was at once too strong and too weak to fill this position. He was too strong because, unlike the Intendant General, the War Minister had specific rights and powers guaranteed to him by the General Establishment of Ministries that the Chief of the Main Staff could not affect: the War Minister was a member of the State Council and the Committee of Ministers and attended the Ruling Senate, and he was the only military official charged with reporting on the army to these bodies.84 Unlike the Chief of the Main Staff, the War Minister had the power to suggest modifications in laws or to propose new laws to the tsar.85 The State Council and the Committee of Ministers, it is true, held little power, never opposed the will of the tsar, and did not, therefore, serve as any sort of democratic or oligarchic check on the autocracy.They did, however, serve two important functions: first, in handling the myriad routine matters of the administration of a vast state, they frequently “recommended” measures to Alexander that he usually “confirmed” and that thus became law. The importance of the right of reporting to the tsar, in fact, lay mostly in being able to present “reports,” which, if the tsar “confirmed” them, were promulgated as “supremely confirmed reports” and became law. The men in positions that allowed them to affect the drafts of those reports, therefore, such as the members of these two bodies, had a great deal of influence. Second, the tsar sometimes attended sessions of the State Council and regularly read the minutes of its discussions—he had to: many laws emerged from the “supremely confirmed reports” contained in those

30

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

minutes.The War Minister, therefore, still had the tsar’s ear as long as he retained a voice in these bodies, so that the “unification” of the military administration was illusory. The War Minister, however, was too weak to replace the Intendant General because the distinction between field and central administrations was not entirely abolished: Intendants-General remained the principal logistics officers of the two active armies,86 and the War Minister had no influence over them whatsoever. The War Ministry received funds from the Ministry of Finance and distributed them to the active armies and independent corps. The commanders of those armies and independent corps themselves, however, were the only officials responsible for seeing to the proper and efficient use of these funds; the War Minister had no power to review their accounts or to punish their misdeeds.87 The War Minister’s tenuous control over logistics became still weaker when On the Provisions Administration was approved in 1816.88 This law explicitly redivided that service into a field administration and a central administration.The field administration consisted of the Intendants-General of the two active armies and the Over-Provisions-Masters of the independent corps, while the central administration remained the Provisions Department of the War Ministry. The field administrations were entirely independent of the center.The War Minister transferred funds earmarked for them to the CINC, who turned them over to the Intendants-General or Over-Provisions-Masters. The law explicitly limited the War Minister’s function to this transfer of funds—he was not responsible for reviewing the expenditures of the field administration, or for supplying the troops of the armies or corps.89 The law went further even than the Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army; it assigned responsibility for supplying units not attached to an active army or independent corps but deployed in the regions occupied by an active army or independent corps to the army or corps instead of to the internal provisions administration.The internal administration, therefore, supplied only those units neither attached to nor deployed near armies or corps—a very limited number. This arrangement meant that by far the largest percentage of the provisions budget (which comprised more than 40 percent of the War Ministry budget and more than 15 percent of state revenues) was spent by four separate administrations, none of which had the personnel to keep careful accounts and verify their accuracy.90 On the Provisions Administration outlined basic procedures for account-keeping and included two forms as templates for the required reports, but it did not add accounting personnel to the field administrations.The field administrations, therefore, still did

Alexander’s Legacy

31

not have any sections dedicated to accounting or financial control—one bureau of the chancery of each Provisions Commission performed such functions, but it had neither the personnel nor the institutional stature to perform them well.91 The accounting officials were concentrated instead in the Provisions Department, which, relieved from the responsibility of supplying most of the army, turned its attention to straightening out the confusion left over from the war. By the end of 1816, however, matters had not improved much, and Alexander issued a decree to the Senate reprimanding the Provisions Department: We observed with anger the increase in the misuse of all necessities in the supply of the troops depending on the internal supply system under the administration of the deceased Provisions-Master-General Labat, that the weakening of oversight, the departure from prescribed regulations, the lack of accountability, and every sort of disorder have greatly increased in the past few years, bringing this system to the very edge of disintegration. Despite the extraordinary sums issued from the state treasury, We have seen from the reports of the commanders in chief of the armies and from the corps commanders that not only in many places has the supply of the troops not been satisfactorily secured, but that in some places it has become so difficult as to have been accompanied by the exhaustion of the inhabitants. . . . [This administration] is the more guilty in that in the course of the last three years, when the major part of Our troops, located abroad . . . by the intelligent dispositions [of Barclay de Tolly] and the devoted efforts of Intendant General Kankrin, did not request and did not receive supplies from the Provisions Department, large quantities of reserve supplies and money should have been maintained, because sums designated for the entire complement of the army by the annual estimates were issued to it.92

Alexander was not the only one who noticed the deficiencies in the Provisions Administration. In a letter to the Duty General of the Main Staff, the CINC of the Independent Georgian Corps wrote in November 1816, “The provisions administration has gone crazy. In the magazines there is nothing. They do not issue money on time, they issue too little, and so far they have sent almost entirely assignats, which people here either do not accept or do so at [poor exchange rates]. . . . Now this administration is in such disorder that all of the troops in Georgia are being supplied on local resources and are left without reserves and live from one day to the next.”93

32

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

The tsar formed a commission to investigate the corruption and inefficiencies of the Provisions Department, and a few officials were duly cashiered (this was the investigation that would have led to the trial of War Minister Gorchakov if he had not died first), but the structure of the military administration, which caused the problem, remained the same.94

Alexander’s Administrative Legacy Russia’s military administration was almost exactly the same in 1825 as it had been in 1816. Dmitrii Miliutin, the founder of the modern Russian army, noted that it had taken its shape during the wars with Napoleon, when Alexander had personally accompanied the army and Prince P. M. Volkonskii had served as his chief of staff. Miliutin remarked, The Emperor became accustomed to this manner of conducting affairs and, upon his return to Petersburg in 1815, retained even in peacetime the existence of the “Main Staff of H. I. M.” alongside of the War Ministry.Aside from the Chief of the Main Staff there even remained other positions of the field administration of the army, not excluding even the Wagonmaster-General, the Provost Marshal (general-geval’diger), and others that could not have anything do to in peacetime.This bifurcation of the military administration, retained as a legacy of wartime for 12 years, was a complete anomaly and gave rise to such practical difficulties and misunderstandings that Emperor Nicholas I, soon after his ascent to the throne, did not delay (August 26, 1827) in uniting both titles (Chief of the Main Staff of H. I. M. and War Minister) in one person—Adjutant-General Count (later Prince) Chernyshev.95

Miliutin saw in Russia’s military system of the last decade of Alexander’s reign a mirror of the German General Staff system, which, he pointed out, suffered from similar confusion and duplication of effort. Although Nicholas’s reasons for uniting the posts of Chief of the Main Staff and War Minister in A. I. Chernyshev in 1827 are less clear than Miliutin makes out, there can be no doubt that a desire to curtail the irrationality of Alexander’s system was an important motivation. The “reforms” of 1815–1816 that “established” Russia’s peacetime military administration were not reforms at all.They merely codified what had become practice during the last years of the struggle with Napoleon. Alexander did not concern himself with the duplication of structures and efforts between the Main Staff and the War Ministry because he had become accustomed to it, as Miliutin noted. The experience of the war in

Alexander’s Legacy

33

1812–1815, moreover, seemed to confirm the essential validity of the structure—somehow Alexander, Volkonskii, Gorchakov, and others had managed to make it work. In the last decade of Alexander’s reign, furthermore, nothing happened to bring that confirmation into doubt.Alexander fought no wars and so had no occasion to see the “new” structure of 1816 tested. However glaring the deficiencies of the military administration of the early 1820s seem in light of the problems revealed in the first part of Nicholas’s reign, they did not seem so glaring to Alexander. Alexander was aware of problems, nevertheless, and tried to solve some of them. He remained, in 1820 as he had been in 1810, aware of the acute crisis in Russia’s finances, and he recognized that Russia’s vast army was a large part of the problem. The establishment of military colonies under A. A. Arakcheev, beginning in 1809, was a central part of his solution to the military-financial crisis he faced. Military colonists, who were to feed and supply themselves completely in peacetime, would thus entirely relieve the state of the burden of supporting them, while still providing (in theory) hundreds of thousands of fit and trained soldiers in the event of war. This plan failed dismally, to be sure, but it is not at all clear how obvious it should have been in 1820 that it could not have worked. Alexander, moreover, sought and achieved reductions in the military budgets at the end of his reign. He did so largely at the expense of the army’s readiness, by reducing the issue of ammunition and powder to troops and by taking other measures to restrict training costs. He actively encouraged army commanders to focus on spit-and-polish perfection in marching and to emphasize parade-ground drills, which cost nothing, rather than to conduct realistic, live-fire exercises, which would have taxed the budget.The rise of the “paradomania” that, it is said, characterized the Russian army between 1815 and 1855 arose from these measures. It may be that Alexander, and Nicholas after him, liked parades and conceived of military affairs in terms of the parade-ground, but we must also consider the fact that “paradomania” is a way of maintaining discipline that costs very little. Realistic training, on the other hand, involving as it does the relatively lavish expenditure of ammunition and equipment, the transportation of supplies to exercise areas rather than permanent quarters, and the disruption of the “soldiers’ economy” that, it has been noted, was so essential to keep the army functioning96 costs a great deal more. Whatever Alexander’s motivations may have been, the cumulative effect of these measures was to save the treasury a certain amount of money, and to reduce the military effectiveness, readiness, and discipline of the Russian army enormously.

34

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

The Size of the Russian Army under Alexander I Alexander never directly attacked the fundamental financial-administrative crisis of his reign. His army was too large for the state to support, and its confused administration, which allowed corruption and inefficiency to flourish when the state could least afford them, was complicated by the army’s great size.We may well ask why Alexander did not reduce the army. His own officers, in fact, wondered just that at times. In 1816 P. D. Kiselev told Alexander:“Everyone is surprised by the number [of troops] that you now have, and all grumble; peace has been concluded, but expenditures are the same as before, and the number of troops is being increased; in addition they figure that now we have a lot of cavalry, seventy thousand regular [cavalrymen] and one hundred Cossack regiments.” Alexander replied: “That is how everyone judges! I do not consider Cossacks in the composition of the army, and our regular cavalry does not surpass the combined Austrian and Prussian cavalry. Russia is in such a position that it must maintain an army the same size as the combined forces of Prussia and Austria; I do not take our other neighbors into account.”97 It is not clear why Alexander felt that he had to maintain this “two power standard,” especially in the years of peace that followed the Vienna settlement. It is possible that Alexander maintained the army at so large a size simply out of habit and because it pleased him to have so grand a force. It is more likely, however, that his reason for an 800,000 man army was the high tension that marked the European and Russian situations after 1820. In that year revolution struck Spain and Piedmont. In 1821, the Greeks rose against the Ottoman Empire. In 1819 the Chuguev military colonists had rebelled, and in 1820 the Semenovskii Guards Regiment mutinied. These events were enough to make the peace of the early 1820s seem far from secure to Alexander and his principal advisors, and to confirm Alexander in his belief that the forces of “revolution” were growing in Europe and in Russia and threatened the stability of the international order gravely. Alexander crushed the mutinies of the military colonists and disbanded the Semenovskii regiment, but he believed that the disturbances had arisen from a revolutionary spirit that was still pervading Europe, and he saw the internal and external manifestations of revolution as being the principal enemy against which he must be prepared to fight.98 In response to the Austrians’ request for assistance in suppressing the Neapolitan uprising, therefore, Alexander hastened to order Chief of the Main Staff P. M.Volkonskii to prepare an expeditionary force.The preparations for this mobilization, Volkonskii reported, would require the move-

Alexander’s Legacy

35

ment of the majority of the Russian army, for those units not participating directly in the expeditionary force would need to be moved forward to take the place of those that did. He added, “What concerns me now extremely is the destruction of transport and the fact that transport units have not yet been formed everywhere; the movement will be conducted without doubt, but it will be very expensive, and [Finance Minister] D.A. Gur’ev must not grudge the funds. . . .”99 Volkonskii noted that the revolution might grow stronger, but that “most dangerous of all now is France, although even for Germany it is hardly possible to answer.” He feared that Russia might find herself committed to a war with Austria against the rebels supported by France and possibly the smaller German states. Neither the European situation nor the Russian domestic situation in the years immediately following the Vienna settlement was sufficiently stable to convince Alexander to reduce the size of the army drastically. Nor would he bring himself after 1816 to address the problems of military administration that helped to drain the treasury. On his death in 1825, therefore, he left to his brother an impoverished treasury, a disorganized administration, and an army far larger than the state could afford.The state debt was enormous; the currency was inflated.The military administration was incomplete, inefficient, and functioned largely by custom rather than by law, for the War Ministry had never received its Charge, while the field administration had been established by simply codifying (to a very limited extent) practices that had become common in wartime. Reforms of all types, from the most superficial to the most fundamental, were clearly needed, but Alexander could not undertake them.As he went to his grave, his country lay at the edge of disaster.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter II

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

Russia’s troubles only deepened with Alexander’s passing. The confusion surrounding the succession had given the new regime an appearance of weakness that inspired the enemies of the existing order to take immediate advantage. On the day of his accession Nicholas was compelled personally to suppress a rebellion of elite troops of the guard. Seven months later, Persian troops invaded the Caucasus with surprising success. At the same time the threat of war with Turkey, and possibly with Austria as well, hung like a storm cloud. In short order Nicholas’s advisors made him aware of the serious crisis in Russia’s military administration and state finances. Pressure for reform, however, did not at first focus on those areas. Nicholas’s advisors called instead for a more fundamental reform, the codification of the laws defining the organization and functioning of the state administration, which were in a state of disorganization and confusion. The opening years of the new tsar’s reign, therefore, amid serious foreign and domestic crises, saw attempts at such codification as well as attempts to reform the administration. In both cases, the goal was financial savings. In both cases, the crisis would overtake the reform. Nicholas’s accession was a watershed event in the history of Russian law. He did not grant a constitution; he did not formally abandon any of his autocratic power.Yet his conception of law was fundamentally different from that of tsars before him, and it influenced that of his successors: “Where Alexander valued form, his brother Nicholas valued content. Nicholas emphasized the sanctity of the law and the obligation to enforce it faithfully.”1 Nicholas so valued the law that he believed that even he was

38

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

bound by it.This respect for the law proved critical in determining the nature and outcome of the reforms attempted in his reign.

Alexander’s Disdain for Law Russian law has always been a confused field, for without a legislature, whose job it is to make law, it is difficult to determine what is law. One historian has noted that even in the period between 1864 and 1905 “the difference between a law and an administrative decree was not at all clear.”2 This distinction was especially difficult to make in the earlier period: The ruler’s personal power could at any time overrule and cancel the action of law or procedures.What is perhaps more important, the desire of the ruler when expressed by his subordinates could have the same effect. Down to the end of the empire it remained impossible to distinguish between a law (zakon) and an administrative ruling (rasporiazhenie), which had the force and often the scope of law.The tsar could make the recommendation of a subordinate law by issuing an imperial command (vysochaishchee povelenie). Repeated efforts to distinguish between laws and administrative rulings failed, as the monarch’s decree (ukaz) could give any ruling he chose legislative force, whether or not it had gone through prescribed channels or conflicted with earlier laws.3

Alexander’s reign was no exception to this general description. His refusal to recognize limits on his power—even those he had made himself by issuing decrees—made the efforts of his subordinates to function efficiently (and without incurring his wrath) difficult. Alexander did not see laws as anything other than expressions of his will, which was all powerful. He desired not that the laws be obeyed, but that his will be implemented. This desire caused serious problems for his subordinates, especially since they frequently knew only the law, and not the tsar’s will, which changed from time to time. In late 1820, for example, while Alexander and Chief of the Main Staff Volkonskii were abroad, the question had apparently arisen of whether or not the hospitals maintained by the Medical Department of the War Ministry had the right to refuse treatment to members of the Corps of Internal Guard. Alexander became enraged that anyone might have thought so, and well he might, considering that the War Ministry also administered the Corps of Internal Guard. Volkonskii had the misfortune to bear the brunt of this anger: “ . . . I must tell you [Volkonskii wrote to Adjutant-General

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

39

A. A. Zakrevskii], having served almost 30 years without any reproach, it was extremely painful to hear:‘perhaps you as chief together with the War Minister should be put to trial for this.’ Here are the words spoken to me for any commissariat trifle or stupid military chief; it is difficult for me to know what is going on there, especially since I am several thousand versts away. . . .”4 The law was clearly on Volkonskii’s side: hospitals were the responsibility of the Medical Department of the War Ministry, and despite the fact that the War Minister was nominally a part of Volkonskii’s staff, On the Administration of the War Department explicitly stated that “The Chief of Staff and the War Minister answer for the duties laid upon them, each for his own area. . . .”5 Alexander clearly felt that Volkonskii’s responsibility extended beyond the letter of the law, however, and encompassed responsibility for the entire administration subordinated to him, despite the fact that the law specifically stated otherwise. Another example reflected more serious problems in the military administration and the dangerous confusion that could result from the hastily written and incomplete laws implementing the military administrative reform of 1816. Although various laws established and reformed the Field Main Staff, its actual structure and the powers and responsibilities of its various subordinate officials were never the subjects of any law (none, at least, that was included in the PSZ), and On the Administration of the War Department took a great deal for granted. For one thing, although the Main Staff was clearly modeled on the staff organization outlined in the Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army in 1812, the statute of 1815 made no reference to the earlier law.This omission was a critical flaw because the organization and hierarchy clearly described in the law of 1812, which was designed for an army on a war footing, could not be applied to the peacetime army of 1815 without modification. On the Administration of the War Department thus neither changed the existing regulations to suit the needs of a peacetime army nor took cognizance of the discrepancies between itself and the Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army on which it was based. The legal relationship between the CINCs of the armies and independent corps and the Chief of the Main Staff was never defined; reports from the CINCs to the tsar and orders from the tsar to the commanders went through the Chief of the Main Staff, but the law did not indicate what degree of influence the Chief of the Main Staff himself had over the armies or independent corps. Could the Chief of the Main Staff or his subordinates issue instructions or orders to the CINCs or their staffs? The Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army had made the staff

40

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

specialty chiefs—such as Inspectors of Artillery and Engineering, Duty Officials, Judicial Officials, and the like—responsible both to their own commanders and to the representatives of their specialties on the army staff.6 Was the Duty General of First Army, by extension, then, subordinate both to the Chief of the Main Staff of First Army and to the Duty General of the Main Staff? The law provided no answers. Questions such as these are crucial in a functioning military organization, however, and precisely the question of the powers of the Duty General of the Main Staff arose in 1820 in the aftermath of the rebellion of the Semenovskii Guards Regiment.Volkonskii complained to Zakrevskii, who was then the Duty General of the Main Staff, that the CINC of the Independent Guards Corps (which included the Semenovskii Regiment), I.V. Vasil’chikov, had failed to inform Zakrevskii of events as they occurred so that Zakrevskii might have intervened and saved the day. Zakrevskii responded: You write that if [Vasil’chikov] had let me know about [the uprising], then I, as Duty General, would have had the right to go there and finish the affair.To this forgive me for answering . . . that the office of Duty General in no way gives me such a right: the Guards Corps being independent, General Vasil’chikov as its commander acts by the rights granted him by statute and is not in any way obliged to correspond with me in such circumstances. Our powers do not touch at all and I cannot in any circumstance interfere in his internal dispositions. If I had known about this occurrence and had interfered in it, then this would have been not at all because of my rights as Duty General, but only because, being a Russian general, I considered it my duty to offer my advice or opinion to Vasil’chikov, [who could decide to accept or reject it], and I could not say anything to him if he did not wish to listen, because the rights of the Duty General, determined by the establishment of the duty administration,7 do not in any way give me the power to interfere in his internal dispositions, and all advice which I might give him in this event would be private, which I felt myself obligated to give him, as a person, devoted to the throne, as a Russian general, unable to watch calmly such unheard-of occurrences, and as a person, seeking the general welfare and loving Vasil’chikov.8

Zakrevskii had the law entirely behind him. There was not a single sentence in any law that gave him the authority as Duty General to interfere in Vasil’chikov’s handling of his corps.As Duty General, Zakrevskii had the right to demand various reports from Vasil’chikov and his subordinates, to make inspections of Vasil’chikov’s troops, and to resolve various minor ad-

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

41

ministrative details, but he had no authority whatsoever to interfere in Vasil’chikov’s handling of his corps. Volkonskii and Alexander, however, did not see the matter that way. Volkonskii wrote back: [Y]ou say that according to the establishment of the duty administration you do not have the right to interfere in the affairs of the independent corps.To this, I must tell you that in such circumstances even if, in fact, you were forbidden to interfere, then it still seems more appropriate for you to intervene than that something worse should happen. To this I must also tell you that His Majesty comprehends this matter entirely differently and that when I wrote to you about this it was in the words of His Majesty, and I now repeat that your title is not Duty General attached to an army; you, being attached to His Majesty, already have beneath you the army Duty Generals and, what is more, also the commanders of the independent corps—these are the very words of the Sovereign.9

These words should have daunted Zakrevskii. In Russia, after all, the law was what the autocrat said it was. If Alexander announced that Zakrevskii had the right to issue orders to commanders of the independent corps, then Zakrevskii did have that right, and if those commanders protested, then Zakrevskii could blandly refer them to His Majesty. Not without the courage of his convictions, however, Zakrevskii responded by describing the difficulties with the Tsar’s view of the matter: You write that my office is not that of Duty General attached to an army; that I, attached to His Majesty, already have under me the army Duty Generals and, what is more, even the commanders of the independent corps, and that these are the very words of the Sovereign. The rights, competence and duties of every official are designated by laws that are proclaimed for the information of each. The rights and duties granted to my office are defined by the establishment of the duty administration, but in that establishment I am not granted in the least the rights about which you write; as a consequence, I can in no way arrogate them to myself, even more so in that the Sovereign’s opinion in this matter was not known to me. The Duty Generals of the armies are not subordinated to me: I have relations with them as with equals and I have no right to demand obedience from them, and even less from the commanders of the independent corps, whose rights were defined by Supremely confirmed regulations proclaimed to the entire military administration. In what manner might I have instructed Vasil’chikov and disposed of his internal administration? He could simply have ordered me to remove myself and cease interfering in affairs not my own; I would have

42

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I had nothing to answer him, for this right is nowhere granted to the Duty General. Now, even knowing the will of the Sovereign, I cannot undertake this task; for aside from me no one knows about [the Sovereign’s will]. If I did such a thing, Vasil’chikov would demand an explanation from me of why I sought to arrogate to myself such rights and competence, and I would have had nothing with which to convince him. If the Sovereign is pleased to grant the office of Duty General attached to His Majesty rights such as these, then he must make an addition to the establishment of the duty administration about this and he must announce it throughout the military administration. Only then could the Duty General conduct himself accordingly.10

Zakrevskii neatly summed up the problem created by a semi-constitutional system: if there is a statute that defines the powers and responsibilities of the Duty General, and if the Duty General attempts to make use of powers not enumerated in that statute, other officials may refuse to comply until he can show another document having the force of law that grants him those powers. Even knowing that the tsar wishes him to have such powers does not help, unless the tsar has previously promulgated a decree formally granting them to him, because without such an announcement he cannot prove to other officials that such is indeed the tsar’s will. This passage eloquently illuminates one of the major dilemmas of Alexander’s reign: an autocrat who issues constitutions is no longer truly an autocrat. That realization may have been one reason why, despite the best liberal intentions of his youth, Alexander never granted Russia a constitution. He was, nevertheless, caught in the constitutional trap: having established the structures and functions of the principal army organs by law, he could only change those structures and functions by law, and, until he did so, those organs might continue to work in ways that did not suit him, citing his own edicts as justification. Codification of Law under Alexander Russian officials in Alexander’s time faced an even more serious problem than the fact that the law might conflict with the sovereign’s will: it was often difficult for them even to discover what the law was as it related to them, let alone to know how the tsar interpreted the law. A Russian legal historian has noted: Thus a judicial system based exclusively on statute law had to operate without available ways to determine what statute law was. The court system

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

43

functioned in the chancelleries, where clerks kept notebooks of decrees, which they exchanged among themselves and sold for high prices. Derzhavin, when serving as governor of Saratov in 1785, could not find a single book of laws in the entire province.At his request, his friends searched Moscow but could find only copies of military regulations to send him.11

Military regulations, in fact, were not in much better condition in 1825. When Zakrevskii became Duty General in 1816 one of his duties, according to the law establishing the duty administration of that year, was to “compile in systematic order all already existing and newly promulgated statutes, laws, and decrees about the various parts of the army.”12 He quickly found that this task would not be easy, noting in his final report on his tenure as Duty General in 1823: [O]f the military-judicial regulations existing today, promulgated at various times in the course of one hundred years, some, because of their antiquity, have become incompatible with those changes that have followed in the organization of the military administration in the time since their establishment; others, having been promulgated about various particular circumstances are either unclear or, contradicting one another, are complex and do not contain that degree of precision that would allow them to serve as guides to proper judgment, and, finally, in many cases, there is no regulation in them at all.13

Zakrevskii took the problem seriously and attempted to fulfill the charge laid on him by the decree of 1816 to compile a systematic collection of all the laws relating to the military. He was able to collect and print volumes of the decrees promulgated after 1816 on an annual basis, but he found it difficult to compile more than a few of the regulations established before that time. He found this situation deplorable, because of the laws promulgated before his tenure as Duty General “there are a great many that are either still in operation today or ought to be, but because of time and negligence have disappeared from view, so to speak, and their implementation therefore has either weakened or stopped altogether.”14 This section of Zakrevskii’s final report was intended to justify his “codifying” activities and to convince his superiors to continue and extend them. He assiduously tried to show that he was simply implementing the tsar’s will, previously expressed but left unfulfilled. He pointed out that Alexander had established a commission in 1811 to codify all laws relating to the military, but that this commission “had confined itself only to the establishment of the large active army. . . . After that its activities ceased in

44

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

that same year [1812].”15 He noted that the commission had, therefore, codified only those laws relating to the army on a war footing and had entirely failed to compile the statutes and regulations that would govern it in peacetime. He concluded that that failure “still left [the military regulations] far from that state of perfection that would correspond to the desire of His Majesty the Emperor. . . .” Zakrevskii’s call for further attempts at codifying Russian military law evinced no serious response from Alexander, and the compilations he put together of his own accord remained the only fruit of his efforts. Given the disorder in Russian military law16 at that time, however, these fruits were significant.Volkonskii was impressed by Zakrevskii’s “Digest” and wrote to him in 1821: I have written to Vasil’chikov telling him to purchase from you for the guard several copies of your Digest of Laws, which would serve as a good pause on marches not only for soldiers, but for officers as well, [especially] the articles on discipline, duels, and failure to execute the orders of superiors. I am sure that not only officers, but even generals do not know many of these laws, and I find in this work [of yours] a great deal of utility, giving you much honor.17

However much Volkonskii may have valued Zakrevskii’s “Digest,” though, neither he nor Alexander felt it worthy of continuation or expansion, and it remained an activity that the Duty General of the Main Staff pursued in his spare time. The end of Alexander’s reign did see a more serious attempt to codify the military regulations. In 1822 M. L. Magnitskii, curator of Kazan’ University, suggested that Alexander reinvigorate the committee he had established in 1811 (and disbanded in 1812) to codify military law.18 His appeal to the tsar was vague: [I]f the Commission of Military Regulations (kommisiia voennykh ustavov) was so necessary before 1812, if thereafter it showed itself so useful in the great and brilliant experience of the following campaigns, then can it be, when the forces of the Empire have taken a new kingdom [Poland], that the good and lawful organization of all parts of their administration has become less necessary? Can it be, when the all-destroying spirit of the times strikes with its full force at the troops, at those hitherto unshakable guardians of empires and thrones, that the reliable organization of good military police and of those places of military education in which the new generation of troops and their leaders could all become infected by the disease of subversive opinions is less important?19

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

45

The first serious attempt to codify the law after the wars with Napoleon, therefore, sought not to “modernize,” “westernize,” or “liberalize” Russia, but, on the contrary, to strengthen the tsar’s ability to control his state and suppress the “disease” of “subversive” ideas. It is noteworthy that Alexander did not respond to such an appeal. Although he clearly feared revolution and subversion at the end of his reign, he did not see the law and a wellordered state as the principal defense against those enemies. Alexander, having himself little respect for the law, did not see in it a reliable ally in his struggle against revolution. Magnitskii turned next to Count A. A. Arakcheev, with whom he had worked before and who probably seemed a suitable ally in Magnitskii’s fight not only because he was Alexander’s favorite, but also because as Chairman of the Department of Military Affairs of the State Council he held a good position from which to pursue the matter formally. Magnitskii’s appeal to Arakcheev in February 1823 consisted mainly in a recounting of the history of the committee of 1811, about which Arakcheev would not necessarily have known, for he had not been a member. Aside from Magnitskii, the committee had consisted of General K. I. Opperman, Prince Volkonskii, Prince Saint-Priest, and Barclay de Tolly, its chairman.20 Alexander, Magnitskii wrote, had established that committee in March 1811 to compile all of the military laws and regulations issued since the time of Peter the Great. Within six months, the committee had collected all of Peter’s laws and regulations from the various archives among which they were dispersed. It had conducted a careful review of all of the military archives of the time and from more than one million files from the period 1700–1802 had compiled the five thousand that were most relevant. It had also compiled all of the current laws affecting the military administration and compared them with foreign regulations and with current practice.21 The committee could not do more than compile these materials, however, because on September 8, 1811,Alexander ordered it to stop work on the codification of law in order to produce the Establishment for the Administration of a Large Active Army. “Napoleon’s columns,” Magnitskii notes, “were already on the Oder.”22 The work of drafting the law went quickly: it was finished and confirmed in December 1811, Magnitskii writes (the law, PSZ I 24,975, is dated January 27, 1812), and it was published and distributed to the armies in March 1812, three months before the Grande Armée crossed the Nieman.23 The committee did not continue with its codifying activities after completing the Establishment for the Administration of a Large Active Army. Instead,

46

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Prince Gorchakov, Acting War Minister after Barclay de Tolly took the field with the armies, closed the committee because of the outbreak of the war.24 Magnitskii concluded, “The war is over; but for seven years the question has not been asked: isn’t it necessary, according to Imperial command, to reestablish the commission?” This task would not be easy, however, for Gorchakov had not wound up the affairs of the committee smoothly but had simply stopped paying the clerks who had been keeping the committee functioning. As a result, the papers of the committee, comprising all of the work done to compile the relevant military statues since Peter’s time, were scattered among the various members of the committee and the now unemployed clerks. Magnitskii lamented, So . . . was ended and thrown into oblivion for ten years a task that was desired by Peter the Great, Empresses Anna and Elizabeth, and with which all the most outstanding geniuses of their times, Count [Z. G.] Chernyshev and Suvorov, were concerned; a matter that had completely succeeded in the smaller scale of the Establishment for the Active Army, and for the completion of which, of course, not more than three years would be necessary.25

This letter, appealing strongly to Arakcheev’s vanity by casting him in the role of the completer of the work of Peter the Great and Suvorov, attained its aim.The committee was reestablished in 1823.26 Although Opperman,Volkonskii, and Magnitskii were all still available, they were not called upon to serve as members of the committee again. The new committee was composed, instead, of representatives of each of the Departments of the War Ministry and the Main Staff: the Inspectorate, Judicial, Engineer, Artillery, Commissariat, Provisions, and Medical Departments all sent relatively senior officials to represent them.27 Nothing came of this committee, however. One of its members noted in 1826 that its officials, “being occupied by their actual duties, did not succeed in doing anything, aside from two general meetings.”28 The lesson that the military establishment drew from this episode was that “a matter demanding such broad consideration cannot be conducted by people distracted by the execution of their direct duties.”29 The second committee ended even more ingloriously than had that of 1811: “An enormous correspondence grew up, but no decisive approach to the work was made. In the meantime, several of the members were transferred to other administrations, others died, and in this way the existence of the commission ended of its own accord.”30

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

47

Attempts to codify the military law, therefore, came to nothing under Alexander, as they had under his predecessors throughout the eighteenth century.The failure in Alexander’s time probably resulted in part from the autocrat’s habitual distrust of codifying committees that had both to reform and preserve without giving the appearance of arrogating judgment to themselves as to what constituted the golden mean.The autocrat in turn avoided entrusting this work to a stable group of officials whose exclusive task was codification. Those officials assigned usually held other responsibilities as well and could not give it undivided attention.They were replaced before they had ample time to familiarize themselves with their duties, and on occasion the entire staff of the agency assigned to codification was changed without apparent reason.31

Although the military administration would learn from this experience that the primary cause of the failure of the efforts at codification in the last decade of Alexander’s reign was the failure to relieve officials assigned to that task of their ordinary duties, this lesson was too simplistic. The committee of 1811, although it had not completed the work of codification, had nevertheless accomplished a great deal and its members had continued to hold important and responsible posts while serving on the committee: Barclay was War Minister throughout;Volkonskii was the director of the Quartermaster Section of the army; Opperman was the Inspector of the Corps of Engineers; Magnitskii served as Speranskii’s chief assistant. By comparison, the members of the committee of 1823 were lowly bureaucrats: the most senior among them was merely the chief of a section of the Inspectorate Department.The committee of 1811 had had the support of an extensive apparatus, however, including a chancery, a library, an archive, numerous assistants, editors specializing in foreign law, and so forth, while there is no mention of any such apparatus supporting the committee of 1823.32 The fundamental problem, however, was not that the mid-level bureaucrats of the committee of 1823 were busier than the senior military officials serving on the committee of 1811 had been or that the committee of 1823 did not have sufficient secretarial support. It was, rather, that in 1823 Alexander attached no priority to the work of codification, whereas in 1811 he had given it the highest priority.The priorities of the tsar inevitably trickled down to become the priorities of the officials of the bureaucracy: the members of the committee of 1823 did not find time to work on codification because they felt that their bosses felt that their

48

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

ordinary work was more important. If the priority of the leadership in 1823 had been to codify the military law, then the mid-level bureaucrats of the committee of that year would have found the time to do the job. In the last decade of Alexander’s reign, therefore, the codification effort suffered above all from the autocrat’s lack of respect for the law. Since Alexander believed that his will was supreme, even when it violated the law, it is not surprising that he should have remained unmoved by his subordinates’ pleas for codification and should not have assigned to that task sufficient priority to overcome the ordinary bureaucratic inertia opposing it. As a result primarily of Alexander’s attitude, Russia’s laws, including the laws defining the structure and function of the army and military administration, were still in disorder and confusion in 1825.Yet despite Alexander’s own disrespect for the law, a group of officials was emerging that respected the law very much. Zakrevskii, Volkonskii, Magnitskii, Kiselev, and many others had come to see the confusion of Russia’s legal system as one of the principal problems that had to be solved if the regime was to advance.Their feelings, which led to nothing under Alexander, would find powerful resonances in the feelings of his successor, and they would drive the effort toward the first successful codification of law in modern Russian history.

The Law under Nicholas Nicholas had a much stronger respect for law and legal processes than Alexander had. The contrast in their attitudes was immediately apparent from the succession crisis that followed Alexander’s death and resulted directly from his contempt for legality. In an edict of 1797 Paul I had decreed that succession would be hereditary through the male line, and that it was not alterable by the will of the sovereign. Constantine, Alexander’s rightful heir, was unwilling to assume the throne, however, and prevailed upon Alexander to write a manifesto naming their younger brother Nicholas as his heir. Alexander wrote and signed such a manifesto, despite the fact that Paul’s decree had outlawed such changes in the succession, but he neither published the decree naming Nicholas as his heir nor revoked Paul’s law preventing him from doing so.33 The manifesto changing the succession remained a secret until Alexander’s death. It is not clear that Nicholas knew of the manifesto—he later claimed that he did not34—but there can be no doubt that he knew that Alexan-

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

49

der meant for him to succeed, for he later wrote of a conversation with Alexander in 1819 in which Alexander told Nicholas and his wife that he expected him, not Constantine, to succeed to the throne.35 In spite of his knowledge of the tsar’s will, however, Nicholas refused to take the throne when informed of Alexander’s death but immediately swore allegiance to Constantine as the new tsar and demanded that all those around him do likewise. When his mother learned that he had sworn allegiance to Constantine she told him about Alexander’s manifesto, and Nicholas replied,“If there is [such a manifesto], then it is not known to me, no one knows it; but we all know that our master, our legitimate sovereign, is my brother Constantine.”36 Years later he wrote: “Even if I had known of the manifesto, I would have done just what I did, for the manifesto had not been published during the life of the sovereign . . . [and so] my duty and that of all Russia was to swear allegiance to our lawful sovereign [Constantine].”37 Nicholas knew perfectly well that Alexander had wanted him to succeed to the throne and that Constantine would not take the throne, but he was appalled at the thought of beginning his reign on the basis of an illegal manifesto—under the law he would have been a usurper. When Alexander died Nicholas spent valuable time trying to convince Constantine to take the throne at least long enough to make a formal abdication, thereby legalizing his own succession. Constantine refused for reasons that remain inexplicable, and the resulting delay made the Decembrist revolt possible.38 From the first days of his reign, therefore, Nicholas showed a great respect for the law and a belief that the law bound even the sovereign. Had Alexander repealed Paul’s edict and then issued an edict of his own naming Nicholas his heir, Nicholas, in all probability, would not have objected to assuming the throne on Alexander’s death, for the autocrat has the right to change the laws to suit him. When asked to ascend the throne on the basis of an illegal manifesto that was never even promulgated during its author’s lifetime, however, Nicholas refused, even though by doing so he was flouting the will of both the deceased tsar and of the man whom he himself recognized as the rightful tsar.The tsar, Nicholas felt, could change the law, but he could not violate it. The Decembrist uprising, which stemmed in part from the confusion and delay resulting from Nicholas’s insistence on adherence to the law, itself showed Nicholas that the legislation of the Russian state was in need of organization and repair. He participated personally in the interrogations of the Decembrists in order to discover why they had rebelled, and when

50

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

the investigation was complete, he ordered the secretary of the investigating committee, A. D. Borovkov, to compile a handbook cataloging the principal complaints of the insurgents.Among those complaints Borovkov included a passage on the law: “Firm, clear, and short laws, which are easily remembered, prevent slanders and corruption.With us edict after edict abolishes one, resurrects another; for any circumstance there will be found many contradictory statutes. From this strongmen [sil’nye] and slanderers triumph and the poor and innocent suffer.”39 Nicholas took the complaints seriously and had Borovkov make two more copies of the handbook, one for Constantine and one for V. P. Kochubei, the Chairman of the State Council. Nicholas kept his own copy and studied it closely.40 The officials of the military administration, no less than the rebels, remained aware of the defects of Russia’s legislation to which Zakrevskii and Magnitskii, among others, had tried to attract Alexander’s attention. Shortly after Nicholas’s accession, two senior officials of the military administration attempted to restart the stalled process of codifying Russian law. One, K.A. Sluchevskii, proposed simply resurrecting the committee of 1823, while another, D. I. Akhsharumov, proposed to complete the work himself. In the changed context of the new reign, both proposals went forward and were acted upon.

The Old Way and the New K. A. Sluchevskii, a section chief in the Engineering Department of the Main Staff and a close associate of the Director of the Engineering Department, General Opperman (who had served on the committee of 1811), proposed to the Duty General of the Main Staff in mid-1826 that the committee of 1823 be reestablished.41 He noted that four issues should be resolved if his proposal was accepted: 1) If this commission is reestablished, then would it not be appropriate to order the designation of special officials who would work only on this subject, or to leave those same officials who have already been designated while assigning their [normal] duties temporarily to others; 2) What designation should the commission have; 3) That Sluchevskii as the most senior of the former officials be designated as the senior member of the committee instead of Andreev [who had headed the committee in 1823]; 4) If Andreev remains a member of the commission, then temporarily entrust the administration of the 2nd Section of the Inspectorate Department [which Andreev directed] to one of the bureau chiefs . . . 42

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

51

Sluchevskii thus proposed that the members of the committee should be relieved of all ordinary duties so that they could focus only on the work of codification. This was the main lesson that the military administration had drawn from the failure of the committee of 1823, but it was not necessarily the correct lesson. Duty General A. N. Potapov approved of Sluchevskii’s suggestions and forwarded them to Chief of the Main Staff I. I. Dibich along with three letters from Magnitskii to Alexander and Arakcheev outlining the history of the committee of 1811.43 Dibich apparently approved of the project (see below), but nothing further appears to have happened until August 1827. By that time, however, the reestablishment of the committee of 1823, formed to reestablish the committee of 1811, had been overtaken by events. While the administration considered Sluchevskii’s proposal, it had already acted on Akhsharumov’s. D. I. Akhsharumov, a retired major general who had been the Director of the Commissariat Department, argued in 1826 not for the reestablishment of the committee of 1823, but for the principle of the codification of military law. In particular, he argued that the corruption and inefficiency of the military administration was due in large part to the failings of the laws, and that administrative reform was not possible without a codification and review of the legislation. Russia’s military legislation in 1826, he wrote, was in such a state “that not only is the knowledge or comprehension of all these regulations not easy, but that even acquiring them either by purchase or by any other means has become today extremely difficult for all military officials, both because of the scarcity [of printed copies of the laws] for sale and their high prices, and even more so because of the very enormity of their aggregation, as well as because [no one knows of them] . . .”44 Many officials had eclectic collections of some of the laws relating to their areas of concern, but they did not have all such laws and frequently did not even know exactly how many laws there were that related to them: “there always remained the doubt, isn’t there a contradictory or explicatory law among those which are missing?”45 The lack of a “methodical Digest of military law,” Akhsharumov argued, was also one of the principal reasons for the waste, fraud, and mismanagement that had come to characterize the Logistics Administration: “Illegal requests and issues [of supplies] have their root in the unequal and incomplete knowledge of various regulations. . . . Frequently also [charges of embezzlement] and prosecutions result simply from the failure to proceed entirely in accord with the regulations, without the slightest bad intentions.”46

52

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Akhsharumov, no doubt, exaggerated in saying that the corruption and inefficiency in the logistics administration arose not so much from evils in the personnel of that administration, but from the confusion in the codes that defined what was allowed and how to proceed. Some of the many cases of corruption and misappropriation of funds must have reflected crimes and not just misundersandings.47 Considering the enormous difficulty facing the various commissions specially constituted for the purpose of finding and codifying the military laws, however, officials of the logistics administration, who had neither the time nor the resources to search for laws relating to their activities, must have found the situation terribly confusing.48 Ignorance of the law and of normal procedures, Akhsharumov noted, also brought about increases in the correspondence among and within departments, increases, we shall see, that the departments used as justifications for their inability to reduce their expenditures in any way.49 The lack of a digest of military law, moreover, posed great obstacles to the transfer of personnel from one administration to another—even from the Commissariat Department to the Provisions Department!—because the lack of clear legislation made it almost impossible to train officials quickly in the forms and regulations of their new departments.To be sure, there are many cases of officials transferring between departments and ministries,50 but Akhsharumov’s general conclusion is certainly correct that “the education of Officials for service would be more greatly facilitated than it is now when despite every eager desire of a capable Official to gain a general knowledge of the military-administrative area there is almost no possibility of doing so.”51 Akhsharumov proposed to solve the problem of a lack of codified law single-handedly:“The compilation of a Digest of laws . . . does not require any special expenditures nor the creation of special commission. On the contrary, this work requires of one person a certain time completely devoted to these office affairs. But when a complete portion of this whole matter will have been sufficiently and definitely considered, only then will the temporary assignment of several officials and clerks be required for the further movement of this matter.”52 He further estimated that the entire work of compiling and editing, although presumably not of copying and producing a finished work, could be completed within a year and a half.53 The attractiveness of Akhsharumov’s proposal was obvious. In addition to the fact that he made a much more cogent case for the importance of the undertaking than anyone had done since 1811, his plan was definite and concrete and, above all, required only the smallest expenditure of money—

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

53

on the order of 2,000 rubles per year—and no expenditure of personnel at all: Akhsharumov proposed to work alone and he himself was retired! Aside from its ambitiousness (Akhsharumov proposed to do himself in one and a half years what Magnitskii had thought would take a committee of five with more than ten clerks and secretaries four years) Akhsharumov’s proposal represented a certain danger to the autocrat. He proposed to use his own judgment: “In this Digest it is proposed to include nothing that is temporary and separate, done for any single past circumstance or only for a certain period of time, nor anything that because of its age or for other reasons has entirely lost its application, and equally anything that has been replaced by new and more contemporary regulations.”54 In other words, Akhsharumov proposed to determine himself which laws still had force and which did not. He intended, he wrote, to direct queries to the relevant departments when necessary, to request special permissions and decisions when that seemed necessary, and to submit the entire Digest for review before publication. Many of the “editorial” decisions that he proposed to make himself, however, would ultimately have legislative force. Akhsharumov thus proposed that he alone be granted the authority that most tsars had refused to give to committees of their most trusted advisors. Despite that fact, his request was speedily approved. Dibich forwarded Akhsharumov’s memorandum to War Minister A. I.Tatishchev, who presented it to the Council of the War Minister.The Council of the War Minister (Sovet Voennago Ministra) oversaw expenditures in general, and especially extraordinary expenditures in the departments of the War Ministry, as well as proposals for changes in regulations and military legislation. Because there was no parallel organ to oversee such matters in the administration of the Main Staff, Main Staff officials had to present proposals for reform to the War Ministry for approval.55 This regulation meant that, although the Chief of the Main Staff was the most senior and most powerful official of the military administration, and the only military official with the right of reporting to the tsar, he could not himself forward projects for reform without vetting them first through the War Ministry. The reasoning behind this provision was probably that the Chief of the Main Staff was not a minister and did not have the rights of a minister, and therefore did not share in the ministerial right of proposing either new legislation or changes in existing legislation. If the intention had been to set up obstacles in the way of change, however, the system could hardly have been better designed. It is the more remarkable, therefore, that Dibich’s memorandum of November 12, 1826, was forwarded by Tatishchev to the Council of the

54

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

War Minister on November 17, and approved by the council on December 29. Noting that the importance and utility of the proposed digest did not admit of doubt, the council concluded that there remained “only to ask for a Supreme command to issue all the resources that might be needed for the speediest beginning. . . .”56 The speediest beginning, in this case, took seven months, when the proposal was sent to the Senate in the form of a decree.57 The Senate approved the plan and attached General Akhsharumov to the Main Staff with orders to prepare the digest of military regulations under the direction of Mikhail Speranskii. The Senate gave Akhsharumov the right to retrieve any information he felt necessary from the archives of the military administration, granted him an assistant, and gave him the 2,818 rubles he requested for the project’s first year.58 Sluchevskii’s proposal to restart the committee of 1823, meanwhile, had been pursuing a separate course. By August 1827 it appears that the Acting Director of the Chancery of the Chief of the Main Staff,Wing Adjutant V. F. Adlerberg, had been ordered to locate and catalogue the papers of that committee.59 His first requests for papers and information regarding its affairs went out on August 8, 1827. By August 16 a number of materials had been collected and two captains of the Guards General Staff had sorted and catalogued four boxes of materials received from Magnitskii.60 The first indication that the two projects would be coordinated came in the form of a letter from Dibich to Prince P. A. Tolstoi of September 11, 1827. Dibich wrote: His Majesty the Emperor, finding appropriate the reestablishment of the aforementioned committee [of 1811] under the main direction of Your Highness, has been pleased Supremely to order me to turn to you, S[ir], with the request that you inform me of your opinion concerning its composition and manner of operation, according to the establishment confirmed in 1811 or with certain changes. Executing with this the Imperial Will, I . . . also have the honor to inform Your Highness that according to the pleasure of His Majesty, M[ajor] G[eneral] Akhsharumov, attached to the administration of the Main Staff, from the 1st of this month has already begun work on the compilation of general chronological registers of all military regulations and that from these registers when they have been finished, he will compile general historical registers of every subject of the military area individually.This work is being conducted by G[eneral] Akhsharumov under the auspices of the 2nd Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancery under the direction of Privy Councilor Speranskii.61

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

55

Thus the committee of 1811 was to be formed again, under the chairmanship of P. A. Tolstoi, despite the fact that Akhsharumov was already doing its work by himself (a fact of which Nicholas was, apparently, aware). Details are not available, but it appears that the matter was resolved in a more intelligent fashion:Tolstoi’s committee does not appear to have done anything in the period between 1827 and 1830 when Akhsharumov was still compiling and composing his digests. He completed the first part in 1829 and the second in 1830, however, and at that point Tolstoi’s committee intervened. Akhsharumov was in an anomalous position. He worked for and reported to Speranskii in the Second Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancery, but he was attached to the Main Staff, under Dibich, and paid by War Minister Chernyshev. Although he was compiling a digest of military laws, therefore, and despite the fact that he was being paid by the military administration, he had no formal role in that administration and no means of communicating with it except through its heads, Chernyshev and Dibich.The situation was such that when Akhsharumov needed to request 500 rubles to purchase a copy of the PSZ, series I when it was completed in 1830, he had to address the request to Chernyshev personally. When he had finally almost finished his task, therefore, the question arose of how the military administration could review it. Tolstoi’s committee, consisting of Chernyshev, the War Minister and, in 1830, also Chief of the Main Staff; Speranskii; P. A. Kleinmikhel’ (one of Nicholas’s most trusted adjutants); and Akhsharumov, therefore, represented more a coordinating body than a codifying committee. Comprising all of the main actors of the War Ministry, the Main Staff, and His Majesty’s Own Chancery, and including the editor of the digest himself, this committee was well suited to its task of “discussing the order of revision [of the digest] and the further course of the general Digest of Military Regulations.”62 In a meeting of February 18, 1830, the journal of which was “Supremely confirmed” on March 22, 1830, the committee resolved that “the review of the work of the general Digest of military regulations is to be carried out as the parts are finished in the Council of the War Minister both by its permanent members and by the directors of the military departments.”63 The directors of the departments were permitted to designate vice directors or other officials especially knowledgeable about the matters at hand in their stead.The council also received the right to invite any other military officials it thought necessary to review the work to its sessions. General Akhsharumov, finally, was to participate in all meetings of the council relating to the Digest.

56

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

The committee also indicated that it was impatient for the completion of certain particular parts of the Digest: “In consideration of the special need for the military-judicial area to be brought into clear and firm order, the editors of the Digest are instructed to work now on this area without delay”—in other words, without waiting for the completion of the review of the first part of the Digest. The committee instructed Akhsharumov likewise to hasten the completion of the part dealing with military economy.64 The committee, finally, attempted to ease Akhsharumov’s task in the process of reviewing the Digest by allowing him to demand information from military departments informally rather than by formal query-and-answer, and by requiring “all posts of the military administration [to] give their sincere support to the editors,” and to provide them with all information they might need to know.65 Perhaps the most important effect of the committee’s meeting was the determination to review the digest of military regulations in the same manner as the civil digest was being reviewed.To that end Speranskii sent Chernyshev a copy of a memorandum he had sent to the Ministry of Finance, outlining the procedure:“[The draft] is to be reviewed in two main aspects: in its completeness, and in its accuracy, that is, 1) are all currently active Laws in each part included in the Digest in their true force; 2) have there not been included any superfluous Laws, that is, those that were canceled by later decrees.”66 Each department of the War Ministry and the Main Staff, then, was to review Akhsharumov’s work, comparing it with current practice and with current laws, ensuring that nothing had been left out, nothing included that did not belong, and nothing distorted in meaning or language. This review dragged on in the overworked departments and soon reached a crisis. By 1833 the Inspectorate Department had completed its review, the Provisions and Judicial Departments had begun theirs, and no other departments had yet turned to the matter,67 but it had already become clear that Akhsharumov had done a poor job. In February, Speranskii requested that Chernyshev return all copies of the Digest then under review in the War Ministry to him, because “many posts were demanding changes and additions both as a result of new regulations and in general consideration of parts already worked out. . . .”68 In a memorandum of March 1833 explaining why the completion of the Digest had been delayed, Chernyshev reported to Nicholas that “the comments made on the Digest in its first review seem well founded and, unfortunately, not entirely advantageous to the work of Akhsharumov. Not touching the organization [of the Digest],

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

57

the Inspectorate Department only reviewed the completeness of the exposition itself and showed where and what precisely was lacking; where and what precisely was superfluous, or needlessly repeated.”69 Despite Chernyshev’s anodyne tone, the comments must have been sufficiently serious to convince Akhsharumov, or, perhaps, Speranskii, to withdraw the Digest from the consideration of the War Ministry and rework it. It is not possible to determine exactly what went wrong, but the obvious explanation is probably sufficient: Akhsharumov conducted his codification independent of the military administration. Since the whole project had been motivated by the fact that the laws were in confusion and at variance with current practice, it is not at all surprising that the practitioners in the military administration should have found Akhsharumov’s work, based only on the laws as he understood them, to be inadequate. When Akhsharumov then presented the military administration with a digest of laws that did not reflect current practice, that administration dutifully undertook to straighten it out, as Tolstoi’s committee had ordered.That project, predictably, took a long time, for the military administration had to redo Akhsharumov’s work of gathering the relevant laws together in order to check his work. By 1833 the whole project had simply taken too long: whatever the problems of Akhsharumov’s composition, the structural reforms of the military administration (see chapters 6 and 7) begun in 1832 and continuing through 1836 rendered a considerable portion of his labors obsolete.The new approach to codification had failed. The attempt at the codification of military law in the first years of Nicholas’s reign is significant, however, despite its failure. In the first place, the attempt was not abandoned in 1833 even when it was clear that Akhsharumov had not succeeded. Chernyshev’s memorandum explaining the delays also outlined a new procedure for continuing the process of codification and review, and this procedure ultimately succeeded completely, as will be seen.70 What is, indeed, most remarkable about the failed attempt at codification is the pertinacity that characterized it. Not one, but two separate impulses, Sluchevskii’s and Akhsharumov’s, drove codification projects. When both had failed, Chernyshev provided another. Nicholas steadfastly supported every single effort, in sharp contrast to the distinct lack of interest that Alexander had manifested throughout most of his reign. More important, perhaps, than the fact that the drive for codification actually succeeded under Nicholas was the source for that drive after 1825. The codification committee of 1811 had been composed of some of the most senior officers in the army and military administration. The committee of 1823 had been composed of mid-level bureaucrats without

58

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

the apparent involvement or support of their seniors. The incomplete codification efforts of the late 1820s, however, saw the involvement and full commitment to the project of officials at every level. The projects were suggested by senior officials of the military administration not to the tsar himself or to his favorite advisor, as had been the case under Alexander, but through the normal chain of command within the military administration.When the proposals reached the tsar, therefore, they came with the full support of Chief of the Main Staff Dibich and the Council of the War Minister. As a result, in contrast to the situation in 1823 when the most senior officials of the military administration had not encouraged the members of the codification committee to devote their time to the law, in 1827 the Director of the Chancery of the Main Staff himself actively and speedily chased around after the documents of the committee of 1823. Most important of all, because he was able to mobilize the military administration behind the project, he actually succeeded in locating many of them! There was very little difference between the military administration in 1827 and 1823. The different courses of the codification proposals reflected, instead, the new emphasis the tsar placed on them and the level of involvement of the administration. The codification effort was becoming more an administrative than a legislative function—and thus was becoming more likely to succeed. It is worth highlighting the fact that Nicholas did not seem in any way afraid that the codifiers would become legislators, for he did little to prevent that from occurring. Under the plan he approved for codifying the laws, he would not himself review the Digest until after it had been compiled and reviewed by Akhsharumov and the military departments. How could he know, then, what had been left out or what had been changed? It is obvious, however, that Nicholas did not fear that his codifiers would change the laws without his knowledge. He relied on them to execute their jobs faithfully and on his administration to ensure that they did so.Above all, since he clearly saw it as an administrative, rather than a legislative, task, he did not believe that it posed any danger to his authority. The codification effort of the late 1820s undermines another commonly held stereotype of the bureaucracy in the reign of Nicholas: that of the dominance of the entrenched, conservative bureaucrat who avoided any and all increases in his duties and cared nothing for the welfare of the state. Sluchevskii and Akhsharumov were senior bureaucrats proposing to increase their workload enormously—in Sluchevskii’s case with no pecuniary benefit to him at all.The Chief of the Main Staff, Dibich, enthusias-

Military Reform and the Codification of Law, 1825–1833

59

tically supported both proposals. Two War Ministers, Tatishchev and Chernyshev, sent the proposals to the tsar and vigorously supported their implementation. The Acting Director of the Chancery of the Main Staff, Adlerberg, efficiently and determinedly collected the papers of Magnitskii’s committee. And if the pace of the revision of the Digest in the War Ministry after 1830 seems slow, considering the reforms that were going on in the ministry at that time, it is astounding that it proceeded at all.71 When, finally, the effort had clearly foundered, Chernyshev did not seek to kill it altogether but proposed to revive it, laying even more of the burden on the administration.There is no record of any opposition to a proposal that greatly increased the workloads of a number of highly placed officials in the military administration; on the contrary, all seem to have jumped to the task almost eagerly. The story of the codification effort of the late 1820s also undermines the customary conception of the reign of Nicholas in which the initiative of subordinates was stifled and the administration run in top-down fashion like an army. For the effort at codification was begun not by the tsar’s initiative, as it had been under Peter,Anna, and Catherine, nor even by the intercession of the tsar’s favorites and advisors, as it had been under Alexander, but by an ordinary memorandum submitted by a mid-level bureaucrat. The story of the codification effort is an important part of the story of the administrative reforms of the 1830s in a number of ways. First, it foreshadowed the method of reform that would achieve in 1836 the rational reorganization of the military administration that was botched in 1812 and 1816: the full mobilization of all levels of the bureaucracy to carry out reform. Both the impulse for change and the implementation of plans for change under Nicholas came to be concentrated within the administration itself, rather than coming from outside bodies against which the bureaucracy sought to defend itself. This manner of reform is in many ways much harder to conduct, but its results are much more significant and long-lasting. Second, the fact of the codification effort reveals an interest in the law and legality that would have a fundamental impact on the nature of the military reforms of the 1830s. No longer would they focus, as the reforms of Alexander had done, only on the structure of the administration and the duties of the various officials. The military laws of Nicholas’s reign focus, rather, on the functioning of the administration and the methods of ensuring its adherence to the law.Although such a focus might seem trivial, it reflects, in fact, a new respect for law and rational functioning of the

60

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

administration that is the critical aspect of the reforms of the 1830s and a critical stage in the development of the modern Russian state and army. Third, the codification effort under Nicholas was at all times overtly conservative. It sprang not from a desire to westernize, as it had under Peter and Catherine, nor from a desire to “modernize” Russia, as it had under Alexander, but simply from a recognition of its importance to the continued functioning of the autocracy.The success of this effort marked a fundamental change in the nature of the Russian army that has gone largely unrecognized: the Digest of Military Regulations is practically unmentioned in most of the historiography. This omission almost certainly reflects the fact that Nicholas himself conducted these reforms with no fanfare and for no “liberal” purpose.The codification effort was the first of Nicholas’s conservative reforms that aimed at consolidating the autocrat’s hold on power and increasing the efficiency of the administration that implemented his will. It was a miniature of the military reforms of the 1830s. Finally, Akhsharumov’s lengthy defense of the need for the Digest, together with the comments of the Decembrists and with other complaints of the senior officials of the military administration in 1826 and 1827, helped to convince Nicholas that there was something fundamentally wrong with the administration and so served as the impetus for the later military-administrative reforms.The attempts to codify military law in the late 1820s both drove the military reforms of the 1830s and helped determine their nature. And when those reforms had run their course in 1836 the codification effort would still be alive, so that for the first time since Peter the Great, a major reform of the administration would immediately be placed on a sound legal footing, presented rationally, and created with mechanisms in place to ensure the legality and rationality of its further development.

Chapter III

Two Failed Reforms, 1827–1828

The military reforms of Nicholas’s reign that ended by creating the basic administrative structure of the modern Russian army began as a simple attempt to save money. Nicholas was acutely aware of Russia’s financial difficulties from the moment he took the throne, and the war that Persia began by invading Russia’s Caucasian provinces in 1826 focused his attention even more tightly on the problem. In that year he wrote to Constantine, “Without being in desperate straits, we are doing badly, and You can believe me in this; we have one war on our hands, it is still not costing very much, but no one can answer either for its duration or for the losses it may require of us as much 1) in men as in 2) money; the second object cannot be fulfilled by new taxes in a country like ours. . . . We must therefore economize, but from where is the question. . . .”1 Nicholas answered that question by attempting to economize on the administration. He made two attempts before the war with Turkey, and both failed. Like the failed efforts at codification of those years, however, these attempts at economizing through reform provided the impetus and context for later attempts that would succeed. Above all, they would teach Nicholas and his advisors that half-measures simply would not do and that Russia’s financial problems were linked to administrative problems that were not easily resolved. Cutting the Bureaucracy When the civil governor of Podolia Province volunteered to reduce the size of his chancery in October 1826, Nicholas was so pleased that he decided to see what other administrative savings could be achieved directly

62

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

and easily. On October 12, 1826, accordingly, he noted on the report of the Podolia chancery reduction: “Absolutely necessary and I ask you not to delay this; I also request all ministers to occupy themselves with the reduction of the complements of their chanceries, as well as of the departments [subordinate to them], and to expedite this matter.”2 War Minister Tatishchev thereupon instructed the departments of the War Ministry to present him with proposals for carrying out this directive.The results were poor. The Engineering Department reported “that it could not find any possibility of reducing its complement of officials,” because although that complement had remained unchanged since February 28, 1812, the department had acquired 52 new responsibilities, which it duly listed, ranging from “the entire Danube region consisting of five fortresses” to the camp for several companies of the King of Prussia Regiment.3 The Director of the Artillery Department responded to Tatishchev’s request by asserting, “Daily experience in the administration of his Department confirms his belief that the number of officials in [that Department] is extremely inadequate and that it is necessary to request reinforcements, so that it would be able to process the many affairs and accounts submitted to it with the desired accuracy and expedition. . . .”4 The Artillery Department, therefore, requested additional expenditures on personnel, in order to assure “the most vigilant protection of the interests of the treasury.”5 The Commissariat Department also found that its staff was insufficient for its functions. As proof of its need, it argued, The complement of this department was formed in 1811 according to the number of troops maintained then. In the subsequent time, however, the army has expanded and now maintains a complement almost twice as large as that of 1811; as a result of this the very activities of the commissariat have, so to speak, grown, expanding in a natural manner also the paperwork [deloproizvodstvo] throughout the department . . . [so that] in 1811 there were 34,504 incoming papers and in 1826 there were 57,566. . . . 6

Not only did the Commissariat Department “not have a surplus of officials, but even as against other departments of the War Ministry, it [was] extremely limited” in its complement, especially as compared with the Provisions Department. The Provisions Department, however, did not regard itself as having an abundance of staff either. Its report complained that from its annual

Two Failed Reforms, 1827–1828

63

funds “it was also obliged to maintain the Committee of Provisions Affairs, and that, therefore, the complement of the Provisions Department proper was so constrained that not only was it impossible to think about reducing it, but on the contrary it was essential to increase the salaries of the directors, members and chancery servants in the commissionerates and commissions.”7 Not a single department admitted the possibility of reducing its staff, and most demanded increases either in staff or in pay. Even the Provisions Department, which had escaped with relatively light punishment for its incompetence and dishonesty during Alexander’s reign,8 had the cheek to regard itself as hard done by in 1826. Bureaucrats often regard themselves as victims and almost never believe that there are too many of them. These complaints of the “overworked” officials of the departments of the War Ministry, however, are more significant than the standard bureaucratic response to orders from above to consider downsizing. The size of the armies that these departments were charged with maintaining had dramatically increased since the departments’ complements were set, but those complements had not been increased materially since then. The increase in the number of incoming papers described by the Commissariat Department was almost certainly real; it was less than that reported by Zakrevskii for the Inspectorate Department, which received 57,979 incoming papers in 1812 and 104,737 in 1822.9 One is naturally suspicious of such figures, but it is likely that the paper flow did nearly double between 1812 and 1826. In the first place, the army grew from 597,000 men in 1812 to 1,055,107 in 1826—an increase of 77 percent.10 The larger number of men surely generated many more reports, requests, receipts, accounts, and so forth, which the Commissariat Department had to handle. In the second place, the Commissariat Department’s figures corresponded closely with those given in Zakrevskii’s summary report of his tenure as Duty General in 1823.There is no reason to think that Zakrevskii distorted those figures, as no reductions were contemplated in that year, and Zakrevskii was leaving the military administration altogether to become Governor-General of Finland. It seems safe to assume, therefore, that the growth of the army greatly increased the amount of paperwork that the central administration had to perform. Russia’s military institutions had not developed to keep pace with the expansion of the armies, however. The Inspectorate Department, for example, had had a complement of 71 officials according to the statute of 1812, when the army stood at 597,000 men. When it was transferred to

64

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

the Main Staff in 1816, however, its statutory complement was reduced to 60 officials, although the army then consisted of 710,000 men.11 The other departments fared similarly; none of their complements, at least, grew significantly between 1812 and Nicholas’s accession. It is not in any way surprising, therefore, that on July 30, 1827, Tatishchev reported to the Committee of Ministers, “I do not see, therefore, any possibility of reducing the complement of my chancery, which is in any case already entirely too small.”12 The downsizing attempt went nowhere: on March 16, 1827,Tatishchev had presented a memorandum to the Council of the War Minister that summarized the negative responses of the departments.13 Nicholas’s request for straightforward reductions in the size of the military administration in hopes of achieving significant fiscal savings reflected his failure to comprehend the problems that that administration faced.The War Ministry and the Main Staff had to administer an army of over one million men on the basis of a structure designed for little more than half that. There is fat in any administrative organization, and it surely would have been possible to eliminate a number of idle paper-pushers in 1827, but the savings achieved thereby would have amounted to nothing. The budget of the entire War Ministry’s administration in 1812, including the bodies later transferred to the Main Staff, was not more than 682,000 rubles.14 By contrast, the War Ministry’s budget for 1825 was over 150 million rubles.15 The elimination of the entire War Ministry staff, therefore, would have resulted in a savings of less than half of one percent in the army budget—clearly the elimination of a few superfluous bureaucrats would have made no difference at all. This experience confirmed two things in Nicholas’s mind.The first was that it was much more important to increase the efficiency of the military administration than it was to save pennies by firing the odd bureaucrat. For the rest of the reform period, he always strove to keep the number of officials in his government to a minimum, as we shall see, but he did not balk even at increasing expenditures on certain aspects of the administration when he believed that those expenditures would lead to greater savings. The second was that the military administration as it was constituted was not responsive to his will and could not handle the administrative load it already faced. He had issued an instruction to War Minister Tatishchev; Tatishchev had flatly refused to obey it and had cited the obstinate refusals of his subordinate officials as his support. He had even demanded increases in expenditures and the size of his ministry. Nicholas apparently concluded that (a) Tatishchev had to go, and (b) the administration had to be reformed

Figure 3.1

Organization of the Military Administration Proposed by the Draft Law

66

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

fundamentally in order to make it more efficient and more responsive to his will.

Exploring Fundamental Reform Dibich’s Draft Law Implementing the first resolution was simple: Nicholas fired Tatishchev in August 1827 and replaced him with A. I. Chernyshev. Implementing the second turned out to be more difficult than Nicholas had imagined. Nicholas had been aware from his days as Inspector-General of Engineers that the organization of Russia’s administration was inefficient, that financial controls were weak, and that the administration was wasting money due to inefficiency and corruption because of the complicated and unclear relationship between the War Minister and the Chief of the Main Staff.16 He therefore instructed his Chief of the Main Staff, Dibich, to develop a plan “for cooperation in the activities of the Main Staff of His Majesty and the War Ministry, and in the overall connection in this affair, to join the War Ministry to the Main Staff.”17 A draft law merging the War Ministry and the Main Staff under the Chief of the Main Staff was, accordingly, drawn up, presumably by Dibich, although there is no information indicating who wrote it. The author was certainly not Nicholas himself, because the memorandum by which it is accompanied in the archive notes that the Tsar had objections to one of the law’s provisions; nor was it P. A. Tolstoi, because the draft was being sent to him for comment.18 The reorganization aimed to reestablish a clear hierarchy of command authority by reducing the War Minister explicitly to the position of Deputy Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty.19 The Main Staff, therefore, would consist of (1) Chief of the Main Staff, (2) Deputy Chief of the Main Staff, (3) Inspectors-General of Engineers and of Artillery, (4) Quartermaster General, (5) Duty General, (6) Intendant General, (7) General- and Wing-Adjutants, and (8) Army Senior Chaplain.20 The draft law’s most important provision stated,“All affairs of the military administration, divided by the Edict of December 12, 1815, are concentrated in the Chief of the Main Staff and his Deputy.”21 Thus the draft law would largely have abolished the division into “operational” and “economic” functions as the basis for the organization of the military administration (see figure 3.1). In short, the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff would have had a lesser rank and less independence from the Main Staff than the War Minister had,

Two Failed Reforms, 1827–1828

67

but would have even greater power than before. Since 1815, the War Minister had controlled only the logistics and medical administrations and the economic aspects of the artillery and engineering administrations. The draft law, however, would have placed the Quartermaster General, the Duty General, and the Intendant General under the direct control of the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff. One vestige of the old division remained: the artillery and engineering administrations still reported to him about economic matters.22 The Deputy Chief of the Main Staff would attend the Senate, the Committee of Ministers, and the State Council,“because the Chief of the Main Staff himself, because of the manner of his duties, can not always attend them.”23 Nowhere does the law mention the right of the Chief of the Main Staff to attend those bodies in the first place, however, a right which On the Administration of the War Department had explicitly denied him: the Chief of the Main Staff “does not attend the State Council, nor the Committee of Ministers, nor the Ruling Senate, because in those places the War Minister will be continually present.”24 The draft law gave the Chief of the Main Staff “that power granted him by the edict of December 12, 1815,”25 but it was not clear if the exclusions to that power were also to continue. The draft law did not concern itself deeply with such details, however, because it was intended mainly to strengthen the financial controls over the military administration. It described the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff as the principal financial officer of the military administration who conducted the necessary correspondence with the Ministry of Finance about obtaining funds, who distributed all of the funds to all of the administrations of the Main Staff and the armies, and who accounted for the entire military budget.26 In contrast to the arrangement of 1815, however, by which the Chief of the Main Staff had no power to demand a financial accounting from the War Minister, the draft law explicitly gave the Chief of the Main Staff this power over his Deputy: “The Deputy Chief of the Main Staff, for his administration of the Departments, comprising the War Ministry, presents the Chief of the Main Staff with annual accounts on the basis of the General Establishment of Ministries, adding to them also those, which will be received from the armies and corps. . . .”27 The Deputy Chief of the Main Staff was to be fiscally responsible to the Chief of the Main Staff, and “all directors of units and Departments” were to be fiscally responsible to the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff.This draft law thus represented an attempt to unify the financial apparatus of the military administration and to make

68

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

a single official—the Chief of the Main Staff through his Deputy Chief— responsible for the entire financial situation of the army.28 The draft law also addressed directly the confusion reigning in the logistics administration by giving the Intendant General control over the Field Provisions Administration, the Provisions Department, the Field Commissariat Administration, the Commissariat Department, and the Medical Department.The Intendant General would thus become the chief logistics officer for the entire military administration.29 All subdivisions of the Main Staff ’s and the armies’ and independent corps’ logistics administrations would have to provide the Intendant General with annual estimates of the funds they would need for the following year, and they would be responsible to him for the correct and lawful use of the funds allotted to them.30 The Intendant General would have a special chancery to assist him in this enormous task.31 The last major innovation envisioned in the draft law was the creation of a Council of the Main Staff (Sovet Glavnago Shtaba). This body would replace the Council of the War Minister (which would be disbanded) as the principal board of review for the military administration: The Council of the Main Staff reviews all subjects of the military administration that call for new regulations, the perfection or replacement of existing regulations; all proposals for the development, repair, and improvement of military units; annual accounts of funds for the entire military administration; the most important events in the provisions and commissariat preparations, especially the direction of those that contain any sort of new measures; the gathering of reserves; construction; resolution of difficulties encountered; exceptional measures; disorders uncovered by investigations; treasury deficits, and so forth.32

This section was an improvement over the existing situation in two ways: it actually defined the functions of the Council of the Main Staff in the specific context of the military administration, which the Establishment of the War Ministry of 1812 had not done for the Council of the War Minister, and it created a body that, unlike the Council of the War Minister, had the power to oversee the entire military administration, not just that portion that happened to be subordinated to the War Ministry.33 The emphases and omissions of the draft law make clear that its primary aim was not to facilitate the coordination between the Main Staff and the War Ministry, as Dibich claimed in the cover memorandum, but to provide effective financial control mechanisms that would eliminate the cor-

Two Failed Reforms, 1827–1828

69

ruption and fiscal inefficiency that characterized the army of 1825. The Deputy Chief of the Main Staff was described almost exclusively as a financial official. The relationship of army and corps commanders to him was unclear, as was his relation to the Chiefs of the Main Staffs of the armies and independent corps (each of which had its own Main Staff subordinate to the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty). The draft law only stated that every member of the army and military administration must report to the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff about money. The relationship between the Chief of the Main Staff and his Deputy was equally unclear. On the one hand, the draft law subordinated the Deputy Chief to the Chief, to whom he reported and was responsible about all matters of his administration. On the other hand, the Deputy Chief would have had the right to conduct correspondence with army and independent corps commanders and ministers in his own name without reference to the Chief.34 Since the Chief of the Main Staff also possessed this right, the draft law thus allowed the Chief and his Deputy to issue contradictory instructions. The draft law attempted to avoid this problem by distinguishing between the matters on which the Chief could write and those on which his Deputy could write, but the result was still vague.35 Above all, the draft law left unclear precisely what the Chief of the Main Staff would have been doing. The Deputy Chief would have overseen all of the most important administrations of the army and had only to report about their functions to the Chief.The Inspector-General of Engineers and the Inspector-General of Artillery,36 it is true, would have reported directly to the Chief of the Main Staff about operational matters, but those reports would hardly have occupied all of his time. The structure outlined in the draft law would, in fact, have left the Chief of the Main Staff free to act not as an administrator, but as a general. He could be, in effect, the commander in chief of Russia’s armies whenever the tsar did not hold that position explicitly.This was the view that Volkonskii had apparently held of the position, and this was the view that Dibich took with him into the Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire in 1828— much to the discomfort of Commander in Chief of Second Army Count P. Kh. Wittgenstein.37 Dibich did not enjoy administration any more than Volkonskii had, and he drafted the proposed law to relieve him of as much of it as possible, allowing him to occupy his time more pleasantly by acting like a general. The impression created by the draft law that there was one senior official too many may have had another, less cunning cause, however. Section 15 stated that “the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff takes the place of and receives all of the rights of the Chief of the Main Staff in the

70

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

event of his absence or illness.”38 If Nicholas had approved it, therefore, this law would have been the first to address what would happen when the senior military official was absent from the capital or otherwise unable to discharge his duties. When Chief of the Main Staff Prince Volkonskii accompanied Tsar Alexander to the conference at Laibach in 1820, no one took his place; the Duty General, Zakrevskii, kept the department functioning on a basic level, but he actually sent documents, reports, and judicial matters all the way to Austria so that Volkonskii, who alone had the authority to handle them, could do so.39 Such a situation was clearly preposterous, and Nicholas, with his love of order, did not put up with it. When he sent Baron Dibich to Tiflis in February 1827 to resolve the dispute between Generals A. P. Ermolov and I. F. Paskevich, he appointed General P. A.Tolstoi acting Chief of the Main Staff and Adjutant-General A. I. Chernyshev his deputy.40 The draft law would have resolved this problem permanently and simply, at the expense of maintaining two senior military officials where one would have sufficed. The arrangements for the logistics administration had similar problems. The sections making the Intendant General a supreme logistics officer with authority over the entire logistics administration, both field and central, would definitely have been an improvement, but the draft law made no provision for combining the field and central administrations, which would have been a much more important improvement. The Intendant General would have had to control not three administrations (provisions, commissariat, and medicine) but six (counting the central and field administrations for each branch).This arrangement would probably have facilitated coordination among the field and central administrations, but it would have perpetuated enormous duplications of effort between them and would not have provided for any reduction in the enormous staffs of the logistics agencies.41 In sum, the draft law of 1827 would have created three new agencies, the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff, the Council of the Main Staff, and the Intendant General,42 all of which controlled only financial matters in order to root out inefficiency and corruption.These agencies differed from those that existed already only in the scope of their authority: for the first time since 1812, a supreme military administration would have been brought into being, with a single head responsible to the tsar for all of the matters of the army, both financial and operational. The draft never became law; Nicholas never signed it, it was never promulgated, nor did it form the basis for the reforms that ultimately occurred between 1832 and 1836. Nevertheless this stillborn reform provided the

Two Failed Reforms, 1827–1828

71

immediate context within which the successful reforms of the 1830s took place, because the criticisms it provoked contained general lessons for the reform process as a whole and because its death constituted another step in the education of Nicholas and his military advisors. Why was this attempt at reform stillborn? The comments appended to it in the archival file were probably part of the reason. These comments amount to a call for a complete revision of the laws defining the organization and structure of the military administration. They reveal a keen sense of the basic problems facing the military administration and of the flaws inherent in this specific draft law as well as in any attempt to solve those problems without a fundamental revision of the laws.

Kochubei’s Critique of the Draft Law There is no way to identify who wrote the comments; no names or positions are mentioned either within the comments, in the margins (which are empty), or in the table of contents of the delo. The most likely possibility is V. P. Kochubei, who was at that time Chairman of the State Council, and to whom we know that this draft law (or one very like it) was sent: They are conducting a [re]organization of the military administration and in place of the War Minister there will be logistics, provisions and medical departments, but they have not yet thought of to what [agency] to join the artillery and engineering departments.The young prince (Dibich) will have as his deputy the young prince Chernyshev.They say that this organization has been sent to Revel’ to Prince Kochubei and that they await his opinion.43

The comments, furthermore, read as though he might have written them; at the least, whoever wrote them had a magisterial command of the functioning of the state administration and an active memory that reached back to the functioning of the old colleges, to which an unusual reference is made.44 In the absence of evidence that anyone other than Kochubei saw this draft, however, we may tentatively conclude that these comments are his. In response to section 6 of the draft law, which states that “The Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty preserves all the power granted to him by the edict of December 12, 1815,”45 Kochubei pointed out: By the edict of December 12, 1815, the power of the Chief of the Main Staff is not defined in detail. He reports all papers sent to the Imperial Name,

72

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I receives Imperial Orders and brings them into execution either himself or through others. He is the Adjutant-General Reporting (General-Ad”iutant Dokladyvaiushchii), but the measure of his own power is not designated: this, however, must be done in a new Organization, by which also the name of the War Ministry existing to this point would be abolished.46 In general, in my opinion, this new organization must be complete and must contain within it all of those previous regulations that still have force, so that it will not be necessary to continue to make reference to them.47

Kochubei thus called for the same sort of “methodical digest of military regulations” as Akhsharumov had in mind, only with more fundamental changes. Kochubei recognized that the partial nature of previous reforms, which described only what changed, but did not examine how the new structures were to relate with those already existing, had introduced enormous confusion into the administration. On the Administration of the War Department, which legally created the position of the Chief of the Main Staff, did not define it at all except as a box in a paper-routing diagram.48 A total of seven sections of that law served as the definition for the position of Chief of the Main Staff. Section 3 stated: “The Chief of the Main Staff is that person through whom all subjects relating to the ground forces are sent to Me, and through whom My resolutions or new regulations are sent.” Section 10 repeated this description. Section 11 described what must be written on envelopes sent to the Chief of the Main Staff. Section 12 required the Chief to report to the War Minister about relevant matters. Section 13 restated that correspondence from the Quartermaster General, the Duty General, the Inspector of Artillery and the Inspector of Engineers had to proceed through the Chief of the Main Staff. Section 14 stated that the Chief did not attend the supreme state bodies. Finally, Section 15 stated that the Chief might, in certain circumstances, make presentations to the Council of the War Minister. No part of the law defined the duties and obligations of the Chief of the Main Staff or his relations with CINCs of the armies or with their staffs. The system did not break down at once because the first Chief of the Main Staff, Prince Volkonskii, continued to act as he had when he had been Chief of the Field Staff of His Imperial Majesty—from which the Main Staff had grown.The confusion and vagueness of the laws, however, led to the dispute between Zakrevskii and Volkonskii (and Alexander I) about what role Zakrevskii, as Duty General of the Main Staff, could have played in the revolt of a regiment of the Independent Guards Corps.49 In 1828 that confusion would lead to more serious trouble.

Two Failed Reforms, 1827–1828

73

By the time Baron Dibich took over in 1823, his predecessor had defined customary behavior, and Dibich simply followed precedent. Customary behavior plays an important role in all bureaucracies, but when it plays a defining role, inefficiency and confusion, not to mention corruption, are likely to result. Kochubei called for an end to this confusion and for a clear definition of roles, powers, and responsibilities, without which reform was impossible. Kochubei also recognized the confusion between the powers of the Chief of the Main Staff and his Deputy. He noted that “it is necessary to designate in detail the relations of both of these [the Chief and his Deputy] to this administration [of the Quartermaster General], as well as the degree of dependence on them of each post.” 50 This apparently mild criticism is, in fact, fundamental: if the drafter of the law had carefully set out the relationships between the Chief of the Main Staff and the various administrations of the Main Staff and between the Deputy Chief and those same administrations, it would at once have been apparent that either the Chief or his Deputy was superfluous, for either the Chief would be a figurehead with little involvement in the actual administration, or the Deputy Chief would have been simply another bureaucrat whose job it was to pass papers from lower officials to higher ones and back down again. Kochubei made this point very clearly in relation to the Intendant General: About the Intendant General I must note that this newly introduced person51 will comprise an intermediate position (sredniaia instantsiia) between the Departments (Provisions, Commissariat, and Medical) and the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff, to whom these administrations are subordinated: and that hardly more than a slowing-down of the flow of affairs will result.Why do these Departments not have direct relations with the Deputy, who, according to the new Organization, obtains the rights and responsibilities of the War Minister? The former Colleges are now reproached for their slow processing of affairs; but in them all was resolved by a general meeting and report, without idle transferring of affairs from hand to hand and unnecessary correspondence. But here (as in general in all Ministries) papers will pass from Departments to the Intendant General; from him to the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff; from the Deputy to the Chief himself, or to the Council of the Main Staff; from the Council again to the Deputy, to the Chief, to the Military Department of the State Council, and to His Imperial Majesty. Is this process not slower than the Collegial one?52

74

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Although an unfavorable comparison to the efficiency of the War College was a foul blow, it was not fatal: the reforms introduced in the 1830s developed paper routings that were much more labyrinthine than that described here, for which Kochubei’s criticisms are, in fact, off the mark. There is an important difference between the relationship of the Intendant General and the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff and that of the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff and his Chief: the logistics administration would have been but one of the many administrations that the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff would have overseen, and if he had personally to oversee the six administrations of the central and field logistics agencies, and the entire Duty Administration for all of Russia’s million men under arms, and the Quartermaster General’s administration, and the topographical, typographical, scientific, and other lesser agencies, he would have been completely swamped. By keeping control of the logistics administrations and troubling the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff only with ordinary, summarized reports and matters of particular concern, that is, through the proper division of function, the Intendant General would not have been simply an intermediate bureaucrat, but would have served an important function. There was no defined division of function between the Chief of the Main Staff and his Deputy, however, and so the Deputy probably would have become simply an intermediate agent multiplying delays in processing paper. It is quite likely that, had this system been put into practice, a division of function would have occurred—the Deputy Chief becoming a sort of chief of staff to the Chief of Staff and bothering his boss only when necessary—but it would have been problematic. Only a law that carefully laid out the duties and responsibilities of the senior officers of the military administration, and thereby effectively legislated the division of function, would have provided an escape from this trap.53 Kochubei similarly complained about vagueness in the definition of the responsibilities of the new Council of the Main Staff: The designation of subjects to be reviewed [by the Council of the Main Staff] is done in general terms and is not sufficiently precise. It is necessary to designate in detail and clearly all of the subjects (sluchai) belonging to the competence (vedomstvu) of the council, so that not a single one may be taken away from it, and so that for every issue the council, and the Chief of Staff, and his Deputy and the Departments themselves knew in advance whether or not [the matter] had to proceed in this manner [through the council] or not?54

Two Failed Reforms, 1827–1828

75

Although this criticism was valid and important, it also made clear why the very notion of solving the basic problems of the military administration in a draft law of 55 paragraphs was absurd. The regulations defining the duties, powers, and relationships of the Military Council (the successor to the Council of the War Minister after the reforms of 1832) as set down in the Svod Voennykh Postanovlenii of 1838 occupy themselves 53 paragraphs, while the description of the paper routing required another 51 paragraphs.55 The fact that no one had ever set out precisely what the duties and responsibilities of all of the senior officials and agencies of the military administration were was one of the principal problems with those bodies, and reforms short of the large-scale reform of 1832–1836 were likely to add as much confusion as they resolved. The draft law of 1827 was in no fundamental way superior to the laws that had established the Main Staff in 1815 and 1816. It was too short and took too much for granted about the organization and functioning of the military administration. Above all, it attempted to solve a fundamental problem in the organization of that administration simply by rearranging the boxes in a diagram. Administrative unity, however, does not result simply from placing a number of disparate organizations under the control of a single person. The only way to unify the military administration was to rip up the diagram entirely and redraw it. How could one man bring order to a confused administration in a law of 50-odd paragraphs? How, indeed, could one man do it at all? Any attempts by individuals, even individuals within the military administration, to define or redefine its organization and function had to be closely coordinated with the administrative bodies themselves. Whatever the laws might have stated, and we have seen in what confusion the laws were, the only way to discover the true organization, complement, and function of the military administration was to ask the members of that administration. Dibich’s draft law and the comments attached to it made that clear.There could be no easy solution—the military administration had to reform itself if the reform were to have any meaning. Such was the lesson that the Tsar and War Minister A. I. Chernyshev drew from this episode.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter IV

Lessons Lost:The Problems of the 1828 Campaign in Turkey

The tentative steps that the tsar and his advisors had taken toward military reform in 1826–1827 came to an abrupt halt in the winter of 1827–1828 as increasingly tense relations between Russia and Turkey made armed conflict appear imminent.When war came in the spring of 1828 it swept aside all considerations of reform, for Nicholas himself took the field against his enemy, leaving a committee of regency in St. Petersburg charged with maintaining the status quo. The war brought into sharp focus a number of critical problems in Russia’s military policy, but because of the unusual nature of this war, which taxed Russia’s administrative, rather than tactical, skills to the limit, the problems it emphasized were problems in administration.The difficult terrain, the obstinacy with which the Turks defended their fortresses and employed “scorched earth” tactics to complicate Russian supply arrangements, and numerous flaws in the organization and functioning of the military administration almost led to complete disaster. Nicholas’s attention during the war and after, as a result, was fixed ever more strongly on the problems of administration and organization, even though this war also pointed up sharply the fact that the Russian army, for all its great size, was actually too small to perform all the tasks Nicholas expected of it. The Turkey Problem: Causes and Objectives of the War Two distinct issues caused Russia and Turkey to go to war in 1828. The Greek revolution, raging since 1821, continued to attract international

78

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

attention, and the Turks’ repeated failures to put it down drove them to ever more radical measures. A rumor that the sultan had ordered Mohammed Ali, the pasha of Egypt, to slaughter all the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus to put an end to the uprising once and for all spread throughout Europe in 1827 and briefly united England, France, and Russia. These powers combined to place a joint naval squadron off the Greek coast that annihilated the Turkish navy at Navarino on October 20, 1827.This international embarrassment shook the sultan, insecure on his throne to begin with, and drove him to declare a holy war against Russia in December of that year. The commander of the joint squadron at Navarino, as well as most of its ships, were British, but the Turks declared war only against Russia.The reason that the sultan singled out the only enemy capable of doing him serious harm was that his internal weakness made it essential for him to show his independence of Russia.1 To that end, it was better for Sultan Mahmud to fight and lose a war against the Russians than it was for him to compromise in the face of Nicholas’s demands. The other reason for Turkey to defy Russia and not England or France was that Russia’s demands were not primarily concerned with Greece.The Treaty of Bucharest, which had ended the last Russo-Turkish war in 1812, was not a satisfactory peace for either side. Concluded in haste by a Russian army that had not thoroughly defeated Turkey, but that had to turn to meet the looming threat of Napoleon, the Treaty of Bucharest effectively wrested control over the Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) from the Porte2 and gave them to Russia. By 1828, however, the Turks had still not fulfilled their treaty obligations, and this affair was an open sore that the battle of Navarino turned into a casus belli. Nicholas had limited aims in the war against Turkey: to secure guarantees that the sultan would observe his treaty obligations, to win limited autonomy for Greece, and to end the Turks’ closure of the Turkish Straits (the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus) against Russian shipping. Far from being the primary motivation of the war, the aim of establishing a truly autonomous Greece was distasteful to Nicholas in the extreme. He declared to the Austrian ambassador, Count Zichy, in 1828, “I detest, I abhor the Greeks, although they are my co-religionists; they have behaved in a shocking, blamable, even criminal manner; I look upon them as subjects in open revolt against their legitimate sovereign; I do not desire their enfranchisement; they do not deserve it, and it would be a very bad example for all other countries if they succeeded in establishing it.” Nicholas continued by arguing at length and in detail that his opposition to Turkey stemmed

Lessons Lost

79

entirely from the Porte’s failure to abide by previous treaties and from Turkey’s embargo on Russian trade, which was doing enormous harm.3 Nicholas’s correspondence with Constantine throughout the first three years of his reign makes it clear that this statement was not a pose: a desire to support the Greeks was never a reason for involving Russia in conflict with Turkey but always an objection that had to be overcome.4 Why did Nicholas go to war in support of a cause he bitterly hated? One reason was the Porte’s embargo. In 1828 as now, the overwhelming proportion of grain grown in Russia was grown in the south, either in Ukraine or in the “central black earth region” around Saratov and Tambov. Almost all of the grain exported abroad, therefore, was loaded on ships in Black Sea ports and transited the Turkish Straits. There was no provision for exporting grain through Baltic ports, which were much farther away and not set up for such trade. If the Turks closed the Straits to Russian grain shipments, therefore, most Russian grain could not be shipped.Three weeks after the battle at Navarino and the reimposition of a complete embargo on Russian trade by the Porte, therefore, the governor of Novorossiisk Province reported that prices for grain in the province had fallen by half, and that in all the southern provinces “reserves of grain remain unsold, produce brought to the ports is either sold at a loss or thrown away in the expectation of a positive change in the circumstances, while the lack of money—a general disaster in any circumstances—threatens equally both merchants and landowners with the most unpleasant consequences. . . .” 5 Damage done to the economy in such a manner was much worse than it might at first appear. If the grain growers suffered, they would be unable to pay their taxes, and those taxes formed a critical part of the state’s budget. If they suffered enough, the state might have to step in to assist them financially, for it would be national suicide to allow them to be wiped out. The inability to export grain, in addition, meant the closing off of Russia’s best source of foreign currency, as well as the loss of import and export duties, which accounted for another sizable percentage of the budget.A complete embargo of Russian trade through the Black Sea, if maintained well enough and long enough, could prove fatal to a Russian state already on the verge of bankruptcy. The free passage of Russian merchantmen and warships through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles had long been a principal concern of Russian foreign policy toward Turkey. A hostile and defiant Turkey clearly posed a threat to Russia’s economic (and therefore, as we have seen, military) well-being: shortly after the outbreak of the Greek rebellion in 1821, the Porte began to stop, search, and, frequently, seize Russian shipping

80

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

through the Straits and prohibited the passage of grain ships entirely. As a result of these measures, Russian grain shipments in 1821, 1822, and 1824 were a mere 50 percent of the previous annual averages.6 Why had Alexander not attacked at once? One consideration restrained him: fear of revolution. In 1821 he told one of his advisers, “if we answer the Turks with war, then not a single government will be left on its feet. I am determined not to give the enemies of order freedom of action.Whatever it may be, we must find means to prevent war with Turkey.”7 Other reasons to avoid war in Turkey emerge from the financial considerations discussed above, and the military considerations closely tied to them. War is expensive; war with Turkey especially so: “geographic, topographic, climatic, and demographic characteristics of the theaters of military operations [in Eastern Europe] imposed substantive costs of their own. . . . In order to get to the theater of war, a Russian army, after mustering, typically had to march hundreds of miles across desolate, underpopulated territories. . . .”8 The borderlands of Moldavia, Wallachia, and the Balkan mountain range were inhospitable and poor, and the Russians under Nicholas had to deal with the difficult and expensive problem of supply. During the war scare that followed the Greek revolution of 1821, the Chief of Staff of Second Army (deployed against Turkey), P. D. Kiselev, constantly wrote to the Duty General of the Main Staff, A. A. Zakrevskii, demanding permission to make preparations for supplying a possible campaign.9 Zakrevskii could not help much, but he did understand the problem: “Supply, if there will be a war, will seriously hinder the army and we must take timely and decisive measures—this is not Germany.”10 Alexander had not taken decisive measures because the situation had not forced him to. The Turks were involved in crushing a revolution in their own state—an activity of which he heartily approved. Even as the Porte waged war in the Peloponnesus, in fact, Alexander was preparing to send an army to assist the Austrians in suppressing a revolution on their own territory. The embargo on Russian trade was annoying and potentially very serious, but Alexander had every reason to hope that the matter would be resolved and the embargo lifted before grave damage had been done to the Russian economy, or to Russo-Turkish relations. He was deceived in this hope. The sultan took a long time attempting to suppress the Greek revolt. Fearing that the Greek revolution would spread and that the Janissaries would assassinate him as they had assassinated many a previous sultan who was weak on his throne, the sultan had massacred them. Although that slaughter relieved him of one danger, it exposed him to a host of others,

Lessons Lost

81

for the Janissaries, if they had not been reliable, had usually been effective at suppressing revolutions not of their own making, and they had been the Porte’s primary fighting force in all foreign wars. The Battle of Navarino made the sultan’s already weak position untenable: with revolution seething in Greece and powerful vassals, it was thought, scheming in the outlying provinces to restore what was left of the Janissaries, Mahmud could not afford to appear impotent in the face of the West. He responded by denouncing the treaty he had signed with Nicholas at Akkerman in 1826 and declaring holy war on Russia. The Treaty of Akkerman had been Nicholas’s attempt to resolve his conflict with the Porte without resorting to war. Its terms cleared up some of the disagreements between Russia and Turkey stemming from the Treaty of Bucharest and mandated negotiations to clear up the rest—as well as to deal with the Greek question. It was a harsh treaty and was regarded with disfavor in Europe as placing Russia in too strong an advantage vis-à-vis Turkey.The sultan signed it so that he could put his house in order—by taking care of the Janissaries, to start with. Why did Nicholas demand such harsh terms? It has long been the common view that Russia has had designs on the Straits since the days of Catherine the Great. This opinion influenced contemporaries such as the British Foreign Secretary for much of the 1830s, Lord Palmerston, as much as it has influenced historians subsequently.11 Russia’s “drive for the Straits” is legendary. Part of the reason for the appeal of this legend is its obviousness.The economic imperatives outlined above should be enough to persuade any tsar that it would be better for Russia to hold the Straits than for any other power, especially Turkey, to do so, for then she need never fear the economic and military damages that resulted periodically throughout the nineteenth century from their closure. The act of taking the Straits would include, of course, taking Constantinople, and so would precipitate the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. Looked at from one vantage point, this event might also seem to be in Russia’s interests, for it would allow Russia either to take possession of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and other Slav lands under Ottoman rule or to establish in those places states that were independent but strongly beholden to her. Russia’s tsar would become the unquestioned master of all the Balkans. The Russia of Nicholas’s day was aware, however, that this rosy picture would not come to pass, for Russia could not defeat and occupy Turkeyin-Europe before the other European powers mobilized to prevent the

82

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

establishment of Russian hegemony in the east. Nicholas could be certain that Austria would go to war to prevent such an outcome, and that England probably would support Austria in such a war in the interest of maintaining the European balance. Depending on the attitudes of France and of Prussia, the result could well be a general European war on a Napoleonic scale. Russia could not support such a war, and Nicholas did not desire such hegemony. In fact, in 1829 he feared that he had beaten the Turks so soundly that Constantinople might fall into his lap—and he concluded that he did not want it even then. In September 1829, as the Treaty of Adrianople that ended the war was being negotiated, Nicholas convened a secret committee to discuss “what position Russia must occupy in the event of the fall of the Ottoman Porte.”12 The Foreign Minister, Count K.V. Nessel’rode, told the committee that it was essential for Russia to preserve the Porte, for “any other order of things that might be substituted there could not equal for us the advantage of having a weak state for a neighbor.”13 D.V. Dashkov agreed, arguing that “a policy setting for itself the goal of the fall of the Turkish empire does not correspond with the true interests of Russia.” The committee concluded the following: 1. The advantages presented by the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire in Europe surpass the inconveniences accompanying its existence; 2. In consequence of this the fall of the Ottoman Empire does not correspond with the true interests of Russia; 3. Common sense demands that we prevent that fall, having sought out all possible means remaining to us for the conclusion of an honorable peace.14 Nicholas personally approved these conclusions and transmitted them to Dibich, then negotiating the peace treaty, as guidance. The conclusion of the secret committee that it was in Russia’s national interest to maintain the Ottoman Empire received embodiment in military planning. In a memorandum of December 3, 1829,War Minister and Chief of the Main Staff A. I. Chernyshev wrote to Nicholas, “The actual situation of the Ottoman Empire presents an appearance so little reassuring that, in the most direct interests of Russia it imposes upon [us] the obligation to consider . . . the possibility that the Ottoman dynasty will succumb to one of the crises that are always reborn [and] that do not cease to menace it.”15 He called for the creation of a force of 30,000 men, fully

Lessons Lost

83

equipped and with transports ready to take them at a moment’s notice to the Dardanelles in order to consolidate control over the Straits.16 In 1833 Mohammed Ali gathered an army and marched on Constantinople. He found Russian troops in Anatolia dug in—and withdrew. Nicholas appears to have realized that a war for control of European Turkey was not in his interest even before the committee of 1829 made the obvious points. He tried instead to attain his military goals by diplomatic means.Yet the Treaty of Akkerman was very harsh, and Nicholas’s negotiators harsher still. His tone was at all times bellicose and threatening and he never made it easy for the Turks to deal with him in 1826 and 1827.17 Why should he act in such a manner as to provoke a war when he did not desire to fight one? The answer is that although Russia could not reasonably aim at the fall of the Ottoman Empire or the control of the Straits, the Turks—or any hostile power on the Straits—could virtually strangle Russia at will. The only solution to this dilemma was a policy of intimidation—a policy that Russia followed for more than a century, from 1806 to World War I. The sultan had to fear Russia more than he feared any other power, and he had to be willing to turn his policy to suit Russia at all times. No foreign power, likewise, could be allowed to attain a commanding position at the Porte, and the sultan’s attempts to gain the support of foreign powers had to be foiled. On the whole, Russian tsars and foreign ministers were able to keep this policy working throughout the nineteenth century, sometimes by actually serving the interests of the Porte, as Nicholas would do in 1833, sometimes by uniting Europe either in support of the sultan, again as in 1833, or against him, as in 1827. On no account could Russia allow the sultan to join with a foreign power in opposition to its interests, and on no account could any tsar allow the sultan openly to defy him. Nicholas began his reign with diplomatic attempts to restore the relationship of dominance over the Porte; when the sultan answered by repudiating the Treaty of Akkerman and declaring jihad (holy war) against Russia, Nicholas answered with war—as he had to.This combination of Russian and Turkish policies and weaknesses brought about the war of 1828, which was merely the second of four wars Russia waged against Turkey in the nineteenth century, of which all were limited and stopped short of destroying the Ottoman Empire, although, with the exception of the Crimean War, all saw Russian victories that would have made that goal attainable had it been desired. The war of 1828–1829, however, saw a new element added to Russia’s Turkey problem that had not been present in the desultory war of

84

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

1806–1812, for in 1827 Foreign Minister Canning of Britain died. Canning had sought to control Russia’s ambitions in the Balkans and Turkey by allying Britain with Russia, believing that pressure from an ally would have a greater restraining effect than pressure from an enemy. But that policy of acting with Russia so as to restrain her, which had led to the Treaty of London and the battle of Navarino, died with Canning. Wellington, who succeeded Liverpool (after a short-lived interim ministry), and Aberdeen, his foreign secretary, broke sharply with Canning’s policy. Their new policy of opposing Russia was poorly conceived and executed: “They could not conceive that support of Russia might really be a benefit to Turkey. Their policy was temporising and feeble. . . . Aberdeen and Wellington did not induce Mahmud to make concessions and they did not prevent Nicholas from going to war.”18 Their policy was a disaster for Britain: Russia utterly defeated Turkey, completely excluded the British from the war and the peace, and attained a dominating position in Turkey. From the Russian perspective, however, this change in England’s attitude shortly before the outbreak of the war brought new strategic problems. Of all the powers, Austria could most quickly respond to a Russian invasion of European Turkey, and she was in a good position to catch any invading Russian army in the flank or the rear and cut it off. But Austria could not possibly face Russia alone, and the very act of sending an army racing to the Black Sea coast would have made all the easier Russia’s destruction of the Austrian Empire, if she so chose. In the diplomatic circumstances of the late 1820s, moreover, the possibility of French or Prussian intervention on Austria’s behalf was remote in the extreme. The only possible ally to whom the Austrians could look was Britain. As long as Britain remained engaged with Russia, therefore, whether or not her aim was to restrain the tsar, the Austrian menace was effectively neutralized. As soon as English policy became openly pro-Turkish and anti-Russian, however, Russia faced a serious military problem in the conduct of her campaign. Unlike France and Prussia, England could intervene quickly and decisively in a Russian campaign against Turkey and could even, if necessary, land an army and seize Constantinople from the sea long before the Russians could force the Danube and the Balkan passes. In such a circumstance, Russia could find herself robbed of victory by an Austrian spoiling attack at the same time as the English made reality the tsar’s worst security nightmare by landing an army at Constantinople and establishing English control over the Straits. With the advent of Palmerston as foreign secretary and the ideologization of British foreign policy after 1830 this situation would become much worse, but it

Lessons Lost

85

was bad enough even in 1828 to complicate the conduct of the Russian campaign severely.19 The Turkey problem as it was in 1828 posed an almost insurmountable challenge to Russia’s armies. Not only did they have to win, but they had to win so quickly that Austria and Britain did not have time to mobilize for war in support of the sultan. Not only did they have to win quickly, but they had to win so decisively that the Porte was forced to follow whatever policy the Russians demanded. Finally, they had to win carefully: a victory that led to the fall of the sultan and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire was, in reality, a loss.This circumstance called for a war waged by decisive force at a very high tempo. Russia was not prepared, however, to wage such a war in 1828. Any Russian campaign in the Balkans required a brief passage through the Moldavian and Wallachian plains, followed by the investment and reduction by siege of the Danubian fortresses on the left bank, followed by a crossing—usually opposed—of the Danube, then by the reduction or masking of the right-bank fortresses, an assault through the Balkan passes, and a procession toward Constantinople. The Danubian fortress system, however, was extensive, and as Russian victories drove Ottoman forces from the fields of battle, those forces joined the garrisons of the fortresses. The Russian commanders then had to choose either to mask the fortresses (stationing a small force in defensive positions in front of the fortress to prevent the garrison from leaving it) and maintain a high tempo of advance, or slow down and take them by siege.They almost invariably chose to besiege the fortresses, and in 1828, and later in 1877, this decision caused the failure to accomplish Nicholas’s objectives within one campaign season. The Russians besieged the Danubian fortresses rather than masking them in 1828, even at the risk of extending the war, because they did not have enough men to mask the sizeable Ottoman forces in the fortresses. Besides, besieging the fortresses made good strategic sense: the objective of the war was not to take territory, but to destroy the Turks’ armies. Only by digging those armies out, slowly, laboriously, and, because of the large number of fortresses and the small number of Russian troops, one by one, could the Russians expect to force the sultan to accept terms.A large army, therefore, was needed for success. Why, then, did the Russian army of around 800,000 men send only 100,000 to fight a Turkish army of 180,000 in 1828? Where was the rest of the Russian army? One division guarded the Central Asian steppe from Orenburg, and two divisions held the Grand Duchy of Finland; the Army

86

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

of Poland, including two Lithuanian Corps, watched the Kingdom of Poland, as well as the mobilization of the Austrian and Prussian armies; the Grenadiers Corps and I Reserve Cavalry Corps protected the capital area, and three infantry and three other reserve cavalry corps were deployed in the western provinces from St. Petersburg to southern Poland. No fewer than eleven corps, then, secured the state from possible attack and served as strategic reserves for the campaign in the Balkans, while six corps descended on European and one on Asian Turkey.20 Because her forces were spread so thin, Russia would not achieve even its initial objectives in the campaign of 1828. Russia’s inability to concentrate even a quarter of its forces on the decisive theater for a rapid campaign resulted from the strategic implications of the dangerous diplomatic situation described above. Russian intelligence that the Austrians had mobilized between 60,000 and 70,000 men and moved them toward the Turkish border pinned the Army of Poland and elements of First Army.21 These units had to remain available to fall on the Austrian rear even as the Austrians fell on the rear of the Russian troops advancing into the Balkans.22 The Army of Poland and First Army also had to be on hand to ensure that the newly conquered Kingdom of Poland continued to accept its fate passively.The rest of First Army and the Grenadiers Corps guarded the capital and the Baltic littoral against the possibility that the British might take action to match their increasingly bellicose tone. The Turkey problem, therefore, especially the new element of England’s active hostility, created most unfavorable conditions for the campaign of 1828. Russia had to attain a very complicated and delicate set of objectives with a force that was almost certainly insufficient for the task.The only hope was for the Russian army and the military administration that supported it to function at the peak of efficiency.The dangerous situation that was created when it had failed to do so by the end of 1828 naturally focused Nicholas’s attention not so much on the larger issue of Russia’s strategic and diplomatic vulnerability that had created such unfavorable circumstances, but instead on the smaller issues of inefficiency and incompetence within the military administration; he was thereby determined to proceed with administrative reorganization and reform at the earliest possible opportunity.

Course of the Campaign of 1828 In the spring of 1828 Nicholas concentrated one cavalry and three infantry corps on the borders of European Turkey along the Pruth and Danube

Lessons Lost

87

Rivers.23 On April 14, 1828, he declared war against Turkey, and on April 25 elements of VI and VII Corps crossed the Pruth into Moldavia, driving at Bucharest and Brailov; III Corps made preparations for a forced crossing of the lower Danube into the Dobrudja;VI Corps rapidly overran the Principalities; while VII Corps undertook the first major siege of the war, that of the fortress at Brailov. Nicholas held IV Reserve Cavalry Corps in reserve and ordered the Guards Corps (stationed in St. Petersburg) as well as II Corps to join the active army. Neither of those formations could arrive in the theater of war before August 1828. Chief of the Main Staff Dibich drew up the plan for the war and sent it to the CINC of Second Army, Count Wittgenstein, on November 15, 1827. The campaign was to begin in the spring. Dibich planned to conduct it in three periods, each lasting about a month and a half, although he noted that “under difficult circumstances [each period] may last much longer.”The first period, in which the army was to take the Principalities, besiege Varna, and take Shumla, was to end by June 1, or thereabouts.The second period, in which the army would cross the Balkans and take Adrianople, would end by August 1.The final period, during which the army would march on Constantinople, would end by October. Although the Russians planned to be at Constantinople by the end of the year, they encountered immediate obstacles that set back their tight schedule.24 First, because III Corps was insufficiently prepared to cross the Danube, it took until the end of May to do so.Worse still,VII Corps found the reduction of Brailov unexpectedly difficult. The 10,000 Turkish defenders held firm as the Russians began siege works in May. By June 3 the Russians were ready to take the fortress by storm, but technical failures led to tactical catastrophe.The attack failed and 2,700 officers and men perished. The fortress capitulated less than a week later, but the Russians allowed the 8,000 surviving members of the Turkish garrison to withdraw to other Turkish fortresses, particularly Silistria. As a result of this disaster the Russians did not attempt to take a fortress by storm again in this war. By July, nevertheless, the Russians held almost all of the Turkish fortresses on the left bank of the Danube, and many of those on the right bank, with the notable and important exception of Silistria. III and VII Corps were concentrated at Bazardjik in preparation for the next stage in the war, two months behind schedule.VI Corps was immobilized in the task of garrisoning the Principalities and the Guards Corps and II Corps were two months away from the theater of war. The Russian army at Bazardjik, about 45,000 men strong, faced the task of reducing Silistria (garrisoned by 15,000 men), Varna (15,000 men), and Shumla (40,000

88

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

men). Nicholas directed the bulk of his forces (30,000 men) at Shumla, set another 10,000 at Silistria, and sent an observation force (about 5,000) to Varna. Although Dibich had planned to take all of these fortresses rapidly, the disaster at Brailov precluded storming them.Thus the forces at Silistria could blockade the fortress, but could not take it; those at Shumla could not even effectively blockade the city or prevent supplies and reinforcements from entering or leaving; the observation force at Varna was itself in constant danger of annihilation. It rapidly became clear that no progress could be made before the arrival of the Guards Corps, so Nicholas left the theater of war for Odessa in July and little happened in his absence. He returned for the assault on Varna when the reinforcements arrived at the end of August. The Guards Corps raised the strength of the forces before Varna to 30,000 men, and by September 29 the Russians had compelled the fortress to capitulate. Seeing the futility of continuing to “besiege” Shumla with the forces available to him, Nicholas abandoned it on October 4, sending III Corps to Silistria and VII Corps to Varna. The onset of winter forced the Russian army soon to withdraw across the Danube to winter quarters in the Principalities. The Russians held the Principalities, the Dobrudja, and the coast to Varna, but powerful Turkish forces at Silistria and Shumla pinned them in this salient. Worst of all, the sultan seemed as full of fight as ever and showed no sign of capitulating.As one famous historian of this campaign concluded,“If we consider the enormous sacrifices that the war cost the Russians in the year 1828, it is difficult to say whether they or the Turks won or lost it. It remained for a second campaign to decide the value of the first.”25 The Russians had neither won nor lost the war in 1828.The army had winter to reinforce, regroup, and plan a new campaign, so there was every hope of success for 1829.Yet during the winter of 1828, bitter criticism and self-criticism flowed freely among Russia’s senior commanders and the Tsar. In fact, Nicholas so despaired of his prospects that he planned to abandon altogether the project of crossing the Balkans. He preferred a passive strategy, intending simply to hold the Principalities and the territories that Paskevich had taken in Asia, trusting that eventually the sultan would surrender. Chief of the Main Staff Dibich felt so badly about the campaign that when people spoke of the mistakes of 1828 he would answer, “but I know that perfectly well; what they say is true; it was horrible, it was disgraceful.”26 Russia’s ruling circle in the winter of 1828 thought that the army was on the brink of collapse. It seemed possible that Russia would lose not only the war, but also her po-

Lessons Lost

89

sition as a great European power, acquired at such a great cost but a few decades earlier.

The Army Sickness and supply problems inflicted more fearful losses on Russian troops during the campaign of 1828 than the Turks. At the outset of the campaign the six corps committed at one time or another to the Balkan theater comprised some 149,122 combatants and 18,961 cavalry horses.27 By December 15, 1828, they were understrength by 27,309 combatants (18.3 percent) and 4,095 horses (21.6 percent). On December 15, 23,787 men were sick in hospitals. By February 1829, the Russian army had lost more than 40,000 men and 46,000 horses and oxen.28 The army made good these and other losses from reserves, but at the cost of drawing the reserve forces down to 40,145 infantry, 3,455 cavalrymen, and 2,864 cavalry horses in 1829.29 The army could only maintain even this low level of reserves by conducting three levies in 1827–1828 that drew a total of 256,817 recruits.30 Such a large influx of recruits must be considered a major mobilization, for only 420,000 men had joined the colors in the national emergency of 1812.31 Even though Nicholas had called up more new recruits than there were soldiers in the entire Turkish army, Russian reserves continued to be perilously low and Russian forces never once attained numerical superiority in either theater of war. At the time and subsequently Nicholas has been blamed for failing to strengthen his weak army with forces from First Army or the Army of Poland, a decision that seems inexplicable in light of his determination to win quickly. He did not take forces from those units primarily because the international situation, already tense, grew worse as the unsuccessful campaign grew longer. Constantine, furthermore, who commanded the Army of Poland, strongly opposed the war and seized upon every available indication that Russia’s “enemies” meant to attack her to dissuade Nicholas from pursuing the war at all. On December 3, 1827, Constantine reported to the CINC of First Army, F. V. Sacken, that the Austrians were forming an observation corps of between 30,000 and 60,000 men in Galicia, complete with provisions magazines. Other information pointed to an additional corps of 30,000 forming in Hungary.32 According to Constantine, the entire Austrian army had been ordered to prepare to move to a war footing and to conduct a draft to bring the army up to strength.

90

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Soon Constantine reported to Nicholas directly that an Austrian force of 60,000 was marching toward the Turkish frontier, “for the better strengthening of it.”33 On the first of the new year he provided more details:“It is very possible that the reserve corps stationed in Hungary will be joined to that located in Galicia, and that the prince of Hesse-Homburg will take command then of the combined troops.”34 He estimated the combined strengths of these forces at about 70,000. Nicholas and others were receptive to Constantine’s warnings of Austrian preparations for war against Russia. Writing to Constantine after learning of the battle of Navarino, Nicholas concluded, “already I know that the Emperor of Austria, at the first moment of pain at receiving this news [of the battle] said: ‘If I followed only my sentiment I would send 100,000 men marching to put down the Morea, but I sense that I cannot do it!’—This combined with other notions requires of us the greatest circumspection.”35 Austrian preparations were apparently the talk of society as well: Zakrevskii summarized court gossip for Kiselev, writing,“the Turks and the Austrians are strongly arming every day; each hour of delay is much to their advantage and little to ours. . . . [I]t is certain that the Prussians are forming a strong army and that the English will transport their forces from Portugal to Malta, Corfu, and further.” 36 Although the enmity of the current English government was well known, it is surprising that Russia should see the Prussians, allied to Nicholas by marriage, as a threat. With great anxiety, however, Constantine reported Prussian military preparations in the months before the war. In November 1827 he reported that the Prussian V Corps, stationed in Poznan, had received orders to be ready for war and that it was preparing to march, “whither it is not known.”37 He assured Nicholas that he was making every effort to discover the object of this mobilization. His own agents, however, provided information that made it almost certain that the Prussian preparations were aimed at Austria and not at Russia: “A courier has arrived a few days ago from Berlin to Posen with secret orders from his majesty the king for the generals who command the troops to hold themselves in readiness at the first signal. As soon as Austria will dare to make the smallest hostile démarche, the Prussian army corps that now occupies Saxony, Silesia, and the Grand Duchy of Posen, and that is at a strength of 100,000 men, must at once advance and take Bohemia.”38 Constantine’s continued fixation on the “Prussian threat” may have been irrational or dishonest, or it may have reflected the fact that, as viceroy of the Kingdom of Poland, his priorities were not the same as Nicholas’s. However that may be, he had no basis whatsoever for imagining that the

Lessons Lost

91

Prussians intended Russia any harm. In January 1828, nevertheless, he provided what he saw as evidence of Prussia’s hostile intent toward Russia: The Fifth as well as the Sixth [Prussian] Army Corps are ready to march, but no one moves.The negligence with which they leave all of the strong places situated on the Austrian frontier and the care with which they provision and repair the fortifications on the side of Poland, the activity that they put on to complete the fortifications of Thorn, without regard to the season, to the close parentage of the sovereigns, the tight friendship that joins them, . . . all of this derails the political combinations from those that customarily hold sway, and at this moment there is no opinion fixed in Prussia, neither among the civilians nor in the army.39

It is difficult to imagine that there was a powerful move afoot in Prussia to attack Poland, and even more difficult to believe that Nicholas was seriously concerned with Prussia’s preparations. Within five weeks Constantine himself was reporting that “if a raising of shields takes place in Europe and if nothing changes the policy that Prussia will adopt, it is evident that, in the present circumstances, Russia has nothing to fear from that side, for in case of an alert, the Prussian troops will leave their camps and march to the rear to place themselves in the talon of Silesia.”40 Three days later Nicholas reported to Constantine in his turn that “the Emperor of Austria has explained himself . . . in such a way as to make me suppose that we do not have to fear arms in hand from that side.”41 The prospect of Prussia attacking Poland—either in pique over Russia’s attack on Turkey, an area in which Prussia had no interests whatever, or simply because Russia’s war with Turkey provided the opportunity—and thereby opening itself up to destruction by its ally, in view of the relative strengths of those powers, seems ridiculous on its face. One is tempted to believe that Constantine, who bitterly opposed Nicholas’s attack on Turkey as an unjustifiable support of revolution, was intentionally exaggerating the Prussian danger in order to dissuade Nicholas from what he saw as folly. If he sought to change Nicholas’s mind he failed. These reports and the general insecurity concerning the western frontier nevertheless contributed significantly to Russia’s failure in 1828, for both Nicholas and Constantine frequently made reference to the AustroPrussian threat to justify maintaining the bulk of their armies in Poland and the western borderlands. In April 1828 Nicholas suggested to Constantine changes in the deployment of the Army of Poland because in the event of increased tensions with Austria,

92

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I You will need to be ready to receive the Austrians by a movement to the left and, having the entire Polish army and a goodly part of the corps of reserve united under Your hand,You will be able to impose upon them sufficiently, all the while without changing at all the external appearance that they are used to seeing each summer. If political events require You to press Austria or Prussia according to treaties, a thing sufficiently improbable,You will be ready to march. . . . 42

It might seem odd that Nicholas, having correctly decided that Western intervention was unlikely, nevertheless concerned himself closely with the dispositions necessary to meet this “improbable” contingency. This concern over the phantom of Prussian hostility was not simply foolishness or disingenuousness on Nicholas’s or Constantine’s part, however, but reflected a fundamental difficulty for strategists and planners: it is impossible to know with certainty what everyone around you intends to do. Constantine was able to gather intelligence concerning Prussian preparations for war, which were serious, but not about Prussia’s intentions. Rumors that the Prussians intended to attack Austria if Austria attacked Russia could have been true or could have been planted. Could he or Nicholas afford to ignore the possibility that Prussia might take advantage of Russia’s preoccupation? Russia’s terrible geostrategical position made it impossible. The Russian army engaged in the Balkans could not hope to disengage itself rapidly enough to respond to Austrian aggression, let alone Prussian treachery. Troops deployed to reinforce that theater, therefore, were absolutely unavailable to deal with a European threat that, if it was unlikely to be realized, was much more serious to Russia than Turkish intransigence.The fact that there was no danger in reality does not mean that precautions were not necessary. The bogy of Western intervention critically constrained the manpower available to the army that was actually fighting. Prince Eugene of Württemberg, one of the Russian commanders in the Balkan peninsula, later wrote of his meeting with Nicholas in April 1828: On the very day when Second Army crossed the Pruth, the Guard marched from Petersburg in order also to take part in the campaign; but could there be any doubt that several corps, standing much closer to the theater of military actions, could arrive in place sooner than the Guard and take part in the operations? Thus, for example, the Poles determinedly asked to be sent to the theater of military actions.When I expressed my opinion on this matter, they [Nicholas, presumably] interrupted me, exclaiming:“We need them

Lessons Lost

93

[the Poles] in another place! If the Austrians budge, then Constantine will move on Vienna.” “Constantine? But with what?” “With a corps of eighty thousand.” I shut up, thinking that it would have been better to send those eighty thousand to Turkey, where they were necessary.Austria would hardly disturb us; in addition to move at the present time on Vienna with eighty thousand men would be to risk sacrificing them without getting any benefit.43

Despite what he had said to Württemberg, however, in June 1828, before the sieges of Shumla and Varna had begun, Nicholas already felt the insufficiency of his forces against Turkey. He wrote to Constantine that because of the “absolute necessity of reinforcements for here,” he wondered if Constantine couldn’t send one division of infantry and one of cavalry from the Army of Poland to support Second Army.44 Constantine, however, had opposed the war from the outset, seeing it as an attempt by Russia’s Western foes to distract Russia with the less important matter of Turkey in order to keep Nicholas from realizing and using his strong position in Europe. In February 1828 he had written of Turkey that “the evil will not come from that direction, but, if it comes, it will come from the West; it is for that reason that [the West] does everything possible to occupy us so in Persia, against the Turks, and for the Greeks. The West fears our physical force. . . .”45 Thus, when Nicholas spoke of reducing that “physical force” which the West so feared, to Constantine’s mind he was playing into the West’s hand by becoming further embroiled in a meaningless peripheral conflict. Constantine sought to turn the Tsar’s attention back to the West. If he did send Nicholas forces, he wrote, what would then remain for You on the Western frontier of Russia?—I Corps, 3rd Division, the five under my orders—a total of 8 infantry [divisions].The 11th alone received 8,640 recruits, and the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th are in cadre . . . [but] in departing from here after the assault, European opinion would be that our losses were so enormous that we sought troops from everywhere to reinforce. On the other hand, I think that all political considerations oblige us to think about not disdaining our rear.Already Second Army absorbs from us 11 infantry divisions and 2 of the Guards—a total of 13. See for Yourself, dear brother, if it is prudent to draw everything to You. . . . 46

No Polish detachment was formed; the Army of Poland took no part in Russia’s war against Turkey.

94

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

The assiduous maintenance of Russia’s defensive position against both hostile Austria and friendly Prussia had denied the active army the strength to win its fight against Turkey. When, in turn, Second Army withdrew back across the Danube to winter quarters, Russia’s position in Europe threatened to collapse. In August 1828 Foreign Minister Nesselrode wrote that Austria “was constantly arming itself; drafts follow one after the other, the ranks of the infantry are almost overfilled.”47 At the end of October he wrote, in February of this year I could have guaranteed the Sovereign that he would have to fight only with Turkey alone, whereas relating to the campaign of 1829 I am in condition to respond to this question only with hope. To this point Russia’s attention was directed in the main at Austria and its armaments, but from this point on our attention is drawn both to these armaments and to the outbreaks of the national hatred of the English.48

If Western intervention seemed more likely in October, by December the collapse of Russia’s military prestige seemed certain. Constantine’s reports of the state of opinion in Vienna and the West made it clear that if the Russian army had not lost the campaign of 1828 in Turkey, it had certainly lost it in Europe. In Vienna society opinion compared the situation of the Russian army to the retreat of the French army in 1812. It was said that, with the exception of the guards regiments, every battalion that had crossed the border with a thousand men returned with fewer than two hundred. The cavalry was reduced to cadre status, and the army was thought to have left behind a great deal of baggage.49 In another report Constantine wrote, They indulge with pleasure and even with enthusiasm in recounting and detailing the different disasters which the Russian army has suffered in leaving its positions on the right bank to cross to the left bank of the Danube. It is not a question of executing a movement ordered for taking up winter quarters; it is envisaged as the totality of the Russian army, including the guards, disorganized and forced to retire before an enemy which pursues it with vigor and undermines the rest of this army together or in detail as it encounters it.50

The fantasies of Russia’s disaster imparted new life to Austria’s hostile policies and conjured up yet more fantasies:“Immediately after the first official news of the retreat of the Russian armies arrived at the cabinet of Vienna, they sent a General Staff officer to the Commander in Chief in Transylvania, with, it is presumed, instructions on how to conduct himself

Lessons Lost

95

in case a detached corps of the Russian army, pressed too hard by the Ottoman troops, finds itself obliged to seek a retreat onto Transylvanian territory.”51 The image of Turkish troops, who avoided general engagements with the Russians at all costs because they invariably lost them, driving disorganized Russian troops to seek asylum in Austria and vigorously pursuing a shattered Russian army across the Danube merits laughter, but it also shows what a high price in prestige and diplomatic weight the Russians paid for underestimating the Turks. It is important to emphasize that it matters not at all whether the West’s perception of Russia’s disaster was accurate or not, or whether Russia’s perception of the West’s reaction was correct. However the Austrian government may have felt, Russian policy was formed on the assumption that the Austrians were rejoicing over Russia’s “disasters” and even thinking about administering the coup de grace. In May 1829 Chernyshev emphasized to Dibich that Russia’s position in Europe rested entirely on him, and that the evidences of Europe’s joy at Russia’s difficulties went to show “how essential for us are your successes; they alone, if they will be as glorious as they are decisive, can give another direction to politics. . . .”52 The strategic consequences of this deterioration in the European situation were serious, for, in addition to Austria’s mobilization, increasing English hostility drove Nicholas and his advisors to consider the necessity of strengthening their defense against English attack. Plans were drawn up for strengthening the fortresses that guarded the Baltic and Finnish coasts and for reinforcing their garrisons with regular infantry and cavalry units. The general in charge of developing these plans estimated that the defense of the fortresses alone would require some 28,700 infantry and 3,100 cavalry—almost an entire infantry corps.53 It was clear that it would have been necessary to mobilize additional forces from First Army to act as reserves and to guard the rest of the coastline. Nothing, in fact, was done to strengthen the fortresses or their garrisons during the war, and in 1829 the matter was dropped “due to the changed circumstances and in order to avoid extraordinary expenditures. . . .”54 The campaign of 1828 was nearly a disaster for Russia. The advance into Turkey was neither rapid enough to attain victory in that year, nor decisive enough to forestall an Anglo-Austrian attempt to support the Turks, had the English and the Austrians desired to make one.The Turks, it is true, fought with surprising determination and eagerness and displayed a remarkable ability to avoid pitched battle with the main Russian forces. Many minor problems of administration also undermined the Russian war effort, as we shall see, but the reason for Russia’s failure in 1828 was not

96

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

the inefficiency of her administration, but the fundamental difficulty of her position.The Turkey problem, combined with the weakness of Russia’s finances, almost destroyed Russia’s position in Europe.

Basic Financial Constraints Russia needed an army that was able to put a large force at a high state of readiness into the field against Turkey in minimum time. It did not have such an army because it could not afford one. Nicholas had inherited a state with a critical financial crisis and had immediately found himself at war with Persia.The preparations for the war with Turkey were costly, and the war itself was almost crippling in its expense. At the end of 1828 not only Russia’s diplomatic-strategic position but also her financial position threatened to collapse. Nicholas knew, furthermore, that even a decisive victory in 1829 could only restore Russia’s diplomatic position, not the empire’s finances. When Nicholas returned from the front to St. Petersburg in October 1828, the magnitude of the state’s fiscal troubles was brought home to him.The regency committee he had set up to govern the empire in his absence reported to him: The internal condition of the state as regards wealth is very weakened.The state still has not had enough time to repair itself after the fatherland war [Napoleon’s invasion in 1812], either because measures of repair were not undertaken, or because those measures were insufficient. Our production is in abundance almost everywhere, but not sales, and prices for everything remain extremely low; fiscal circulation is almost nonexistent, and the Minister of Finance frequently says . . . that he expects, and this is certain, large arrears in the collection of taxes. In this situation, if the war continues and there is another campaign, it will not be possible to have recourse to any new direct taxes; they would destroy the remaining class of prosperous people among the lower classes. . . . There would have to be recourse to other means, to loans, to some sort of indirect taxes or means, e.g.: to customs duties, to circulation through banks (aside from the issue of new assignats) and so on, and especially to the greatest possible reduction of expenditures everywhere it is at all possible, and to bringing to expenditures the strictest order and accountability in all parts, including here also expenditures on the war.55

The committee saw that Russia had already expended over 71 million rubles to fight Persia in 1827 and Turkey in 1828, in addition to the 323

Lessons Lost

97

million for those two years combined sent to the army according to its normal annual budgets.The campaign of 1829 would see an extraordinary expenditure of some 122 million rubles added to the budget for that year of 162 million rubles (see figure 4.1). Thus for the three years 1827–1829, Russia would spend over 678 million rubles on its army—over half of the total state budgets for those three years! Nicholas held fast to Minister of Finance E. F. Kankrin’s policy of not issuing assignats to cover deficits and turned, as the regency committee had foreseen, to internal and external loans. Loans floated in Holland in 1828, 1829, and 1831 and within Russia in 1831 raised the state’s indebtedness from 652 million rubles as of January 1, 1828, to some 823 million rubles as of January 1, 1832, an increase of 26 percent.57 The costs of continued warfare and inefficiency in the army were not only beggaring the state, but forcing it to sell its future as well; payments on loans comprised a considerable portion of the Russian budget throughout Nicholas’s reign.

Finance and the Army If the army and the war had ill effects on the state’s finances, the condition of those finances had a worse effect on the army and the conduct of the war. However large Russia’s expenditures on its army had been from the standpoint of the state’s financial capacity, they had always been insufficient for the army’s needs. They were, furthermore, completely inadequate for maintaining an army of the sort required to solve the Turkey problem. From the end of the wars with Napoleon, the Russian army had been underfunded, and that underfunding had gradually but significantly eroded

Figure 4.1 Expenditures 1826–1831 in Thousands of Assignat Rubles56 Year

Army Budget

Extraordinary Expenditure

Total Budget

1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831

154,139 161,817 161,500 161,751 153,679 160,446

0 24,924 46,204 122,422 65,767 97,258

403,916 421,617 406,926 427,906 427,847 446,589

98

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

what we would now call the readiness of the army. Alexander had intentionally kept almost every unit in the army understrength because of his financial problems. By 1826, although the army’s statutory strength was 884,356, only some 729,655 men were actually with the colors—a deficiency of some 154,701 or 17.5 percent.58 Draft no. 91 of August 26, 1827, the first in three years, was intended to correct this deficiency, but it only drew 59,906 recruits, who barely filled the places of the 48,812 men whom the army lost to various causes in 1827.59 The significance of this deficiency is not immediately apparent—a unit does not necessarily lose combat efficiency simply because its strength is below what it should be by statute, especially if, as in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century, statutory strengths were always pious wishes rather than realities. Its true importance lies in the reserve situation already mentioned: the reserves remaining for Second Army after losses in the front-line units from the campaign of 1828 had been made good included only 40,145 infantry and 3,455 cavalrymen with 2,864 cavalry horses. If the campaign of 1829 had gone badly—if, for example, the Turks had fought at Adrianople or had compelled the Russians to besiege Constantinople—Nicholas would almost certainly have been required to send significant reinforcements from First Army, either from reserves designated for that army or from active units. Getting these reinforcements would have posed two difficulties. First, Nicholas was determined not to weaken First Army in any way lest he thereby render it incapable of dealing with the supposed European threats. He had also to reckon with Constantine’s argument that denuding the western frontier to reinforce the troops in the Balkans would have significantly diminished Russia’s prestige and diplomatic weight. Second, because it would take units of First Army months to march to the theater of military operations, by the time reinforcements had arrived, the situation at the front could well have changed beyond recognition. The army that could not deploy quickly to Turkey also could not quickly reinforce its troops there, because other deficiencies, notably in organic transport, had to be remedied before any units could set out from their encampments. Constantine estimated, for example, that it would take at least three months to bring the units of the Army of Poland—the front line rapid-reaction force designated to launch a lightning strike at Austria if she intervened in the war—to battle readiness.60 The lack of men, especially trained men, was grave, but the miserliness of the military expenditures in the prewar years had almost immobilized most of Russia’s army by failing to maintain its transportation base at even a minimum level. The matter of transport capacity both to and within the theater of war was a critical problem for the Russian army in 1828–1829, and it aggra-

Lessons Lost

99

vated already critical supply problems.61 Horses and oxen were the only means of transportation to and within the theater in 1828, for there was not yet any rail service in that region. All units of the Russian army relied heavily upon horse-carts both as organic parts of the units to carry ammunition, field kitchens, smithies, tents, and so forth, and as the principal links between units in the field and their magazines in the rear. Units that did not have their complements of horses were effectively immobilized, as they had no way of moving their artillery, ammunition, and other baggage, and no way of replenishing their supplies in a barren land. Horses, however, are expensive to purchase and to maintain and, as they grow old and die, must be replaced.The Russian army, therefore, to minimize expenditures, had for a long time kept the horse-complement of permanently encamped units so far below strength that they could not move until new horses were purchased for them. This alone would have prevented Russia from responding rapidly to any major European crisis. It turned out, moreover, that the problem was not easily or cheaply solved once war appeared imminent. Constantine argued that his forces could not budge until their horses had been replaced. On the one hand, Dibich thought that over 400,000 rubles were necessary to equip Second Army alone with the necessary number of animals. Because of financial considerations, he issued only 187,000 rubles in August 1827, however, telling Wittgenstein that he was to purchase the rest of the horses only “when it will be necessary to cross the border.”62 The Chief of the Main Staff of Second Army, Kiselev, on the other hand, placed the total cost for purchasing all of the horses and oxen necessary to bring Second Army to readiness for war at over 2.5 million rubles—almost six times Dibich’s estimate.63 Second Army’s artillery did not receive its horses until the very opening of the campaign, and the delay, instead of saving money, cost more. On April 4 Wittgenstein reported that the money given to him to purchase such horses, reckoned against prices that prevailed in the fall of 1827, was insufficient in the spring of 1828 because the passing of winter and the large purchases of horses already made by the army had inflated the prices; he requested additional expenditures.64

Conclusion When Second Army crossed the Pruth in April 1828 it had close to a full complement of officers, men, horses, guns, ammunition, and provisions. The deficiencies in readiness in the peacetime army had been made good

100

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

and did not, in the end, have a profound effect on the course of the campaign.65 The real effects of the financial-strategic constraints under which the state and the army labored were more subtle. Nicholas had ordered Second Army to prepare for a campaign against Turkey in April 1826.66 The mobilization required one draft, two years, a voluminous correspondence, frantic last-minute preparations, and about 24 million rubles—all to put an army of 115,000 men without any real reserve into the field against a second-class foe.67 It revealed that Russia’s army suffered from many of the problems associated with a cadre and reserve army without the benefits: it could neither mobilize quickly and cheaply, nor did it save the state from having to support a vast number of men, nor did it have any meaningful trained reserve to call upon in the event of hostilities. In 1828 this system prevented the army both from striking fast enough to prevent the Turks from themselves mobilizing, concentrating, and strengthening their fortifications, and from bringing enough force to bear to overcome the strengthened Turkish positions rapidly. The diplomatic and financial constraints on the Russian army fighting Turkey rendered the invasion in 1828 a risky gamble rather than a sure thing. The financial and strategic situations would deteriorate further in 1829 and would lead Dibich to take a gamble that was riskier still. Russia’s problems were fundamental—they did not result from inefficiencies in the organization or operation of the army administration. They resulted from the terrible strategic situation in which Russia found herself, and from her financial weakness.The campaign of 1828 went so badly that Nicholas felt himself in an almost intolerable position. For a variety of reasons, however, the war would end before he came to see that the real causes of Russia’s difficulties were its poverty and diplomatic isolation.The military reforms of the 1830s did not result from, and would not respond to, the fundamental problems revealed by the campaign of 1828.They focused instead on administrative deficiencies that were more obvious and more easily solved.

Chapter V

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

The minutiae of war frequently obscure the deeper elements of grand strategy and military economy, especially in the minds of those present at the front lines.When Nicholas accompanied his army into war he did not see that his military posture exceeded his resources, but rather the more obvious but less fundamental flaws of the Russian army. Bad planning; lack of strategic direction; failure to consider that the Turks might not behave as expected; underestimation of the difficulties of siege operations and rapid warfare; horrific supply difficulties; breakdowns of the medical system; problems of command, control, and communications—all these matters of military administration and staff operations seized the attention of the senior officials at the front. Every senior military official, moreover, except War Minister Chernyshev, served at the front for some time during this war. The Tsar himself accompanied the army without taking command in 1828, and Baron Dibich was present throughout the war, first in his capacity as Chief of the Main Staff, then as the Commander of Second Army. The Second Army Commander in 1828, Count Wittgenstein, and his Chief of Staff, Kiselev, were of course present throughout the campaigns. The Provisions-Master General, Senator A. I. Abakumov, became “CINC of the logistics of Second Army”—a nonposition created to solve an organizational problem. The Inspector-General of Engineers and Inspector-General of Artillery, Nicholas’s younger brother, Grand Prince Michael, oversaw siege operations throughout the war. When Dibich took command in 1829, Baron Tol’, who had been Chief of the Main Staff of First Army, went with him to the Balkans to replace Kiselev as Second Army Chief of Staff when the latter took a line command. Of the most senior military officials, therefore,

102

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

only Count Sacken, who was the Commander of First Army, the Duty General of the Main Staff, and Prince Paskevich, the Commander of the Independent Caucasus Corps, were not present at one time or another in the Balkan theater, although the last-named, of course, commanded the war in Asia Minor. Nor was War Minister Chernyshev more likely to focus on the fundamental problems than the officers who accompanied the Tsar to the front, for he was completely preoccupied with keeping the military administration limping along and with fighting off the increasingly shrill demands from the Finance Minister to reduce expenditures. Considering the involvement of almost the entire military leadership and the Tsar in the detailed conduct of operations or administration for this campaign it is not surprising that it was staff and administrative problems, rather than the more fundamental problems, that became the principal targets of the reforms that followed.

Problems of Administration and Staff Operations in the Russo-Turkish War Planning The nascent Russian general staff system was structurally similar to the Prussian system that developed later, as we have seen, but it functioned quite differently. Russia’s military leaders had been concerned since shortly after Waterloo with the possibility that they might have to fight another war with Turkey. Dibich, Kiselev, Kankrin, Jomini (now in Russian service), and many others had produced plans for countless variations of a strategy that would force Turkey to terms by means of an assault in strength into the Balkan peninsula.1 As relations with the sultan worsened in 1826, Kiselev and Constantine, the heads of the armies stationed along Russia’s southern and southwestern borders, developed remarkably efficient systems of military intelligence and evaluated the capabilities and activities of Turkey, Austria, and Prussia with surprising accuracy for that time, although they tended to exaggerate the strength of Turkish garrisons in the Danubian forts and the speed with which the Turks mobilized. Russia’s general staff, however, had not yet found a corporate identity: each official developed his own plan independently of his colleagues, and there was no mechanism to ensure that the information gleaned from the intelligence networks of Second Army and the Army of Poland was in-

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

103

corporated into any of these plans.This failure stemmed from the incomplete professionalization of the general staff rather than from problems in the flow of information, for although the Tsar and Dibich had access to a great deal of tactical and operational intelligence, the plans they sent to Second Army took little or no account of the relative strengths of Turkish fortresses or of the Turks’ ability to mobilize, concentrate, and reinforce their troops. Moreover, because most warplans were the creations of individuals rather than the products of staff deliberations, they were drawn up with a cheerful disregard of difficulties of transportation, movement, supply, communications, and coordination. Despite 16 years of tense peace, the facts necessary to evaluate these difficulties—information that would have been readily available through the merchants and other civilians from whom Kiselev’s agents obtained most of their intelligence—were totally lacking. The Russians had only sketchy notions of how the roads ran in European Turkey and their condition, of the states of repair of Turkey’s fortresses, and of the problems of supplying forage and water for livestock in the summer months in a barren land. Kiselev, it is true, urgently and repeatedly warned of the last two problems, but Dibich, drawing up his own plans in St. Petersburg, did not heed him. This failure of communication between the two chiefs of staff at such an early date boded ill for the course of the campaign. The worst flaw in the war planning before 1828 was the wild disproportion between the objectives sought and the means proposed to achieve them. Practically all of the plans drawn up by Kiselev and Dibich had as their initial objectives the Principalities, the Dobrudja, and the Danubian fortresses; as intermediate objectives Varna and Shumla; and as strategic objectives Adrianople and Constantinople.2 They proposed to attain these goals—which they knew amounted to the destruction of the Ottoman Empire—with the two infantry corps of Second Army, marginally reinforced.They planned to take and hold rough, mountainous land, scored by the Danube and countless streams, studded with fortresses and strongpoints, and garrisoned by some 150,000 Turks, with an army of about 75,000 men in a single campaign.3 In the end it took some 180,000 Russians two campaigns to accomplish a more limited goal, and these succeeded only because Turkish errors led to the complete collapse of the Turks’ will to fight. This underestimation of necessary forces stemmed in large part from the lack of rigor in the planning process. It is true that 75,000 men seems like a large fighting force—it was larger than the Austrian observation

104

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

corps mobilized in 1828, larger than the Prussian forces stationed then on the Austrian border, not much smaller than the force Kutuzov had used to defeat Napoleon at Borodino, and larger than any single detachment of the Turkish army throughout the war.A force of 75,000 Russians could probably have taken Constantinople in 1828—if it could have arrived there intact. Instead, Dibich, having taken command of an army in excess of 100,000, led only 17,000 into Adrianople and fewer still down the road toward Constantinople.4 Friction (soldiers dying, getting sick, deserting, getting lost, etc.) accounted for some part of the loss, and it goes without saying that all of the plans assumed that no soldier would ever die, desert, or become ill, but the vagueness of the planning process accounted for much more. Dibich has been criticized for playing far too active a role in tactical details that should have been left to the Commander of Second Army,5 but his planning showed a total disregard of such important matters as how many troops would have to garrison the Principalities, how many siege guns were available to assault all of the fortresses he wished to take simultaneously, how many troops would have to be left behind either to garrison those fortresses or to mask them if they did not fall quickly, and how many troops would have to remain to secure the army’s communications with its rear. In reality, such tasks occupied well over 90 percent of the army active in the Balkans, which left Dibich facing the militarily ridiculous prospect of assaulting Constantinople with 10,000 men. Dibich’s poor planning had brought Russia to the position of having fully committed its available forces and having no reserves with which to attempt its final objective. Only the Porte’s weakness saved Nicholas from an embarrassment at best and a disaster at worst. Supply One of the worst problems facing the Russians in European Turkey was ensuring the supply of food for the troops and forage for the horses, and the army’s failure to resolve this issue satisfactorily brought it to the brink of disintegration—and caught Dibich’s and Nicholas’s attention forcefully. Second Army’s logistics administration spent 1827 gathering food and forage for the coming campaign and made an impressive showing. By the opening of the campaign, Second Army had reserves sufficient to supply 100,000 men for 10 months and 8,000 horses for a year.6 Unfortunately, the army crossed the border with 115,000 men and almost 30,000 horses,7 and by October 1828 another 65,000 men

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

105

had entered the theater of operations as reinforcements.8 As a Russian historian of the campaign noted, if these supplies lasted, it was only because disease broke out in the army and mortality reduced the demand for supplies.9 In fact, the supplies lasted only for the first part of the campaign, while the army was within hailing distance of the Danube and the Black Sea.The army was supposed to receive additional supplies by sea when it had taken the necessary ports on the Bulgarian coast. Unfortunately, no provision was made for transporting supplies from those ports to the troops deployed inland, and they were ultimately consumed by the troops around Varna.10 When Dibich and Nicholas marched to attack the fortress-town of Shumla, and when that siege dragged on indefinitely, the supply situation deteriorated catastrophically. Supplies for 8,000 horses will not feed 30,000—Dibich expected the horses to live largely off the grass and grain available locally. Such a plan had some prospect of success as long as the army kept to Dibich’s breakneck schedule, according to which it would never have remained long enough in one place to exhaust the supply of forage there. Shumla, however, did not fall as expected, and as the siege wore on, supplies in the area wore out. The first to suffer were the horses traversing the stage-roads set up to provision the troops at Shumla. They rapidly ate up the forage available close to the roads, and foraging parties had to go farther and farther to find food. The horses and oxen sometimes had to haul loads for days without food or water, and they began to die in droves.11 In October the situation was so serious that transport of supplies from the mobile magazines came to a complete stop, the grain allotment for soldiers at Shumla was reduced (the shortage was to be made up with meat from the carcasses of fallen horses and oxen), and even hospitals had to curtail the distribution of bread to their patients.12 Horses were to the armies of the 1820s what motor transport is to armies today, and the loss of fodder for horses then was as damaging as the loss of oil is now.As the horses died, Russia’s mobile units, cavalry and Cossacks, weakened by the deaths, suffered further because they had to send starving horses to the rear and assign the unhorsed cavalrymen to reserve infantry regiments.Artillery transport suffered so grievously that in August 1828 artillery companies sent four guns each (between one-third and onehalf of their complement) to the rear for lack of transport to draw them. Worst of all, deprived of horse transport, the system of supply for the troops threatened to break down altogether. Dibich wrote grimly to Nicholas that

106

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

forage, from day to day, becomes more insufficient, and because the transports cannot supply even half rations [to the troops], we may, in a few days, see ourselves obliged to withdraw [from Shumla] to Enibazar. Feeling how important is each day gained by our presence here—especially relating to Silistria [which the Turks still held], where Roth’s situation will become entirely difficult if we open the Shumla road—I am trying, as much as possible, to postpone this withdrawal; but from all sides they tell me about the impossibility of maintaining the horses.13

Dibich knew full well that the delay of his forces in front of Shumla was the main cause of the difficulty:“With us, meanwhile, the consequences of our concentration [at Shumla] are already making themselves strongly felt; forage already is almost nonexistent, and I fear that we will only with difficulty succeed in maintaining ourselves in our camp for several days.”14 He understood that solving the problem of transportation was the most important task facing him in August 1828, and that failure to do so would mean that “any movement that takes us more than three marches from the sea will become . . . impossible.”15 When the means of transportation are themselves dying, however, the situation is almost hopeless, for how can supplies be gotten to the incapacitated suppliers? The unexpected transportation disaster upset another finely calculated aspect of the prewar plans for solving the logistics problem. Relying on the dominance of the Black Sea Fleet, Nicholas had ordered the governor of the southern Ukrainian provinces, M. S.Vorontsov, to prepare supplies in Russia’s Black Sea ports for shipment to Bulgarian ports after the army had taken them.When the army took Kustendji, transports began ferrying supplies from Odessa and the Crimea to that port and to others as they were taken.The transportation breakdown caused by the loss of horses, however, rendered the task of transporting the supplies from the ports to the troops far inland, whether in the Principalities or at Shumla, impossible. In the end, all of the supplies sent by sea were consumed by the soldiers garrisoning the Turkish Black Sea ports; none of them reached the forces actually fighting in 1828.16 It was not the loss of horses that cost the Russians the campaign of 1828, however, for the worst transportation breakdowns came when the army was encamped in front of Shumla when the campaign was already lost. The Russian army before Shumla was simply not large enough to storm or mine the fortress as long as the Turkish garrison kept its nerve— which it did throughout the war (Shumla never fell). On the one hand, insofar as transportation and supply difficulties convinced Nicholas to

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

107

abandon the siege of Shumla and lead the Guards, freshly entered into the theater, to attack Varna, whose much weaker garrison was vulnerable to naval fire and to isolation, they helped produce the most important victory of the campaign. On the other hand, the collapse of the army’s horses gutted Russia’s cavalry—which had begun the campaign too weak to deal satisfactorily with the Turks’ strongest arm—exacerbated the horrible medical problems that cost the lives of some 40,000 men in 1828, and greatly hampered the movement and operation of the artillery, especially the siege artillery. Above all, it impressed upon Nicholas, both from his own experience and from Dibich’s reports, that there was something seriously amiss in the logistics administration of his army, and even the victory at Adrianople did not wash away this bitter memory. Finance The problem of preparing the army and its supplies for war was greatly complicated by Russia’s straitened finances.The Tsar’s attempts to economize, however, frequently cost him more in the end, as we have seen.17 Nevertheless, the Finance Minister, General Kankrin, mercilessly hounded the army to ensure that costs were kept as low as possible. As a result, Dibich turned to the Tsar for “extraordinary expenditures,” and consequently, the military finances became so confused that after the war a War Ministry committee had to work for years to put them right. The army’s initial estimate in the fall of 1827 that the mobilization would cost 24 million rubles was short of the mark. In January 1828 Chernyshev submitted a revised proposed budget for the year’s campaign of more than 71 million rubles.18 Kankrin, pointing out that “the more cheaply we fight, the more Russia’s might increases,” found this estimate far too high.19 To spend such a sum on a single army of 154,000 men and 43,000 horses against Turkey “would exceed the means and ability of the Ministry of Finance, if we take also into consideration that above this the Persian war continues, the fleet is at sea, and there may arise still other military circumstances.” He found that a sum of 30 million rubles would suffice and that “with the use of income and supplies from the captured lands it might be lowered still more.”20 Kankrin further argued that expenditures on the war with France from 1812 to 1817 had not been above 80 million rubles a year, so that surely, “under the present good organization of the supreme military administration and military economy, the funds I have proposed for the Turkish war will suffice.”21

108

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Chernyshev responded hotly that to cut costs in such a war, which would be fought in regions “where local supplies are unreliable,” was a false economy, for it might greatly hinder the army’s operations and might possibly “extend the war for an undetermined time.”22 He fought against Kankrin’s comparisons with the war against France, pointing out that “in a poorly settled and undeveloped country, it is impossible to obtain from the land all of those things that we found in abundance in Germany and France. I know from experience that the thirty-two-thousand-strong corps in which I served in 1813–1814 received from the logistics administration only pay.”23 Chernyshev sought to compromise with Kankrin and reduced his estimate to 56 million rubles.The army arrived at this figure only by resorting to financial trickery, however, putting off certain payments until 1829 and completely excluding the cost of the Guards’ participation—upon which Nicholas had already decided. Dibich supported Chernyshev’s proposal and added that he thought that more funds might be necessary. Kankrin raised his bid to 33 million. In a face-to-face meeting on April 10, Kankrin, Dibich, and Chernyshev agreed finally upon a figure of 46 million and designated another 12 million for disbursement at the issue of an Imperial edict.The Tsar confirmed the proposal on April 14—the very day on which he declared war against Turkey.24 Because of this negotiating, as late as February 1828 the army had received only 11 million of the 24 million rubles Dibich had requested solely for the purpose of preparing it for war. The remainder of the necessary funds could not possibly be disbursed before the start of the war because the estimates were only approved the day it was declared.25 The purchase of essential supplies of food, forage, and equipment, as well as of horses, was delayed until after the beginning of the campaign as a direct result of the confusion and contention in the military finance system. The allotted funds turned out, moreover, to be insufficient, as Chernyshev and Dibich had thought they would, and repeated demands for and issues of “extraordinary” funds completely confused the army’s and the state’s accounting. Dibich, from the tsar’s side at the front, paid no attention to the complications of the agreed-upon budget, according to which certain funds were to be issued only under certain circumstances, but simply sent requests to Chernyshev for whatever amounts he needed.This left Chernyshev vulnerable to opposition and hindrance from Kankrin, and the War Minister finally had to insist that Dibich indicate from precisely which funds he sought to draw and provide Imperial orders for funds to be drawn from the Ministry of Finance.26

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

109

The Main Staff ’s predictions that the war would cost more than Kankrin proposed did not, of course, prove that Kankrin was wrong in principle. Kankrin’s experience as Intendant General of the army operating in Europe and his universally attested financial acumen make it difficult to ignore his opinions.The easiest conclusion to draw from this story is that corruption and inefficiency in the military administration devoured far more money than was actually necessary to support the army—a view that Kankrin had long held.The dismissal of the directors of the Accounting Section and of the Fourth Section of the Commissariat Department of the War Ministry for corruption between November 1828 and March 1829 supported this view.27 That Nicholas (and Chernyshev) shared Kankrin’s skepticism about the efficiency of the War Ministry is clear from the fact that the period immediately following the war saw the beginnings of the intensive efforts to organize the army’s finances, develop proper systems of financial control, and root out corruption that ultimately formed an important part of the reforms of the 1830s. Command and Staff Relationships Complications arising from the relationships among the tsar, the Chief of the Main Staff, the Commander of Second Army, and the Second Army Chief of Staff similarly seized the attention of the participants and guided the subsequent process of reform yet had little measurable effect on the conduct of the war. Second Army Commander Wittgenstein was a cipher who had lost effective control to his Chief of Staff, Kiselev. Kiselev, in turn, rapidly came to realize that actual command rested not with anyone at Second Army headquarters, but with Chief of the Main Staff Dibich. Dibich, in turn, saw himself forced to implement many decisions he thought were wrong because he served the Tsar’s will slavishly. Aside from the inherent foolishness of allowing a young man (Nicholas was 32 in 1828) to make strategic decisions when he had never before seen battle or commanded a unit larger than a brigade even in peacetime, there would have been nothing improper in these relationships, for all were, in principle, sanctioned by law.28 But if Nicholas shared Alexander’s folly in burdening his commanders with his presence and that of his suite, he scrupulously held aloof from actually taking command, even issuing the edict, as the Regulation on the Administration of the Large Active Army required, to confirm the CINC in his position and powers despite the tsar’s presence.29 Orders to Second Army, therefore, came from two sources—Kiselev and Dibich—neither of whom technically had command authority.30

110

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

By the time the war had begun, Wittgenstein’s power had completely eroded, and Dibich had begun to send instructions directly to Kiselev without bothering the nominal Commander in Chief.31 With the start of the campaign, Wittgenstein’s position deteriorated still further. One observer wrote, Count Wittgenstein from the very beginning of the campaign saw that he was in an unpleasant position by reason of the presence of the emperor, who, as monarch, disposed of everything himself through his chief of staff, Dibich; at first he took counsel with Count Wittgenstein, but then he started only to give him information about proposed actions.This situation so angered the Field Marshal that he spoke from the heart several times when they came to him for orders that he did not command anything.32

Wittgenstein’s position was the worse because Nicholas held him accountable for the failures of Second Army. Nicholas’s biographer wrote,“In happy times of the war, they forgot entirely about the Commander in Chief [Wittgenstein]; Count Dibich deployed the army, his opinion dominated in councils, and only during failures did they recall the existence of Count Wittgenstein; on the aged Field Marshal fell then undeserved blame for his inactivity and lack of foresight.”33 Whatever Dibich may have thought of Wittgenstein, Nicholas’s letters to the Chief of the Main Staff make it clear that he held his Field Marshal in contempt and trusted only Dibich to command.When Dibich fell ill in August 1828, Nicholas ordered him to tell the Marshal that I am extremely displeased that he has dared to send Shelepev [from the siege of Shumla] to the corps near Varna without telling me a thing while it is my Chief of the Main Staff who directs the siege.— In general the stupidity and the insouciance of the Marshal makes itself seen in everything, and your illness, my dear friend, has given him free reign to make visible his ineptitude. . . .The Marshal knows nothing and cares about nothing.34

Why, then, should Wittgenstein remain in his post? Why, if Dibich was commanding in fact, was he not also commanding by law? What is the use of a “Commander in Chief ” who is not supposed to command because, it is felt, he does it very badly? It is difficult to evaluate what damage the confusion among the senior generals caused the Russian war effort. If Wittgenstein was incompetent, he had very little opportunity to show it. The practice of cutting the

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

111

nominal commander in chief out of the command process might have been a bad precedent to set for the long-term well-being of the army, but it need not have seriously harmed operations in wartime. The ease with which Nicholas and others used Wittgenstein and, to a lesser degree, Kiselev as scapegoats would have been very harmful indeed if it had led them to conclude that simply replacing those two men would repair the ills afflicting the army. But neither Nicholas nor his advisers ever came to such a conclusion. Instead, in the winter of 1828–1829, the senior military officials of the empire attacked the organization of the command structure, of the military administration, and of the planning process.The view prevailed among Russia’s generals that the systems and structures of the army had caused the disaster of 1828, and they dutifully outlined recommendations for repairing and replacing those systems and structures.These suggestions sought to solve important problems but failed to attack the fundamental weaknesses engendered by poverty and the strategic dilemmas of the Turkey problem. This oversight was perfectly natural.The problems that Nicholas’s generals attacked were important and real, and the army certainly could not function well until they had been fixed.Who was to say beforehand that if Russia did put its administration in order it could not compensate for whatever problems might still remain? Alexander’s half-hearted reforms had not exhausted the field: the stage was being set for a full-dress attempt to rationalize and perfect Russia’s military administration and command structure.

What Went Wrong in 1828:The Russian View Vasil’chikov In early November 1828 General Vasil’chikov sent Nicholas a critique of the campaign of 1828.35 He began by asserting that the campaign had not been a success, despite the recent fall of Varna, and that Russia’s failure to live up to Europe’s expectations had “opened a vast field for the intrigues of cabinets.” He proceeded to lay out what he saw as the causes for this failure, and he focused mainly upon planning, staff organization, and intelligence. He wrote: One must not look for the causes that made this campaign fail either in a poorly chosen line of operations, or in faults of strategy or tactics, nor, finally, in the superiority and the talents of the enemy; it is easy to find them

112

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

in the errors of the calculation of the number of troops that had to be employed and in the false information we had about the offensive means of the sultan and the spirit that animated his troops; we underestimated our enemy, we unfortunately thought we would be able to make a triumphal march up to Constantinople and we wanted to be ignorant of the numberless difficulties that this war presented. To convince ourselves we must only cast a glance on the forces with which a Russian Emperor marched to the conquest of the Ottoman Empire; we shall see that this army of Xerxes, as the foreign diplomats in St. Petersburg call it, counted at best 90,000 men under arms. It is with these forces that we had to occupy Moldavia and Wallachia, blockade the fortresses of the Danube, conduct the siege of Brailov and march upon Varna and Shumla; is it not clear that the hope of succeeding with such weak means could not but be based upon the conviction that the fortresses of the Danube would fall at our approach . . . ?

Vasil’chikov blamed the failure to attack with sufficient force on poor intelligence, in which he was partly correct. The most telling point in this criticism is that Nicholas had completely mistaken his opponent. He thought the Porte to be weak, insecure, and desirous of peace, and he was so confident that a mere show of force would suffice that he sent three times to Kiselev after the crossing of the Danube asking if the Turks had not yet sent negotiators.36 The Russians made an error in political, rather than tactical, intelligence in preparing for the campaign of 1828. Russian tactical intelligence reported the Turks to be, if anything, stronger than they actually were, as well as more mobile and quicker to concentrate and deploy. Russian political intelligence, however, at least as Nicholas interpreted it, was wrong at every occasion: it created phantom war scares in 1826 when the Porte could not have gone to war and failed to recognize the sultan’s determination to resist bravely in 1828 once the war had begun. Vasil’chikov did not point out that another important cause of Russia’s failure to concentrate sufficient force in the theater of war was the inadequacy of the entire army for all of the strategic tasks Nicholas set for it. He probably omitted it because he did not believe it—it is not an easy thing to believe that an 800,000 man army is too small, at least until one has set its available units against their assigned tasks in wartime, or until one has received letters from the Tsesarevich effectively refusing to send reinforcements from the Army of Poland. The belief that the tsar had erred simply because he had been misinformed was much more obvious and acceptable to Vasil’chikov—and almost certainly to Nicholas as well. It is far easier to believe that others have failed you, or even that

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

113

you yourself have failed, than to believe that the basis of your army and state is flawed. Having thus forced Nicholas, however briefly, to confront his own mistakes,Vasil’chikov then reassigned the blame to the process by which the plan of campaign had been developed, and, thus, to the malfunctioning of the general staff. Having asked how it could be that anyone could imagine that 50,000 men would suffice to take Shumla,Vasil’chikov concluded, It is thus clear that the Chief of the Main Staff 37 based the preparation for this war on inexact information and that he avoided all discussion with officers whose experience could have furnished more positive information. Even genius cannot do everything by itself, and there are no men of talent who can dispense with the ideas of others. It is to this truth that I dare to call the attention of the emperor; His Imperial Majesty does not have any man of superior genius either in his armies, or in his councils, to whom he could entrust exclusively and with full security the care for the preparations of a second campaign; but he has many men of talents, whose experiences and ideas are not negligible; in forming into a committee those of them whose qualities inspire the greatest confidence, and having them discuss in his presence the plan of operations and the measures necessary to assure its success, he will be able at once to judge the pros and cons and to adopt the opinion that suits him. A partial discussion with these same individuals will be more readily harmful than useful; one does not reason well except when surrounded by all of the necessary information and only from the shock of opinions springs the truth.

Many of the failures of the campaign stemmed, as Vasil’chikov asserted, from the complete lack of cooperation in developing the plans for the campaign at all levels. Kiselev developed a number of proposed plans for operations against Turkey and commented forcefully on the plans Dibich sent to him. Dibich, however, rarely took Kiselev’s comments to heart, especially when they suggested, as they usually did, expenditures of money.38 Neither Kiselev nor Dibich, however, appears to have consulted with officials of the medical and logistical administrations in earnest, and the relations between the chiefs of the staffs and the inspectors of artillery and engineers were inadequate.39 The disorganization in the administration discussed above40 was reflected in a confusion in the plans and preparations for war: should someone ask the same question of, for example, artillery officials of Second Army, of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty, and of the War Ministry he could receive a variety of answers.41 Until the staff specialties were consolidated and running efficiently enough that the

114

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

central organs received accurate information from the field administrations, both the planning and execution of operations would suffer, for it would remain difficult for any one group to discuss proposals for action “surrounded with all necessary information.” Having thus outlined the need for the increased involvement of a general staff in planning operations,Vasil’chikov turned to the problem of the excessive involvement of the Chief of the Main Staff in the conduct of operations. He identified as the principal fault of the preparation of the campaign of 1828 allowing a Field Marshal to command the army while the emperor directed it in person. He continued, Such a conflict of powers cannot be useful; the history of modern times furnishes us with much proof of this; for if the marshal is a man of talent and merit, he will not want to play the simulacrum of a commander in chief, [but] if, on the contrary, the choice falls upon a man without abilities, who lets things go, I do not see what utility he can have. In vain do they tell me that the emperor does not wish to enter himself into the details of the administration of the army, and that it is for that that a commander in chief is necessary; I will make to this objection the same response, that a man of talent will not wish to confine himself to running the logistics of the army, and that a man without abilities will not administer it, but will disorganize it. Even supposing that one might find a man of merit who wishes to make the complete abnegation of his self-esteem, his Chief of the Main Staff will find himself in a position as false as it is difficult, the conflict between two authorities, of the commander in chief and the Chief of the Main Staff of the emperor, will embarrass and hinder his work; he will find himself under the direction of the one and the other; obliged to complain to both, he will not dare to execute the orders of his commander in chief without having the approval of the Chief of the Main Staff of the emperor, he will waste his time in puerile negotiations, work will accumulate, decisions will feel the effects of too much haste and disorder will follow.

Vasil’chikov did not assert that the present system was not working because of the people who ran it, but that it could not work under any circumstances. Vasil’chikov offered, in effect, two solutions: either the emperor could himself command the army, stripping the CINC of his command authority and directing operations through the Chief of the Main Staff, or he could hold aloof from interference in the details of operation, absent himself and the Chief of the Main Staff from the army, and allow the army commander and his chief of staff to do their jobs. Vasil’chikov concluded that “the emperor has plenty of other things to do

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

115

than to occupy himself with the minute details that the preparations for a campaign demand, and his Chief of the Main Staff is too burdened with affairs to be sufficient for this work by himself.” If Nicholas had no confidence in Wittgenstein,Vasil’chikov tacitly argued, he must replace him and let the replacement run the campaign. The Tsar’s and Chief of the Main Staff ’s presence in the theater of war could in no way serve to repair the faults of a bad commander. Vasil’chikov believed that “the war against Turkey is purely administrative,” and that, accordingly, Russia’s failures in 1828 were failures of administration. He pointed out the defects in planning that had contributed to those failures and argued that the presence of the tsar and the Chief of the Main Staff on the battlefield disrupted the chain of command and harmed the campaign.The principal problem was the lack of coordination and cooperation among the Commander of Second Army, the Chief of the Main Staff of Second Army, and the Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty.Vasil’chikov proposed that Nicholas solve this problem by replacing the useless Wittgenstein and the “inexperienced” Kiselev (who had been Second Army Chief of Staff for almost ten years) with a better team and then allowing his commander to conduct the campaign without excessive interference from the tsar or the Chief of the Main Staff. Dibich The Chief of the Main Staff also found that tensions among chiefs of staff and commanders was the source of Russia’s difficulties in the campaign of 1828. In a memorandum of December 10, 1828,42 he argued that the relationship between the Chief of Staff of Second Army and the Commander of Second Army greatly harmed not only the efficient functioning of the administration of that army, but also discipline at all levels. He wrote: I find one of the reasons for our incomplete success in the current campaign in the fact that in general the thought circulates among the troops that it is possible to attain trust, reward, and other benefits without one’s direct commander. I argue . . . that the very institution of the Main Staffs . . . [is], in general, harmful, because of the . . . [problems caused by] giving any subordinate trust sometimes exceeding that of the commander.43

Dibich clearly had in mind the case of Kiselev and Wittgenstein, and he must have been aware that he himself was one of the main sources of the problem: he had long since undertaken to bypass Wittgenstein and work

116

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

through Kiselev, but he obviously found that such a procedure exacts its price in wartime. It is, however, somewhat jarring to read the Chief of the Main Staff ’s general assertion that he considers the institution of staffs in general to be harmful. If staffs in general are harmful, how could Dibich defend his own position as chief of the highest staff in the land? Dibich never seems to have noticed the contradiction between his general statement and his own position, which gives us insight into his perception of the position of Chief of the Main Staff.44 He clearly did not see himself as a staff officer of any type, but as the effective Commander in Chief of all of Russia’s armies. The problem he saw was not his own usurpation of command, but the confusion that reigned at the headquarters of Second Army because of the fact that the nominal commander was a cipher while the effective commander was a staff officer. This situation, he thought, “leads easily to the habit, harmful to the service, of accepting not only from the chiefs of staffs, but also even from other clever subordinates, covert reports against the commander.”45 Dibich saw the problems of 1828 as having been inherent in the system of staffs designed during the wars with Napoleon. He recognized that the strengthening of the powers of the commanders in the Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army “brought much benefit” to the army, but “at the same time it introduced staffs and their chiefs.” Everyone, he argued, found it more useful to address matters to the chiefs of staffs than to the commanders of the armies, who were old and unable to command vigorously. He concluded that most, it seemed, worked primarily with the chiefs of staffs and . . . with the [subordinate] commanders themselves. In these latter arose mistrust toward their assistants and a certain apathy toward the precise execution of all of their responsibilities. The chiefs of staffs themselves might easily have noticed the one and the other, but they could not (even without any ill intent) always hide from their subordinates their dissatisfaction, for having strong moral responsibility, they say that sometimes success did not meet their expectations [because of these problems]; and meanwhile they had only the moral rewards of these successes, for their positions required them beforehand to decline the acquisition of personal glory.46

Thus Dibich outlined precisely the same difficulties that Vasil’chikov had pointed to, though Vasil’chikov saw them as resulting from the excessive interference of the tsar and the Chief of the Main Staff in the conduct of the campaign, and Dibich argued that they were inherent in the staff sys-

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

117

tem of the Russian army itself. Both agreed that there were too many powerful officials in the theater of war, but whereas Vasil’chikov proposed to solve the problem by simply removing the tsar and his chief of staff from active control of the campaign, Dibich envisioned a more radical solution. In an uncharacteristically clear and categorical statement, Dibich proposed to eliminate the chiefs of the army staffs altogether. He wrote: I am firmly confident that by dividing power over the executive, economic, and inspectorate parts between the Duty General and the Quartermaster General (as was done before [the changes of 1812–1815]), under the direct command of the Commander in Chief, affairs will gain both in strength and in speed. Both of these officials in whatever degree they have won the trust [of their superiors], can never in their power and influence compare with the chief of staff, for each oversees only one area, but the chief of staff concentrates in himself as a second person all that power that the Commander in Chief has. With the separation of secondary powers there may also be intrigues, as there have been and always will be, but everyone [will] know that in the end everything will reach the Commander in Chief; whereas now no one is certain that in his name, or even in the Supreme name, an affair was not resolved entirely against the will of the Commander in Chief.47

Dibich made no mention of his own position as Chief of the Main Staff, nor did he address the problem of what relationship the Chief of the Main Staff ought to have with the Duty General and the Quartermaster General.Would they both report, as before, to the Chief of the Main Staff as well as to their commanders? Such a situation would have concentrated still more power in the hands of the Chief of the Main Staff while leaving the commanders of the armies entirely eclipsed in power and influence. The advantage that Dibich saw, no doubt, was that whereas under the existing system it was the outspoken and irrepressible Kiselev who eclipsed Wittgenstein, under the proposed system it would have been Dibich himself. Dibich recognized that changing the system radically during wartime was unwise, however, and he accordingly offered a number of principles for reducing the difficulties that he saw as arising from the existing system. The first principle was that the chief of staff of an army should be the choice of the commander of that army, and that the commander should be able to replace him, or that the chief of staff “should be allowed to request a combat assignment to the first vacancy at his rank.”48 Although this principle is sound, Dibich’s advocacy was almost certainly

118

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

not without baser motives. Kiselev was as unhappy with his position as Vasil’chikov and Dibich imagined he had to be, and he had repeatedly requested transfer to a combat assignment—requests that the Tsar had angrily refused as being unworthy of a senior officer in wartime. This bland statement of what seems an obvious principle—a commander can work well with a chief of staff only if that chief of staff enjoys the confidence and trust of the commander—probably served as a cloak behind which Dibich hoped to silence the voluble complaints and criticisms that Kiselev directed at him both above his own signature and above that of Wittgenstein.49 Dibich’s second principle was that all correspondence between the Chief of the Main Staff and Second Army should be directed to the Commander and only to him. Inquiries, however, should be directed from the Duty General and Quartermaster General of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty to the Duty Generals and Quartermaster Generals of the army staffs, who were to reply to them with the permission of the Chiefs of the Main Staffs of the armies.50 It is hard to see why the Chief of the Main Staff should suggest changes in the way he himself conducts his affairs to the tsar, unless he sought to shake the tsar out of the habit of by-passing his commander.The net result of both parts of this recommendation, however, would clearly be the reduction in the importance of the Chief of Staff of Second Army, for Dibich was proposing to reroute correspondence and reports of all sorts both above and below the Chief of Staff—in other words, to break the monopoly the Chief of Staff held on the flow of information to and from Second Army. Dibich’s memorandum went on to list other “less important” reasons for the failure of the campaign of 1828, such as the late appearance of the Guards and various failures of tactical doctrine and practice, but he wasted little effort describing them. The main problem he saw was the excessively strong position held by the Chief of the Main Staff of Second Army, Kiselev, and his recommendations for solving that problem involved gutting the position of Chief of Staff at all levels below his own. Perhaps the most important aspect of Dibich’s memorandum was the fact that he made it very clear that he regarded the Chief of the Main Staff ’s position as entirely different from those of other staff officers in the army, and that the Russian “general staff ” was so far from having the corporate identity that was at that very time growing ever stronger in Prussia that its effective head sought to destroy his most powerful subordinates, whom he saw as a threat to him, in favor of their commanders, who were too weak to be threats.

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

119

Wittgenstein If Dibich thought it necessary to strengthen the position of the commander in chief,Wittgenstein, unsurprisingly, agreed. On December 12, 1828, Wittgenstein sent the Tsar his own memorandum concerning the reasons for the failure of the campaign of 1828 and suggestions for improvement, which amounted to the strengthening of his own position.Whereas Dibich saw Kiselev as the main problem, Wittgenstein clearly saw the Tsar and Dibich himself as the causes of the confusion. He argued that “the last campaign has shown that the major part of the disorders in the army arose from none other than the separation of powers, which was made even more harmful because difficulties in communications did not permit the timely correction of errors arising from various remote orders.”51 Wittgenstein feared that the situation might even deteriorate in the next campaign, for “it is ordered from the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff [Chernyshev] to report directly to His Majesty the Emperor not only about military emergencies, but also about all internal and economic dispositions.” Wittgenstein proposed, therefore, four principles for avoiding “the harmful consequences that may result” from this situation: 1. If His Majesty the Emperor will be pleased to command the army, then all supreme orders must be given in the name of His Majesty by the Chief of His Staff, who must be located inseparably with him, while to the Commander in Chief should be entrusted the command of a part of the troops on the general rules, as was done in the previous war in which Prince Barclay and I commanded corps. 2. When the Sovereign is absent from the army, the Commander in Chief takes the army under his full control and transmits to his subordinates, who are not in any circumstances to receive such [orders] other than from the Commander in Chief, all Supreme orders of whatever sort he receives from His Majesty or through His Chief of Staff. 3. Strictly prohibit corps and detachment commanders, as well as all officers in general located with the army, from reporting around the Commander in Chief to His Majesty the Emperor. The fourth principle was that the civil administration of the captured principalities must also communicate with the Emperor only through the Commander in Chief. Wittgenstein concluded that “in these articles are

120

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

contained, in my opinion, the essential bases of subordination, order, and successes.” The first principle was, of course, as direct an assertion as Wittgenstein could have made, considering the weakness of his position, that if the emperor is present with the army, he must command, and if he does not wish to command, then he must absent himself from the theater of war. The stricture that the Chief of the Main Staff should be inseparably located with the sovereign reflected the awkward situation that held in the months of July and August when Nicholas was in Odessa, but Dibich, at Shumla, was issuing orders in his name. That period, above all else, probably contributed to everyone’s sense that the system was not working, for Dibich was micromanaging the campaign and issuing orders about small details, which he had no authority of his own to do, that could not possibly have originated with the tsar.52 Dibich, of course, had forgotten that the laws gave him no command authority whatsoever, but only administrative control over the staffs of the armies. Wittgenstein’s pointed description of the role of the Chief of the Main Staff as someone through whom Imperial orders are issued shows that he had not forgotten that fact. His second principle took for granted a situation unlikely to occur—if the tsar was not with the army, the Chief of the Main Staff would either also be absent or would be irrelevant, allowing the commander to conduct his own campaign. The most dramatic changes proposed in Wittgenstein’s memorandum, thus, were proposed only covertly—the tsar must either command the army or leave it, and the Chief of the Main Staff must restrict himself in wartime to the role of passing orders from the tsar to the commander and reports from the commander to the tsar.

Significance of the Memoranda of November and December 1828 None of the three memoranda discussed above touched directly on the fundamental reasons for the failure of the campaign of 1828.Vasil’chikov came closest when he complained that the “army of Xerxes” had been far too small to accomplish its task, which was true, but he laid the blame for this problem entirely on intelligence and planning failures, which was only partly accurate. All three focused instead on issues concerning the interrelationships between the Chief of the Main Staff, the Commander of Second Army, and the Chief of the Main Staff of Second Army, and attributed the failures in the campaign to problems in those relationships.

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

121

There were many reasons why these senior military officials focused their attentions on the secondary problems and ignored the primary ones; perhaps most important, in Russia in 1828 the language and method of thinking that has come to characterize strategic discussions did not yet exist. Nicholas and his advisors did not speak of their “strategic environment” and their plans did not include “mobilization” and “concentration” stages, nor did they distinguish between “initial,”“intermediate,” and “final objectives.” It goes without saying that their notions of “tactics” and “strategy” were more primitive than those developed by their lineal descendants in the Red Army. The use of such terminology in the present work reflects the fact that the objects signified by the terminology did exist in 1828: there was a mobilization phase (April 1826 through February 1828), which was followed by a concentration phase (February through April 1828).The plan of campaign defined successive military objectives, including a strategic objective of taking Adrianople (and possibly Constantinople). Military operations took place on the tactical level (in numerous battlefields and sieges), on the operational level (in the coordination of multiple army corps operating independently over a wide area in a single theater of war), on the strategic level (in the coordination of two army groups, one operating in the Balkan theater, the other in the Caucasus theater, and the coordination of the Black Sea Fleet with both of those operations), and on the grand strategic level (in the relationship between the Turkish “front” and the Austro-Prussian “front,” and in considerations of Russia’s military and strategic position in Europe and the world).53 To imagine that the military leaders at the time recognized these concepts clearly and thought in modern terms, however, would be anachronistic and wrong. Modern military terminology makes possible clearer thinking about and discussion of military affairs.Within the conceptual framework of the Napoleonic/Jominian worldview that dominated Russia (and much of Europe) in the 1820s, clear thinking was more difficult, especially about the relationship of tactical and operational performance to larger issues, such as mobilization and military manpower issues. No one in Russia in the 1820s was likely to argue that the Russian army failed in 1828 because its military manpower base did not match the requirements imposed by its strategic threat perception, not only because the terminology was alien, but because the understanding of “military manpower bases” and “strategic threat perception” was still primitive and unclear.54 Alexander, we may recall, had no better notion of how to evaluate the strategic threat of Austria and Prussia than to add up the mobilized strengths of

122

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

their infantry, cavalry, and artillery.55 Vasil’chikov did not suggest that Russia had sent an inadequate army to subdue the Porte because of an insufficient recruitment system because he, like Nicholas and all his other generals, was not accustomed to thinking in those terms. He sought the explanation instead in concepts that were familiar to him: poor intelligence, careless planning, underestimating one’s enemies, and administrative breakdown.This war and the Polish rebellion would alert Nicholas to some of these problems but would not provide him with a clear paradigm with which to understand them and seek solutions. Dibich’s and Wittgenstein’s complaints were even more narrowly focused on administrative and tactical, rather than strategic and grand strategic, issues because they were intimately aware of all of the complexities of the former, and completely unaccustomed to thinking in terms of the latter. What is more, the failure of the campaign of 1828 was grave enough to convince everyone that the system needed reforming. It was not, however, a severe enough defeat to convince the generals and Nicholas that the country needed a new military system. The military leadership, therefore, drafted plans and spent the winter months thinking about conservative reforms designed to tinker with a fundamentally flawed system. If Nicholas had fought the campaign of 1829 according to the plans that he had in early November 1828, or if the Turks had been wiser or more steadfast and had either avoided battle in the second campaign as they had in the first, or else kept their nerve when they had the advantage, the disaster that would probably have ensued might have driven Nicholas to consider more radical reforms that would have changed the system’s fundamental elements. Instead, the Turks collapsed at almost the first blow in 1829, so Nicholas was not forced to confront Russia’s most basic problems. That fate he left to his son in 1855, along with an overmobilized but defeated army, a ruined treasury, and a destroyed international position.

The Committee of November 19, 1828 Two circumstances gave Nicholas the cheap victory he sought in 1829: he was persuaded to adopt a strategy that made a cheap and rapid victory possible, and the Turks were trapped into a pitched battle far from their fortifications. Of the two circumstances, the first was the more improbable. No Romanov tsar other than Peter himself has been portrayed as more ironwilled and determined to be master in his own house than Nicholas I.This consistency and determination, in fact, has contributed to giving him an

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

123

undeserved reputation for being somewhat dim.Yet Nicholas was only 32 in 1828, had never commanded troops in wartime, and had been tsar for only three years. We should not be surprised to discover that as a young man and inexperienced ruler he was both more malleable and more impressionable than the stubborn old man who brought Russia to defeat in the Crimea.56 In despair at realizing in October that he could not possibly hope to win the war that season but must prepare to fight for yet another year— the extra year of fighting that his committee of regents had told him he could not afford57—Nicholas cast about for plans. His first problem was that either Wittgenstein had become more determined than ever to quit his post, or Dibich had decided that the nominal Commander in Chief was dispensable, for the Chief of the Main Staff wrote to Nicholas that “the Field Marshal, evidently, seriously feels the necessity of quitting his post, as soon as he has brought the army to winter quarters.” Dibich added, My duty . . . requires me to tell you, My Lord, that I am sure . . . that Field Marshal Prince Wittgenstein will be very difficult to replace with anyone else. But if Y[our] M[ajesty] wishes this change, then I am convinced that he can only be replaced with Prince Sacken, retaining his staff—only if Y[our] M[ajesty] Yourself does not wish to stand at the head of your armies. In the event of Your presence with the troops, however, Prince Langeron would seem to me the person who would execute the orders of Y[our] I[mperial] M[ajesty] with the most diligence and lack of selfish feelings.58

Nicholas assented readily to Dibich’s recommendations but found an obstacle: Sacken refused to serve because of his age and weakened condition. Nicholas, therefore, concluded that “if there is no hope of avoiding a second campaign, I may well have to return [to the theater of war], and then I shall command myself, having Langeron [as the eldest of the commanders left in the theater] under me.”59 But Nicholas did not want to command personally, and by November he had developed a strategy that, he thought, would allow him to retain Wittgenstein as the commander of Second Army, for it would be largely defensive and would require little initiative from the commander. He wrote to Dibich, The experience of this campaign has proven to us . . . with which country and with which nation we have to deal.60 To repeat the gratuitous losses that we owe to our false measures arising from our erroneous focus on these two important points61—would be a crime with which I will never burden

124

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

my conscience. It is necessary therefore to decide what we must do, according to what we can do or undertake. Before beginning the war I announced that I desired to obtain guarantees that would allow me to hope for honorable conditions for peace. Despite the fact that the campaign has not entirely answered our expectations, nevertheless Providence has deigned to put into our hands two provinces intact, and one other as the theater of war, to which the key is Varna. In Asia, excepting Anapa and Poti, three Pashaliks are in our power. These are considerable guarantees—if they are not yet sufficient to obtain our end.Would it be prudent of me to wish to press at risk a campaign beyond the Balkans without any surety of success, even if I could hope for it; while to assure the position of the guarantees it remains for me to seize the places situated along the Danube? It seems to me, therefore, that, far from pressing beyond the Balkans, good sense and prudence imperiously demand that we abandon the idea of an invasion beyond the mountains and confine ourselves to accepting on a firm footing that which we already possess while achieving the occupation of that which is not yet in our power. . . . [T]he general plan is to maintain ourselves in the occupied countries and as much as possible to constrain the Sultan in all the needs of his capital and his Empire, to bring him to treat [with us], without making large sacrifices ourselves, neither in men, nor in financial means.62

Nor does it seem likely that this plan originated with Nicholas.Three days before he sent this letter to Dibich, Finance Minister Kankrin had written his own memorandum, “Considerations on the coming campaign against the Porte,” in which he laid out four points to serve as the basis for the plan of campaign: 1. Foreign powers have without doubt the ulterior motive of weakening us in men, in materiel, and in money, and they calculate that a war against the Turks is costly. 2. In considering the brevity of time, the natural difficulties, and the obstinacy of the Turks, it is not probable to finish the campaign in one vigorous campaign, even if we succeeded in assembling everything necessary for it. 3. In confining ourselves to observations and to holding the fortresses already conquered, having an armed force on the Danube and a considerable army on the Dniestr we could conduct the war with the minimum of expenditures of all sorts; the Turkish population will leave the service, the monetary resources of the Porte will dry up, the blockade of the Dardanelles will exhaust the capital, and the intentions of the powers will be thwarted.

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

125

4. If, on the contrary, we decided to finish the war in one campaign, it would have to be fast, vigorous, bloody, undertaken with large forces and large means, and even in the case that the enemy awaits us at Adrianople, this success would be precarious.63 Thus for about a week in November 1828, Nicholas prepared to change the strategy for the war from offensive to defensive for reasons that were, at their root, solely financial! Such a strategy would not necessarily have been disastrous if Nicholas had tried it with some modification in 1828. For example, if he had set his armies the task of taking each Turkish fortress as they came to it, seizing it by mine or storm, interning or killing the garrison, and razing the fortress, then moving on to the next one, he might thereby have broken the Porte’s nerve. Following the failure of the campaign of 1828, however, the reversion to so passive a strategy could only seem to the Porte—and to Europe—to be an admission of weakness and of fear.This strategy would also have deprived the Russians of their best chance for a rapid victory by luring the Turks into a pitched battle and dealing them a devastating blow. It is possible that Vasil’chikov knew of Nicholas’s change in plans, and that his memorandum was an attempt to head off the implementation of what he knew was a bad strategy, or it may have been merely a stroke of good fortune for Nicholas that Vasil’chikov wrote when he did.64 In any case, the Committee of November 19 replaced the ill-conceived strategy with a vigorous plan designed to win the war in only one more campaign. The Committee of November 19 consisted of the Tsar (presiding), General Vasil’chikov (who had suggested it), War Minister and Deputy Chief of the Main Staff A. I. Chernyshev, Chairman of the State Council V. P. Kochubei, and Chief of the Main Staff of First Army Baron Tol’.65 Nicholas was the youngest of those present by ten years, which was significant—Nicholas, only 19 when the Napoleonic wars ended, had had no experience of fighting whatsoever, whereas Chernyshev, only ten years older, had covered himself with glory as a commander, a diplomat, and a spy in the period between 1809 and 1815.66 Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps because Vasil’chikov’s indirect criticism had stung him into thought, Nicholas opened the session with the clearest statement of Russia’s war aims in 1828–1829 ever uttered: “The goal of our current war with Turkey consists not in the conquest of Constantinople or in the overthrow of the sultan, but in the acquisition of as many guarantees as possible to drive the Ottoman Porte to the conclusion of a peace that will make possible henceforth the securing, in a firm and

126

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

inflexible fashion, the precise execution of all privileges granted already by Turkey to Russia in preceding treaties. . . .”67 It is a mark of great weakness in the process of planning for the war of 1828 that the political objectives had not been defined and the military objectives had been left tacit and vague until one full campaigning season had passed.This weakness had not gone unnoticed. In September 1827, asked to respond to Dibich’s proposed war plan, Kiselev had noted, “The muster of troops into Corps or detachments, the preparation of supplies, of ammunition, and many other minor considerations depend on the final goal of the war, which cannot be determined without knowing the political relations of Russia to the other powers, and therefore the composition of a plan of war, without the necessary basis for this, would be a problematic proposition and completely useless.”68 This warning and others like it had gone unheeded in the plans for 1828 and through most of the planning for 1829. Only when confronted with the necessity of discussing the matter with senior and experienced political and military advisors did Nicholas finally decide once and for all what his war aims were. Having done so, Nicholas also decided, for the first time, what means he was willing to use to accomplish them. The Tsar announced to the committee, therefore, that, “taking into consideration the political condition of Europe,” he would not use more than 110,000 to 120,000 men against Turkey.69 He then asked the committee to suggest ways and means for the best use of these forces to achieve the desired ends. The committee concluded unanimously that a systematic war, which would be limited only to taking several fortresses on the Danube, keeping our left flank in its present position and making in that direction only a few demonstrations, would not in any circumstance compel the sultan to seek peace, and equally would not offer the basic hope of luring his forces into the open field, in view of the system adopted by the Turks of refusing such battles with us. As regards the entirely substantial successes of our arms in Asia, although they would prevent the sultan from using all of the reinforcements necessary to him in Europe from that region of his lands, nevertheless these successes would not quickly drive Mahmud to submission.The only means of attaining the proposed goals consists in striving to deal the enemy sensible, forceful, and unexpected blows that might drive him to a condition of complete reevaluation and fear.70

Some of those present argued for an increase in the size of the army to at least 170,000, but preferably 200,000, men, arguing that

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

127

this reduction of the forces within the empire at the current minute would not present any inconveniences in the political relation; England [is] occupied with a multitude of domestic concerns and could not wish decisive actions against us. Austria also would not be willing to enter the affair alone, both because of the thought of all of the consequences of an invasion into Russia and because of their fears for the integrity of their Italian and Slavic lands, when the means for their subjugation would no longer be in the hands of the government.71

Nicholas refused this renewed request for more troops, but on new grounds. He no longer argued that political circumstances, or even financial exigencies, made it impossible. Instead he asserted that experience obtained in the current campaign, as well as acquaintance with the locality in which these troops would have to operate, proved well enough not only the enormous difficulties, but even the almost complete impossibility of feeding and supplying such a significant force on the right bank of the Danube, when suppling with all necessities that number of troops that was already assigned to action would demand the use of enormous efforts and the recourse to completely extraordinary means.72

Nicholas may simply have meant to end the argument about how many troops to send by giving solid military administrative reasons that the generals who had watched the campaign of 1828 would have found hard to refute, even though concerns about finance and Russia’s international position were the driving force behind his feelings. Nicholas may seriously have meant to say, however, that the constraint on the size of the army operating in the Balkans was the logistics administration.There is ample evidence in his correspondence with Dibich that both he and his Chief of Staff chafed under the failures of the logistics administrations and were aware of the horrible damage those failures had done to the fighting readiness of the army.73 It is not at all surprising, therefore, that even victory in this war did not shake Nicholas in his belief that the military administration had to be reformed, or that he and his advisors were slow to perceive that Russia’s basic military problem was more fundamental than the administrative problems he wished to attack. The committee turned next to the question of how best to achieve Russia’s war aims with the limited means available, and it decided to attack Silistria and Shumla at once, then to push south along the coast toward Constantinople as far as was necessary to bring the Porte to terms.74 Nicholas adopted this decision, and Dibich produced a new plan

128

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

in January 1829 much along these lines, which noted explicitly that taking Shumla “was not essential for the conclusion of the campaign.”75 Having adopted the first of Vasil’chikov’s suggestions, calling a council to plan for the next campaign, Nicholas moved rapidly to adopt the rest. He fired (retired) Wittgenstein, gave Kiselev the transfer to a line command he had long sought, and replaced them with Dibich himself as the commander of Second Army and Tol’ as Second Army Chief of Staff.76 Chernyshev was promoted from Deputy Chief of the Main Staff to Chief of the Main Staff, retaining also his position as War Minister.This obvious and apparently inconsequential move was in fact a critical step in the unification of the military administration that was the cornerstone of the reforms of the 1830s.77 The tsar himself determined to stay away from the theater of war.The result was the unity and clarity of command for which all of the commanders had hungered during 1828, and it is possible that the power and independence that Dibich received—infinitely more than Wittgenstein had ever had—made possible Dibich’s capitalization on the most significant error the Turks made in the war. In May 1829 the grand vizier, having collected a sizable force at Shumla while Dibich attacked Silistria with the main Russian forces, marched some 40,000 of his Turkish infantry against elements of VII Corps encamped at Pravadi. Dibich’s decisive action and the grand vizier’s confusion led to a pitched battle near the town of Kulevcha, in which the vizier’s army was destroyed.The effect of this defeat on the morale of the remaining Turkish forces was so devastating that when Dibich, having forced the Balkans with practically no opposition, found himself with some 10,000 Russians in front of Adrianople—an enormous city of 80,000 inhabitants, well garrisoned and well supplied—he was able to take the second capital of European Turkey without firing a shot.When news of the fall of Adrianople reached the Porte, he at once sent negotiators to sue for peace. When the talks dragged on, Dibich put his force of 10,000 men in order and began to march down the road toward Constantinople—as though he proposed to take that enormous, well fortified, well garrisoned city with a force the size of a division! The sultan, however, was beyond such calculations. He capitulated at once.

The Results of the War of 1828–1829 Nicholas escaped cheaply from the mistakes he and his commanders had made in 1828–1829.The grand vizier’s error exposed the Turkish army to

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

129

a catastrophic defeat that undermined the remaining garrisons’ will to fight. If instead the Turks had continued to fight the war of fortresses, it is not at all clear that the Russians could have defeated them in 1829 with the forces at hand. There was never any question that Russia could and would defeat Turkey in single combat—eventually.Victory alone, however, did not assure Russia success in the larger aims of the war.The success or failure of those aims depended on how the war was fought—did it take one or two campaigns or many? Did the Russians sustain high losses? Did the Russian army suffer humiliating setbacks? Did Russian setbacks offer good opportunities for intervention by Austria, England, or other countries? In the event, the speed of the Turkish collapse in 1829 offset the embarrassments the Russians had suffered in 1828, and the completeness of Nicholas’s victory, combined with the turmoils beginning to embroil the West in 1829, overcame the initial failures of Russian arms. But Nicholas was not likely to forget those failures. He had been present at the botched crossing of the Danube and had watched the attack on Shumla bog down. He had seen the conquest of Brailov—and the profligate expenditure of the lives of his soldiers in the failed storm of that fortress. These failures so impressed themselves on his mind that when Dibich referred in a note in 1829 to a renewed attack on Shumla, Nicholas responded:“I cannot permit the repetition of last year’s stupidities.”78 Even in 1831, while Dibich was putting down the Polish rebellion, the failures of 1828 were very much in Nicholas’s mind: he wrote to Dibich that “a long stay in front of Praga would be . . . worse than that of Shumla.”79 He took firmly to heart the lesson that “in my presence everything goes badly; I do not want to interfere personally with affairs any more, and therefore I will not go to the army,”80 and he never took the field with his armies again.As a result of his determination to let Dibich alone in 1829, therefore, Nicholas was not present at the great victories of the war, Kulevcha and Adrianople. All Nicholas experienced of that war was failure and stupidity. The young tsar had on his desk the memoranda of four of the most senior generals in his army calling for reforms of various sorts in the military administration.81 Vasil’chikov had told him that the war against Turkey was a “war of administration,” and Nicholas himself argued to the Committee of November 19 that it was the constraints imposed by the logistics administration that limited the size of the army he could send against the Turks. With these thoughts and feelings in his mind, it is no wonder that he was receptive to suggestions for administrative reform. Nor is it surprising that he and those around him did not contemplate fundamental reform. The problems in logistics, intelligence and planning,

130

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

and command and control were administrative problems—they reflected failures in the functioning of the system rather than inherent flaws of the system. They could be and were addressed by administrative reform. In contrast, the problems in military manpower, grand strategy, and finance, when looked at coldly, revealed fundamental problems in Russia’s military and political systems that required fundamental reforms to resolve. But was this fact apparent in 1829? Nicholas and his advisers did not find it so. They largely ignored the problems resulting from the fact that Russia’s grand strategy required a military establishment far larger than they possessed and that they could in no way afford such an establishment. The outcome of the Russo-Turkish War probably seemed to support this view, for, although there were moments when it appeared that Russia’s army might be called upon to fight on other fronts while continuing the Turkish war (e.g., the threats from Austria in 1828 and Persia in 1829), such fears did not materialize—the system was not tested, and so it did not fail.The difficulty Nicholas had in procuring the necessary number of troops to fight in the Balkans should also have been a warning to him, but he probably dismissed it when he became convinced that logistical, that is, administrative constraints prevented him from attacking the Turks in adequate force. Even if he had been inclined to think in terms of fundamental reforms aimed either at reducing Russia’s commitments by redefining its grand strategy or at increasing its military establishment by changing to a cadre and reserve system, Nicholas would have been foolish had he not attempted first to solve these problems more easily, through administrative means. Similarly, although the financial difficulties that Russia faced in the 1820s were, in fact, warnings of a most serious problem—one which would bring about the catastrophe of the defeat in the Crimea—it was not at all obvious in 1829 that radical solutions were necessary.The military administration was notoriously corrupt and inefficient. Alexander had pecked at these problems for the last ten years of his reign but had not attempted any serious reforms of the administrative system. No one could say before an attempt was made that a rationalizing of the military administration and the implementation of proper financial controls would not save what needed to be saved.The failures in the war against Turkey convinced Nicholas to make the attempt. In 1829 the stage was thus set for an attempt at a conservative reform— a reform that aimed to perfect the existing system, rather than to replace it. The reforms that he undertook could not be liberal reforms, for Nicholas hated liberalism, but they could be, and were, significant reforms

The War of Administration, 1828–1829

131

nonetheless. If they accomplished nothing else, they facilitated the fundamental reforms that followed in the 1860s. For when financial collapse drove Alexander II to capitulate to the Crimean Coalition and to consider what changes he needed to make to his state and his army, no one could suggest limited administrative reforms on the grounds that they had never been tried.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter VI

Preliminary Reform, 1831–18321

The proposals for change made by Dibich,Wittgenstein, and Vasil’chikov in 1828 formed the bases for parts of the reforms of 1832–1836, but the final reform bore little resemblance to their recommendations. The suggestions made in 1828 were inadequate as blueprints for reform—they were more in the nature of complaints, and by the time it was possible to think about serious reform, all three men had vanished from the militarypolitical scene. Dibich died fighting the Polish insurgents in May 1831, Vasil’chikov returned to his retirement, and Wittgenstein, who would forever be tied in Nicholas’s mind to the failures of 1828, also retired.The task of reforming devolved upon Dibich’s successor, Aleksandr Ivanovich Chernyshev, who was the first and last man to hold simultaneously the posts of War Minister and Chief of the Main Staff. Chernyshev was not unsuited to the role of conservative reformer.As a young adjutant of 23, Chernyshev had been Alexander’s envoy to Napoleon from 1808 to 1812. It seems that Napoleon took a liking to this Russian spy and assisted his spying by lecturing him on the principles of the art of war, as seen by the greatest general of his time. Chernyshev took advantage of every opportunity to study the organization and functioning of the Grande Armée, and he reported to St. Petersburg not only tactical intelligences, but the principles of French organization and administration gleaned from personal observation and from the lectures of Napoleon.The reform of the military administration in 1812 owed a great deal to these reports. Chernyshev participated in the wars of 1812–1815 first as an adjutant of Alexander’s suite (he dutifully submitted his own plan for defeating Napoleon, just as every other Russian officer above the rank of major did),

134

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

then as the commander of Cossack partisan detachments. His attachment to Russia’s Cossacks continued in 1819, when Alexander appointed him a member of the committee to reorganize the Don Cossack host. He excelled in this, his first experience in military reform, and continued to work on regularizing and codifying the organization of the Cossack hosts even after his appointment as War Minister in 1827. Chernyshev was a completely loyal, ambitious sycophant, hated by most of his contemporaries. In 1829 the head of the Third Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancery, Count A. Kh. Benkendorff, reported that “Count Chernyshev enjoys a poor reputation: he is the bête noire of the public, of all classes without exception. People in general fear and hate him; they even accuse him of deceiving the sovereign with false information in his reports, attempting to ascribe to himself others’ services. . . .”2 But Nicholas cared less for Chernyshev’s reputation than for his loyalty and his willingness to undertake hateful tasks. Nicholas had carefully tested both that loyalty and that willingness at the very start of his reign, for he sent Chernyshev, who had been close to Prince Arakcheev during Alexander’s reign (which was hardly a mark of good character), to confront Arakcheev with Nicholas’s wrath, and through much of 1826 Chernyshev had had the unsavory duty of chairing the committee investigating the Decembrist revolt. Chernyshev’s background, then, had prepared him well in a number of ways for the task that lay before him. His experiences in France during the Tilsit period had exposed him in detail to a different way of organizing a state and an army, and he had learned the art of war from one of its greatest masters. At the same time, his very sycophancy and loyalty were assets in the task of conservative reform, for he would require the complete trust of the tsar if he was to carry out the necessary centralization of the military administration. His experience on the Don Cossack Commission was, moreover, direct experience in the process of conducting conservative reform. Most important of all, however, was the fact that Chernyshev came to the military bureaucracy in 1827 as an outsider. He had spent the last years of Alexander’s reign engaged on a number of diplomatic missions, and he had never held a position in the War Ministry or the Main Staff. A. I. Tatishchev, on the contrary, whom Chernyshev replaced at the Ministry in 1827, had been the bureaucracy’s man. Appointed War-Commissary-General in 1808, he had served in that capacity for 15 years before becoming War Minister in 1823. When Nicholas sought to reduce the size of the ministerial bureaucracy in 1826–1827, therefore, it should have come as no

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

135

surprise that Tatishchev saw the matter from the point of view of the department heads and prevented change. It is asserted by Tatishchev’s allies that Chernyshev took his position as the result of a successful intrigue. It is at least as likely, however, that Tatishchev fell but one month after refusing to implement Nicholas’s desires because Nicholas realized that he was too tied to the old ways and was not capable of “new thinking.” Chernyshev had no ties to the organization and procedures of the military administration and saw the situation exclusively from the point of view of what would please his master. Immediately upon taking office, therefore, he set about making changes, including attempts at strengthening the general staff administration and reigning in corruption and inefficiency in the Commissariat Department.3 The outbreak of war with Turkey brushed aside these beginnings of change, but they show that Chernyshev clearly understood that his mandate from Nicholas was to improve and perfect, not merely to preserve. But Chernyshev was no Miliutin. He had no desire to conduct a fundamental revolution in the Russian state or army, and he was temperamentally incapable of continually facing Nicholas with unpleasant realities, even if he himself had seen them. He was an exceptionally competent bureaucrat with a keen eye for the flow of power and a burning desire to hold as much of that flow as possible in his own hands. In the 1830s this desire led him to re-centralize the fragmented administration that Alexander had created; in the 1840s it would lead to stagnation, ossification, and the stalling of reforms that were necessary to move the country forward. In the wake of the wars of 1826–1831, however, Chernyshev’s ambition drove him to implement many of the changes envisioned by Dibich, Wittgenstein,Vasil’chikov, and Nicholas himself as a result of their experiences in the wars. Nicholas, intentionally or not, had placed Chernyshev in a unique position, combining both the War Ministry and the Main Staff under his control, and Chernyshev seized the opportunity to unify the administration and initiate a conservative, bureaucratic reform that would form the foundation of the modern Russian army.

Chernyshev’s Memorandum of 1831 The changes in the military organization that followed in 1832 did not differ in kind from the reforms of Alexander I’s reign. For the most part they consisted simply of changes in the positions of boxes on organization charts for the central military administration, and if the war of 1828–1829

136

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

had shown those changes to be necessary, it had also shown that they would certainly be insufficient.4 The reform of 1832 is remarkable, however, because the law that implemented it obliged the military administration to launch new, more significant reforms in its wake. In June 1831 Chernyshev presented Nicholas with “A Brief Review of the Order of the Military Administration and Means for its Reorganization.”5 The report began by outlining the development of the central military administration from the War College established by Peter, including the partial establishment of ministries in 1802; the reestablishment of the War Ministry and the abolition of the War College in 1812; the creation of the Main Staff in 1815–1816; and a description of the situation in 1831, when the military establishment consisted of 21 administrations, 7 subordinate to the War Minister and 14 to the Chief of the Main Staff. Chernyshev then described what he saw as the deficiencies of the current system.This section evidently caught Nicholas’s attention, for he annotated it freely and with frequent reference to his own brief experience as Inspector-General of Engineers in Alexander’s reign.

Such a fragmentation of the parts of one and the same administration, especially the separation of affairs of the combat type from economic affairs, demanding for all important military undertakings combined collaboration, leads to many deficiencies, increased correspondence and greatly hinders the activities of the supreme military command. This deficiency is equally manifested when the staff and the ministry are administered by different people or by one person. In the first instance, the Chief of the Main Staff, conducting all dispositions in the Imperial Name, does not himself bear any responsibility, and because of the absence in the main staff of detailed information about the economic area can-

Nicholas’s marginal notes: “This separation was inconvenient in the arty. and eng. administrations, as it is inconvenient also now, but in other areas this deficiency exists because the minister is outside the main staff.” “This will be.” “It will be reduced.” “It will be restored.”

“Also even now.” “And it will not be necessary, when the chief is the same for both.”

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

not always make use of all the resources that this area possesses, and sometimes is placed even in the necessity of ordering such measures that are entirely unconducive to implementation on the part of the ministry; but the War Minister, bearing the full responsibility for the implementation [of those orders], does not participate in general consultations, has no information either about the direct intentions of the Sovereign or about the political and military relations on which these are based, and, consequently, does not have the ability to make any sort of preparatory dispositions, so important for military affairs; in the last instance, the person administering both areas is greatly burdened, finding it frequently necessary to work on one and the same subject in two places: the staff and the ministry.6

137

“This will be eliminated.”

“G[eneral]-Fel’dts[ejkhmejster] and Inspector-G[eneral] of hospitals.”

The only real criticism of the military administration presented in this report was the lack of centralization, which caused confusion and inefficiency.This problem was important, but it was not the most fundamental, and its resolution, although essential for the functioning of the army, was not alone sufficient for that purpose. But individuals make reforms, and the reforms they make reflect the problems as they see them. Dibich thought that the main problem in 1828–1829 was the excessive influence of the army staffs on the conduct of operations, because they hindered his freedom of action; Wittgenstein saw the problem as the excessive interference of Dibich and the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty in operations, which hindered his freedom of action. Chernyshev also saw the matter from his own perspective. In 1828, while nominally Acting Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty, Chernyshev in fact took orders from Dibich, who accompanied the army

138

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

to the theater of war.The situation was especially bad in the area of military finances. On the one hand, Dibich ordered what operations he felt necessary, without regard to cost. Finance Minister Kankrin, on the other hand, cared nothing about operations in war, but only about reducing expenditures. Chernyshev found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to answer to both, while being consulted by neither. It is no wonder, then, that Chernyshev felt that a system in which “the War Minister, bearing all the responsibility for the execution [of plans], does not participate in general consultations [in which they are developed]” needed urgent fixing. When Chernyshev became Chief of the Main Staff in reality after Dibich took command of Second Army in 1829, the situation must have seemed all the more foolish to him.The Main Staff and the War Ministry were entirely separate organisms, each having its own chancery and its own procedures, each governed by various different statutes, and each even having its own building! When Chernyshev referred to having to work on the same subject in two places, it is all too likely that he meant that he had literally to work in two offices, in two different buildings, with two sets of secretarial staff supporting him. The unique vantage point thus afforded him must have served to focus his attention on the absurdity of a system whereby a single matter must be processed separately by two enormous bureaucracies, in order to be submitted, in two different forms, no doubt, to a single man who heads both. Chernyshev’s view that the unification of the War Ministry and the Main Staff was the most urgent task of reform in 1831, then, arose most naturally from the situation as he had experienced it. It may well be that less noble motives were at work in Chernyshev’s heart. He submitted his proposal between the death of Dibich in May 1831 and the conclusion of the campaign in Poland with the fall of Warsaw in August. Upon Dibich’s death, Prince Paskevich, Nicholas’s favorite field commander, took command of Russia’s army in Poland. Paskevich stood higher both in rank (he became a field marshal) and in status (he was a line commander; Chernyshev had not commanded troops for almost two decades), as well as in the favor of Nicholas. Would Paskevich seek to become Chief of the Main Staff when the war concluded? Would not Nicholas so reward his faithful commander for his service? Dibich had made of the position of Chief of the Main Staff more of a command position than an administrative one; Paskevich was a commander, whereas Chernyshev was an administrator. Was it not likely, then, that Paskevich would ease Chernyshev’s burden by taking on the responsibilities of Chief

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

139

of the Main Staff? Or, if not Paskevich, then perhaps P.A.Tolstoi, whose recommendations for reform had almost seen realization in 1827? What little is known of Chernyshev strongly supports the conclusion that thoughts such as these were not alien to him. Whatever his motivation might have been, it was certainly convenient for his continued power that by the time Paskevich had returned from the war in Poland, Nicholas had agreed to disband the Main Staff altogether and concentrate the control of the military administration in the War Minister’s, that is, Chernyshev’s, hands. Chernyshev’s proposal to unify the military administration was not new: Nicholas’s instruction to Dibich to draw up a law uniting the Main Staff and the War Ministry had produced the draft law of 1827, of which Chernyshev probably knew. Chernyshev’s project differed significantly from Dibich’s draft law, however. Chernyshev proposed seven principles to serve as the basis of the unification: 1. Combine all posts currently comprising the Main Staff and the War Ministry into a single unit, having attached all administrations without exception to the Main Staff [which may retain] the name of War Ministry.7 2. Establish two chanceries, a general and a particular, under the Chief of the Main Staff or the War Minister.All matters of military administration in its highest relation should be concentrated in the general chancery.To this end, another section for affairs of the Inspectorate and Quartermaster [administrations] and in general, affairs currently conducted in the chancery of the Chief of the Main Staff must be added to the current composition of the Chancery of the War Minister; to the particular chancery belong: a) special affairs not belonging to any department of the military administration and entrusted by His Majesty himself to the person of the Chief of the Main Staff or Minister. [Nicholas’s note: (N): “Necessary.”] b) affairs under secrecy; c) affairs concerning the corps of pages and the newly established Military Academy; [N: “In the general chancery.”] d) affairs about the designation and dismissal of senior officials of the military departments; [N: “Ins[pectorate] dep[artment]”] e) affairs about the reward of officials of the military administration; [N: “Ins[pectorate] dep[artment]”] f) affairs about denunciations and complaints against the actions of the departments; [N: “Necessary”]

140

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

g) all those affairs that the Chief of the Main Staff or the Minister recognizes as necessary to have under the closest supervision and that demand his special personal attention. [N: “Not necessary, for then the departments are not necessary.”] From this chancery also the necessary officials may be detached to accompany His Majesty the Emperor during Imperial journeys. These officials, already having information about the condition of the affairs of the military administration, might be especially useful on a journey; and upon their return, they would enter the composition of the chancery together with their affairs, in which way the necessary connection between affairs conducted here and during journeys would be strengthened. [N: “There would not be general communication (svedeniia) with them.”] 3. Implement the reform itself, by previous example, in an edict to the Ruling Senate. 4. In this edict the new relations of all posts and officials of the military administration must be defined with all clarity and accuracy.8 In order to define those relationships, Chernyshev continued, a number of questions had to be addressed first. Should the War Minister, or the Chief of the Main Staff, have a Deputy, as some of the other ministers had? The original General Establishment of Ministries of 1812 (PSZ I, no. 24,686) had made provision for Deputies to the Ministers, but by the end of Alexander’s reign this post was frequently vacant. In 1827 the question of Deputy Ministers had arisen again, although not everyone was sure that there was any point to it.9 In a marginal comment on his own report, Chernyshev proposed that if Nicholas decided to assign a deputy to the War Minister or Chief of the Main Staff, then perhaps Adjutant-General Adlerberg would be a suitable candidate— a politic suggestion, as Adlerberg was a favorite of Nicholas.10 What should be the relationship between the Chief of the Main Staff or the War Minister and the Inspector-General of Artillery and the Inspector-General of Engineers? This was a fundamental question, and wrangles over the degree of subordination of the Inspector-General of Artillery—who was also the Inspector-General of Engineers, who was also Nicholas’s younger brother, Grand Prince Michael—to the War Minister marked the reform of the Artillery and Engineering Departments. What should be the relationship of the military colonies’ administration and the gendarmes to the supreme military administration? Both the military colonies’ administrations and the gendarmerie were constituted as

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

141

separate and independent entities before the reform of 1832, reporting to no one but the tsar.This arrangement had suited Prince Arakcheev, whose brainchild the military colonies were, for it gave him much greater control over them.With his passing from the scene in 1825, however, this arrangement came to make much less sense. Should the Chief of the Main Staff (or the War Minister) remain also the Chief of the General Staff, as hitherto, or should the Quartermaster General receive control of this administration? Should the Duty General retain his influence on the Judicial Department, or should the latter be reconstituted as a separate department of the War Ministry?11 The report concluded with three important points that formed the basis for the continuation of the reform after the initial changes made in 1832: 5. In the same edict [in which the reform will be implemented] the Chief of the Main Staff or the War Minister must be instructed to demand from every post of the military administration projects for detailed rules for their activities and to compile these into a general charge to the War Ministry. 6. Together with the charge, a proposal must be developed for the reform of the Council of the War Minister, and for its establishment on bases corresponding better with [its purpose] and with the needs of the service. 7. Since due to the extreme limitation of the size of all posts of the military administration its chiefs are deprived of the possibility of having in all posts experienced and reliable officials, therefore together with the charge a project of new rosters must also be compiled; the chanceries, in addition, which must also now be reformed, must be given new rosters during the reform itself, corresponding with the duties that will be newly laid upon them.12 This proposal formed the blueprint for a large-scale conservative reform. Its ostensible aim was extremely limited: to unify the War Ministry with the Main Staff. Its actual objectives, however, were more complex. It is hard to know exactly why Chernyshev kept open the possibility of calling the unified establishment either the Main Staff or the War Ministry. It may have been the courtier’s instinct to refuse to make an important decision and thereby involve the tsar more intimately in the process of reform, or Chernyshev may have desired to underline the fact that it made no difference what title the new organization might have.The rest of his propos-

142

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

als make the second point clear: Ministers had Deputy Ministers, and the argument in point four that the Chief of the Main Staff or the War Minister should have a deputy by analogy with other ministries made it clear that the supreme unified military administration would be a ministry in fact even if it was not in name. The mention in point six of the Council of the War Minister, a body that existed in all ministries, but that had never had any equivalent in the Main Staff, further strengthened this position. It is possible to attribute too much clever deviousness to Chernyshev (although his contemporaries would not have thought so), but it is tempting to point out that Nicholas, logical as he was, could not fail to see that Chernyshev’s reform inevitably created a ministry whether it was called a Main Staff or not. In such a case it was almost as inevitable that Nicholas’s logical mind would rebel at the notion of not calling it a ministry. If the unified organ was to be the War Ministry, then Chernyshev, who was already War Minister, would surely remain in control of it; if, however, a “Main Staff ” had been created, then Chernyshev might have feared that some other would become its Chief, while he remained, in effect,“deputy for War-Ministry affairs.”The point is worthy of note because the reforms that this proposal sparked did not create a General Staff-style administration on the Prussian or any other model. The decision to make the centralized military administration a “ministry” rather than a staff was a critical one, and it is interesting that the sponsor of the reform appears to have been ambivalent about it. Far more important than the question of the name of the new institution, however, was the manner that Chernyshev prescribed for carrying out the reform. In point five he made it clear that the promulgation of the edict would not complete the reform, for he insisted that the edict itself contain the requirement for more reform. The laconic wording of this point concealed its import: the “Charge to the Minister” was never made in the reform of 1812. No statute setting out the duties, responsibilities, and powers of the officials of the War Ministry, or the process by which affairs in that Ministry were to be conducted, was ever signed into law.The Ministry had been functioning for 20 years on the basis of the “Charge” that had been drafted in 1812, but that had not been promulgated because it had been found to have been defective! The mildness of the wording of point five hid the fact that it proposed that Nicholas write into law a demand for a thoroughgoing examination and reform of the functioning of the military administration. Another essential aspect of the reform was that the agent of change was not the tsar and his senior advisors, as in the reforms of 1802 and

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

143

1815–1816, nor even the War Minister and his advisors, as in those of 1812, but the bureaucracy itself. Point five required that “all posts of the military administration,” i.e., the departments of the ministry, submit projects for the reform of their areas. Point seven, in proposing that the chancery receive a new roster during the reform, made clear that chancery officials would be actively involved in the projects of all the departments, probably in editing and collating them. The outline of the proposed reform, then, comprised several distinct parts: a) the unification of the ministry and the Main Staff, including reforms to the newly created chanceries and to the Council of the War Minister to enable those bodies to carry out further reform; b) the development of projects for the reform of each department of the new ministry within the departments themselves; c) the compilation, consideration, and editing of those separate departments’ proposals in the chancery of the ministry; and d) the compilation and promulgation of a new Charge to the Ministry, as well as new rosters for the separate administrations of the ministry.This was the order of events that, with minor variations, produced the conservative reforms of 1832–1836. It is easy to say that allowing the bureaucrats to reform the bureaucracy is allowing the fox to guard the henhouse. Surely such a “reform” proposal is a proposal for no reform at all. The experiences of 1826–1827 seemed to bear out this point: Nicholas called for downsizing and the bureaucrats responded with requests for new hires. Even under a strong leader backed by a determined tsar, the bureaucrats might simply refuse to “propose” changes that did not suit them and vigorously object to attempts to cut the sizes of their administrations. Such resistance and opposition, in fact, characterized the entire process of reform between 1832 and 1836 and arose in almost every department, as we shall see. Since this difficulty was obvious from the outset, and since Chernyshev seems to have been determined to consider real changes (the matters outlined in point four would have given Chernyshev considerable, if not complete, control over the Artillery, Engineering, and Military Colonies Administrations, which had powerful chiefs ready and eager to defend their prerogatives), why propose a method that seemed sure to multiply obstacles to change? Part of the answer probably lay in past experience of reform and part in the nature of a bureaucracy in an autocratic state. Chernyshev made it clear in the historical section of the report that the reforms of 1802, 1812, and 1815–1816 had been failures. They had been, at best, partial reforms that had defined only structures and not functions and had succeeded in

144

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

producing the miserable military administrative performance of 1828. None of those reforms had involved the bureaucracy to any great degree. In 1802 Alexander and his “unofficial committee” had drafted the ministerial reform with little or no contact with the existing bureaucrats, whom they considered to be their enemies. Count P. A. Stroganov, a “member” of the “unofficial committee,” writing an aide-mémoire to Alexander I of a conversation they had in May 1801, described the organizing principle of the reform as follows:“The reform of the government must be the work of the Emperor, and no one who does not have in this regard his special confidence must know that any such thing [as this reform] is being meditated. . . .” 13 It goes without saying that the members of the “unofficial committee” held Alexander’s confidence and that the senior bureaucrats in the colleges did not. The reforms of 1812 were largely the products of Speranskii’s and Barclay de Tolly’s imaginations. Barclay, it is true, had a sizable committee of advisors and clerks who diligently compiled the military statutes of the past for his consideration, as we have seen, but the actual bureaucrats working in the administration contributed almost nothing to the final form of the law.The reforms of 1815–1816, however, took so much of the process of administration for granted that they can scarcely be considered to have been complete laws—they were merely changes in the titles and positions of boxes on organizational charts of the military administration. In all cases the reformers at the top of the charts had little contact with the people actually doing the work at the bottom. The most obvious advantage of such contact is that the directors of departments, sections, and bureaus know exactly what it is that they actually do, whereas ministers themselves are likely to be vague about such details. If the ministers alone draft the laws, then the laws are also likely to be vague about the details of mid- and low-level administration. If the minister drafts detailed and specific laws on such matters without spending a great deal of time studying them, it is likely that those laws will correspond only distantly to the real needs of the administration. If the minister has enough time on his hands to learn about all of the minor details of his administration, then there must be a very real need for reform indeed. Chernyshev was wise enough to realize that he could not carry through a reform of any magnitude in the military administration alone, and he saw that the people who did the work must also, under his close supervision, make the reform. It was safe for Chernyshev to make this decision because of the peculiar nature of bureaucracy in an autocratic state. Law in Imperial Russia

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

145

was what the tsar signed and only what he signed; there was no legislature to overturn his “veto,” no Supreme Court to strike down his decision as “unconstitutional”—and no constitution to limit his power to make law in any way. As a result, there was no way for obstinate bureaucrats seeking to put through a bad reform or to weaken a good one to circumvent the tsar’s will.As long as Chernyshev remained firm in his determination to wrest reform from the bureaucracy, and as long as Nicholas did not waver in his support of his “minister,” there was little danger that the reform could be subverted into something Nicholas and Chernyshev did not desire. It is worth remembering here that Russian “ministers” were not ministers in the Western sense; that is, they were not responsible ministers.They answered only to the tsar and required the support of no other person or body.They did not report to the Senate or the State Council and could be neither retained nor removed by any action of those bodies. They were much more like American “secretaries” (e.g., the secretary of state)— except, of course, that they did not have to endure confirmation hearings. As a result, when a Russian minister held the confidence of the tsar, he was incomparably stronger than any Western statesmen, but when that confidence faltered he became incomparably more vulnerable.When executing decisions about which the tsar cared passionately, he could speak with the voice of the autocrat. The nature of a bureaucracy in an autocratic state reduced the dangers of giving the bureaucracy control of the reform. The fact that the state was an autocracy, however, did not make it any less important that the reform be conducted by the bureaucracy itself. Nicholas could order any individual in the state to do whatever he wished; he could order any body to satisfy any desire he might have. But how does one order a bureaucracy to function efficiently? How can one enforce such an order? Stalin, perhaps, would have found little difficulty, but Nicholas was no Stalin, and Chernyshev, whatever his contemporaries might have said of him, was no Ezhov or Beria. One could, in theory, simply fire all obstructionist bureaucrats. But the confusion introduced into a bureaucracy by such a rapid turnover of personnel would certainly enervate whatever benefits it introduced, and besides, where would Nicholas and Chernyshev have found better bureaucrats? Throughout the nineteenth century tsars and their more enlightened ministers constantly complained that Russia did not produce enough educated, motivated, talented men to fill all the positions in its vast bureaucracy. Endless educational reforms and establishments of universities,

146

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

cantonists’ schools, junkers’ schools, and other such institutions did little to alleviate the problem.14 If the bureaucrats could not circumvent the tsar, neither could the tsar readily circumvent the bureaucrats. Chernyshev’s decision to work through the bureaucracy in order to reform the bureaucracy was wise. Of all the significant military reforms of the first 60 years of the nineteenth century, only Chernyshev’s accomplished their goals both at the highest levels of the bureaucracy and at the lowest.

Nicholas’s Response: Onward with Reform! Nicholas’s marginal comments on Chernyshev’s report make it clear that he decided to accept it, probably while reading it, which is not surprising, considering that he had ordered Dibich to consider precisely the same project in 1827.15 He was not satisfied, however, with simply letting Chernyshev proceed but instead responded to Chernyshev’s proposal with a 19-point memorandum outlining the major characteristics of the reform he wanted.16 Although the main outline of the reform was similar to that advanced in 1827, there were notable differences that showed Nicholas had taken the lessons of 1828 to heart. The most important element of Nicholas’s project was the complete centralization of the military administration, but under the War Minister, rather than under the Chief of the Main Staff, as he had imagined it in 1827.The first point of Nicholas’s memorandum was:“The entire military area is administered by the War Minister. He is the reporter to the Sovereign about all aspects of the military administration.”This proposition was almost identical with section 3 of On the Administration of the War Department of 1815, which defined the Chief of the Main Staff as “that official through whom all matters relating to the military ground forces reach me and through whom my resolutions or new statutes are promulgated.”17 The law of 1815, however, had at once contradicted this proposition. In section 16 it mandated that the Inspectors of Artillery and Engineers “report about economic matters to the War Minister, and about others to [the Tsar],” but there was no mention of the Chief of the Main Staff serving as intermediary between the Inspectors-General and the tsar. Nicholas explicitly sought to eliminate this decentralization in 1831 by stating that “the War Minister directly administers . . . the Artillery and Engineering areas, as the means of communication of reports to the Sovereign of the InspectorGeneral of Artillery and Inspector-General of Engineers.”18 Above all, for the first time in 30 years the central military administration was to be united:

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

147

the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty was to be disbanded as an institution in peacetime.19 The rest of Nicholas’s memorandum related to four areas of concern: the creation of the Military Council, the organization of the Chancery of the War Ministry, the Military Colonies, and military justice.The Council of the War Minister had been established in 1811 in the General Establishment of Ministries and consisted of the directors of all of the departments of the ministry under the chairmanship of the War Minister.20 Its responsibility was to “review matters demanding general discussion because of their importance.”21 “Matters demanding general discussion because of their importance” were defined somewhat more clearly in section 115 and involved questions of legislation (problems in existing laws, need for new laws), finance (both ordinary and extraordinary expenditures had to be approved by the Council of the Minister), financial control (annual financial statements and other financial reports were reviewed by the Council of the Minister), contracts, personnel (complaints, promotions, demotions, appointments, dismissals, etc.)—in short, every matter of importance in the administration went to the Council of the Minister. Because it was composed of the directors of the departments of the War Ministry under the chairmanship of their boss, the Council of the War Minister carried little weight. Nicholas sought to change that. He ordered: 2. A Military Council [voennyi sovet] shall be established in the War Ministry. 3. To this council shall be entrusted the main administration of the entire economic area of the military administration, that is, the departments: a) artillery; b) engineering; c) commissariat; d) provisions; e) medical; f) the economic part of the military colonies. . . . 4. Generals shall be named members of this council by the Personal selection of the Sovereign. 5. The chairman of this council is the War Minister himself, even if he is lower in rank than [other members]. He presents questions for the discussion of the council but has an equal voice with the other members.Affairs are to be decided either unanimously or by the majority of voices; in the event of disagreement the matter is to be presented to the Sovereign for resolution.22 Nicholas clearly intended these changes to strengthen the independence of the Military Council without thereby disrupting the unity of command of the military administration.The proposition seems, on the face of it, to be

148

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

either meaningless or unworkable. If the members of the Military Council docilely approved whatever the War Minister set before them, how would that improve the existing situation? If, however, the Military Council repeatedly opposed the War Minister, the tsar would not only constantly have to involve himself in minor details of military administration, but he would eventually be compelled to replace either the War Minister or the members of the Military Council.What could Nicholas have hoped to accomplish? On the one hand, it is likely that Nicholas still took Vasil’chikov’s advice of 1828 to heart: in peacetime and in preparations for war, the discussion of ideas among many talented and experienced men is essential. By replacing dull and inexperienced department directors with generals in whom he himself had confidence, Nicholas probably hoped to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the War Ministry. On the other hand, this proposal may have been an attempt to break the control of the War Minister over the flow of information to the tsar. Point thirteen specified that the Director of the Campaign Chancery of His Imperial Majesty—which was to accompany the tsar on his journeys, but form a part of the Chancery of the War Ministry when he was in St. Petersburg—would also be a member of the Military Council. Since the Director of the Campaign Chancery was, both in theory and in the practice of Nicholas’s reign, one of the tsar’s most trusted confidants, he could surely be relied upon to provide the tsar with a detailed picture of the workings of the War Ministry independent of that which the War Minister himself chose to present. By mastering the myriad minor details of the military administration with which Nicholas, energetic as he was, simply could not spare the time to become familiar, the Director of the Campaign Chancery, or any other member of the Military Council whom Nicholas might choose for his trustworthiness and loyalty as an independent reporter, could warn the tsar of upcoming problems, of suspicious activities, of hints of corruption that the War Minister might not see or, for whatever reason, might not wish to report. If the establishment of the Military Council was in part a measure to combat over-centralization, it was probably because the measures encouraging centralization were otherwise so extreme. Nicholas did not approve of Chernyshev’s idea of creating two chanceries but insisted instead upon the creation of one general Chancery of the War Ministry. This chancery was to consist of two sections, one to conduct economic affairs (that is, all matters under the purview of the Military Council), the other to conduct all other affairs.The Campaign Chancery was to consist of officials drawn from both sections.23

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

149

The excessive power of the Inspectorate Department was broken by the reestablishment of the Judicial Department as a separate entity under the Auditor-General.The Military Colonies Administration came to an end as an independent body altogether; most of it went to the Inspectorate Department, although its Auditor-General and his administration were transferred to the Judicial Department, and “whatever may be detached from its colonies administration” was transferred to the administration of the Quartermaster General.24 All in all, Nicholas’s outline of the reform did not differ substantially from Chernyshev’s original proposal. Neither document clearly outlined the goals of the reform, concentrating instead on the countless details, but the general aim was clear enough: to increase the effectiveness and to lower the cost of the military administration and the army by increasing the efficiency of organization and function within those institutions. Rather than expanding to address larger and more fundamental questions, Nicholas’s and Chernyshev’s reforms began to focus ever more narrowly on increasingly minor details of administration, organization, and paper flow. The enormous amount of testimony concerning Nicholas’s love of order and decent organization may also help to explain why he turned toward conservative, bureaucratic reform, which increases order, instead of more fundamental reform, which is more messy. Nicholas’s assertion that he had the worldview of a brigadier general was not quite right: he had the worldview of a bureaucrat.25 What is surprising, then, is not that this reform did not address the fundamental problem, but that the effort at conservative reform of the bureaucracy conducted by the bureaucracy did not simply flounder under the load of administrative details, petty jealousies, and bureaucratic obstinacy.The reason for the success of this effort lay in the single-minded determination with which Nicholas and Chernyshev were to pursue it, and in the skill with which they set it in motion by the law of 1832.

Setting the Stage:The Project of 1832 The Supremely Confirmed Project of the Organization of the War Ministry26 implemented the reforms outlined in Chernyshev’s and Nicholas’s memoranda in four major areas: a) the unification of the central military administration; b) the creation of the Military Council; c) the creation of a single central chancery for the military administration; and d) the reestablishment of the Campaign Chancery of His Imperial Majesty.27

150

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Despite the fact that the unification of the military administration was the only goal Chernyshev explicitly defined in his proposal for reform, the chapter of the Project implementing that measure was the sketchiest and least complete of all.The reform of 1832 only makes sense if it is understood as preliminary: the unification of the military administration allowed the bureaucracy to consider rational reform in a comprehensive fashion; the strengthening and centralization of the Chancery of the War Ministry provided an instrument for editing, collating, and improving the bureaucracy’s proposals; and the emancipation of the Military Council from the War Ministry bureaucracy created an organ for carefully scrutinizing the final reform proposals and seeing to it that they attained the overall objectives of the reform.

The Centralization of the Military Administration Chapter I of the Project outlined the measures necessary to centralize the military administration under the War Minister alone in 35 paragraphs—5 more than On the Administration of the War Department had taken to decentralize it in 1815. The Project was just as brief as On the Administration of the War Department and just as inadequate to the task of reforming an enormous institution, but whereas the measure of 1815 was intended to be a complete reform, the Project was merely a prelude. The Project abolished the position of Chief of the Main Staff in peacetime and the institution of the Main Staff altogether.28 It attached to the War Ministry not only all of the elements of the Main Staff, but also the Military Colonies administration.29 Above all, it specified that “all affairs of the ground forces administration requiring Imperial permission or confirmation are sent to His Imperial Majesty through [the War Minister], and [the War Minister] receives and promulgates Imperial commands of His Majesty to that [administration].”30 It is not clear that the Project attained by this measure Nicholas’s goal of subordinating the Inspector-General of Artillery and the InspectorGeneral of Engineers (his brother Michael held both positions) to the War Minister, for On the Administration of the War Department had assigned precisely the same powers to the Chief of the Main Staff but had then granted the Inspector-General of Artillery and the Inspector-General of Engineers the right of direct access to the tsar nevertheless.31 Although the Project did not explicitly reconfirm this right, neither did it explicitly revoke it.32

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

151

It is unlikely in any case that the matter could be neatly resolved as long as the tsar’s brother held positions nominally junior to the War Minister. In the task of unifying the Main Staff and Ministry administrations, the Project restricted itself simply to rearranging boxes on the organizational charts: “The officials comprising the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty are subordinated to the War Minister in the same manner in which they were hitherto subordinate to the Chief of the Main Staff.”33 The Medical, Inspectorate, Artillery, Engineering, Provisions, and Commissariat Departments all retained their existing structures and complements.34 The newly created Department of the General Staff was simply left to form itself on the basis of the rules governing the formation of departments in the General Establishment of Ministries.35 The unification of the staff and the ministry, then, took place at a very high level, and the effects of the Project on the departments of the Main Staff and the ministry were quite small.36 Further reform would be necessary to bring about change beyond alterations in departmental stationery.The change from the Council of the War Minister to the Military Council, however, was dramatic.

The Military Council Peter the Great established the principle of collegial administration very firmly in Russia, and the feeling that there ought to be a collegial body near the top of any administration continued to be strong even after the elimination of the colleges themselves. When Alexander I approved the General Establishment of Ministries in 1811, therefore, it contained provisions for a Council of the Minister in every ministry that consisted of several departments.37 The General Establishment of Ministries, however, was a reaction against the continued influence of the colleges in the central administration.The size, composition, and powers of the Council of the War Minister rendered it inefficient and incapable of affecting the course of the administration in any significant way.38 The General Establishment of Ministries established a Council of the Minister consisting of the minister himself, who served as chairman, and the heads of the departments of the ministry.39 It made special provision for the designation of additional members for the Council of the War Minister.40 On the basis of that provision, the Establishment of the War Ministry added to the 7 department chiefs serving on the Council 3 permanent and 2 annually rotating members whom the tsar would select from among the

152

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

army generals.41 A chancery staff of 7, independent from the Chancery of the War Minister, served the 13 members of the Council.42 The scope of the Council of the Minister was excessively broad, including virtually every aspect of the activity of the Ministry.43 The powers of the Council, on the other hand, were insignificant. The 13 members voted on all matters brought before them, and the majority decision was entered into the Journal of the Council of the War Minister, into which dissenting opinions were also entered.44 This Journal was then presented to the War Minister, who could accept or reject the findings of the Council at his discretion.45 Whatever he decided, he alone had the power to put any proposal into execution, for the law specifically denied the Council of the Minister any executive authority.46 The Council of the War Minister, then, was established as a large consultative body, dominated by the War Minister and the seven heads of departments who served under him. The other members, selected independently by the tsar, could well oppose any measures presented to them in the face of the united support of the ministry personnel, but their opposition meant little: even if they had succeeded in voting down a resolution, the minister was not obliged to take account of that action in any way. The Council of the War Minister as originally established seems to have been little more than a genuflection in the direction of the centuryold habit of collegial rule. The establishment of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty in 1815 should have eased the burden on the Council of the Minister and allowed it to concentrate on the economic aspects of military administration that so badly needed oversight in the years after the Napoleonic wars. The transfer of the Inspectorate and Judicial Departments to the Main Staff should have reduced the size of the Council by two and should have removed from the Council’s purview practically all matters of personnel and justice, leaving it to consider only military economy and legislation.47 In reality the reform of 1815 seems to have done neither, for the mid-1820s found the Council of the War Minister larger and more irrelevant and inefficient than ever. The Council of the War Minister did not, needless to say, serve as an effective check on corruption and inefficiency in the military economy, and in 1825 War Minister Tatishchev, perhaps in an effort to address this problem, brought a request for changes in the Council of the War Minister to the State Council. He requested that two Guards generals be added as temporary members of the Council and that its chancery be enlarged.48 Alexander personally rejected the request for Guards generals, showing the

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

153

importance he attached to the Council of the War Minister: “His Majesty the Emperor found it inappropriate to bring this proposal into execution, for the generals of the Guards Corps, being occupied with their own responsibilities, cannot be detached for extraneous matters.” Presumably Alexander felt that just about anything Guards generals might be doing would be more important than their service on the Council of the War Minister. The State Council added to this rejection that “the addition of Members to the Council of the War Minister will not accelerate the movement of affairs as long as order in the conduct of [those affairs] is not established and rules by which affairs must be reviewed and completed determined.” This contention was surely valid: a committee of 13 is already too large to resolve many complicated economic and financial affairs quickly; enlarging it is only likely to make the matter worse. Something of the same complaint would seem also to apply to the request to enlarge the Council’s chancery: if the rules governing the conduct of affairs are unclear and inadequate, then adding more chancery officials is unlikely to solve the problem. Although the State Council did make a half-hearted attempt to draft new rules for conducting affairs, the main effect of the resulting law was to reduce the Council of the War Minister to 12 members and to enlarge its chancery from 20 to 32 officials.49 Considering that the prospect of the Council of the War Minister’s having any significant effect on the operations of the military administration was virtually nonexistent, it seems that the 41,850 rubles which the law of 1825 provided for it were entirely wasted. The reform of the military administration in 1832 seriously attempted to return the collegial element to a share in power.The Project abolished the Council of the War Minister and its chancery and created the Military Council to replace the former.50 As before, the War Minister served as Chairman of the Military Council, but the Council was to consist only of members appointed by the tsar—the directors of Departments could be invited for consultation to meetings of the Military Council but could not vote in them.51 The director of the newly reformed Campaign Chancery of His Imperial Majesty, however, was a permanent voting member ex officio. The law did not determine the number of members of the Council, but it was a much smaller body than the Council of the War Minister had been—five or so members signed most of the Journals of the Military Council relating to the reforms of 1833–1836.52 In addition, the excessive layer of bureaucracy that the Chancery of the Council of the War Minister had introduced disappeared, because the clerical support work for the Military Council was conducted in the Chancery of the War Ministry.53

154

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

The new structure greatly increased the bureaucratic efficiency of the War Ministry as well.The clerical support for the Military Council and the Council of the War Minister consisted of drafting, editing, and copying materials to be presented to the Council; preparing the journals of the Council meetings for the signatures of the members, copying those journals for presentation to the War Minister (for the Council of the War Minister, but not for the Military Council); and preparing and copying both excerpts from those journals and accompanying instructions from the War Minister to the departments to put those resolutions into effect. Significant efficiency was achieved by eliminating the Chancery of the Council of the War Minister, for every time a document entered or left a chancery, it had by law to be entered into a register of incoming or outgoing papers, sometimes copied in whole or in part into that register in the form of a memorandum of its contents. This process was sometimes very slow, for the chancery officials who kept the journals were frequently overworked, and the journals became bottlenecks. The granting of executive authority to the Military Council54 also eliminated the several steps involved in copying the journal for presentation to the Minister, preparing and copying his resolution on the journal, and preparing and copying his instruction to the department, or cover memorandum if the matter was to be presented to the tsar, together with an excerpt from the journal. The increased efficiency of the Military Council that resulted from these measures would have meant little, however, had not its scope been narrowed while its powers were strengthened.The Military Council oversaw only matters of economy and legislation, and its jurisdiction within the enlarged War Ministry was restricted to the departments for which such matters were especially relevant: artillery, engineers, commissariat, and provisions.55 Those departments, however, were administered jointly by the War Minister and the Military Council, for the Military Council had received executive powers.56 The Project gave the Military Council almost all of the rights, powers, duties, and responsibilities relating to these four departments that the War Minister had previously had toward them.57 The Council had, therefore, the right to confirm contracts made by these departments and to present matters directly to the tsar, the State Council, and the Committee of Ministers. This right was the equivalent of the War Minister’s right to attend those bodies in order to present projects and proposals through them for imperial confirmation, whereupon they became law. Similarly, the members of the Military Council could be held individually and collectively responsible for nonfeasance or malfeasance in the matters and administra-

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

155

tions under their jurisdiction.58 The most significant safeguard for the power of the Military Council lay in the Project’s specific prohibition of the War Minister ignoring its resolutions or seeking to circumvent them by application to higher bodies.59 For affairs the final resolution of which lay with the Military Council, once the members (including the War Minister) signed the journal containing the resolution, the Chancery of the War Ministry automatically sent the departments concerned excerpts from the journal containing instructions for implementing the resolution.60 For affairs that required the confirmation of higher authorities, the Chancery of the Ministry automatically sent presentations to the necessary bodies in the name of the Military Council.61 In the event of a disagreement among the members of the Military Council, over a matter for which the Council had authority to make a final determination, a majority vote was sufficient for the Council to adopt a resolution, though that resolution, together with dissenting opinions, had to receive Imperial approval before it could be put into execution.62 The establishment of the Military Council was a fairly farsighted reaction to the disorder in the finances of the War Ministry. Measures to put the military economy in order had been underway for five years and would continue in the form of a temporary expansion of the Commissariat Department in 1832 to allow it to cope with an enormous backlog of accounts.63 The establishment of the Military Council, however, was intended not to put right the current problems of the administration, but to help keep the administration from going wrong again in the future— which is not to say that there were no immediate improvements. An undated and unattributed report written sometime after 1835 stated that “the results of these activities [of the Military Council] were the reduction in the estimate of 1833 as against that of 1832 by 24,000,000 assignat rubles, and against the requests of the Departments of 8,000,000 assignat rubles.”64 The old Council of the War Minister had necessarily been ineffective in this task because it consisted mainly of the very department heads whose incompetence or dishonesty had permitted the administration to deteriorate in the first place. The Military Council, however, invariably consisted of senior generals who were not in any way tied to the administration and so could serve as an effective and independent board of oversight. Because they had no duties other than sitting on the Military Council, they could devote their full attention to keeping the military economy functioning properly, and because of their seniority and because

156

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

the tsar personally appointed them they could expect to be heard if they raised the cry of corruption or disorder. Because all matters of military finance had to come before the Military Council, finally, and since the Council’s resolutions were final, binding, and immutable, this body in most cases was able to keep a very careful check on all aspects of the military economy. Its members might even catch hints of corruption, confusion, and inefficiency that the War Minister, harassed from all sides by the operations of a vast bureaucracy, could not have noticed himself. If the new Military Council’s primary purpose was to keep the military economy on an even keel, more minor details hint at a subsidiary objective. The regulation that the tsar would resolve any disagreement arising from a resolution of the Council, together with the incorporation of the Director of the Campaign Chancery of HIM into the Council, suggest that Nicholas sought to use the Council to keep tabs not only on the military administration, but also on the War Minister himself. The operation of the Military Council must have depended in large measure on the degree to which the War Minister held the confidence of the tsar. As long as the War Minister was in the tsar’s grace, it is hard to imagine a member of the Military Council flouting his will. If the tsar was thought to distrust the War Minister, however, members of the Military Council might try to prove their loyalty to their sovereign by opposing measures they felt to be inappropriate (or that they thought the tsar would find inappropriate). In the event that the War Minister was corrupt or seriously incompetent, the Military Council, unlike the Council of the War Minister, had the right and the ability to bring the matter to the tsar’s attention directly (although not without the War Minister’s knowledge). The inclusion of the Director of the Campaign Chancery of HIM in the Military Council may have been intended to provide the tsar both with accurate knowledge about all of the proceedings of the military administration independent of the reports of the War Minister and with the ability to affect the operations of that administration directly and at the level of departments and below.The Director of the Campaign Chancery was one of the officials who accompanied the tsar on every journey he made outside Petersburg. He was especially close to the tsar and would, therefore, be in an excellent position to serve as a spy for the tsar on the operations of the Military Council. Since resolutions of the Council that were not unanimously approved were sent to the tsar, furthermore, even if the War Minister controlled or held the loyalty of the permanent members of the Council, the tsar’s trusted Director of the Campaign Chancery could, acting only on his own initiative, bring any matter to the attention of the tsar that he wished.

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

157

There is no evidence that Nicholas used the Military Council in this way—indeed, it has been asserted that Chernyshev kept the true state of the military administration from the tsar in the 1840s and that Nicholas was not able to penetrate the deception.65 But Nicholas, who was intensely loyal to those who served him, seems never to have lost faith and confidence in Chernyshev and so may have allowed himself to be blinded.The notion that Nicholas might have desired to be able to infiltrate the War Ministry, however, even if he did not imagine having to do so while Chernyshev held the post, is not far-fetched. The reform of 1832–1836 created a centralized administration that consisted of more than 1,600 officials, cost more than 2.3 million rubles a year, and spent more than 170 million rubles annually.66 It concentrated power over this entire vast bureaucracy in the hands of a single man, the War Minister. Alexander had discovered how frustrating it was to be unable to affect a large and expensive bureaucracy except through a single man, especially if that man was ineffective, as Tatishchev was, in imposing his own or the tsar’s will on the bureaucracy. Nicholas himself had encountered the same frustration in the first two years of his reign. It would have been quite natural for any tsar to have sought to create organs within the bureaucracy to which he could have direct access and in which he could put people whom he trusted to keep him abreast of events and watch for signs of malfeasance. For Nicholas, who was obsessed with the desire to control every aspect of his state personally, such a desire seems almost inevitable. However that may be, the Project eliminated the irrelevance of the Council of the War Minister and replaced it with a strong, independent Military Council that, in its role as a legislative department, was to play a dominant role in the further reform of the unified War Ministry.

The Chancery of the War Ministry The centralization of the military administration made possible the creation of a strong, unified chancery to replace the numerous particular chanceries that had previously been attached to the separate organs of the administration. The reform of the bureaucracy by the bureaucracy that Chernyshev had outlined in 1831 required a strong central chancery that was large enough to continue the ordinary work of administration, to handle the large backlog left by the inefficient system of 1815, and to compile and edit the reform projects that the departments of the ministry presented

158

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

to it. The basic work of the reforms of 1833–1836 was accomplished, we shall see, in the departments, but the strength of the unified Chancery of the War Ministry made it possible for Chernyshev to keep control over the process and see to it that the bureaucracy did not undermine the ultimate aims of the reform.67 The Chancery of the War Minister came into being in 1812 on the basis of the General Establishment of Ministries and was defined in more detail in the Establishment of the War Ministry of that year.The chancery consisted of three sections: the first handled the correspondence between the War Minister and the tsar and oversaw the personnel of the ministry; the second handled the affairs of all 7 departments of the ministry; and the third controlled the ministry’s bookkeeping and accounting.68 The chancery was composed of 36 officials, an indefinite number of clerks, and 29 staff.69 Because only 3 officials were assigned to the financial section, which oversaw all of the financial affairs of the central military administration, it is not at all surprising that the Napoleonic wars quickly put the ministry’s financial officials entirely out of their reckoning. The creation of the Main Staff in 1815 produced 5 chanceries to replace the centralized chancery of 1812: the Chief of the Main Staff, the War Minister, the Council of the War Minister, the Duty General, and the Vice-Director of the Inspectorate Department of the Main Staff all received chanceries, totaling, by 1825, 39 officials, 32 clerks, and 16 staff.70 The division of chancery duties entailed by this structure caused a great deal of duplication of effort both among different chanceries within the Ministry and among the chanceries of the War Ministry and of the Main Staff. Responsibilities for the economic aspects of the artillery, engineers, provisions, and commissariat administrations, for example, were shared by the minister’s and the Main Staff ’s chanceries. Considering that On the Administration of the War Department, which created the Main Staff, explicitly stated that economic affairs were the province of the War Ministry and not of the Main Staff, it is difficult to understand why the Main Staff should have concerned itself with such matters at all.71 To be sure, the Chancery of the Chief of the Main Staff did not concern itself with money and accounts or bookkeeping, but it was charged with compiling rosters of and reports from factories and depots, as well as with keeping account of reserves of artillery and engineering supplies, and of provisions and commissariat equipment. Keeping account of the state of reserve supplies, however, would have been a fruitless enterprise unless the chancery also had the ability to rectify defects in those supplies—a process that was entirely fiscal and that the chancery, in principle, did not have the

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

159

authority to undertake. It is ridiculous, likewise, to suppose that the War Ministry could supply both troops and reserve supply depots without having its own precise rosters and reports on the status of the units of the army and of the factories and depots that produced the supplies.The division between “economic” and “inspectorate” aspects of a military organization, although conceptually valid, is ineffective as a criterion for separating administrative organs.The duplication of effort and the multiplying of correspondence that accompanied this system underlined the fact that the organization of 1815 weakened the army and that the reforms of 1832–1836 were essential for returning the military administration to a sound organizational basis. The Project of 1832 unified almost all of the chanceries of the 1815 system into one, but only over Chernyshev’s objections.72 Both in his original proposal for reform and in later correspondence seeking Nicholas’s guidance about details of the project Chernyshev proposed that a Special Chancery of the War Ministry operate alongside of the General Chancery.73 Nicholas responded that the matters Chernyshev proposed to turn over to that Chancery “should not under any circumstances be removed from the (general) chancery.” It is possible that Chernyshev’s desire to eliminate any possibility of serious rivals to his power within the military administration drove him to suspect the power of a Director of the Chancery of the War Ministry who concentrated all of that administration under his control. Such a suspicion would not have been entirely unjustified, for the position of the Director of the Chancery of the War Ministry after 1832 was strong indeed. It had long been true that the directors of the Chanceries of the Main Staff and of the War Ministry were powerful officials, for their posts carried with them the rank of Actual State Councilor, rank four on the Table of Ranks, equivalent to the military rank of major general. The only officials in the ministry who ranked above them were the ministers themselves (rank two—Actual Privy Councilor, or general) and deputy ministers (rank three—Privy Councilor, or lieutenant general).The directors of those chanceries held the same rank as directors of departments and members of the Council of the War Minister.74 Whereas the directors of the chanceries of the Main Staff and the War Ministry before 1832 had each had authority only over a defined portion of the military administration, however, the Project specifically gave the Director of the Chancery of the War Ministry power over “all affairs and dispositions within the military administration.”75 Nor was this power merely theoretical: throughout the reforms of 1833–1836, Director of the

160

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Chancery of the War Ministry Maksim Maksimovich Briskorn repeatedly issued instructions to the various department heads to which they responded promptly. It is difficult to believe that Chernyshev actually had suspicions of the Director of the Chancery of the War Ministry, however, because that official was, almost by definition, a civilian and therefore ineligible for promotion to the position of War Minister.76 Considering the frequent assertions of historians that Nicholas “militarized” Russian life, and that he assigned military officers to civilian posts at an unusual rate, it is somewhat surprising that Nicholas himself insisted, over the War Minister’s objections, upon making a civilian the second most powerful administrative official in the ministry.77 To keen students of the bureaucratic process, in fact, the Director of the Chancery of the War Ministry would seem to have been the most powerful administrator, for he held control over the flow of all papers to and from the War Minister. If the Project strengthened the hold of civilians on the military administration by routing all departmental correspondence through the sections of the Chancery of the War Ministry, it also greatly increased the Chancery’s ability to handle so great a paper flow. The combined chanceries after 1832 were comprised of 96 positions, as compared to 87 in the previous system. The increase in administrative capacity, however, was much greater, for of those 96 positions, 52 were officials, up from 39 officials before.The number of officials determined the administrative capacity of a Russian bureaucracy because they and only they could have administrative responsibility.78 The centralization itself, of course, also increased the administrative efficiency of the chancery by eliminating the duplications of function that the Main Staff system had created. These changes resulted in the creation of a chancery that could keep up with the day-to-day administration of the army and still spare the necessary effort to oversee departmental reforms and edit them into a general reform of the military administration.

Conclusion The Supremely Confirmed Project of the Organization of the War Ministry of 1832 created the tools necessary to conduct a more significant reform but was in itself far from complete.The problem of organization was critical, and there could be little progress in the effectiveness of the mili-

Preliminary Reform, 1831–1832

161

tary administration until it was solved, but the real problems in the bureaucracy were problems of function and cadre. The military bureaucrats had squashed attempts to reduce the size of their institutions, and thereby save the state scarce resources, by pointing to the enormous workload they faced. During the wars of 1827–1831 the situation grew steadily worse, until by 1832 several committees were at work just sorting out the paperwork mess in the departments of the War Ministry. Reducing bureaucratic staffs or increasing administrative efficiency and effectiveness were impossible unless the functioning of the administration was improved.The damage caused by Alexander’s failure to produce the second half of the reform of 1812, which would have addressed this matter, had become clear, and Nicholas, at Chernyshev’s prompting, addressed it forthrightly: §70 The War Minister, together with the Military Council, is obliged to present for Imperial consideration within one year [a report] about matters that experience shows require additions to the organization of the Military Council, as well as about means for perfecting [that organization], and especially to present a complete project, a Charge to the Military Council, in which all affairs and circumstances requiring the review of the Council and the direct administration of the War Minister must be defined in all detail, as well as which of these affairs are decided finally by the Military Council and the Minister, and which must proceed for approval and confirmation to higher executive, legislative or Autocratic powers. §71 The Directors of the Artillery, Engineering, Commissariat, and Provisions Departments are equally obliged to compile within the same period projects of Charges to their Departments, in which affairs that may be resolved by the director and affairs that must be presented to the review of the General Council of the Department must be defined in full detail.79

These provisions implemented Chernyshev’s suggestion that the ministry provide the Charge, that is, the rules for and forms of its conduct, which Alexander’s partial reforms had failed to produce. They produced four years of steady bureaucratic wrangling and argument at the end of which the War Ministry emerged with an entirely new roster, organization, wage scale, system of rewards and punishments, and set of procedures. In the process, the old system of military administration dominated by line officers was swept out and a new system dominated by staff officers and bureaucrats, including civilians, arrived. Russia’s military administration was beginning to modernize.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter VII

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

The proposals for reform in 1827, created out of a concern for the ineffectiveness of the military administration, were entirely administrative. Dibich and Wittgenstein, in 1828, made their proposals in the midst of war, and they sought to use administrative improvement to increase the warfighting capacity of the army. Even Vasil’chikov’s comments, although proceeding from the assumption that the war with Turkey was a “war of administration,” nevertheless conceived of administrative reform as improving the army’s battleworthiness. The Supremely Confirmed Project of the Organization of the War Ministry of 1832, however, although closely related to the proposals of 1828, had as its objective not an increase in the army’s fighting power but, rather, an increase in the administration’s efficiency through centralization, which would make possible significant financial savings. The reforms that followed in 1833–1836 intensified this financial focus and spread it even into the army itself, where reforms prompted by a desire for fiscal savings harmed the army’s readiness and fighting capacity.And Nicholas, the “drillmaster,” the world-renowned martinet, and the man who doted on the army and to whom the army was all, patiently and determinedly supported reforms that starved the army of vital resources.The advent of victorious peace in Poland in 1831 saved Nicholas from having to face the fundamental contradiction between the poor financial base of his state and the vast expense of its military posture. But peace did not bring wealth, and Nicholas was forced to face an equally difficult problem: how to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of an administration on the brink of collapse while reducing expenses across the board. The administrative dilemma was even more intractable than it at first appears. Salaries for War Ministry officials in 1832 had remained

164

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

unchanged for 20 years, although the purchasing power of those salaries had diminished. As a result, not only was it impossible to attract the best civil servants to the War Ministry, but it was sometimes difficult to fill vacancies. The pay scale had to be increased if the level of competence of the bureaucrats, and therefore the efficiency of administration, was to improve. Increasing the pay scale in times of fiscal stringency, however, meant reducing the number of bureaucrats to keep expenditures more or less constant. But in departments already overburdened with excessive paperwork, the prospect of future improvements in efficiency did not offset the certainty of short-term breakdown following reductions in already insufficient staffs.The only solution was to reduce the amount of paperwork by reorganizing the administration and rationalizing its functioning (eliminating unnecessary correspondence, duplication of function, etc.), while simultaneously reducing the size of the administration and increasing the salaries of those who remained. All of this had to be accomplished without increasing expenditures, even temporarily, and over the shrill objections of the incumbent bureaucrats. This was the task facing Chernyshev in 1832.

Organizing the Reorganization The Chancery of the War Ministry and the Military Council were staffed and operating by the beginning of 1833, and they at once set about the task of developing “Charges” for the Artillery, Engineers, Provisions, and Commissariat Departments. They quickly found that the guidance provided in the Project was insufficient, however, and the Chancery of the War Ministry presented a note to the Military Council on February 24, 1833, seeking additional direction.1 The Military Council’s response greatly expanded the scope of the reform to include all aspects of every department of the War Ministry and defined the reforms’ fundamental objectives more clearly. The Project had called on the departments to work out new “Charges” only, but the chancery’s note pointed out that such a limited reform would be insufficient: For the War Ministry . . . the Organization was published in 1812, but because of the changes that followed over the course of time in all branches of the military administration, [this Organization] can in no way be accepted

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

165

as the basis for the elaboration of the Charges, for the circle of activities of the Departments has greatly changed, and now in some Departments affairs are conducted about matters that were either not included at all in the establishment of 1812 or belonged in that establishment to other Departments. From this it follows that it is impossible at the present time to restrict ourselves to the elaboration of the charge alone, but it is essential to publish anew for each Department both a charge and an organization and in this way to compile complete establishments. . . . 2

The reforms of 1815–1816 had ripped up the old organization chart of the military administration but had not replaced it in any coherent fashion. The Inspectorate Department, for example, which was transferred to the Main Staff, was given a great deal of authority over a large number of matters that, in principle, fell outside its purview. The Duty General was responsible, for instance, both for the condition of the military hospitals and for ensuring the proper supply of provisions to the troops, although the first properly fell under the jurisdiction of the Director of the Medical Department and the second of the Provisions-Master-General in the War Ministry and the Intendant General of the Main Staff.3 The double supervision of those matters did not prevent them from being among the principal administrative causes of the near disaster of 1828. The size of the department, in any case, did not increase to support its broader sphere of activities.4 Even if the Military Council had recommended designing new organizations to accompany the new charges, however, the problems of the Inspectorate Department would have remained, for the Project ordered reorganization only in the four economic departments of the ministry.The Chancery of the War Ministry’s note pointed out this fact and asked if, “since the Inspectorate Department does not have a detailed Charge, and since the successful conduct of affairs in the first four [economic] departments is entirely dependent upon the correct, quick, and accurate movement of affairs in the Inspectorate Department,”5 that department should not receive a new organization and charge as well. Finally, the Chancery of the War Ministry pointed out that there was little chance that these or any reforms could be carried through by the departments unless officials of those departments were specially designated to work on this project and no other. It wrote, “it is impossible not to note that the Departments, because of their extremely limited staffs, barely sufficient for the movement of current matters, cannot detach officials for this work, which demands such broad consideration, constant and intelligent

166

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

labor.”6 The Chancery asked, therefore, that each department be allowed to assign three officials exclusively to work on the organization and charge of the department, their salaries to be paid from the department’s own resources without additional expenditure from the state treasury.The officials were to be paid as though they were one section chief and two bureau chiefs; the total cost would then be 4,900 rubles per year. The notation that these funds were to come from department resources and not from the treasury was portentous, for this restriction characterized the entire reform. The departments’ resources varied greatly, of course, from the economic departments, which always had considerable capital from various sources ready to hand, to the Inspectorate Department, which probably relied on unexpended salary and supply funds for its much more restricted “resources.” This request showed, nevertheless, that the Chancery of the War Ministry had learned from the mistakes of the 1820s, when officials had been expected to work on the task of codifying military law while still completing their normal work for their departments.The senior military bureaucrats were determined not to allow this reform to die from lack of attention. The Military Council considered the Chancery of the War Ministry’s note on February 24, 1833, and not only approved it but broadened it still further.7 The note had extended the reform only to the Inspectorate Department—which still left the Medical, General Staff, and Judicial Departments and the Temporary Department of Military Colonies without organizations and charges.The Military Council ordered that all of the departments of the War Ministry develop new organizations and charges: the reform was to affect the entire central military administration.8 At the same time, the Council determined that the developments would actually constitute a reform, rather than a simple codification of existing practice, and it gave that reform a goal:“the aim [of this work] must consist not only of defining in detail in the Charges the subjects of concern of the Departments . . . , their areas of competence, as well as their powers and responsibilities, but, together with that, of reducing correspondence and, as much as possible, taking into account the importance of the subjects and the level of power, of easing and accelerating the conduct of affairs.”9 Together with this stated objective, the Council defined another goal: “ . . . since the aim of the Charges . . . is the easing and reduction of paperwork, the Departments must keep in mind [the need] to reduce the number of officials as much as possible,” so that the savings in the salaries of superfluous officials could go to pay for increases in the salaries of those remaining.10 In the event that these savings did not cover the costs

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

167

of the increased salaries, the Council concluded, the departments must cover those costs themselves,“without seeking any sort of additions from the State Treasury.” The Military Council instructed the departments to present their draft organizations on May 1, and their draft charges on September 1.11

Collegiality in the Departments—The General Council12 One of the advantages of assigning officials, both in the departments and in the Chancery of the War Ministry, to work full time on the reform was that even as the departments drew up their proposals, the Chancery of the War Ministry was considering the best ways to refine the goals of the reform and improve the administration. In April 1833, before most of the departments had sent in their draft organizations, the Senior Official of the Campaign Chancery, Mikhail Pozen,13 sent Chernyshev a memorandum proposing that the principle of collegiality manifested by the Military Council be extended to the departments.14 In the process of arguing for the establishment of General Councils in the departments, Pozen helped define not only the goals of the reform, but the goal of the military administration itself. The General Establishment of Ministries of 1811 created General Councils on the same model as the Council of the Minister.They were to consist of the chiefs of all of the sections of the department under the chairmanship of the director of the department, and to consider all matters of importance affecting the department. These bodies were entirely advisory, their decisions did not bind the director of the department in any way, and they had no executive authority whatsoever.15 Pozen described the state of affairs brought about by this arrangement: . . . the entire administration in the Departments lies on the Director alone. The Chiefs of the Sections are granted certain powers, but by the nature of their duties, by the manner of their selection, dismissal, and promotion, by their complete dependence on the Director, they are merely simple executors of his instructions. The General Councils of the Departments have the appearance of being advisory bodies, but, consisting of those very same Chiefs of Sections, they function only at the direction and will of the Director, who alone decides, in any case, . . . to accept or not accept the opinion of the General Council.16

168

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

The definition, furthermore, of what matters had to go through the General Councils was so vague that the directors of the departments frequently failed to send the most important matters of administration to it at all. When important matters were laid before the General Council, the power and influence of the director was sufficient to see to it that his view prevailed.The results of this situation were unfortunate: 1. The most important affairs sometimes receive resolutions not entirely consistent with the needs of the service; 2. The Directors, bearing by themselves the entire weight of the administration, cannot function with equal success in all areas under their control; and 3. When a Director is dismissed, the government encounters the greatest difficulty in locating someone who combines in himself the knowledge of the laws and rules operating in the area of each Department with sufficient efficiency and the ability of a good executor and Inspector.17 Pozen recommended alleviating this situation by creating General Councils on the model of the Military Council, a model that “combines the speed of Ministerial Administration with the firmness and regularity of Collegial” administration. Precisely the same criticisms could have been made of the Council of the War Minister, and it is likely that they had occurred to Nicholas and driven him to give the Military Council the powers he did—although he did not voice his criticisms, out of respect for Chernyshev. The establishment of the Military Council and the new General Councils reflected a feeling among Russia’s senior officials that ministerial rule (by which they meant rule by single individuals) had brought about increased corruption and “goal displacement” at all levels of the administration.18 Although they recognized that the collegial system had not proved effective, they felt that the best system would combine the two methods of governing. Such a system would have the speed and decisiveness of ministerial rule for urgent matters (such as troop deployments, personnel affairs, military justice, and so forth), but the collegial element—independent both of departmental politics and of the director of the department—would keep the administration from losing sight of its ultimate goals. But what were the goals of the military administration? The Establishment of the War Ministry, On the Administration of the War Department, and the Project of 1832 had defined areas of concern of the military administra-

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

169

tion but had not defined its objectives. Such a definition had, in all probability, seemed superfluous: the objective of any military administration anywhere is to keep its army prepared for war and for whatever tasks it has in peacetime. Pozen, however, felt it necessary to define that objective more clearly, and his definition showed how far the government’s concern had drifted away from military effectiveness. He wrote, The goal of this Administration is without doubt the well-being of the troops; but not less than that, because of the unbreakable connection of the military with all branches of the State’s wealth, the Military Administration must strive so that the well-being of the troops is based upon means as little burdensome as possible for the State; so that by the accurate and strict account of the personnel of the troops the need for constant recruitment, burdensome to the population, is avoided, so that through extreme thriftiness in expenditures it can support the State treasury, so that with all military purchases . . . it not only does not constrain, but expands private industry.19

Few government bureaucracies even now view their connections with the society and the economy in such a clear and farsighted way. It is even more surprising that Pozen not only recognized the relationship between the army and Russian society and economy, but identified as principal objectives, on a par with the objective of keeping the army in order, improving the society and the economy in specific ways. Most surprising of all, Nicholas and Chernyshev acted to bring about each specific recommendation made in this passage by: reducing the cost and increasing the fiscal efficiency of the army, reducing the burden of recruitment on the population, and using the army’s purchasing power and economic resources to develop private industry.20 Pozen even recommended that the lower levels of the military administration organize themselves in order to meet these broader objectives, a reorganization that had already occurred at the highest level with the creation of the Military Council, by strengthening the departmentlevel General Councils.21 He foresaw the objections that this proposal would encounter: that it would increase expenditures and slow down the conduct of affairs. He granted the first point, noting, “there is no doubt that the establishment of General Councils not from the Chiefs of Sections but from permanent members is accompanied by new expenditures, the more so in that for the attainment of the desired goals it is necessary for these members to receive sufficient compensation.”The

170

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

additional expenditure, he estimated, would come to 150,000 rubles per year for the entire War Ministry, which he suggested that the economic departments themselves would cover from their own funds, at least until the General Councils had shown that they could bring about significant savings.22 He also presented convincing evidence that the establishment of General Councils of permanent members would not only not slow down but would actually expedite the conduct of affairs. Pozen’s proposal was considered and approved by a meeting of the Military Council on August 18, 1833, in a secret journal.The Military Council had examined “the dangers arising from the Organization of General Councils in the Departments not from the Directors of Sections, but from external members.These dangers consist, in the first place, in the fact that the establishment of these councils might significantly increase expenditures on the maintenance of the War Ministry, and in the second place that the very deloproizvodstvo (conduct of affairs) in the Departments might be slowed down.” The Council resolved that these dangers were not significant—affairs had not slowed down with the change from Council of the War Minister to Military Council, on the one hand, and the money saved by better scrutiny of departmental finances expected of the General Councils, on the other, was expected to be far greater than the additional costs of the new organization.23 The plan for establishing General Councils of the new type was therefore outlined in a Journal of the Military Council, confirmed by Nicholas on September 5, 1833.24 In accord with Pozen’s recommendations,25 the General Councils henceforth were not to consist of section chiefs, but of permanent members, recommended by the War Minister and confirmed by the tsar, including the vice-directors of the Departments and one member from State Control.26 The member from State Control was to be nominated by the State Controller and confirmed by the tsar. State Control (Gosudarstvennyi kontrol’) was an independent “main administration” established in 1811 on the basis of the General Establishment of Ministries. It reported through the Committee of Ministers and the State Council to the tsar. Its mission was to verify the accounts of all state administrations to ensure that treasury funds were expended in accord with budgets and with all other regulations, and to ensure that those accounts were kept accurately and honestly. It did not have any agents serving in the ministries but relied instead upon reports furnished by the ministers concerning the movement of funds in their administrations.As a check against corruption it was obviously ineffective in the form in which it had been constituted in 1811.

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

171

The Military Council’s decision, therefore, introduced a radically different relationship between the War Ministry and State Control, for it gave State Control agents access to the day-to-day financial activities of the ministry at the level at which expenditures were actually made.The Military Council, it is true, had to approve all expenditures, and it would have made a certain amount of sense to have placed a member of State Control on that body, but because the departments actually disbursed the funds and kept the books, State Control could keep the most effective watch on the movement of money at the departmental level. In like fashion the addition of a member from State Control to the new, independent General Councils made it possible to decentralize the financial control of the ministry. The director of each department continued to serve as chairman of the General Council of his department but his power over it was greatly reduced, based on the new model of the relationship between the War Minister and the Military Council. Directors continued to have direct control over executive matters (hiring, firing, promotions, orders to troops and other sub-units, and so forth) and reported about them directly to the War Minister. Economic matters, however, were the concern of the General Council. The General Council disbursed all budgetary funds and had the right, hitherto reserved to the Military Council, of finally confirming contracts for less than 25,000 rubles.27 It also had the right to approve expenditures of less than 10,000 rubles in emergencies. The General Council, finally, also had the right to initiate investigations and to remand to courtsmartial department officials who were thought to be guilty of peculation. Remarkably, Nicholas, commonly thought to be an almost pathological centralizer, vigorously supported this decentralization of fiscal controls even as he sought to strengthen those controls. It is even more remarkable that Chernyshev not only did not object to the infiltration of his administration by officials of another bureaucracy over whom he had no control whatsoever—he could neither nominate them, nor does he seem to have had the right to demand their withdrawal—but he actually fought down the vigorous opposition of the departments to this innovation. The answer to this riddle is twofold. First, increased financial controls were absolutely essential to the continued functioning of the army. Second, although the introduction into the ministry of officials of agencies not under Chernyshev’s control was annoying, these innovations did not actually reduce Chernyshev’s or Nicholas’s power. If anything, they increased it. The departments of the War Ministry had been excessively strong for many years, for most of them had developed from independent administrations in the previous century.The creation of ministries had done little

172

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

to improve the situation, for the ministries of 1802 were simply grafted onto already existing department structures that did the actual work of the ministries. The reforms of 1812, 1815–1816, and 1832 had made some steps in the direction of bringing the departments to heel, but they had not been very effective because the War Minister had had no way to circumvent the directors when dealing with the departments. Any time requests, instructions, and information must pass through a single official, that official has an enormous amount of power to obstruct the initiatives of officials senior to him. He can choose either to ignore completely, or to enforce carelessly directives of which he does not approve. If he is truly recalcitrant and opposes many directives, his superiors may attempt to oversee his department directly, but they can not usually do so at all effectively, because the director has hired many of the department’s officials and because his zealous superior has many other things to occupy his time. Nicholas had this problem in 1827, for when Tatishchev sought to obstruct the Tsar’s own initiative, the Tsar was powerless to do more than replace him. Replacing department directors frequently, however, was likely to do more harm to the organization than good. The establishment of the Military Council was an attempt on Nicholas’s part to restrict the War Minister’s power to obstruct his desires, and the strengthening of the General Councils was aimed at doing the same to the department directors. The Military Council clearly expected that the relationship between the General Council and the department directors would be the same as that between the Military Council and the War Minister, that is, that decisions of the General Councils would be final, that the directors would have to implement them even if they did not agree with them, and that, in the event of disagreement on the General Council, the matter would be brought directly to the Military Council for resolution. Since the directors of the departments had no control whatever over the members of the General Council, and since they would not be able to ride roughshod over the Council without losing control over their departments to the Military Council, the General Council would provide an effective check on the departments for the ministry. Since no one in the ministry, furthermore, would have any control over those members of the General Council from State Control, State Control would have an effective check on malfeasance in the War Ministry as a whole.28 The department directors were aware of the obvious intentions of this reform measure and they vigorously opposed it. Their fight was not entirely without success, at least in two departments, most probably because they managed to enlist in their cause the Tsar’s brother, Michael, who was

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

173

Inspector-General of Artillery, as well as of Engineers. Michael might not ordinarily have involved himself in a dispute over the powers of the Director of the Artillery Department, except that he was already embroiled with Chernyshev over the question of his own powers and his relationship to the War Ministry.29 The Military Council sent copies of its Journal to all of the departments, instructing them to present their views on the question of the General Councils in particular, and the Journal in general. Michael obliged with a polite assault on the principles behind the establishment of the General Councils.30 Although he granted that the establishment of the General Council in the Artillery Department might, without doubt, be valuable, he saw a few problems with it in its current form. He wrote, The rule that all affairs concerning distribution [of funds] are to be decided only in the General Council unavoidably leads to the question: how must matters proceed in the event that the Director does not agree with the opinion of the members? Does the Director then become the helpless executor of the decision of the members, or is this disagreement presented for the review of the Military Council?31

Michael found neither possibility appealing, for if the director had to implement a decision he did not agree with, then he would be demeaned, whereas if disagreements had always to be brought to the Military Council’s attention, that would greatly increase the amount of correspondence and paperwork in the ministry and slow the conduct of affairs. Michael wondered if it would not be best “to entrust the disbursement power, having defined its boundaries in detail, to the Director himself, so that in the economic affairs of the Artillery administration perennial slowness, so to speak, would not be created, which, although it was according to regulations, was nevertheless prejudicial to the good of the service?” In other words, why not leave all power in the hands of the director and change nothing at all. Michael did not imagine that so simple a brushing-aside of the matter would suffice, and he continued pleading his case on the grounds that the artillery administration was in a special situation and required special consideration of its particular needs.32 Recognizing that the same arguments might apply on a larger scale to the War Minister himself, and that Chernyshev had already submitted to the prospect both of being “demeaned” and of having to submit many matters for the consideration of higher bodies,

174

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Michael was at pains to argue that the situation of the Director of the Artillery Department was not analogous to that of the War Minister. He wrote, The War Ministry can not serve as an example for the Artillery Department. The Military Council considers measures that are almost always general and . . . when it does occupy itself with subjects relating only to one particular Department, then it decides important affairs that do not require particular speed. In contrast to this, although the activities of the Department include matters demanding prolonged discussion, nevertheless it conducts many more affairs that must be resolved without delay to make use of the best time, of low prices, sometimes fortuitous circumstances, and so forth. It seems necessary, therefore, to give the Director [economic] power in order not to deprive him in essential circumstances of the ability to act without delay for the good of the service.33

Michael’s view was not without foundation. Intrusive measures of fiscal control such as the proposed strengthening of the General Councils are harmful to the efficient conduct of affairs if the officials being controlled were already honest and efficient. It is Michael’s implicit assertion, of course, that the Director of the Artillery Department was honest and efficient and that the imposition of such controls would only be a hindrance. Chernyshev and Nicholas, equally of course, did not share Michael’s confidence in the matter and had considerable evidence, if not from the Artillery Department in particular then from other departments, to support their views. Like any wise military commander, moreover, Michael had obviously also given thought to the possibility that his initial arguments would fail to win Chernyshev over, and so he proposed an additional measure in the nature of a fall-back position. He brazenly proposed to subvert the artillery General Council entirely by insisting that its members, aside from one from State Control (he evidently did not think he could reasonably argue against that), be Artillery generals, for “the administration of the economic area of this administration vitally demands theoretical knowledge and experience that can be obtained only in artillery service.”34 Of course, only the Inspector-General of Artillery can “know the capacities and experience of all of the officials serving in the artillery,” so that “the selection of capable men to be members of the Council of the Artillery Department must belong to him.” If Michael had to accept a General Council, even a powerful one, he demanded the right to make completely certain that it would, at least, always vote correctly.

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

175

The Acting Director of the Artillery Department, A. Kh. Euler, safe under the cover of Michael’s attacks, added his own supporting fire, arguing that the members of the General Council absolutely had to be artillery officers, and that it was inconceivable that the director of the department should be compelled to bow to the opinions of his juniors.35 Euler went further than Michael had, however, and attacked the very basis of the General Council, arguing that the re-introduction of the collegial system was inappropriate. He wrote,“Under the currently existing two manners of administration—directly collegial or based on the establishment of the Ministries—I shall not claim for myself the wisdom to choose which is good and which bad, but I note that the first was changed for the second for greater success in the conduct of affairs.”36 Carefully failing to note that the proposal to strengthen the collegial element under his consideration also sought greater success in the conduct of affairs because the strictly ministerial order was felt to have failed, Euler pointed out that the proposed collegial system was different from the system that had existed before 1802. He reminded Chernyshev that “under collegial administration the Director or president divides not only his power and duties, but also his responsibility with all of the members, therefore his activity will be less well motivated.” The advantages of the system designed to support this reform manifested themselves most clearly on this occasion, for the attacks of Euler and Michael on the General Councils did not land on a War Minister too overworked to respond effectively even if he had wanted to, as similar attacks had landed on Tatishchev before, but on an official whose only responsibility was to respond to just such attacks, Mikhail Pozen. Pozen took up the challenge aggressively, by pointing out that Euler had misstated the nature of the collegial system. Pozen wrote, “in the collegial and ministerial administration economic and executive power is not divided: in collegial administration it belongs exclusively to the total body, which decides affairs and itself executes its decisions. In ministerial administration both are done by the Director.”37 He went on to attack the current system of General Councils as purely advisory bodies in identical language to that in which he had proposed the reform in the first place. Pozen also fought the assertion that requiring the director of the department to execute decisions of the General Council with which he did not agree would demean him. He pointed out, General Euler gives such a conception of the General Council that one might imagine that in fact the Director of the Department would not

176

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

participate in the resolution of affairs, and that all of his activities would be subordinated to the General Council. But according to the Supremely confirmed proposition of the Military Council, the Director is the chairman of the General Council and economic power belongs to him and to the General Council together, while executive power belongs exclusively to him alone; therefore the Director is not in any way removed from the resolution of affairs and is not in any way subordinated in his activities to the General Council.

Pozen wrote further that this manner of deciding affairs worked in the State Council, in the Committee of Ministers, in the Senate, and in all advisory institutions. Affairs were decided by the majority of votes, even if the chairman did not agree with the decision. But the chairman of those supreme bodies did not in any way find themselves demeaned by having to implement decisions with which they disagreed.Why should the situation be different in the Artillery Department alone? Finally, Pozen did not accept the proposition that since the Artillery Department concerned itself with “technical matters” only technically qualified personnel, that is, Artillery generals, could sit on the artillery General Council. He wrote, Although affairs of the Artillery Department, relating all without exception to the artillery administration, do demand theoretical knowledge and experience in that area, nevertheless officials who have always served in the artillery cannot understand administrative matters as well as Civil officials, especially matters relating to contracts. . . .Therefore in addition to Artillery officials other officials of the War Ministry familiar with administration must be selected among the members of the General Council.38

Here Pozen explicitly stated that administration, even the administration of the most technical branch of the army, should not be in the hands of army experts exclusively, but should be entrusted to civilians. The section chiefs who had previously served on the General Council had also been civilians, but they had had only advisory powers. Pozen now demanded that civilians be given administrative control over sensitive military matters.39 The dispute was resolved in the following fashion: the Director of the Department received the right to make such decisions as he felt necessary, even in the face of the opposition of the General Council, but he then bore the full responsibility for the consequences of such a decision. The matter of membership on the General Council was tied to the compro-

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

177

mise Chernyshev made with Michael over the relationship between the War Ministry and the Inspector-General of Artillery: the General Council of the Artillery Department was to consist of one member selected by the Inspector-General, one by the State Controller, and the rest by the War Minister.40 Nicholas was not entirely pleased by this outcome. In his comments on the penultimate draft of the Establishment of the War Ministry in 1836, he wrote next to the section giving Michael the right to choose one member of each General Council, “Why? This is the affair of the War Minister alone.”41 Chernyshev responded wearily that this provision was the result of a compromise worked out with Michael, and that it had already been implemented in the temporary Establishment of the Artillery and Engineering Departments that Nicholas had already signed.42 Nicholas gave in.43 The bureaucracy’s power to resist change was very strong, especially when Michael was present to add his own strength to the fray. The fight over these relatively minor points stretched over three years through numerous attacks and counterattacks. If Chernyshev had not delegated a senior official to the sole task of driving this reform through such opposition, he would probably have lost through sheer lack of staying power. In a sense, conservative bureaucratic reform of this sort is harder to conduct than radical reform. Once Alexander emancipated the serfs, for example, the administration had no choice but to attempt to cope with the new situation; no bureaucratic recalcitrance could unemancipate the serfs. Bureaucratic obstinacy, however, could well eviscerate bureaucratic reform, and it is testimony to the determination of Chernyshev, Pozen, and Nicholas that they were able to bring about any change at all in the fundamental structure and functioning of the bureaucracy.

Better Fewer, but Better Despite the clarity with which the objectives of the reform, especially the need to reduce the size of the administration, had been set out in the Journal of the Military Council confirmed on March 1, 1833, the departments had not gotten the message. The newly formed Department of the General Staff proposed to add 30 members to its staff of 60; the Inspectorate Department sought to increase the number of its officials from 94 to 112; the Provisions Department sought an increase from 111 to 127; and the Engineering Department, from 137 to 142.44 These 4 departments alone, then, proposed to add 81 members to their staffs.

178

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

They had taken one aspect of the reform to heart, however—they proposed to pay their enlarged staffs much better.The new pay scale increased officials’ salaries across the board—from 25 percent for a junior assistant bureau chief to 100 percent for a treasurer. The salaries of chiefs of sections, bureau chiefs, and assistant bureau chiefs, which represented by far the largest portion of the salary budget, increased by 40 percent, 66 percent and 60 percent respectively. In the Inspectorate Department alone the proposed changes would have added more than 108,000 rubles to an annual budget of 155,000.45 The departments piously promised not to draw on the treasury, but to supply the increased salaries from their own funds, but the reform was certainly in danger of veering away from its target of a leaner, more efficient administration. The bureaucracy’s response to the call for reform in 1833, therefore, was precisely as it had been in 1827: it called for increases in staff even as the senior officials demanded reductions. In 1827, we may recall,War Minister Tatishchev had capitulated to the bureaucrats’ demands to the extent of reporting to Nicholas that reductions were impossible. Although Nicholas had fired him within a month, the Tsar did not achieve reductions in the bureaucratic staff. Matters proceeded differently in 1833 because War Minister Chernyshev was fully determined to make the necessary reductions, and he had the support of the chancery officials who were compiling and editing the departments’ recommendations, as well as of the Military Council, which sat in judgment upon them. When most of the departments submitted proposals that would have subverted the aims of the reform, the Military Council, prodded by the Chancery of the War Ministry, acted to save the reform. In an enormous Journal of September 5,46 lengthy excerpts of which were sent to every department, the Military Council outlined the general principles of the reform that the departments must follow, as well as the specific changes it required in each of the proposals already submitted. The absence of an approved “charge” to the ministry had meant, among other things, that the departments did not have defined areas of competence, responsibilities, or duties. As a result, a considerable amount of confusion entered into the organization of administrative details, especially in the Inspectorate Department. The Journal of September 5 corrected this deficiency by defining the tasks of each department. The Department of the General Staff was to oversee the movement and quartering of the troops, the Engineering Department controlled engineering troops as well as all military constructions (including fortresses), the Provisions Department provided the troops with food, and so forth.

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

179

The important change in responsibilities, however, was the reassignment of all duties of the Inspectorate Department that were not closely related to matters of military manpower to other departments.The Military Council defined the Inspectorate Department’s sphere as “limited to affairs concerning the manning levels of the troops, the designation, dismissal, and promotion of Generals, Staff Officers, and Officers, the disposition of graduates of military-educational institutions, oversight over the well-being of the forces as regards field discipline, and, above all, keeping account of the people who comprise the armed forces.”47 The Journal transferred matters concerning the economic aspects of the irregular troops (principally Cossacks) and military-educational institutions to the Temporary Department of Military Colonies; those concerning the arming of troops and fortresses to the Artillery Department; those concerning paying the troops and supplying them with equipment, as well as all matters relating to military hospitals, to the Commissariat Department; and those concerning the officials of the War Ministry to each department individually. As the result of these changes, the Inspectorate Department, which Alexander’s reforms had made a clearinghouse for practically all important matters of military administration, gave up the nonessential aspects of its duties to more competent bodies and was able to concentrate on simply keeping track of the 800,000-odd men who comprised Russia’s army—a task it had been performing none too well.48 Simply transferring duties from the Inspectorate Department to other departments, however, were not sufficient to reduce the size of the Inspectorate Department significantly and did not aid in the reduction of the other departments at all.The Military Council, therefore, ordered that the departments eliminate the positions of assistant section chief, section journalist, and official for correspondence.49 The position of junior assistant bureau chief was also to be eliminated, and each bureau chief was to be restricted to only one assistant. These changes made it possible to eliminate 36 officials from the Inspectorate Department, 10 from the Provisions Department, 20 from the Artillery Department, 24 from the Engineering Department, and 34 from the Commissariat Department, for a total of 124 from those 5 departments together—a reduction of 21 percent.50 This was a sizable reduction in an administration that was already badly overburdened, and the bureaucrats fought it every step of the way. The argument over whether or not to eliminate, for example, junior assistant bureau chiefs (the very title seems a parody of foolish administration) may appear at first glance to be at best trivial and at worst

180

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

mindless bureaucratic infighting.The departments’ determination to hold on to this position represented, in part, their determination to preserve the status quo as much as possible, or at least their inability to imagine that affairs could be conducted in any way other than that to which they were accustomed.Yet not all of their criticisms were as trivial.The Duty General (Director of the Inspectorate Department) argued forcefully against the elimination of this position not only on the grounds that his administration was already overworked and needed even these most junior officials, but also on the grounds that the junior assistant bureau chief was the only position in the department in which new bureaucrats could be trained.51 He did not fail to mention, however, that his department was horribly overworked and that he actually needed more officials. The War-Commissary-General claimed the same for his department, while the Director of the Artillery Department, Euler, found, as usual, that it would be best to leave things as they were.52 Euler’s argument was especially troubling, for he wrote that “based on the experience that there is no possibility of significantly reducing the paperwork of the Artillery Department, I do not find any means of making further reductions” in the staff of the department. The principle underlying Euler’s argument was that it was unrealistic to expect that changes in administrative procedure could significantly reduce the administration’s workload, and that making reductions in administrators on the basis of such an assumption was foolhardy.This same principle animated War-Commissary-General S. P. Shipov’s final attack on the proposed reorganization, delivered on January 25, 1836—two months before the reorganization was signed into law. Shipov undertook to prove categorically that the proposed changes would be disastrous, that “the department would not be in a position to operate successfully . . .” if such changes were approved.53 He pointed out, once again, the uniquely difficult position of the Commissariat Department and, using the example of one of its bureaus, demonstrated conclusively, or so he thought, that that bureau could not possibly function with only one bureau chief and his single assistant bureau chief. These arguments did not impress Pozen any more this time than when Shipov had made them before. He responded that the situation of the Commissariat Department was not any worse than that of other departments and that if the Artillery Department, for example, could accept the proposed changes, then the Commissariat Department should certainly not have any difficulty with them.54 He took the occasion also to restate the principle on which the reform had been carried out:

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

181

One must not compare the complements of sections [now with those they had before the reform] individually, for affairs have received a new organization. One may compare the general resources of deloproizvodstvo of which the Department disposed before 1832 with those that are designated for it now. This comparison shows that even with the number of people designated now these means are incomparably greater than they were before. . . . 55

“The success of deloproizvodstvo depends not on the number of officials, but on their quality,” he continued, adding that good officials can only be acquired by offering them good salaries. The salaries offered before 1832 were so poor that it was impossible to lure even half-competent officials to serve in the ministry. The result was that “at least a quarter of the vacancies remained permanently unfilled, while those who served were, for the most part, not equal in their abilities to the titles they bore.”56 This situation would change with the adoption of the new organization, Pozen argued, as it had already changed in those departments that had received interim reorganizations: “The number of outside applicants for work in the War Ministry in those administrations that have already received new complements is much greater than the number of posts designated for them, and the directors do not have any hope of satisfying all those seeking to serve in the Ministry.”57 As a result the directors could be very particular in their selections, so that “only now . . . can almost all positions in [the departments], and even the positions of assistant bureau chiefs, be filled with officials who are capable of working with success as administrators [proizvoditeli del].” Whereas before the reforms only section chiefs and a very few bureau chiefs were capable managers, the new salaries made it possible to attract officials at all levels, even assistant bureau chiefs, who could, if necessary, be given administrative power.58 It is impossible to evaluate the accuracy of Pozen’s facts, or the cogency of his arguments, although they are perfectly logical. We do not have enough information on the performance of bureau chiefs and their assistants to evaluate their efficiency (or lack thereof). Annual paperwork statistics, although they are readily available for each department, are not normally broken down into sections, let alone into bureaus, and cannot serve as guides to the efficiency of individual bureaucrats, especially considering that we do not have attendance records or time-sheets indicating how long each official actually worked. There seems little doubt, however (and Shipov never challenged Pozen’s claims in this regard), that the salary increases were absolutely

182

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

essential if the ministry was to continue to be able to find qualified people to fill its ranks. A decade later, Field Marshal Paskevich, the commander of the Active Army, made the identical complaint to Chernyshev regarding the officials of the army administration, who were still being paid according to a scale adopted 30 years earlier in 1816. Only with an increase in the salary scale, he argued, could he find “capable and orderly Officials, in [finding] whom now extreme difficulty is encountered, for classified places in the civilian administration present much greater rewards.”59 It is quite possible that by “civilian administration” Paskevich referred to the War Ministry’s civilian posts. If so, it would seem that the salary increases of the 1830s had been effective indeed—perhaps too effective if the result was to deprive the army administrations of skilled administrators in a time of unrest and threat of war. However valid Pozen’s arguments might have been, his position was very strong by the end of 1835, for when the directors of the departments met to discuss the draft of the First Part of the Establishment of the War Ministry (the Organization of the Ministry), Shipov was alone in his opposition. The directors of the Engineering, Provisions, Judicial, Inspectorate, and Military Colonies Departments found nothing to complain of, while the directors of the Artillery and General Staff Departments had only minor criticisms to make.60 It is likely that Euler, having received a compromise much to his benefit in the matter of the War Minister’s control over the operations of his department, was not inclined to make further trouble, while the Duty General’s opposition to the measure, although it had been more cogently stated than Shipov’s, had been less determined. The Commissariat Department, it must be remembered, received little but pain from the reforms—it had its sphere of activities expanded (by the inclusion of matters that had belonged to the Inspectorate Department) and its complement radically cut at the same time as much greater outside control was imposed upon it in the form of the Military Council and the General Council.The Artillery Department, on the other hand, had fought for and received a special position in the reforms (recognized in section 20 of PSZ II, no. 9,038, and elsewhere, which granted the Inspector-General of Artillery considerable powers over appointments in the department), while the Inspectorate Department had its responsibilities greatly reduced. It is not surprising, therefore, that Shipov alone proved recalcitrant to the end. When Shipov’s comments and Pozen’s reply were presented to the Military Council, therefore, the Military Council fully supported Pozen and went even further. It pointed out that the complement of the Com-

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

183

missariat Department that Shipov was trying to protect had been established in 1832 for the express purpose of allowing the department, which was then in almost complete collapse, to straighten out its affairs. That complement was always “in the nature of a temporary measure until the organizing of the administration. Now, by the constant efforts of the War-Commissary-General, the commissariat administration has received an incomparably better organization, and there is, therefore, no need whatever to maintain the department in a reinforced complement.”61 Shipov did not subside, however, but continued to argue his case into March 1836. The Military Council rejected his arguments again on March 6, and sent the final draft of the Establishment of the War Ministry to the Tsar for approval on March 27, 1836.62 Nicholas read carefully through the draft law and made numerous marginal comments, to which Chernyshev responded, either by adopting Nicholas’s (almost invariably minor) suggestions, or by explaining (tactfully) why the Tsar was wrong. Nicholas presented the laws for confirmation to the Senate on March 29, 1836.63 The reform of the central military administration was complete.

The Significance of the Reform What did the reform of 1832–1836 mean? What were its results? It is easy to bog down in the intricate details of conservative, bureaucratic reform and so come to the conclusion that, for all the piles of paper produced, little was accomplished. The central fact of the reform may be put simply, however: it unified what had been a fragmented military administration and organized it along rational, functional lines. Chernyshev, its originator, had never intended it to do more than that, as he made clear in a summary note written on March 3, 1836.64 Speaking of the bifurcated system that had existed before 1832, he wrote, the unity of administration, always useful and absolutely essential in military affairs, had been destroyed. But the most important difficulty was that in all of these partial changes [the reforms of 1812, 1815, and 1816], only organizations were published, while appropriate manuals or charges were not given for any area. The consequences of the new order of administration soon erupted in the extraordinary expansion of communications, the increase of correspondence, and the breakdown of several parts, especially the economic part.65

184

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

The reforms instituted in 1832 created a strong, unified ministry, increased the salaries of ministry officials, cut 314 unnecessary officials, and regularized and rationalized the functioning of the administration.66 Nicholas is frequently seen as a man almost neurotically devoted to centralization, so it should come as no surprise to discover that centralization of the military administration was the main aim and accomplishment of this reform. The historian must avoid most carefully, however, the tendency to identify centralization with stagnation, inefficiency, and the other bureaucratic ills that frequently accompany it.Although similar ills accompanied the reforms of the 1830s (and grew to be real problems by the end of Nicholas’s reign), the fact remains that the centralization of the military administration in 1832 was not only useful, but essential. Decentralization may result from deliberate changes instituted with an eye toward increased efficiency and autonomy on the part of subordinate units, or it may simply be the result of an incomplete centralization in which many independent administrations are joined in statute but not in reality into a “unified” administration.The Russian military administration prior to 1832 suffered from decentralization of the latter variety. In the 1740s the administration had been divided into a Main Commissariat, a Provisions Chancery, a Main Chancery for Artillery and Fortifications, and a War College (essentially performing the duties of the Inspectorate Department), all of which functioned independently and reported separately to the tsar (nominally through the Senate).67 Over the course of the eighteenth century these bodies were brought loosely together as “expeditions” of the War College, although they continued to operate largely independently. This state of affairs was not changed by the creation of the War Ministry in 1802, for the “expeditions” of the War College simply became the “departments” of the War Ministry and continued to have enormous autonomy.This autonomy was reduced further, but not destroyed, by the reforms of 1812 and was, if anything, strengthened again by the changes of 1815–1816. In those reforms, as we have seen, the Inspectorate Department became almost a fiefdom of its own, the Artillery and Engineering Departments, nominally subordinate to two masters, were really subordinate to none, and all were separate from the logistics departments that, together with the Medical Department, comprised the rump War Ministry. The strength of these semi-autonomous departments was clear in 1827 when they sabotaged Nicholas’s first attempt at change in the administration, and it was equally clear in the process of the reforms of the 1830s. Some of the departments were bought off, like the Inspectorate Depart-

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

185

ment, by a reduced workload, or, like the General Staff Department, by increases in its workload that entailed increases in its power. Others, like the Artillery and Engineering Departments, fought their ways to compromises that were less satisfactory than they would have liked, but were at least tolerable. Still others, like the Commissariat Department, had to be put down repeatedly with strong and determined arguments and, finally, by a vote in the Military Council.The net result was to bring the departments to heel long enough to establish areas of competence and bureaucratic procedures more appropriate to the needs of the army and the state. It may be that the centralization was too extreme, and that decentralization should have followed—such, at least, was the argument advanced by Dmitrii Miliutin in support of his plan to introduce military districts into Russia. It cannot, however, be argued that the centralization of the military administration effected by the reforms of 1832–1836 could have been somehow avoided, and Miliutin himself acknowledged the critical and progressive nature of these reforms.68 The reforms of the 1830s may have been only a part of a reform, but they were the essential first step toward the creation of the modern Russian army. The emancipation of the General Councils from the control of department directors, the introduction of members from State Control into those councils, and the establishment of normal regulations for paper flow and for financial accountability all contributed to the reduction of the autonomous power of the departments. The reduction of that power made possible the strengthening of the War Ministry as a whole and was an important step toward assuring that all of the branches of the central military administration would act in harmony with one another and with the interests of the state and the army. It goes without saying that that goal was not achieved in Nicholas’s Russia, any more than it has ever been achieved in any large bureaucracy. It is significant that the administration, whatever new faults it might have acquired, had sufficiently shaken off its old faults that the tasks of maintaining 150,000 men in Hungary in 1849, or well over one million men throughout Russia in 1853–1855, did not bring about the systemic breakdown that had afflicted the decentralized administration when it had attempted the lesser task of supplying 100,000 men in the Balkans in 1828.69 Most significant of all, however, was that the reforms of the 1830s established the basic pattern of Russian military administration for the rest of the Imperial period and even had important legacies in the Soviet period. From 1812 to 1832, the main organ of military control had been the staff—first the army staffs of Alexander’s armies, and then the Main Staff of

186

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

His Imperial Majesty.The reforms of the 1830s swept the Main Staff away and made a powerful, unified, and centralized War Ministry the dominant administrative center of Russia’s armies.When Dmitrii Miliutin undertook his much larger-scale reforms in the 1860s and 1870s, although much of what he did implicitly indicted Nicholas’s army, it also underlined the importance of this transformation. For the creation of the military district system required two forms of decentralization: the decentralization of the military administration, which was not new, and the decentralization of the army command structure, which was. For all of the centralization that the statutes of 1832 and 1836 imposed upon the military administration, they also expanded and strengthened critical elements of decentralization within that system.The commissariat, provisions, artillery, and engineering administrations all divided the empire into a number of administrative districts. At the head of each provisions district (called commissions or commissionerates)70 stood a commissioner and his council (commission). He was obliged to maintain detailed maps and statistics of the district under his control in order to facilitate obtaining and transporting supplies to all of the troops quartered in his district.71 In cases for which such maps and statistics did not exist (most of the empire), the commissioners were to compile them. The Commissariat Department operated in precisely the same fashion.72 Both the Artillery and the Engineering Departments divided the empire into administrative districts as well.73 It is true that these districts did not have single district commanders or administrative heads, nor did they necessarily have the same borders. The only districts, in fact, which had the same borders and overall commanders were the Grand Duchy of Finland (under the Governor-General of Finland), the Orenburg line (under the Commander of the Independent Orenburg Corps), and the Caucasus line (under the Commander of the Independent Caucasus Corps). Because of their centralization under a single commander with regard to all of the economic departments of the War Ministry, these districts were unusual, but the concept of a military district was already latent not only in those anomalous districts, but in the district system of the War Ministry in general. It is in no way surprising that Miliutin, coming as he did from the Caucasus, should have advocated the expansion of that system throughout the empire. If the introduction of administrative districts after the Crimean War was not really an innovation, the abolition of army and corps commanders in favor of district commanders was a significant break from the past that highlighted an important failure of the reforms of Nicholas’s reign: the

Finance and Administration, 1833–1836

187

commanders had too much power. By 1832 only two men in the empire could bid fair to control Russia’s army: Chernyshev and Paskevich. Each was an accomplished courtier and held the Tsar’s trust and confidence. Each sought to expand and consolidate his control over his agency. Each sought also not to become embroiled in a battle to the death with the other. Even as Chernyshev sought in 1832 to consolidate his command over the military administration, he instigated parallel efforts to reform the army command system, which had remained largely unchanged since the Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army in 1812.74 The committees he saw created worked in fits and starts from 1832 until 1846 and did ultimately produce an important new law, Regulation for the Administration of Armies in Peacetime and in Wartime.75 Although this law substantially improved upon the measures confirmed in 1812, it failed fundamentally to address the most important problem remaining in Russia’s military structure: the relationship between the Commander and the Minister.76 The Commander continued to control the administration and supply—from harvesting wheat to distributing bread to the troops—of the forces under his command (something over half of the entire army).77 The Commissariat,Artillery, and Engineering Departments of the War Ministry affected the men of the Active Army only through parallel organizations of the Active Army administration, while the Provisions Department continued to play little or no role at all in feeding the Active Army’s troops.The Active Army remained Paskevich’s satrapy, spending a noticeable portion of the War Ministry’s annual budget, nominally under Chernyshev’s watchful eye, but effectively at the Field Marshal’s discretion. It is idle to assert that the regulation of 1846 failed because it did not weaken the commander’s power, however, for it was never intended to.78 Neither is it appropriate to blame the reforms of the 1830s for not making bolder changes in the administration of the army. All of Nicholas’s reforms were conservative reforms. He intended them purely to strengthen and perfect the existing organs of government, thereby strengthening and perfecting the existing order of things. In that context, the reforms of the 1830s must be judged a success.They brought order to a chaotic administrative situation and improved the bureaucracy’s efficiency by making it possible to attract better bureaucrats, and they did all of that and more without increasing expenditures on the administration. Administrative reforms could not, however, solve Russia’s basic problem— that her army was vastly greater than the state’s wealth could support.As Viktor Kochubei had said in 1810,“eight or nine million rubles are of no account

188

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

at all when accounts are figured by tens of millions.”79 Administrative reforms, however aggressive they might have been, could not have saved enough money to solve the problem. Russia’s true dilemma in Nicholas’s reign and later was that her strategic perception required a military posture that cost far in excess of what she could afford to pay. It is open to question whether, as long as the strategic perception and the will to maintain the implied military posture remained, this dilemma could be solved by any means at all.

Chapter VIII

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

The promulgation of the Establishment of the War Ministry in 1836 brought to a close the transformation of the military administration. No substantial changes would be made to the new system until Miliutin’s reforms in the 1860s. The publication of the Digest of Military Regulations (Svod voennykh postanovlenii) in 1838 brought a successful conclusion to more than a century of attempts to codify and rationalize military law. The Digest not only gave permanence to the reforms of the 1830s that served as its basis, but it was one of the foundation blocks of the modern Russian army. Previous military reforms had been implemented in laws that described only the aspects of administration that had changed and that were not designed to be easy for the bureaucrats who would execute them to use.They had more often than not increased the amount of confusion in the military administration. The Digest of Military Regulations, however, established the new reform as the fundamental law of the military administration and placed it in the context of all of the other laws and regulations defining that administration. Since it was, moreover, designed to be as easy as possible for War Ministry bureaucrats to use and refer to, it was the first reform effort since Peter the Great that stood a serious chance of reducing the extreme confusion that had characterized the military administration for years. The creation of the Digest was not straightforward, however. It saw a sharp bureaucratic struggle between Chernyshev and M. M. Speranskii, the driving force behind the effort at codifying all Russia’s laws and the effective, if not actual, head of the Second Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancery, which was charged with codification (the director of the Second Section was M. A. Balugianskii). Speranskii had been determined for

190

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

three decades to bring order to Russia’s laws, a task that he saw as essential to the progress of the Russian state. He was heavily influenced by enlightenment ideals and by the desire to create in Russia a state based on the rule of law.1 He hoped the codification effort, which would reveal how backward Russia’s legal system was, would lead to a new code of law. Speranskii hoped, therefore, that the preparation of the civil and military digests would be merely a prelude to this final reform.2 The matter appeared differently to Chernyshev. As far as the military administration was concerned, he was in the process of drafting the new “code of law,” which would be issued in the form of the Establishment of the War Ministry in 1836.To him the Digest of Military Regulations was in no way preliminary; it was to be the final exposition of a completed transformation.The War Minister’s objective was not to codify confused laws so as to make rational reform possible, but to make the laws defining an already completed rational reform clearly and easily available to the bureaucrats who would have to use them. The codification process cast this disagreement between two of Russia’s foremost statesmen into sharp relief.

The Review of Akhsharumov’s Draft Digest We have seen how the need to codify Russia’s military laws was an important impetus for military reform in the 1820s.3 Numerous officials in and out of the War Ministry had argued that significant improvements in the military’s organization and efficiency could not be made without bringing rationality and coherence to the laws and regulations establishing the military administration. So persuasive had been the arguments of retired Major General Akhsharumov that Nicholas had attached him to the Main Staff and charged him with producing a digest of Russia’s laws relating to the military. By 1833, Akhsharumov had produced a draft and several departments of the War Ministry and Main Staff had reviewed it, but they had found it inadequate. Akhsharumov, therefore, had had to undertake to improve it dramatically. In principle, Akhsharumov’s draft should have gone to the Council of the War Minister for final review after the departments had certified that it was complete and accurate. The departments had not yet completed their reviews in 1833, however, when the military reforms had begun to take hold. Chernyshev argued that, because the Military Council, which had replaced the defunct Council of the War Minister, was conducting

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

191

these reforms, charging it with reviewing the Digest would have slowed down both of these projects.4 Chernyshev’s Recommendations Chernyshev proposed, therefore, changing the process of reviewing the Digest. Instead of charging the departments of the War Ministry, which were also extremely busy with the reorganization of the military administration, with the task of reviewing Akhsharumov’s enormous document, Chernyshev proposed to form a special committee within the Ministry to do the work. He nominated A. D. Borovkov to be the chairman of the committee, which would include one or two experienced officials of the Chancery of the War Ministry and one official from each department. Akhsharumov would be required to communicate with the committee and to provide it with all necessary explanations and information but would not himself be a member.5 Borovkov was a clever choice. He had been Director of the Chancery of the War Minister under Chernyshev’s immediate predecessor, A. I. Tatishchev, with whom he had been closely associated.6 His autobiography argues, in fact, that Tatishchev fell victim to a nefarious plot in 1827 that Chernyshev had engineered.7 Shortly before Tatishchev’s dismissal, Borovkov had left the ministry to become Assistant State Secretary of the Department of Military Affairs of the State Council, and he had had several other disagreements with Chernyshev from that position. It is quite clear from his memoirs that he did not like Chernyshev, and that Chernyshev, in all probability, did not like him. Borovkov was, nevertheless, an excellent choice to head the commission reviewing the draft digest, because, although he was clearly not Chernyshev’s man, he was close to Speranskii. Speranskii had tried to put Borovkov in charge of compiling the digest in 1828 (presumably instead of Akhsharumov), but Borovkov had refused, noting that it would be much too tedious to collect all of the laws, and much better and easier to edit them after someone else had collected them. Borovkov quickly came to realize that quite the converse was true, as Speranskii told him in 1833.8 Despite his prejudice against Chernyshev, Borovkov served him faithfully. His closeness to Speranskii, furthermore, served as a necessary lubricant between the powerful War Minister and the occasionally fiery codifier. Chernyshev’s nomination of Borovkov was a masterful bureaucratic maneuver, but it was not immediately approved.

192

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Chernyshev proposed that the committee under Borovkov conduct its review in two aspects. It should determine if the organizational plan of the Digest was satisfactory, that is, if it encompassed the entire military administration and all of its details, and if its divisions and subdivisions made sense. If the committee found that the plan was flawed, then it was to develop and present a new plan. Almost as an afterthought, Chernyshev added that the committee should ensure that the laws themselves were complete, accurate, and well stated. When the committee had completed its work, the Military Council would then review it and, presumably, pass it to the Tsar for confirmation.9 Chernyshev presented his suggestions in a memorandum to Nicholas, who confirmed it “tentatively” but instructed him to obtain Speranskii’s opinions about the new process.10 Speranskii objected to Chernyshev’s recommendations.Thus began a two-year conflict between the War Minister and the legal giant.The conflict was, on the surface, trivial: it centered on the role Akhsharumov would play in the process and on the scope of the committee’s review.The true significance of the conflict was, however, much deeper. Speranskii’s Objections Although Speranskii approved the idea of forming a special committee within the War Ministry to conduct the review, he sought to keep Akhsharumov at the center of the affair by ensuring that he would be present at all of the committee’s meetings. He argued that, considering the size and complexity of the Digest, the volume of written correspondence between the committee and the Editorial Board (Redaktsiia) could easily bring the review process to a standstill. It would be much better if Akhsharumov attended all of the committee’s meetings, both so that he could provide any necessary explanations of his work, and so that no paperwork be generated about points on which Akhsharumov and the committee agreed. Only when opinions diverged would a formal journal with special written notes and explanations be composed. In the ordinary course of events, however, Akhsharumov could take note of what changes were necessary and simply implement them without further written correspondence.11 Speranskii also objected to Chernyshev’s proposal to allow the committee to review the organization of the Digest. The current organization of the Digest, he wrote, was itself only tentative. Akhsharumov could not develop a final organization until after the Digest had been completed and

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

193

had undergone a preliminary review. Speranskii added that Akhsharumov was working on a revised organizational plan at that very moment, and that he would communicate it to the War Ministry when it had been completed. Speranskii noted that although he agreed in principle with the course of action outlined in Chernyshev’s memorandum, no structural review could be undertaken until Akhsharumov had completed his own revisions in response to the comments of the departments of the War Ministry. Chernyshev’s Objections to the Objections Chernyshev dutifully reported Speranskii’s comments to the Tsar and added his own conclusions and recommendations. He argued strenuously against Akhsharumov’s attendance at the committee’s meetings, noting that the Major General would be among the most senior members present, and that his rank and the fact that he was the editor of the Digest would inhibit frank discussion. He pointed out, furthermore, that the Digest had to be able to stand or fall on its own merits, and that whatever oral explanations or comments Akhsharumov might make were irrelevant to the process.12 The War Minister sought to remove Akhsharumov from the review process entirely. He argued that Speranskii’s proposal for reducing paperwork would probably only increase it, for it would be necessary to compose “special journals, written notes, correspondence with Akhsharumov, resolutions of disagreements, etc.”13 His argument about this matter does not appear to be convincing. Speranskii had suggested that Akhsharumov be present at the meetings so that only disagreements between the editor and the committee need be written up formally; if Akhsharumov were not present, all resolutions of the committee, both those with which the editor agreed and those with which he did not, would have to be written up formally. It is not clear if Chernyshev actually misunderstood Speranskii’s proposal, deliberately misunderstood it, or deliberately misrepresented it, but the effect of his irrational argument was probably powerful, as Nicholas was seeking frantically to reduce paperwork at all costs. Chernyshev continued:“To return the plan and the books of the Digest to Akhsharumov for corrections [before all of the departments had completed their reviews] would be useless.” This objection was better founded: the entire review process would be stalled while Akhsharumov laboriously corrected the flaws in his work that the departments had already called to his attention, and it would then have to be started all over again. Chernyshev proposed, instead, to continue the review process, allowing all of the

194

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

departments to complete their reviews of the draft they already had, then to compile all of the comments on all parts of the Digest, and to give those to Akhsharumov to correct. The matter could then be transferred to the Military Council and concluded more quickly.14 Chernyshev’s motivations in this matter are not entirely clear. He was certainly displeased with the product Akhsharumov had sent to the War Ministry and determined to revise it substantially. He clearly feared that if Akhsharumov revised the Digest before the departments’ review was complete, the second draft he submitted would appear to be a final draft, so that it would be much more difficult to modify. Alternatively, he may have hoped to revise the Digest substantially within the War Ministry and so present Akhsharumov with a fait accompli. Whatever his motivations were, he was clearly determined to retain the ability to effect major changes in Akhsharumov’s draft. Nicholas did not choose to adjudicate the dispute. He instructed Chernyshev, instead, to forward his new proposals to Speranskii and to return with a joint report about “measures for the fastest and most successful conclusion of this affair” signed by both Chernyshev and Speranskii. Chernyshev requested a meeting at Speranskii’s earliest convenience to work out their differences.15 There is no record of any meeting, nor of any joint memorandum. Speranskii’s Counterproposal . . .Two Years Later Indeed, their differences remained, for Speranskii reported in April 1835, two years later, that while presenting the Tsar with a copy of the draft of the Digest, he also presented him with a note about the process of the revision—which had not yet occurred. He wrote that, “although this subject has already been reviewed before” it seemed appropriate to raise it again, for Akhsharumov had completed the correction of the draft, and it had become urgent, therefore, to work out a process of review.16 Speranskii had thus won his first point: Akhsharumov had been given the time he needed to revise and reorganize the Digest to meet the criticisms leveled against it by the departments of the War Ministry. Speranskii tried in his memorandum to win the rest of his points as well. As the processes of review by a committee and by the departments and sections of the War Ministry were both flawed, he argued, he proposed to combine the two.The Ministry would form a committee to review the Digest, but it would only conduct a preliminary, general review. It would then break the Digest into parts according to the subject of the laws and

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

195

send them for review to the appropriate departments and administrations. In this way the review process could benefit both from having all of the necessary specialties represented, impossible on any one committee, and from a general review, impossible among specialists.17 Speranskii’s Goal Most importantly, Speranskii’s proposal stated the goal of the review:“The goal and the only subject of the review, both in the Departments and in the Committee itself, consists in the resolution of two questions: 1) Are all regulations currently in force in each area represented in the Digest in their true sense; 2) Are there any superfluous articles, that is, those that were confirmed in regulations which have already been changed.”18 He added that the Digest ought to be complete as of January 1, 1835: it was not supposed to incorporate legislation that took effect after that date. Finally, since the organizational plan of the Digest “has received its final confirmation and cannot be changed without destroying . . . the composition of the Digest, therefore, during the review of the articles, only the accuracy and completeness of their exposition must be kept in mind, and not the location and distribution of their subjects by book, division (razdel) and chapter.”19 When this review had been completed, the results would be given to the editor, changes made, and the Digest published. Speranskii thus himself attempted to present the War Ministry with a fait accompli. From the beginning of the process in 1827 to the completion of the draft in 1835, Akhsharumov had determined on his own the organization of the Digest and had had control over all changes made to it. Speranskii offered the War Ministry another chance, in effect, to proofread it, but not to influence it in any fundamental way.The significance of this seemingly trivial argument over the right to affect the organization of the Digest becomes clear when the next iteration of the argument is examined. Chernyshev Responds Chernyshev, ever the skillful bureaucrat, attempted to portray his heated disapproval as agreement by seizing on the one point on which he and Speranskii did, in fact, agree:“Having reviewed in all details . . . [your] note about the review of the Digest of Military Regulations, I entirely agree with Your opinion, Sir, that for the perfection of this Digest, as one of the most important State Legislative Acts, it is absolutely necessary to review it by means of a special Committee established within the War Ministry.”20

196

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Speranskii’s opinion, however, had been nothing of the kind. He had argued that a committee was necessary as a preliminary part of the review process, the main part of which would be conducted by the departments of the War Ministry. Chernyshev proposed to brush the disagreement aside: let the committee “establish whatever process of reviewing the articles that the Committee decides is most appropriate, that is, entrusting the review to the Departments or conducting it itself.”21 The difference between these alternatives is not small. If a committee of experts, devoting its full attention to the Digest and having the entire Digest before it, decides upon major revisions or even changes in the structure of the work, it is in a position to formulate suggestions forcefully enough to bring about the changes it desires.A department director, however, who has many more pressing affairs to distract him and who sees only a small part of the Digest, is not likely even to conceive of major changes and is almost certain to be incapable of formulating proposals for important revisions intelligently. Most likely, he would simply let the matter go. Speranskii sought to defend the draft of the Digest from major revisions; Chernyshev sought to retain the possibility of changing it dramatically to suit the War Ministry better. Chernyshev’s Goal: Practicality Having tried to create the impression of concord where there was none, Chernyshev then made it clear that the disagreement was fundamental, and that he was almost certain that major changes even to the organization of the Digest would be necessary: [K]eeping in mind the proposed transformation of the military administration, part of which is already in force based on experience, I feel obliged to bring to your attention this fact to ask if You, Sir, do not find it necessary . . . to allow the Committee to give its attention even to the plan and systematic organization of the Digest themselves, especially if, during the review of its articles, some sort of unsatisfactoriness is found in its general organization that might pose difficulties in the practical use of the Digest.22

For the first time in the debate, Chernyshev made clear what was actually at issue. He sought, as War Minister, a digest that would be as convenient as possible for a bureaucrat of the War Ministry to use in his work.The abstract goal of codifying laws relating to the military did not especially impress Chernyshev: he regarded a digest without use in the administration

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

197

as a failure.The Digest was, to Chernyshev, the final confirmation of a completed reform, instead of the groundwork for more fundamental future reform, as Speranskii had conceived it. It was important to Chernyshev, therefore, that it reflect the most recent reforms. The importance that he attached to this point is clear from the vigor with which he fought Speranskii for the right to make changes in the organization of the Digest. It is clear from his attempts to remove Akhsharumov, who would certainly have fought to preserve the organization he had decided upon, from the review process. It is clear, finally, from his determination to establish a committee in the War Ministry under his control—excluding Akhsharumov—that would have the power and the ability to re-craft the Digest so that it suited the administrative needs of the Ministry. Speranskii Objects Again:The Digest Cannot Keep Pace with the Reforms Speranskii did not surrender but attempted to minimize their differences. He disagreed with Chernyshev, he wrote, on two main points: “1) in the proposition of Your Excellency that the review of the Committee be only preparatory, while the final review must be conducted in the Military Council. 2) That in certain circumstances divergences from the plan must be permitted.”23 The Military Council, Speranskii thought, could not really conduct a thorough review of the Digest because it was occupied with too many other affairs, and the Digest was so large. He proposed to resolve this problem by restricting the Military Council’s “review” only to the resolution of questions raised in the committee about particular laws. His objection to the active participation of the Military Council rested on a fear that it would “necessarily take an extremely prolonged time; and in the meanwhile the Digest itself would be so changed by new regulations that it would be necessary to redo it in many parts.The Digest cannot follow the necessary, almost weekly, movements of legislation; it absolutely must stop at some given epoch, and then be continued with annual addenda.”24 By this remark he meant to respond to Chernyshev’s comment that the new reorganization of the War Ministry necessitated changes in the Digest. Speranskii argued that changes in the laws were not relevant— they would be dealt with in annual addenda. The most important thing was getting any digest published quickly, for if the process was delayed, it might never be completed. To Speranskii, the value of any digest was inherent, in that it codified legal practice, and not dependent on its usefulness to those who executed law.

198

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

On the question of changes in the plan, Speranskii sought the appearance of compromise without actually compromising. He explained, My thought consisted only in the need to preserve the main divisions of the Digest, that is, the division into parts, books, divisions, and chapters. Many articles of the Digest may be changed in their content by the comments of the Committee, or in their exposition; the general plan will not be destroyed by this, but it may be destroyed if the reviewers move subjects from one chapter to another or intermingle material from one division in another: for confusion throughout the composition of the Digest will inevitably result from this intermingling.25

It is not clear why Speranskii assumed that the reviewers would propose to “change the plan” stupidly, that is, by simply moving sections from appropriate locations to inappropriate ones. In any case he clearly did not understand the real problem, which was that the War Minister was becoming convinced that the Digest was organized incorrectly. Chernyshev Wins the Argument Speranskii’s attempt to compromise failed. Chernyshev submitted another memorandum to the Tsar proposing to conduct the review as he wanted. He first enumerated four principles upon which the work of the revision would be based: • That the review of the Digest, demanding a great deal of hard and intensive labor, be conducted by special officials, as little as possible occupied with other duties; • That the review concentrate on the main parts of the Digest, not going into minor details; • That all superfluous correspondence be avoided during the review, as well as personal meetings between the editors and the reviewers; and • That the review in the Military Council be confined only to the examination of the main results of the [preliminary] review and the resolution of those disagreements that might have arisen between the editors and the review Committee.26 These principles did not necessarily contradict Speranskii’s views, but Chernyshev went on to enumerate the specifics of the review process, which did:

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

199

1. For the review of the Digest of military regulations a special Committee will be established in the War Ministry under the chairmanship of Actual State Councilor Borovkov . . . [composed] of the most experienced officials of the Chancery and of all departments of the Ministry. 2. Each member of the Committee will conduct the review of those parts of the Digest that contain regulations relating to the Department from which he comes. 3. During this review the officials will receive all necessary information and explanations that they demand orally and in writing from Chiefs of Sections, who will be ordered to satisfy those demands in the shortest possible time. . . . 7. The review will be restricted to the examination in the first place of the satisfactoriness of the organizational plan . . . and in the second place of the clarity, completeness, and accuracy of the exposition.27 Chernyshev thus brushed aside the question of the review process in the Military Council and concentrated on winning the points he cared about: the review would be conducted only in the committee, and not in the departments, and it would look first at the organizational plan, and then at the articles themselves. This memorandum finally had the desired effect: Nicholas approved it on June 17, 1835.28

Borovkov’s Committee Takes Over The review committee (formally the Supremely Established Committee for the Review of the Digest of Military Regulations) was composed of War Ministry officials, just as the committee established by Alexander I in 1823 had been. The earlier committee had accomplished nothing at all because the officials could not spare the time to put serious effort into the codification work; it had barely been able to meet twice in its existence. Chernyshev’s review committee, in contrast, did complete the enormous task of reviewing and, in the end, rewriting the Digest of Military Regulations—in less than three years.Why did the codification effort under Nicholas succeed when it had failed under Alexander? In the first place, the review committee was not charged with gathering the laws and drafting the Digest itself.That task might well have been beyond the powers of a committee composed of officials who still had to

200

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

accomplish their departmental work. Akhsharumov, working without distractions and with the support of the Second Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancery, had already accomplished the compilation, although his organization of those laws into a digest was deeply flawed from the War Ministry’s standpoint.The codification effort took 11 years (1827 to 1838) of the government’s unflagging devotion to supporting at least one, and usually several officials working only on the laws. Alexander and his military officials had never shown such prolonged devotion to this task; Nicholas and Chernyshev did. In the second place, Chernyshev saw to it that the review committee was given the highest priority in resources, including the time of its members.When Borovkov noted that the written work of the committee was far too extensive for its staff, which included no clerks, Chernyshev immediately ordered the Director of the Military Colonies Department to transfer “three or four” clerks to it.29 Whenever Borovkov noted that members from particular administrations of the War Ministry should be added to the committee, Chernyshev responded immediately. Most remarkable of all, when Borovkov complained to Chernyshev that the official sent by the Inspectorate Department, whom he had entrusted with reviewing “almost a third part of the entire Digest,” was so overloaded with work for his department that he “will not in any way be able to succeed in finishing [his review] in a short time,” 30 Chernyshev wrote at once to the Acting Vice-Director of the Inspectorate Department and forcefully instructed him “immediately to free [the official] from all current affairs of the Department, aside from the most important, until such time as he has completed the revision of the articles of the Digest entrusted to him.”31 This exchange shows that Chernyshev used his authority to ensure that his demands for speed in completing the review process were met in practice. It also shows why the codification effort under Nicholas succeeded where it had failed under Alexander: the War Minister gave the matter sufficient priority to demand the full support of the bureaucracy for the project. The review committee was successful for another reason as well. Its chairman, Borovkov, was not himself a departmental official, but simply a high-ranking officer “attached to the War Ministry.” He was an experienced administrator who could devote a considerable portion of his attention first to organizing the work of the committee rationally and then to keeping it moving steadily. He was State Secretary for the Department of Military Affairs of the State Council, and his workload was extremely light because of Chernyshev’s proclivity to bypass the State Council alto-

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

201

gether.32 The committee held its first meeting on July 4, 1835.33 By midAugust Borovkov had developed a plan for the review work in which the committee was to function more like a small administration than like a committee proper. Borovkov’s Plan for Reviewing the Digest Borovkov proposed to break the task into two parts: the review of all of the Digest’s articles and the overall review of the Digest’s organization. He proposed to review the articles first and in the following manner: since each member was an expert on only one aspect of the committee’s work, it was pointless to assemble the entire committee to listen to reports about articles with which they had little familiarity, let alone expertise. Instead, the members would conduct their reviews individually and so avoid useless, paperwork-generating meetings that would only slow the review process. When a member had completed the review of his sections, he would then meet with Borovkov and the members detached from the Chancery of the War Ministry, who were supposed to be experts in all aspects of the administration, to discuss his comments on the laws. Only when all of the members had completed their sections would the entire committee meet to discuss the overall organizational plan of the Digest.34 The proliferation of ad hoc committees in Nicholas’s reign is legendary and often criticized, but the review committee, at least, was both necessary and well organized. It was necessary because no other process could have accomplished the desired objective.The departments themselves could not carry out the review work. The directors were too busy with other matters, all of which were more important to them, to see to it that the review work proceeded smoothly and intelligently. An outside official or body, however, simply would not have the necessary knowledge and experience to do the job well, as the failure of Akhsharumov’s original attempt to draft a digest showed.Although a former director of one of the largest economic departments, even he could not develop a draft digest acceptable to the departments of the Ministry. The committee as it was constituted in 1835, moreover, was extremely well designed. It was not simply a collegial deliberative body, but a gathering of experts into an executive body under the control of Borovkov and the Chancery officials, who could look at the matter overall and coordinate the activities of the experts. Borovkov believed that no member of the committee should review material with which he was not entirely familiar, and so he repeatedly asked Chernyshev to add to the committee

202

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

experts on relatively minor administrations.This stricture was critical, for the review committee endeavored to harmonize the articles of the draft Digest with current practice. That principle was never directly stated, but it was clear from the emphasis on the expertise of the members. They were not necessarily experts on the laws and regulations of their departments per se, for the codification effort had gotten underway precisely because most departments did not really know what laws and regulations related to them. The officials, however, knew exactly how things were done in their own departments and so were able to help bring the laws and the practice into agreement. Despite the excellent organization of the review committee, it did precisely what Speranskii feared, and Chernyshev hoped, it would: it concluded that the organization of the Digest was inadequate and required substantial revision, and that it was necessary to include laws promulgated after the January 1, 1835, date originally set by the charge to the committee.35 The organizational plan of the Digest, wrote Borovkov, would not allow bureaucrats to apply its contents easily in practical situations:“The most attentive and strict review convinces me without a doubt that the general plan or division of the entire Digest into parts and books, because of its perfection, does not require any changes; but the subdivisions of each book, considering the practical uses of the military regulations, require various changes. . . .”36 As Chernyshev had noted in his arguments with Speranskii, Akhsharumov had not organized the Digest so that administrative officials could use it, and consequently the Digest was, for Chernyshev, a failure. Borovkov, either from his own beliefs or in the desire to serve Chernyshev faithfully, looked at the matter similarly. He requested permission to review the entire Digest and to propose a new organizational plan for it. What was worse, from Speranskii’s point of view, Borovkov proposed to allow the Digest to “follow the necessary, almost weekly movements of legislation,” for he argued that it was essential that the Digest include the laws reforming the War Ministry, which were being completed even as the Digest was being reviewed. He wrote, “In the course of the past year [1835] many establishments were promulgated that completely changed the major part of previous regulations. Beyond this many new regulations are expected in the current year [1836] that must change the text of the Digest.”37 One of those, the “organization of the War Ministry, with the publication of its new establishment, will change not only its basic principles, but also its details.”38 Borovkov pointed out that under the best of circumstances, the work on the Digest could not possibly be completed before 1837. He concluded,“it is therefore essential to permit the committee to complete it with regulations [promulgated] up to January 1, 1836.”39

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

203

Borovkov recognized, however, that his plan would not encompass the new establishment of the War Ministry, which would not be promulgated until after the January 1 deadline, and he suggested another means of coping with that problem. He would require each member of the committee to keep track of all changes made in his area of specialty over the course of 1836, and to prepare articles reflecting those changes that could be compiled into an addendum and published simultaneously with the Digest. The Digest itself would not, then, reflect the reforms of the 1830s completely— it would reflect the partial reform of 1832 rather than the complete reform of 1836—but at least the new laws would be immediately codified and made available to the administration in a useful form.

Speranskii Surrenders The blast from Speranskii which might have been expected did not come. Borovkov reported that he had shown his proposals to Speranskii, who had “fully approved” them.40 It is not clear why Speranskii surrendered at this point. It may have been that Borovkov, whom he trusted, convinced him that, all appearances to the contrary, Chernyshev was right: the Digest had to reflect current practice, even if that meant delay, and its organization had to change to suit the needs of the bureaucracy. It is also possible that Speranskii, whom Borovkov thought had never gotten over the effects of his fall from power and exile in 1812, feared to oppose Nicholas after the Tsar had endorsed Chernyshev’s last memorandum.41 However that may be, Chernyshev had effectively eliminated Akhsharumov and the Second Section from the review process entirely—they would only become involved again when the committee had completed its review and it was time to implement its suggestions. Speranskii had surrendered gracefully and agreed to “help” Borovkov by giving him “advice.”42 Borovkov apparently consulted with him throughout the remainder of the process, perhaps sincerely, but the only result of these conversations that Chernyshev saw was the invariable comment at the end of each of Borovkov’s proposals that Speranskii had “completely approved” it.

A Digest at Last Chernyshev, unsurprisingly, approved Borovkov’s proposals fully and presented them to Nicholas for confirmation, which he received on December 16, 1835.43 The review committee went to work at once. By mid-June

204

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

1836 Borovkov presented Chernyshev with a proposed reorganization of the Digest—and with a proposal to revise the review process again. Arguing that it would simply be a waste of time and paper for the committee to write up all its comments and suggestions and then have to negotiate with the Editorial Board about each and every one of them, Borovkov proposed instead that the review committee itself implement the changes it had recommended, submitting the final product to the Military Council for final review.44 Speranskii “fully approved” this measure as well, which was all the more surprising because Borovkov proposed not only to reorganize the Digest, but to extend the deadline for materials to be included yet again, this time to July 1, 1836.The reason for this request was obvious: the new Establishment of the War Ministry had been promulgated in March, and Borovkov was anxious to include it. Speranskii, cowed or convinced, did not object, and Borovkov went to work again on reorganizing the Digest, incorporating new material, and making the other changes recommended by the members of the committee. By design or by chance, the review process had been stretched out long enough that the Digest of Military Regulations could be based upon PSZ II, no. 9,038, the Establishment of the War Ministry, which was the embodiment of the military system designed by Chernyshev.

Significance of the Codification of Military Law The codification of military law, like the codification of civil law, was an extremely important event in Russian history, and a turning point in the birth of the modern Russian army. No improvements can be made in the organization and function of institutions if the laws defining them are mysterious. Above all, the military administration cannot function smoothly and responsibly if the laws are not well known and readily available to the officials of that administration. Akhsharumov had probably exaggerated in 1827 when he had ascribed the corruption and inefficiency in the military administration solely to confusion in the laws, but there cannot fail to be corruption and inefficiency in the absence of clear and accessible laws. The process of codifying these laws reveals much about why Nicholas and Chernyshev supported the effort.Whereas Speranskii had initially seen codification as the first part of a more significant reform—which would almost certainly have been called “liberal” if it had occurred—to Nicholas and Chernyshev it was simply an administrative task the completion of

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

205

which would aid the functioning of the administration. It is probably for that reason that the codification of Russian law under Nicholas has not established him among the “enlightened,”“reforming” tsars, for it was much less flamboyant and “liberal” than the codification efforts of the eighteenth century and of Alexander’s reign. Catherine the Great’s Editorial Commission had been inspired by Enlightenment ideals and had aimed, at least in theory, to bring those ideals to Russia. Her Charge to that commission was a liberal document that raised hopes of liberal reforms, whatever her intentions might have been. The first half of Alexander I’s reign was marked by various attempts by Speranskii and others to bring about liberal reforms, including granting Russia a constitution and codifying the law. Although the “liberalness” of Speranskii’s intentions is open to question, the strength of Enlightenment ideals among the members of the “Unofficial Committee,” who still held positions of power then, is not.45 It is not surprising that historians, fixing on the stirrings of Enlightenment “liberal” ideals that seemed doomed to failure in Russia, have not included Nicholas’s successful codifications of law in the catalogue of successful “reforms.” On the one hand, this exclusion is fully warranted.The codification of law in the 1830s was not in any way a liberal reform, nor was it a product of what is usually thought of as the Enlightenment ideal.That is, it was not motivated by a desire to bring justice to Russia, to protect her citizens from unwarranted persecution, or to improve the lives of the inhabitants of the countryside in any material way. It was not, indeed, a reform at all, strictly speaking, for no aspect of the conduct of life in Russia changed as a result.The codification of law, and especially of military law, was pursued in order to improve the efficiency and honesty with which the administration did its business. The exclusion of the codification of law from the catalogue of major reforms in Russia is, however, unjustifiable in the end. Regardless of the motivation behind Nicholas’s codification effort, it succeeded.The defects in the law codes and the Digest are insignificant compared with their existence. For the first time the Russian state had a firm basis in law, readily accessible both as a systematic compilation of laws, the PSZ, and as digests of civil and military laws to which bureaucrats in the administration could easily refer. This development both made possible and provided an impetus to the development of a professional, modern administration, which was capable of conceiving and carrying through the reforms of the 1860s. It reflected Nicholas’s belief in the supremacy of law, and it helped transmit that belief, so critical in the modernization of Russia, to his successors.

206

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Speranskii saw the importance of the codification effort on the grand scale. He had advocated it in the first decade of the century, and he brought it to completion in the third still believing that it was the essential precondition for the development of the country. It was most important to him that the codification be completed, and he feared most any delays that might lead to the abandonment of the project, as had happened many times before. He fought against Chernyshev’s desire to incorporate the contemporary reforms into the Digest not because he considered them unimportant, but because he thought that completing the codification itself was more important, and that, having once established the codification process, addenda and future editions of the Digest could reflect whatever changes in the administration Chernyshev saw fit to make. Having in mind only the broad goals of codification, Speranskii fought against delays for what he saw as trivial matters. Chernyshev did not see the issue that way at all, and it is probable that Nicholas did not either, considering his support for Chernyshev in the bureaucratic struggle. Chernyshev supported codifying military law neither to improve the state, nor to establish the rule of law, nor for any other such lofty goal. He supported it because he believed that the army and its administration could only function well if the laws were clear, coherent, and readily accessible to all officials, and he desired the efficient functioning of the army and its administration above all other things. Chernyshev had to ensure that the codification process achieved his goal of bringing order not to the law, as Speranskii desired, but to the military administration. Engaged as he was with that administration’s overhaul, it mattered a great deal to Chernyshev whether the Digest codified the situation there as of January 1, 1835, when the reform was incomplete, or the clear and rationalized structure of the War Ministry after March 1836, when the reform had been finished.The Digest would not serve the needs of the administration well if officials had to search various addenda in order to discover the fundamental organization and operating principles of the bureaucracy. Chernyshev persevered, won the bureaucratic contest, and attained his goal. Speranskii fought hard, lost the bureaucratic contest—and also attained his goal.The military law was codified. Speranskii never once indicated that he thought that Akhsharumov’s draft of the Digest or his concept of its organization were superior to what the War Ministry’s committee produced. He opposed letting the War Ministry participate deeply in the process, rather, because he feared that the Digest would then never be finished.The apparent collapse of his opposition after meeting Borovkov may

The Codification of the Reform, 1833–1838

207

well have been genuine, for he may finally have recognized that his fears were groundless—that Chernyshev and Nicholas would not allow the codification effort to falter. The outcome of this bureaucratic struggle was critical for the future of Russia’s military administration. The reform of 1836, unlike any previous military reform, thereafter existed not only as an Imperially issued decree, but as the fundamental organizational principle of Russia’s military legislation. It was not significantly revised until Miliutin’s reforms of the 1860s, and when those had been completed, their proponents also produced another edition of the Digest of Military Regulations, organized according to the new principles, just as Chernyshev, Borovkov, and Nicholas had done in 1838. The Digest of Military Regulations of 1838 defined a military administration based entirely on the War Ministry, having abolished the Main Staff in peacetime altogether. It compiled the regulations governing the economic aspects of the ministry, and it even attempted to rationalize the code of military justice, an important topic that cannot be pursued here.Above all, it marked the establishment of a rational bureaucratic system based on comprehensive and consistent laws that allowed the military administration to keep pace with the enormous task of supplying and maintaining the Russian army as it moved into the industrial age.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter IX

The Unfinished Reform: Strategy and Manpower in the 1830s

The reform of the military administration conducted between 1832 and 1836 and codified in 1838 was a critical element in the birth of the modern Russian army, but it was not sufficient. The administrative problems that it had aimed to correct had been only a part of the larger problem of Russia’s strategic situation. Even as Nicholas and his advisors worked to improve the efficiency, rationality, organization, and economy of the army, developments were occurring that showed them that these conservative reforms might not suffice.The possibility of the Crimean disaster was visible already in 1831—Nicholas would see it, but he would not be able to bring himself to address it.The final chapter in the story of the reforms of the 1830s is the story of the reforms that were not conducted. The Turkey problem, which had already been almost intractable in 1828–1829, became much more difficult following the revolutions of 1830. By 1832 the international situation was so poor that Nicholas feared not merely intervention in Russia’s Turkish entanglements, but general war between the European conservative forces (mainly himself) and the forces of liberalism and revolution, France and Great Britain. For although British Foreign Minister Canning’s suicide had brought about sufficient confusion in England’s affairs to keep that country from interfering in the RussoTurkish War, in the longer run it ushered in a decade of almost unbroken Whig ministries in which the fiery (and bitterly anti-Russian) Palmerston played a critical role. The rise of the Whigs, and of liberalism generally, in England was momentous for Russia. One historian has noted, “in the 1830s, Russia had to

210

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

contend increasingly with Russophobia in a ‘democratic’ foreign policy for which [Foreign Minister Nesselrode] leveled much of the blame on Palmerston and the Liberal [Whig] Party.”1 Nor does that blame seem to have been misplaced. Palmerston, who was to dominate English foreign policy for much of the rest of Nicholas’s reign, believed that “Europe was convulsed by a struggle between despotic and constitutional principles, and that this war of opinion was the great fact of the moment. The opposed forces were the despotic military monarchies, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Turkey; and the constitutional states, England and France.”2 Palmerston encapsulated his feelings in a speech before Parliament in 1832: There are two great parties in Europe, one which endeavours to bear sway by the force of public opinion, another which endeavours to bear sway by the force of physical control. . . . There is in nature no moving power but mind . . . in human affairs this power is opinion, in political affairs, it is political opinion; and he who can grasp the power with it will subdue the fleshly arm of physical strength and compel it to work out his purpose. . . . Constitutional states I consider to be the natural allies of this country and . . . no English ministry will perform its duty if it be inattentive to the interests of such states.3

This desire to work in the interests of constitutional states against those of despotic states would guide Palmerston and practically ensure that he would see the principal threat to Europe as coming from Russia, the strongest of the despotic states. That feeling, in turn, would drive a much more aggressive English policy in Turkey aimed simultaneously at strengthening and liberalizing the Porte’s domains while excluding Russian influence. In future Russo-Turkish conflicts, Palmerston would be determined that England not sit idly by. England’s hostility to the Russo-Turkish War in 1828–1829 had been muted in part by the confusion that reigned in London and in part by the fact that there was no army available to England to enforce her policy.The July Revolution in France made such an army available to Palmerston. One of the first diplomatic moves of the regime of Louis Philippe was to approach England and to establish with her an entente cordiale.4 Whether or not the Orléanist regime was really revolutionary, it seemed to Nicholas that its advent in 1830 transformed a relatively conservative France, aligned with Russia in the preservation of the status quo, into the center of a spreading European revolutionary movement that Nicholas found himself honor-bound to oppose.5 Palmerston’s image of the constitutional states,

The Unfinished Reform

211

France and Britain, opposing the despotic states, led by Russia, had its reflection in Nicholas’s belief that England and France together were conniving to spread revolution throughout the continent and undermine the status quo at every turn.The combination of the July Revolution and the Whig triumph was wholly inimical to Russia’s interests. In the short term it brought about the Liberal Entente and Anglo-French cooperation in opposing Russia’s operations in and around Turkey, thereby enormously complicating the Turkey problem for Russia. In the long term these two phenomena together laid the basis for the Crimean Coalition. None of this was obvious in 1830, however. It did seem clear in Russia, at any rate, that a general revolutionary conflagration threatened Europe.Therefore, when King William of the Netherlands wrote to Nicholas in the fall of 1830 asking for help due him by treaty to put down the Belgian revolution, Nicholas saw a speedy response to this plea as his best first defense against the further spread of revolution throughout Europe. The Army of Poland under Constantine’s command would form the vanguard of the Russian expeditionary force, but Nicholas also ordered that I and II Infantry Corps and III and V Reserve Cavalry Corps be placed on a war footing and moved toward the frontier.6 He intended to hold the Guards and Grenadiers Corps to the last possible moment as his final reserve. Even so simple a mobilization as this revealed something of the complexity of the problem facing Nicholas.The Polish Army consisted of approximately 80,000 troops and would probably have been sufficient to deal with the Belgian revolution.7 Yet Nicholas mobilized 140,000 more and held 100,000 in reserve in the form of the Guards and Grenadiers.8 He explained these moves to Constantine by writing, “I am convinced that it is almost impossible that a general war will not follow”9 from the Belgian revolution and the expected French intervention in it. It may be inferred from this comment that Nicholas imagined he might be sending Constantine into a trap—a general European war might break out while Constantine’s army was in Holland—and he might need to send those 240,000 reinforcements to relieve Constantine and carry the war into France.10 If the reinforcements had been sent, however, Nicholas would have been left with only III, IV, and V Infantry Corps to garrison and guard Poland, cover the entire Baltic littoral, and protect St. Petersburg, and with only VI and VII Corps to cover the Austrian and European Turkish frontiers. Nicholas’s half-hearted preparations for the “general war” would have been insufficient—he would have had to call up more troops. The outbreak of the Polish rebellion in the winter of 1830 saved Nicholas from further reflections along these lines, but only briefly. The

212

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Polish Revolution, the specter of an Anglo-French liberal alliance intervening in that revolution, and fears of the collapse of Turkey’s precarious stability brought European tension to its highest point since 1815. These circumstances forced Nicholas to contemplate, if not yet to experience, the fatal consequences of the contradiction between Russia’s strategic situation and her manpower policy.

Poland and Russia’s Manpower Disaster It is extremely difficult for the modern student (as it was for many contemporaries) to imagine that Russia could have difficulty subduing a Polish insurgency or the decrepit forces of the Sublime Porte. Russia’s enormous size, an army twice as large as any other in the world, and the determination with which Nicholas posed as the guardian of all order make it seem absurd that Russia should quail in the face of 100,000 ragtag Polish rebels or 200,000 Turkish soldiers. Nor did Nicholas ever quail publicly. Instead he wrote to friend and foe alike in terms such as,“It is impossible not to sense the grace of God and national pride when we see mother Russia standing like a pillar in the midst of all the chaotic conditions that agitate Europe, disdainful of the yelping envy and maliciousness, giving good for evil.”11 The very nature of the crisis Russia faced almost required a foreign policy based on a bluff of military strength. Because of that bluff, and of the secrecy that Nicholas imposed upon all discussions of Russia’s difficulties, the crisis itself has almost disappeared from history.The fact is, however, that the Polish revolution occasioned a severe crisis in Russian military policy, the story of which can now be told with the aid of materials in the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RGVIA).12 The Polish rebellion broke out at the end of 1830, and, even though Nicholas had taken steps to mobilize forces in and around Poland to participate in the suppression of the Belgian revolution, the Russian army was caught by suprise. Field Marshal Dibich rushed to the scene and took command of an Active Army that was composed of the Guards and Grenadiers Corps; I, II, and VI Infantry Corps; III and V Reserve Cavalry Corps; and the Independent Lithuanian Corps, but most of the elements of which would not be in position until after the new year.13 Historians have generally attributed the difficulties that the Russians encountered in putting down the rebellion speedily to Dibich’s want of energy.14 However that may be, Dibich struck no decisive blow in 1830. Even after he won a crushing victory at Grochow Field in February 1831, moreover, he

The Unfinished Reform

213

failed to take Warsaw, although it seemed to lie open to him, or even to pursue his vanquished foe. By April the spring thaw had destroyed the Russian army’s communications and almost eliminated the possibility of a speedy victory. Nicholas once again faced the predicament he had encountered in 1828: although he would certainly defeat Poland eventually, as the war protracted, Europe, on the brink of a general war, became likelier to learn the truth about Russia’s military strength. That truth was known, by Nicholas’s order, only to himself and a very few of his most trusted advisors, and, had it been generally bruited about Europe, it would scarcely have been believed: Russia was rapidly running out of men.

The Secret Committee The Secret Committee for Finding Ways to Strengthen the Military Capacity of Russia met first on April 16, 1831, and four times thereafter. Its members—Generals A. N. Golitsyn and P. K. Essen; Adjutants-General Vasil’chikov, P.V. Kutuzov, Chernyshev (Minister of War), Kankrin (Minister of Finance), and Zakrevskii (Minister of Internal Affairs); and State Secretaries D. N. Bludov and D.V. Dashkov—were among the most powerful men in the state and among Nicholas’s most trusted advisors in military affairs.The director of affairs (pravitel’ del) of the committee was the Director of the Chancery of the War Minister himself, M. M. Briskorn. The activities of the committee were placed under the strictest secrecy: “His Majesty, firmly convinced of the boundless devotion to the general welfare of all of the individuals chosen to deliberate on so important a subject, wishes to order . . . that the very subject of the activities [of the committee] be kept under impenetrable secrecy and remain known only to the members of the committee.”15 Together with an explicit set of instructions, Nicholas presented the committee with an overview of “the direct course of Russia’s military circumstances” to guide it in its deliberations.16 After the victories over Persia and Turkey, Nicholas wrote, “sudden and serious political upheavals in Western Europe required [Russia] to take the necessary measures of precaution.”17 Those precautions, which involved bringing the units mauled in the war with Turkey back to full strength and onto a war footing, were interrupted by the Polish uprising. Dibich led the Active Army to crush the rebellion at once and attained, at first, the expected success.18 The unexpected onset of warm weather, however, “gave our military operations an entirely different, unexpected

214

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

turnabout.” As a result, Dibich felt it necessary to order the Guards and II Infantry Corps, which had remained in Russia’s western provinces, into Poland. When these forces began moving, however, sporadic uprisings broke out in those border regions, gravely complicating Dibich’s situation. At the same time, the cholera epidemic that had been raging in the southern provinces spread to the Active Army.19 All the while, Polish partisan groups were inflicting significant casualties on isolated Russian detachments. These raids culminated in a ten-day battle in which VI Infantry Corps lost more than 50 percent of its effective force and was reduced to scattered remnants. “All of this together convinced the Commander in Chief to cease preparations for the crossing of the Vistula [which had been underway] and to undertake a withdrawal of the Main Army in order to come nearer to the sources of supply in which the Army had begun to feel appreciable deficiencies.”20 Even as this withdrawal was taking place, moreover, the rebellion spread to Lithuania, requiring Dibich to dispatch thither five brigades from II Infantry Corps and the entire 1st Uhlan Division as well as additional forces from First Army and from the internal reserves. “In this situation, in order to maintain the moral influence of Russia on foreign relations, His Majesty was pleased to find it necessary to undertake at once the organization of a special Reserve Army,”21 consisting of all internal reserves, IV Infantry Corps, and II Cavalry Corps. Such an army, “quickly formed and supplied with all its needs, will show to foreign Powers the general military capacities of Russia, will cover the rear of the Active Army with sufficient strength, will maintain peace and order in the provinces nearest to the Kingdom of Poland, and will strengthen the forces of the Active Army itself as needed.”22 Should Nicholas have to commit the reserve army, however, he would be left with only two infantry corps,V and VII, to cover both the Turkish frontier and the approaches to both capitals, and to serve as the last strategic reserve.23 This situation was intolerable, and Nicholas called upon the committee to develop plans to form, in the event of necessity, a reserve army from newly drafted recruits.The Tsar included his own proposal but admonished the committee to seek other means if flaws were found in it. Any suggested plan, however, had to meet the following criteria: 1. That the newly designated military force, in the event of necessity, can be formed in the shortest time and in those places as close as possible to the provinces returned from Poland [Ukraine and Belorussia].

The Unfinished Reform

215

2. That during the implementation of this undertaking, measures are undertaken to maintain peace in those provinces in which these newly formed forces are concentrating, [while these forces] are not yet acquainted with military discipline and with the direct obligations of soldiers. 3. That this new burden on the people is distributed as evenly as possible among the provinces and that if not all provinces have to [furnish recruits], then at the same time as the inhabitants of the [provinces] closest [to Poland] furnish people, the inhabitants of the [provinces] farthest [from Poland] must assist in the general task by supplying the monetary or even material needs of the Army. 4. That considering the current, already difficult position of the state treasury, the formation of the new Army does not demand very significant expenditures that might further constrain its circulation, and 5. That this necessity is satisfied as much as possible with the smallest exhaustion for the inhabitants themselves.24 Such were Nicholas’s secret instructions to the secret committee. The reasons Nicholas gave for forming the first reserve army (the formation of which necessitated, in turn, the formation of another, which the committee was to oversee) support the notion that he was engaged in a conscious bluff: he determined to make a show of throwing his last strength into the fray so that his enemy might be fooled into thinking that his strength was endless. His emphasis on maintaining Russia’s influence and on showing the other powers that Russia was strong reveals that his thoughts were not only on Poland. The Poles, of course, continually and shrilly called upon the liberal and revolutionary powers, that is, England and France, to intervene on their behalf. England and France, in turn, made periodical threatening noises. In the similar circumstances of 1828, as we have seen, Nicholas panicked and proposed to pull back and regroup. In 1831 he determined on a last throw, and, while trying to whip Dibich into some action, he prepared to send almost all of his regular army toward Poland and to call upon the fabled manpower reserves of his country. Nicholas proposed initially to form 93 reserve infantry battalions and 44 reserve cavalry diviziony, 25 or one infantry battalion for each infantry regiment in the Active Army and one cavalry divizion for each regular cavalry regiment.This plan would have required 100,712 recruits for the infantry and 18,568 recruits for the cavalry, or 119,380 recruits in all.26 Nicholas proposed 4 measures to secure the necessary number of recruits:

216

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

a) The establishment of a draft in the Provinces nearest the army, dividing them by Division; b) Calling [back] to service enlisted men released before the completion of their terms of service; c) Inviting volunteers to serve, and finally; d) Calling to service all supernumerary and unregistered children of churchworkers of appropriate age.27 Nicholas counted on getting 115,322 recruits in category a, 15,000 in category b, and 1,590 from categories c and d together.28 Of the 120,000 soldiers in the new reserve army, therefore, not more than 15,000 would have seen service before. Nor did Nicholas think it would be easy to find officers for the new formations. He reckoned that he would need 184 staff officers, 1,581 infantry line officers, 44 cavalry staff officers, and 616 cavalry line officers. He told the committee that “finding means for filling the ranks of this number of staff and line officers and other ranks shall comprise a subject for special discussion by the committee”—meaning he did not have any good ideas.29 He sought to find NCOs for the new formations, finally, by simply assigning to those positions Guards soldiers returned from premature releases.30 Why should Nicholas have called a secret committee together to discuss so pedestrian a matter as calling up a new levy to fill out a reserve army? The answer lies in one of the provisions Nicholas proposed to insert into the manifesto ordering the levy: the new recruits were not to serve a set term, but, upon the conclusion of the state of emergency necessitating the call-up, their landlords (or tenants-in-common) could demand either the recruit’s release back to the countryside or the normal recruit quittance given when a serf is drafted to serve his 25 years.31 In other words, Nicholas wanted to call into being not an additional standing force, but a “temporary force” (vremennoe vooruzhenie) that would be leavened with professionals and therefore more useful than a militia (opolchenie), but that could be disbanded when the emergency had passed and so would not constitute an additional permanent drain on the treasury.32 In its second meeting on April 23, the Secret Committee considered first of all whether it would not be better after all simply to have recourse either to a militia or to a normal, expanded draft. It concluded that, although both methods of strengthening the army had advantages, both also suffered from serious drawbacks.The committee decided:

The Unfinished Reform

217

A temporary militia, because of the speed with which it can be created and because of the moral force which is developed in the highest degree in all social strata by its organization, could serve as the means to a rapid concentration of a significant force, but, not having in its ranks any true sources of military well-being, order, and discipline, this armed force, as the experience of 1812 showed, is of little use in defense, and even less in attack operations and, not comprising a reliable aid and support to the regular troops, makes it necessary to fill their ranks through other means independent of [the militia].33

In other words, the militia can neither function effectively as an independent army grouping, nor can it serve as a replacement pool for filling the depleted ranks of the regular army.34 Whatever “moral force” the development of a militia might arouse in the country (presumably by making it clear that emergency threatens the motherland), its military value would clearly be negligible. The committee was also uncomfortable, however, with the notion of simply levying a new draft on the peasantry, and the reasons it gave for rejecting this course of action show the true problem facing Russia in the pre-emancipation period: An extraordinary draft, . . . although it would assure the creation of a wellordered military force, nevertheless a draft conducted on that basis, [would] not [be] accompanied by that speed that circumstances might demand, would appear to be a normal measure of the Government, and, not evoking the unanimous fervor and enthusiasm of the people for the general wellbeing, would burden it with a particular weight, the more sensible in that in the current circumstances a new reinforced35 draft is necessary immediately following the draft hardly yet finished.36

Put clearly, the committee feared that the “unrest” might spread to internal, Russian, provinces.The members reasoned that levies had become depressingly normal during Nicholas’s reign, and another levy, announced by manifesto in the normal way, would not make clear to the peasants that the country was in danger and that the new draft was both extraordinary and justified. Because recruits were still trickling into the army from the most recent draft, the committee felt that the peasants might see a new draft as an intolerable burden. The committee did not need to mention, however gently, that the peasants might rebel at such an apparently unnecessary burden, nor did it mention here the equally obvious fact that Nicholas’s

218

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

preparation of the reserve army organized around IV Infantry Corps would have effectively stripped every last regular army unit from the provinces to be hardest hit by the new draft.There would be no force left to stand against either the smallest draft resistance or a full-scale rebellion throughout the empire. The matter was made even worse because the committee resolved that the 120,000-man temporary force Nicholas envisioned was insufficient and called for a force of 186 battalions and 88 diviziony, totaling 238,584 men.37 In the end the committee drew up a draft manifesto that would have created fourth and fifth battalions and diviziony for each regiment of the Active Army, whereby recruits would be drawn from the regiments’ own reserve or third battalions into the active battalions of the regiment, then from the fourth battalions into the third and from the fifth into the fourth.38 The result would be that the “second reserve” (zapas) would serve as the initial training ground for reserves and the third battalions as a sort of military finishing school before the recruits, no longer raw, saw combat in the regular army.39 It was a rather ingenious system for getting around the problems caused by Russia’s complete lack of a trained reserve, but it was never implemented: the committee, after carefully and painstakingly drafting the necessary manifesto, would ultimately recommend that the Tsar not issue it. Having traced the general outlines of the draft manifesto in its third session (April 30), at its fourth session (May 3) the committee considered whether or not it should recommend that the manifesto be issued at once or only “in the case of a further unfortunate turn of events.” To aid it in this consideration, Chernyshev presented it with information on the current state of the Active Army. Although the Active Army, First Army, and the Reserve Army together comprised, by statute, 430,000 men, as of February 1831 they were under strength by more than 213,000—about 50 percent. The Active Army itself numbered not more than 117,265 men, with another 26,057 detached to suppress the uprisings in Lithuania. A total of 114,809 new recruits were assigned from the last two drafts to augment the three armies, although many of those recruits were probably already with the colors by this time (and therefore already figured into the armies’ strength estimates).40 Chernyshev concluded that if the committee recommended that Nicholas not yet order the creation of a temporary force, it would be essential to call up yet another levy quickly to make good the deficiency. The committee was quite sure that Nicholas should not create the temporary force at that moment, because, although the committee could fore-

The Unfinished Reform

219

see events that would make that force vital to Russia’s security, the peasants could not:“If only the people, upon whom words or predictions work much more weakly than evident facts, were convinced of the necessity of an extraordinary force, then it would bear all and fulfill all [its duties]; but in the contrary case it may give itself up to despair, to grumbling, and it may create various disturbances and disorders.”41 In May of 1831, the Russian people did not see any “clear and present danger” (in large part because Nicholas’s bluff required that he assiduously conceal from them and from the rest of the world all of the signs of such danger) and so could be expected to grumble very loudly. But if they would complain against an extraordinary draft, how could they be expected to bear a regular draft to fill the deficiencies in the army? The committee found that they would not bear it well, and it also found, therefore, that in May 1831, Russia had exhausted its manpower supply—drafting further troops even to supply dangerous deficiencies in an army engaged in war could only weaken the security of the state! The committee concluded: The filling of deficiencies in manpower in the troops is essential under conditions of war. It follows that the question lies only in this: should we declare a levy now, or, because of the great difficulties it will encounter, should we postpone it to the Fall, that is, to the normal time when levies occur in Russia. The zeal for the throne and the devotion of our compatriots has been proved by many and various experiences and does not admit of any doubt. The last two drafts, ninety-five and ninety-six,42 were conducted in essentially Russian provinces unquestioningly and with the necessary order, although the last of them was especially burdensome because of the unusual time, so important for the population, and despite the sufferings of the people in the preceding year from the spread of disease [cholera], from insufficiencies of internal industry, and from local crop failures. State and private peasants in many provinces deprived of all ability to pay State taxes, subjected to two levies in less than six months, are probably not far from the thought that by winter there must be a new levy, especially as the war drags on. But if the levy will be promulgated now, at a completely unusual time of the year, then it will put the peasants behind in the most important fieldwork. Still not having recovered from the last draft and not having succeeded in collecting the means for satisfying the (albeit reduced) monetary requirement accompanying it, they may lapse into unrest: many fields will remain unworked, the means of national production even for the next year will be reduced, and the very order observed during the levy may be broken. Such disturbances may have consequences the more dangerous in that the internal forces for the preservation of general peace and order will be insignificant,43 and with that

220

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

small detachments will be scattered over a broad expanse for directing newly drafted recruits to their destinations. . . . Finally all of the weight of this premature measure will fall on the central Russian provinces, for which any external war, and even rebellions in Lithuania and Volynia, are much less dangerous than internal, even small-scale disturbances.44

The committee resolved that, whatever might happen in the war with Poland, 350,000 to 400,000 “valiant troops,” as well as those due from the levies just past, would be sufficient to handle the Polish rebels. As for the putative European intervention, the committee found that, considering the condition of France, no hostile army would appear in the theater of war before the new year and that the fall levy would have strengthened the army sufficiently by that time. Foreign policy considerations also moved the committee. It concluded, Basing itself on the explanations of the Vice-Chancellor [Nesselrode, who was especially invited to attend this meeting], [the committee] found that the consequences of a strong armament on our part without evident necessity could be very grave, that it would give aid to the enemies of order in Russia in their accusations against our Government of secret plots against France. . . . These accusations would seem probable even to those not hostile to us, for it will be difficult to convince them that the suppression of the Polish rebellion demanded such unusual and large efforts.45

Russia’s enemies, provoked by what seemed like preparation for aggression into preemptive war, might strike at Russia’s allies (particularly Prussia) while Russia was unable to come to their aid. The committee concluded that “in this way a measure that is unusual and not necessitated by any clear disasters may place powers friendly to us in difficulties, and even in danger, the consequences of which would be harmful for us ourselves as well.” The committee recognized that Nicholas’s bluff had been succeeding so well that even Russia’s friends would not believe that the mighty Russian army could have serious trouble with the Polish rebels. Russia was caught in a cleft stick: failure to take measures that were, in fact, urgently necessary, would endanger the security of the state, but if Nicholas took such measures, the world, which could not believe that they were necessary, would think him guilty of preparing for aggression and would launch an attack that the committee had concluded Russia could not then meet.Yet the Russian army was vastly larger than it had been when it had utterly smashed Napoleon! Where was the largest population in Europe? Where was the Russian army?

The Unfinished Reform

221

Russia’s Manpower Base Russia’s manpower problem, at first glance incomprehensible, makes sense in light of the reality that Russia had to defend a territory the size of Europe on a population base the size of Austria’s. For although Russia’s population in 1831 was about 47 million, the system of serfdom meant that it could recruit from a population of only about 35 million.46 Yet the country was so large that, counting the entire population of European Russia, there were 647 inhabitants per square mile in 1850, as compared to 3,203 in Austria, 3,313 in Prussia, and 3,789 in France.47 Worse still, the serfs were concentrated far from any likely theater of war: over 9 million of them—about half of all male serfs—lived in provinces 600 miles or more from Warsaw.48 This fact was a permanent complication in Russian mobilization plans: before the era of railways it meant that mobilizations were measured in months and that recruits continued to trickle into their units more than a year after the call-up; in the days of the railway it would mean enormously complicated railway scheduling under which mobilization would nevertheless proceed very slowly, stretching the transportation resources of the state to the breaking point all the time. Specifically in 1831 it meant that the Active Army in Poland would see no sign of the “temporary force” until four months after Nicholas issued the manifesto bringing it into being.49 The Russian army under Nicholas was, therefore, maintaining a force roughly three and one quarter times as large as the force France maintained on the basis of roughly equal populations.50 Nor were Russian peasants less valuable to the state than Frenchmen were to France: taxes paid on the basis of peasant labor provided about 30 percent annually of Russia’s income in the 1830s51 and peasant labor provided, of course, all of Russia’s grain—including that used to feed the army—as well as much of the workforce in Russia’s nascent industry. The War Ministry produced a report in 1835 containing suggestions for improving the military administration. The general summary of the document, written by Chernyshev, included a detailed and grim picture of just how tight was the noose formed by Russia’s manpower problem. Chernyshev began by describing the manpower resources of the state as “meager.” In 1832–1833, Russia had supported an army of about 850,000 on a base of 16.5 million peasants liable for recruitment.52 Russia’s peacetime standing army, therefore, required that 1 in 20 eligible recruits be with the colors at all times. Chernyshev pointed out, however, that by no means all 16 million male peasants were suitable, by age and state of

222

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

health, for service. He estimated that, in fact, not above one-fourth, or 4,125,000 male serfs were actually fit to serve.53 Those 4 million lost more than 75,000, or 2 percent of their number, to new service in the army every year.54 Another way of looking at the matter is that the 850,000 men in the regular army represented about 20 percent of all men in the state fit and eligible to serve. Chernyshev noted, moreover, that the importance of those men was out of all proportion to their percentage of the population: “If one takes into consideration that each of these people entering the service frequently maintains by his labor an entire family and provides the most important vital necessity to a given number of people not of the productive class of the population, then the effect of the draft on the condition of the population and of industry is revealed even more.”55 The War Minister concluded with what may have been an oblique reference to emancipation and the mass army:“Time and the perpetual concern of the government for the well-being of the people, without doubt, will find in the future new sources for expanding the resources of filling the ranks of the troops.” One is reluctant to attribute so advanced a view to so conservative a bureaucrat as Chernyshev on the basis of a reference as oblique as this one, yet it is difficult to imagine what other source for expanding the manpower base Chernyshev could have had in mind.The expansion of the service to include the empire’s Jews, much discussed as an example of Nicholas’s repressiveness and anti-Semitism, nevertheless could have yielded but a few thousand more recruits.56 It is difficult to imagine expanding the recruitment to other social classes without emancipating the serfs, for how could free men be expected to serve with slaves? Nor would it have been possible to reduce the term of service and release large numbers of serfs back to the countryside without the emancipation. That fact was clear to Dmitrii Miliutin a generation later, when he wrote that “serfdom does not permit us either to decrease the term of service, nor to increase the number of indefinitely furloughed soldiers in order to reduce the number of troops with the colors.”57 If the situation was clear to Miliutin in 1856, it was certainly also clear to Chernyshev in 1835.The likeliest explanation of this reference is that Chernyshev, who must have known of Nicholas’s interest in emancipation, sought to tell his master that the problem of military manpower could only be solved after the problem of serfdom.58 Russia’s army, then, was bankrupting the state not only financially, but demographically as well.The drain on the state’s manpower reserves was so

The Unfinished Reform

223

great that Alexander had tried to avoid drafts altogether by establishing the military colonies and by maintaining active units significantly under strength. Nicholas continued this policy in the sense that he sought to repair deficiencies caused by the war with Turkey over time, both to save money and to avoid having to declare additional drafts. In 1831 he reaped what he and his brother had sown: the army entered the struggle undermanned and then required both replacements of its fresh losses and, through Dibich’s bad generalship, reinforcements. Russia’s manpower base was overtaxed by these demands. It is true that 1831 was an exceptionally difficult year: disease, crop failures, and war had already reduced the manpower pool, and the fact that the enemy was revolution, which Nicholas always feared might spread to Russia, reduced it still further.59 Even so, simple numbers speak volumes: Russia’s army comprised 20 percent of all the men who could possibly be called upon to serve in it. The situation was precarious and a few unfortunate circumstances could lead to disaster. The disaster did not come in 1831 because the European situation was, in reality, favorable to Russia: France was still weakened by its recent revolution, and Britain could not readily intervene alone in Poland. Neither country, moreover, desired the general European war that would inevitably have followed such an intervention in the form of Prussian, and probably Austrian, involvement. When the European situation worsened in the 1850s, however, and the site of the struggle was more accessible to English naval power, Nicholas had still not rectified the fundamental dilemma, and disaster struck indeed.

Where Was the Rest of the Army? The foregoing discussion proceeded from the difficulties facing the Active Army, First Army, and the Reserve Army to the conclusion that emergency drafts were needed and that the manpower base of the country was too narrow in pre-emancipation conditions to support such measures.Yet these three armies together comprised only 430,000 of Russia’s 850,000 man army.The answer to the question,“Where was the rest of the army?” shows that the figure of 850,000 men, although it accurately reflected the burden of the army on the state and society, was far less accurate as an indicator of Russia’s disposable military strength. In 1834 Russia’s forces consisted of 8 infantry corps (Guards, Grenadiers, and I through VI Infantry Corps) totaling 471,087 officers and men, 3 cavalry corps totaling 54,587 officers and men, and reserves

224

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

comprising 84,593 officers and men. There were, in addition, 4 regional Independent Corps in the Caucasus (99,755), in Orenburg (17,196), in Siberia (21,172), and in Finland (19,375), as well as the Corps of Internal Guard (64,462).60 Since none of the forces of any of the independent corps except for Finland could participate in a European war, some 202,585 soldiers were permanently unavailable for the army’s most important undertakings.61 In reality, on January 1, 1834, 690,931 officers and men were with their units, of which number 499,740 comprised the infantry, cavalry, and reserves that Russia could bring to bear in a European war.62 The standing Russian army, which could not, as we have seen, readily expect reinforcements, was about the same size as the mobilized armies of France, Austria, and Prussia individually. But the situation was even worse, because the strike forces of the Russian army (the infantry, guards, grenadiers, and cavalry corps) faced daunting tasks even in peacetime. After 1831 Russia maintained tense relations with Great Britain and France, neutral relations with Austria, amicable relations with Prussia, and relations with Turkey varying from near-alliance to near-war. These circumstances pointed to the likelihood of danger to Russia’s northern and southern flanks from British, Anglo-French, or Anglo-Turkish operations. But the Polish rebellion had only just been put down, so that the Polish salient had to be garrisoned, however amicable relations with Austria and Prussia might be. Furthermore, considerations both of easing the problem of supplying the army (by not concentrating too many forces in the western provinces) and of the need to maintain a military presence to keep order in the center of the empire, dictated that sizable forces “garrison” the heart of Russia.The resulting deployment was fully suitable to no objective. The Guards Corps was stationed in and around St. Petersburg, of course, and the Grenadiers were deployed to the south in St. Petersburg, Novgorod, and Pskov provinces. I Infantry Corps guarded the entire Baltic coast from Vilnius to St. Petersburg. II and III Infantry Corps garrisoned Poland and the adjoining provinces of Belostok, Grodno, and Volhynia. IV Infantry Corps was stationed in Moscow, Tula, Riazan, and Vladimir provinces, while V Infantry Corps held Volhynia, Kiev, Podolia, and Poltava provinces.VI Infantry Corps watched the Turkish frontier in Bessarabia and in Cherson province. The cavalry corps were stationed throughout Ukraine from Odessa to Voronezh.63 The forces as deployed were obviously insufficient to the missions they might have to face. One corps (VI) faced Turkey, one and a half faced Austria (V and part of III), one and a half held Poland (II and part of III), one

The Unfinished Reform

225

guarded what are now the Baltic states (I), two defended the capital (Guards and Grenadiers), and one, in deep reserve in Moscow (IV), could not hope to reach a fighting front until months after it was ordered to move out.The war with Turkey had required four infantry corps; the Polish rebellion had required five.64 The notion that I Corps alone could have kept the British from landing anywhere along the Baltic coast is fanciful. Only St. Petersburg (and Moscow) could be said to have been adequately guarded from all attack. Almost any conceivable war on the scale of that of 1828 or larger, therefore, would have required redeployment to strengthen the threatened sectors, for in no case could the forces permanently deployed in that sector be sure of success acting alone. But redeployment meant shifting forces from one underdefended sector to another, leaving the first still more vulnerable—a risk Nicholas was not usually willing to take. The result was that the Russian army, although the largest in Europe, invariably sent insufficient force into any campaign through unwillingness to denude peaceful but vulnerable sectors of their defenders and inability to raise reinforcements rapidly, or, sometimes, at all.Thus in 1828–1829 the Army of Poland was immobilized in garrisoning Poland and watching Austria, while the majority of Russia’s forces, concentrated in First Army, worked out mobilization plans—against the possibility that England would intervene and attack from the Baltic. In 1831, while the Active Army fought almost at parity with the insurgents, IV Corps was held in deep reserve, III Corps guarded the Baltic littoral, VI Corps guarded the Active Army’s southern flank, and V Corps stood near the Turkish frontier.65 Thus Nicholas’s strategic view that no potential enemy could be considered safe and, therefore, that no sector vulnerable to any potential enemy could be denuded of its defenders, combined with Russia’s almost complete inability to generate replacements for casualties, let alone reinforcements, meant that the Russian army, excessively strong in aggregate on paper and excessively heavy in its burden on the state, was doomed to be excessively weak in almost any campaign it might be called upon to fight.

England, Isolation, and the Preview of the Crimean Coalition Russia’s strategic situation, poor to begin with, worsened in the early 1830s as the rise of the Whigs in England turned that country from ally to bitter foe. The Turkey problem remained as complicated as ever, but as

226

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

British distaste for Russia grew, so also did Britain’s, especially Palmerston’s, determination to keep Russia out of Turkey. In 1838 Palmerston informed the Russian minister in London, K. O. Pozzo di Borgo, that “England would never tolerate [Russia’s] intervention in Turkish affairs, as though war would issue from it.”66 To this Nicholas responded (to Paskevich), “Whatever happens, we are ready.” But how did Nicholas intend to wage war with England and France? The Russians had faced that question squarely in 1832–1833, as they prepared to send a force to save the sultan’s tottering throne, and as the British and the French gave every indication that they would oppose such a move. At first, Nicholas had conceived of the problem in 1832 in the same way in which he had thought of the situation in the previous year: war would mean a strike through Prussia at revolutionary France to restore stability in Europe. In December 1832 he drew up a roster of an Active Army to carry the campaign into the west. Consisting of the Guards and Grenadiers, I, II, and III Infantry Corps, and I, II, III, and IV Reserve Cavalry Corps, this army would have comprised over 350,000 men. Its departure would have left Russia practically defenseless in the face of British attack.As the Active Army crossed the border,V Corps was to occupy Poland and IV Corps Lithuania, VI Corps remaining on the Turkish frontier as before.67 This deployment would have left, then, two corps holding Poland and facing Prussia—the one state whose loyalty could not be doubted—and one corps facing Austria and Turkey, with no reserve at all, no significant force on the Black Sea littoral, no significant force on the Baltic littoral north of Riga, and no force whatever (aside from garrisons) defending the capital. Fortunately for Russia nothing ever came of this plan, and Nicholas and his advisors began to concentrate more seriously on the strategic problems posed by the prospect of war with Britain. The debate over the relative superiority of a sea power over a land power has been going on for centuries, but the strategic position of Britain against Russia seems to support the arguments of Mahan very well. Although the Russian Baltic and Black Sea fleets could be bottled up with the greatest of ease at the Danish and Turkish straits respectively, those fleets could not similarly bar those straits against the Royal Navy. If the Turks cooperated with St. Petersburg they could, it is true, keep the Royal Navy out of the Black Sea, but even with the cooperation of the Danes or the Swedes the Russians could not necessarily bar the Kattegat to a Royal Navy that maintained superiority in the North Sea—as the Royal Navy always had.

The Unfinished Reform

227

Once past the straits, an English landing force would have had its choice of tempting targets in the form of cities, fortresses, and harbors all along the Baltic and Black Sea coasts.Those targets, however, although they were many, were widely separated and, because of the shape of the coastlines, not readily mutually supporting. Forces in Finland could not easily transfer to the Baltic provinces (except by sea), while forces in the Crimea would be many days march away from Odessa. Worst of all, if the Turks could not be relied upon to close their straits to the British—which the Russians never trusted them to do—then the Russian army would have had to be divided into two entirely separate forces 800 miles apart, defending between them a sea front longer than Russia’s land border with Europe, which had to be defended as well.The task was monumental, especially when the prospect of a French force accompanying the British fleet was added, greatly increasing the size and striking power of what would otherwise have been a small-scale raid.68 In the first attempts to develop a reasonable response to the possibility of a British attack, the Russians turned to historical precedents: what had the plans been during the Tilsit period, and in 1828? The initial answers were encouraging: Admiral P.V. Chichagov had proposed to defend Russia’s coasts with about 75,000 men in 1810, while plans in 1828 called for only about 32,000 men.69 It was clear at once, however, that those plans could have no bearing at all on the situation in 1833. On the one hand, in 1810 Russia had been allied with France, and, thereby, with the rest of Europe, including Denmark, and had had hopes of contesting the Royal Navy’s passage through the Danish straits.The plans for 1828, on the other hand, suffered from two difficulties: they solved only half of the problem (there was no plan for defending the Black Sea coast), and they included only garrisons for the fortresses.Although First Army was well deployed to provide reserves for the defense of the Baltic, no plans were made to move it closer to the coast or to prepare it for the role of a reactive reserve. Russia needed a new plan better suited to the current strategic situation. A number of new plans were drawn up toward the end of 1833 that assigned the defense of the Baltic littoral to three corps—Guards, Grenadiers, and I Infantry—and the 19th Infantry Division (permanently stationed in Finland). I Infantry Corps deployed one of its three divisions each in the provinces of Courland, Lithuania, and Estonia. The Grenadiers Corps assigned its 3rd Grenadiers Division to the defense of the fortress of Revel’ and its other two divisions to the defense of St. Petersburg, to which the Guards Corps was also assigned.The rest of the Finnish coast was defended by the 19th Infantry Division.70 The Black Sea coast was to be held by VI

228

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Infantry Corps, which was to deploy one division each in Odessa, Sevastopol, and Bessarabia. II Reserve Cavalry Corps was to act as the reserve of the 16th Infantry Division in Odessa.71 In all, then, the defense of Russia’s coasts against possible Anglo-French attack was thought to require four out of the eight infantry corps comprising Russia’s mobile forces, leaving II and III Infantry Corps in Poland,V Infantry Corps on the Austrian frontier, and IV Infantry Corps as a reserve deployed in and around Moscow. The Baltic defenses proposed in this plan might well have been enough to deter an Anglo-French landing, although in fact a multi-corps attack would have had crushing superiority over the local forces it encountered and might well have been able to defeat them and establish a solid beachhead before the Russians could concentrate significant reserves against it. A landing of 150,000 in Estonia, for example, would have encountered initially elements of only 2 divisions (2nd or 3rd Infantry and 3rd Grenadiers). If a landing could be contrived in the eastern part of the province, say near Narva, these forces could be kept divided from the Guards Corps, stationed around St. Petersburg. If secondary landings or feints could keep the two Grenadiers units stationed to the north of the capital pinned there, the landing force would be in an excellent position to threaten the capital, with a numerical advantage of 2 or 3 to 1, with no significant Russian reinforcements in sight for more than a month (it was expected to take 42 days for a force to march from Poland to Revel).72 Such a landing would have required great audacity, skill, and enormous luck, and it probably would not have worked anyway, but, for all that, the Russian defensive plan can hardly be said to have guaranteed the security of the capital. The forces assigned to the Black Sea littoral, moreover, were similarly clearly not up to the task.The position of Sevastopol, for example, which was identified as the most important and most threatened point,73 was extremely poor. Only one infantry division and one cavalry brigade were assigned to defend it. The plan noted that it would have been very helpful to have assigned an additional infantry division “in the nature of a reserve to cover Odessa or Sevastopol as necessary.This measure was recognized as essential in the considerations made in 1833 but was not finally resolved upon because of the extreme difficulties that would beset then the supply of forces in the Novorossiisk area.”74 This statement was prophetic in view of the supply difficulties that would beset a much larger Russian force in the Crimea in 1853. The experience of this planning exercise should have been sobering to Nicholas and to his principal military advisors, for it made it clear that

The Unfinished Reform

229

Russia faced the dilemma of a land power attempting to defend against attack by a strong naval power. Russia, not knowing where an Anglo-French force might land, had to be strong everywhere.Yet the coastlines were so long that the army could deploy half of its mobile forces to coastal defense (thereby immobilizing them) without even achieving a position that would justify confidence in their ability to beat off a landing.Worse still, a landing made in one theater would not release the forces in the other, for the Russians could not know how many landings England and France would attempt. In 1833 Nicholas had all of the information to enable him to foresee the possibility of a Crimean War and to predict the likeliest result of that war.The war planning of that year shows that Nicholas thought that joint Anglo-French naval operations against Russia were not only possible, but probable.Turkey, it is true, was inclined to cooperate with Russia in 1833, but it should not have strained the intellect to imagine that that condition might not persist indefinitely.75 If Russia should become involved in a war with Turkey the experience of 1828–1829 had demonstrated that Austria was likely to mobilize at the first sign that Russia intended to cross the Danube, as it did in 1828. In 1828, however, it had been Austria, not Russia, that had been isolated: even as Austria mobilized against Russia, Prussia prepared to mobilize on Russia’s behalf, France was inclined to support Russia diplomatically, and Britain was in no position to involve itself in military operations due to internal political difficulties. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that Austria stayed its hand, but even so Nicholas did not find it possible to denude his Austrian frontier of troops. But what if Russia was isolated? What if Russia became involved in a conflict with Turkey that Britain chose to take as a casus belli? The Vixen affair of 1838, in which a war scare ensued from the Russian seizure of a British ship engaged in running weapons to the Caucasian mountaineers with whom Russia was at war, seemed to show that a Whig government would tolerate very little.76 What if the Liberal Entente was strong enough to bring France to England’s aid? Unlikely as it now appears that the weak regime of LouisPhilippe would have undertaken any such operation, the matter was by no means as clear to Nicholas, who identified the Orléanist regime with French revolutionism and the power of Napoleon that had been destroyed only 20 years before. Nor were the French themselves innocent of stirring up such fears: in trying to persuade Nicholas not to break off diplomatic relations following the July revolution, the French ambassador in St. Petersburg allowed and encouraged Nicholas to take it for granted that the

230

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

new French “revolutionary” government would have access to all the power of the old. If Russia broke off diplomatic relations with France, he told Nicholas, then France “would be obliged to attack Europe before [a new coalition] was ready.”77 The ascent of the unpredictable Bonaparte to power in 1848 did make France a manifest threat and the likelihood of Anglo-French activities much greater. What if Prussia chose neutrality rather than risk a general European war fought mainly on its soil? The events of 1830–1831 showed that this scenario was also likely, for the Prussian king kept Nicholas’s emissary, Dibich (who had been sent to Berlin to discuss ways of putting down the French revolution) cooling his heels for long enough to make it absolutely plain that he did not intend to allow Nicholas to start a European war. Again, Nicholas should have known that Prussia, following the revolution there in 1848 that greatly weakened the monarchy, would be reluctant to turn an Anglo-Franco-Russian dispute into a general European war. Finally, if Austria adopted the same hostile, armed “neutrality” as she had in 1828–1829, Russia’s isolation would have been complete. Such a situation should not have seemed impossible in 1833, and it was terrifying.The Anglo-French threat would require something like the deployments worked out in 1833. The Austrian threat, and Prussian unwillingness to commit to combating it, would have pinned II and III Corps in Poland in order to protect Poland from Austrian attack and guarantee that the Poles did not rebel again. This would have left two corps, IV Infantry Corps around Moscow and V Infantry Corps on the Austrian and Turkish frontiers, available as reserves or for conducting operations. But what sort of operations could two corps conduct against England, France, and Turkey? Operations across the Danube would have required considerably more force than that, considering the difficulties encountered in 1828 and the need to guard against possible Austrian attack from the rear.The campaign of 1828–1829, furthermore, absolutely required Russian mastery of the Black Sea for such meager success as it attained, yet the involvement of Britain as a belligerent would have given Turkey and the Western powers the mastery.78 But if Russia could not, therefore, attack Turkey, she could not harm Britain and France in any way. Even if Russia could have enticed Prussia to fight beside her, she would not have the forces required to invade metropolitan France while simultaneously defending her coasts from English and Turkish attack. All of the above discussion assumes that the forces detailed to defending the coast, especially the Black Sea coast, would have been sufficient.As we have already seen, however, they almost certainly would not have been.

The Unfinished Reform

231

In reality, IV and V Infantry Corps would probably have been assigned either as defenders or as tactical reserves to one or both of the coasts, and Russia would have been left with no disposable forces at all. In such a situation, Russia’s manpower policy problem was likely to be fatal. The 230,000 men that the Secret Committee of 1831 imagined Nicholas could call up in extreme necessity might have secured Russia’s defenses, but, as they were mostly completely untrained, leavened but weakly with veterans, and suffering from a severe lack of officers and NCOs, this force was thought of only as a reserve pool—it would not have made Russian offensive operations possible. Russian operations against a “Crimean coalition,” therefore, would have to be completely defensive.The plans of 1833 make no reference whatsoever to offensive operations and, therefore, suggest no means for winning the war. Russia could only achieve victory in such a circumstance by showing the greater endurance, and by conducting so skillful a defense that the attackers lost their will to fight without ever having their homelands or vital interests threatened. Had Russia been a wealthy country with large reserves of manpower, the superior determination and stability of an autocracy as opposed to parliamentary and constitutional monarchies might have given her the advantage.As it was, Russia’s army, too heavy a burden on the economy in peacetime, became an intolerable weight in war. As for Russia’s manpower reserves, the experience of 1831 showed how quickly they might be exhausted. If Nicholas had five million potential soldiers available to him, as Chernyshev calculated, the mobilization of any large percentage of them would have practically precluded a long war of endurance. The withdrawal of so large a percentage of the producers of tax revenues, combined with the complete or almost complete elimination of customs and other trade revenues, and with the vast increase in state expenditures on the war, as well as with the closing off of most of the markets in which Russia floated foreign loans, would quickly have emptied the treasury. The Crimean War was a war the Russians were almost certain to lose.

Nicholas’s Response Nicholas’s response to the dangers he was shown in 1830–1833 was inadequate and hampered by the social and financial realities of Russia, as well as by the extremely poor manpower policy he had inherited from his elder brother. Alexander had not, of course, realized that his strategic situation required a larger army even than he proposed to maintain after 1815;79 he

232

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

had fixated instead on the financial damage that the maintenance of that army did to the economy. His attempt to solve that problem had been to establish the military colonies and to keep the army understrength—both of which solutions aimed not only at cutting costs, but at eliminating the necessity for regular drafts.80 Ten years of such a policy, followed by six years of war, had left Russia’s army badly understrength and its manpower resources still exhausted. Nicholas answered this situation by reestablishing regular drafts on the basis of totally reworked and much more sophisticated laws of military service, by attempting to expand the manpower pool of the army by drafting Jews and elements of Russia’s clerical society, and by attempting to create something of a reserve pool with the establishment of the system of indefinite furloughs. The Regulation on Recruitment of 183181 brought some measure of order to the chaos of military manpower policy. It did not make any radical changes in the system of the recruitment or in the manpower base of the army (merchants were still exempted from the draft on payment of a given sum, for example) but sought to make what minor improvements were possible while rationalizing the entire process. The recruitment process in 1830 was still defined by the General Regulation on Recruitment of 1766, various portions of which had been modified by additional regulations.82 The committee established to develop the new statute found that the age of this original regulation was one of the “reasons of disorder and causes of abuses” of the recruitment system.83 The manpower crisis was one of the principle driving forces behind the determination to put an end to those disorders and abuses. The Regulation on Recruitment of 1831 aimed not only to rationalize the system, but to establish means “for maintaining the health of recruits both while traveling from their induction centers and during their initial training.”84 These measures were successful: from 1825 to 1835, of 795,738 recruits inducted into the army, 1,647 (1 in 483 or 0.2 percent) died before reaching their units and 6,130 (1 in 130 or 0.8 percent) deserted; from 1836 to 1850, of 1,176,454 recruits inducted, 677 (1 in 1,737 or 0.06 percent) died and 1,411 (1 in 833 or 0.1 percent) deserted.85 That is an improvement of 70 percent in deaths and 87.5 percent in desertions. Over the entire 25year period, however, fewer than 10,000 recruits of almost 2 million inducted died or deserted,86 so even if the regulations had saved every one for the army, it would not have materially affected the manpower problem. The same difficulty afflicted Nicholas’s attempts to broaden the state’s manpower base by recruiting Jews (from 1827), Poles (from 1834), and cer-

The Unfinished Reform

233

tain Cossacks (from 1834).87 From 1825 to 1850, recruitment of Poles, Cossacks, formerly exempted classes in the western provinces, and certain military colonies yielded only 188,335 soldiers, or 9.5 percent of the total recruited in those years.88 The vast majority of the inhabitants of the Russian empire under Nicholas were Russian, so that as long as peasants were the only Russian inhabitants who served, there was no real way to increase the manpower pool available to the army. Only the development of a cadre-and-reserve system, such as the Prussians had, had any prospect for increasing the size of the army, but this prospect was closed off as long as the system of serfdom remained entrenched in Russian life. Since a serf army was the only force that kept order in the countryside, it was unthinkable that serfs could be drafted, trained in war, and then released back to their villages, still as serfs, after a few years. The introduction of a cadre-and-reserve system in such circumstances could only have led either to serf rebellion or to gradual emancipation. Nicholas did his best to circumvent that restriction, however, through the system of indefinite furloughs. A law of 183489 established that all soldiers of the reserve battalions of the 6 infantry corps who had served without demerit for 20 years (of their 25-year terms) would henceforth be released to their homes.These soldiers were then liable to be recalled to the colors and to serve again until their 25-year terms had been completed. This measure should not be judged by its failure during the Crimean War. Although it was obviously inadequate to correct the difficulties of Russia’s manpower situation in the worst case—war with England, France, and possibly Turkey—it was an appropriate response to the situation of 1831, when an additional 150,000 men would have been invaluable. Between 1833 and 1848, 256,499 soldiers were released on indefinite furlough.90 Chernyshev asserted that this system “made it possible, during disorders arising in Western Europe [in 1848], to create, one might say, momentarily a 150,000 [strong] western army in full strength and complete order.”91 The creation of that army (necessary for the suppression of the Hungarian uprising) was made possible by the recall of 165,187 soldiers from indefinite furloughs, of whom 67,344 went to fill vacancies in understrength units of the active army, while the rest formed reserve units.92 The value that such an influx of trained reserves would have had in 1831 cannot be overstated. Even in 1848, as Chernyshev found, it greatly eased the task of making forces available to aid the Austrian crown. Only in the face of the cataclysm that struck in 1853 did the system “fail,” and then only because the 200,000-odd soldiers on indefinite furlough were

234

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

well below what was necessary.93 The determination of the success or failure of all of the measures taken to improve the manpower situation under Nicholas depends entirely on whether they are evaluated against the conditions in which they were established, or against those of 1853.The addition of the 10,000 recruits saved by the new Regulation on Recruitment or of 100,000 Poles to the army in 1831 would have had enormous benefits, but they were totally inadequate to the strategic problem of 1853. Nicholas and Chernyshev, one must conclude, solved the problem they set out to solve—unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the problem they most needed to solve.

Conclusion It remains to ask whether Nicholas should have set out to solve the problem of the Crimean Coalition, and, if so, whether he could have solved it.94 The conditions that might lead to a war between Russia and some form of “Crimean coalition” were visible from 1831 on, but Nicholas does not appear to have seen them. It is easy to say with historical hindsight that he should have, but even if he had, the question remains if he should have guided his entire policy, domestic, military, and foreign, so as to avert what was always, after all, only a possibility, however catastrophic it was likely to be. It may be that some combination of diplomatic maneuvers could have avoided the situation, but it is difficult to imagine what they might have been. It is impossible to imagine that any combination of diplomatic or military activities could have significantly altered the horrible strategic dilemma that Russia faced in fighting the Crimean coalition. The only possible solution Nicholas might have found, then, was in the realm of military policy: expand the state’s manpower base and find a way to maintain a vast army without bankrupting the state. That solution, however, was possibly even more elusive than the other two. From the time of the Napoleonic wars, Russia’s army had cost more than the state could afford to pay. By 1830, this excessively expensive army had been revealed as clearly too small to deal with strategic situations that were by no means unthinkable or necessarily avoidable. The transition to a cadre-and-reserve army, with a peacetime complement of about 400,000 and a mobilized strength of, say, 1,600,000 (a multiplier slightly higher than that which the Prussian system used) might have solved the problem. Or it might not have solved the problem at all, for Russia was not Prussia. In 1830 Russia had no railways to speak of; by 1850 it was the worst-

The Unfinished Reform

235

off major power as regards rail transport, especially considering the relative sizes of European countries and their rail-nets. But much of Russia’s population, as we have seen, was located far from the borders. Without railways, Russia would have to reckon on four to six months for a mobilization of any size. She would then have to face the problem of paying for so vast an army for the duration of the crisis—yet it was the impossibility of paying for an even smaller army that led to the need to introduce a cadre-and-reserve system in the first place. But the discussion of the relative merits or demerits of the adoption of a cadre-and-reserve army in the 1830s is moot, because it was impossible. It has been argued by historians as well as by contemporaries that no such system can exist in a serf society, and the arguments seem irrefutable.95 Yet it does not seem likely that Nicholas could have emancipated the serfs during his reign—at least not without enormous resistance leading to events which Nicholas’s advisors might have to describe with that horrid word: “disorders.” When his son undertook the reform project that Catherine II,Alexander I, and Nicholas had all dreamed of, he had an advantage that none of them had had: Russia had just lost a major war irretrievably.96 It was easy, therefore, for Alexander II to argue that the old system had been discredited and that emancipation was a matter of vital national security. Nicholas, however, could make no such claims. In the first place, in the first six years of his reign his armies had smashed Persia, pushed Turkey to the brink of collapse, and crushed utterly a serious rebellion in Poland. Who would believe that the situation was other than glorious? As the Secret Committee of 1831 pointed out, the people believed in realities, not predictions. But there was an even better reason why Nicholas could not have argued for emancipation on national security grounds: it would have been an admission of weakness. It is clear from his actions and from discussions in the committees of the 1830s that Nicholas knew Russia was weak.Yet he encouraged Russians and the world to believe that Russia was at the height of her strength. This was a sound policy in that it prevented foreigners from intervening in two Polish uprisings and kept English support of Caucasian rebels to a clandestine minimum. But it absolutely prevented Nicholas from calling on landlords to support emancipation on the grounds that the state was in danger, for such a call might have put the state in real danger indeed, and not just from disgruntled landlords. But of all of the problems that would have beset Nicholas’s attempt to solve the manpower problem, the worst was that emancipation would not

236

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

have been enough. The core of Russia’s problem was that the population of serfs—or of freed peasants after emancipation—was not large enough to support an army of the size required by Russia’s strategic situation.The real solution to the problem lay in expanding the manpower base of the army by making more elements of society subject to recruitment. But it is impossible to imagine that Nicholas, if he had somehow managed to emancipate the serfs, could then have expanded the recruitment obligation without creating serious disturbances throughout the land. Even after the Crimean War had been lost, 13 years intervened between emancipation and the development of universal military service—and that came about only after the Franco-Prussian War showed Russians and the rest of the world that it was indeed a matter of vital national security. If Nicholas had proposed such a thing in the 1830s, his countrymen would have surmised that he was out of his mind. Russia under Nicholas faced a very difficult challenge in almost every area of state activity. Its relative poverty and geographical-strategic circumstances combined with its social structure to create a vicious cycle whereby every recruit taken into the army pushed the state that much closer to fiscal collapse. Nicholas could not see his way to a solution to this problem, probably because no solution existed. He did not simply wish the problem away, however, as Alexander had done in the decade after the Vienna settlement. Instead, Nicholas implemented a series of conservative reforms in the area of manpower policy at the same time as he was implementing similar reforms in the area of military administration. In both cases the reforms accomplished the goals Nicholas had set for them. In both cases those goals turned out to be insufficient to solve the problems facing Russia. In both cases it is very difficult to imagine what Nicholas could have done differently that would have corrected in 20 years a situation that had been developing for 200. Russia was and is a poor state both in wealth and population compared to its size and strategic circumstances. Nicholas saw his state smashed to bits by contradictions he had not created and could not have solved. It is time to recognize the tragedy of the reign of Nicholas I.

Conclusion

The reign of Nicholas I was rich in important developments in Russian military policy, some of which, such as the predominant position the War Ministry attained as a result of the administrative reforms, would endure for decades after Nicholas’s death.Yet history has long portrayed this period as a dark age of the Russian army and of the Russian state. Official nationality,1 the expansion of censorship, the creation of the “secret police,” and the suppression of liberalism and revolution at home and abroad are the policies for which his reign is known. Of the army it is generally said that the “parade-ground atmosphere” and “devotion to mindless drill” robbed what had been a fine army of its fighting skills and reduced it to a shell fit only for passing in review. The army’s inability to defend the Crimean peninsula in 1853–1855 is taken to be an indictment of Russia’s entire military policy for the previous quarter-century. It is not surprising that this should be so. In the first place, the sources for this period that are most plentiful and accessible readily give the impression that Nicholas’s reign revolved around repression and fanfare and reflected the fact that the autocrat was a world-class martinet. N. V. Gogol’s stories lampooning Nicholaevan bureaucrats, radicals’ bitter attacks on the mindless cruelty of Nicholas’s repression, the oft-repeated charges of Slavophiles from that period and later that Nicholas’s regime was controlled by “Germans” who acted against Russia’s true interests—all these sources overwhelm the student of the 1830s and 1840s with a feeling of the unpleasantness and ruthlessness of the tsar and his court. Nor do Nicholas’s principal servants at first glance inspire confidence in Nicholas as a judge of men: Benkendorff and Chernyshev, on the one hand, were, from appearances at least, nothing more than consummate courtiers who held no views of their own, seeking only to divine the Tsar’s whim that they might serve it blindly; on the other hand, servants such as S. S. Uvarov, the author of the policy of Official Nationality, seem almost wicked in their desire to push Nicholas even further in the direction of

238

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

chauvinism and repression; “good” men, such as Kiselev, who sought to ameliorate the lot of the state peasants, seem to have been isolated and almost totally ineffective. All of these appearances are true—and yet they are only part of the story. Nicholas’s regime was repressive, sometimes needlessly so (as in the case of the persecution of the Petrashevsky circle, which was certainly more foolish than dangerous).The Crimean War was an indictment of the Russian state and army. Nicholas’s advisors were not world-conquerors and were cowed both by their natures and by the indomitable will of the master they sought to serve. The Russian bureaucracy was not efficient, and much of it was both ridiculous and outrageous, especially in the provincial administration, which Gogol’ lampooned so effectively in The InspectorGeneral. Nicholas himself was a conservative—although he was not a reactionary—and saw liberalism and revolution as being closely allied and enemies of the stability of his realm.2 Even so, Nicholas was a conservative reformer who was willing to undertake significant change to perfect the existing order of things. His advisors, especially Chernyshev, proved that sycophancy does not necessarily prevent a man from carrying through important initiatives. As for the Crimean War, Official Nationality, and the threat to Russia from liberalism, these are all matters about which the truth is much more complicated than it has hitherto seemed. The present work has not explored and cannot fully illuminate those truths but must serve, rather, as an introduction to a review of Nicholas’s reign from a new viewpoint. History is about the actions and choices of individuals, especially those who hold positions of power and responsibility in their states. The causes of these individuals’ actions and choices can only be understood from the viewpoints of the decision-makers themselves.Yet few historians of Russia have approached their subject from that viewpoint.Thus one historian of Nicholas’s reign has written: The 1830s and much of the 1840s comprised what might be called the apogee of autocracy in Russia and marked an era of stability and peace at home and abroad. From 1831 until 1849, Russians faced no major wars and, apart from annual campaigns against the natives of the Caucasus, the Empire was at peace.The turmoil of the Napoleonic era and the unsettled years of the Holy Alliance were past. For the moment, Russia’s conflicts with the Ottoman Empire were settled, and the difficulties brought on by the creation of the Polish Kingdom in 1815 were being resolved by prince Paskevich’s firm policies as viceroy in Warsaw. Something resembling a ‘Pax

Conclusion

239

Nicholeana’ had descended upon Russia and upon Central and Eastern Europe. Russia had embarked upon a period of economic progress and domestic tranquillity.3

This description is of a Russia seen from the outside, but it does not tally with what the Russian government saw from the inside. Russia fought no major wars between 1831 and 1849, to be sure, but that is not to say that it faced no major wars in that period.As we have seen, Nicholas spent most of the 1830s all but convinced that he would have to fight a world-shaking war with Great Britain, and he did not even start planning for what was sure to be a cataclysm until after 1831—the year of the advent of the “Pax Nicholeana.” Nor was the economic progress of the country anything to encourage a feeling of security in Nicholas. As the 1830s wore on, Finance Minister Kankrin’s demands for further reductions in military expenditures grew ever more shrill. Nicholas knew that those reductions were eating into the effectiveness of the army. The disasters and near-disasters of 1831 had shown him that, whatever progress Russia might be making, it still remained precariously close to catastrophe. Russia’s conflicts with the Ottoman Empire had been settled, for the moment, but that fact by no means simplified the enormous complexities of Nicholas’s policies toward Turkey—policies that brought Russian forces to the Bosphorus in 1833 and almost did so again in 1839 even as England threatened war. Paskevich, the Viceroy of Poland, on the other hand, may have been pacifying Poland and energetically staving off the threat of further rebellion, but he was “resolving” no “difficulties” there. In a moment of despair during the worst part of the campaign of 1831 Nicholas had drafted his own evaluation of Poland’s position in the Russian Empire in attempting to decide what to do with Poland after he had suppressed the rebellion. He wrote, Russia is a strong and fortunate power by herself; she ought not to be menacing for other powers that are her neighbors, or for Europe. But she must have an imposing, defensive position such as to render all aggression impossible. In glancing at the map, one is horrified to see that the frontier of the Polish territory reaches almost to the Oder even as the flanks are withdrawn behind the Niemen and the Bug to reach toward the Baltic near Polangen and toward the Black Sea near the mouths of the Danube.This point contains an army for maintaining it in submission. This country returns nothing to the Empire. It cannot, on the contrary, exist except through the continual sacrifices that the Empire must make for it so that it can suffice

240

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

for the needs of its administration. It is therefore clear that the advantages of this inconvenient possession are none, while the inconveniences are serious, even menacing. It remains to decide how to remedy this situation? I can not see but a single means, this one. To declare that Russian honor has been amply satisfied by the conquest of the realm, but that Russia has no interest in possessing a province of which the ingratitude has been so flagrant; that [Russia’s] true interests require it to fix its frontiers at the Vistula and toward the Narew, that it abandons the rest as unworthy of belonging to it, leaving to its allies the concern of making use of it as they would. . . . 4

Many of Nicholas’s complaints against the inconvenience of holding Poland were correct. It pinned two infantry corps—one-quarter of Russia’s active forces—in garrisoning it and keeping it peaceful, even at times when relations with Austria and Prussia would have released those corps to more important activities. When relations with Austria deteriorated, Poland became a ready target whereby Austria could threaten to retaliate for Russia’s activities in the Balkans or elsewhere. Paskevich could not “resolve” these “difficulties” either—they remained, together with Turkey’s instability and the complex policy that it forced on Nicholas and with Russia’s own vastly complicated economic situation. These problems all faded to the background of public knowledge in the 1830s and 1840s, but they did not fade away from the minds of the policy makers and policy executors of the Russian government. Nicholas’s charge to the Secret Committee of 1831 reveals another reason why it has been difficult to evaluate the history of his reign from the standpoint of Nicholas and his advisors—calculated official secrecy was designed to support the belief that the state of affairs in Russia described in the excerpt above was the true state of affairs, that Russia was strong, stable, peaceful, and ready to destroy utterly any attack upon it.The habit of secrecy was a veritable fetish with Nicholas and Chernyshev. Few sources make less interesting reading than the letters and documents of Chernyshev reproduced in the volumes of SIRIO, and Nicholas was not fully candid even when writing to Constantine.The heart of the policy process, which, as we have seen, was much more complicated than the ordinary view of Nicholas the autocrat would make credible, is visible only from the day-to-day documents preserved in Russian archives. Only with the aid of those materials is it possible to see beyond the façade created both by accidents of history and historiography and by the conscious policy of Nicholas and his ministers. When that façade has been penetrated, the truth emerges that Russia under Nicholas was in a state of extreme tension. Strategically it suffered

Conclusion

241

from “involuntary overstretch,” that is, a strategic environment that had not been created by any conscious policy and that was changing in ways over which Russia had no control created military requirements far in excess of what Russia could support.The concept of “imperial overstretch” that has been developed to describe England in this period (and other states in other periods) fits Russia perhaps best of all, when suitably modified.5 One can argue that Britain could have withdrawn at almost any point from many of the imperial obligations that weighed it down (except India and a few other vital strongholds), whereas Russia had little option in the matter aside from Nicholas’s raving about giving up Poland. On the other hand, the wealth of England and the poverty of Russia were such, especially as compared with their relative military (and imperial) requirements, that although it is arguable whether or not England’s “overstretch” seriously damaged the English economy at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, it is absolutely beyond question that Russia’s enormous expenditures both in money and in manpower did great damage to her ability to develop economically.The drain of healthy young men from the farms to the army, which Britain did not have to suffer because of the advantages of being a naval power, created, as we have seen, a vicious cycle whereby the loss of fieldhands reduced the peasants’ ability to produce wheat for export, thereby reducing export dues, which were important to the treasury, and even interfered with the peasants’ ability to pay their own taxes, an even more important component of the income that was vital to maintaining the peasants taken away to be soldiers. That Nicholas had not been able to resolve the financial-strategic tension was evident from the fact that financial considerations were an important element of the decision to accept Austria’s ultimatum in 1856 and thereby accept defeat in the Crimean War. At a council called to consider the ultimatum in January 1856, one advisor held that “soon the war would cause national bankruptcy, because of a huge debt, a deficit in production and income, and the drain of much manpower into the army.”6 The role of finance in the decision to accept defeat also raises questions about the true nature of that defeat—was it really the fault of the army? Although it is not possible in the present work to answer that question, it seems arguable that the Russian army actually performed better in the Crimea than it could have been expected to, and that the defeat resulted less from failures in the army than from the foreign political-economic circumstances in which the war was fought. In considering whether or not to continue fighting after 1855, Minister for State Properties Kiselev argued,

242

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Our situation is extremely difficult. In history there has never yet been such an example of the union of two naval powers, destroying in concert the actions of our fleet. Four allied powers, with 108 million people and 3 billions in income stand against Russia, which has 65 million people and barely 1 billion in income. In such a situation, without help from the outside, without any likelihood of alliance with anyone, wanting in the means for continuing the war and having in mind that even the neutral states are inclining to the side of our adversaries, it would be, to say the least, unwise to risk a new campaign. . . . 7

In other words, Kiselev argued that the strategic situation was Russia’s bane in 1856. This argument is not surprising in light of the fact that Nicholas had almost faced such an impossible situation in the 1830s, and that it had been equally clear then that Russia had but the most forlorn hope of emerging victorious from such a contest.What is surprising is the contrast between how the Russian army could have been expected to perform in 1833 and how it actually did perform in 1853. In 1833, as we have seen, Nicholas could not hope to have more than 1.2 million men or so under arms under any circumstances—and even this figure might be rendered impossible by circumstances out of his control, as it had been in 1831. By 1856 the Russian army had 1,774,297 men in regular units and 2,561,494 soldiers overall counting irregular forces and militia units.8 That is to say, the army of 1856 was more than twice as large as Nicholas’s advisors had reckoned possible in 1833.9 Russia’s population, especially the serf population from which the army was still drawn, had not doubled over that period (there were about 18 million male serfs eligible for service in 1831 and about 25 million in 185610—an increase of about 40 percent). Plans for war with England in the 1830s had not admitted the possibility of deploying more than one and a half divisions in the Crimea—about 15,000 men. By 1856 the Russian army in the Crimea numbered over 320,000 men. Taken together with the forces in Bessarabia and along the Black Sea littoral, over 440,600 men were deployed where Nicholas had thought he could not send more than 40,000 in 1831 because of the impossibility of supplying them.11 The fact that the Russian army found it possible to call up and send to the field so many soldiers, and that it found itself able to supply 10 times as many troops in the critical theater of war as it had hoped to be able to supply in 1831, shows that the administrative reforms of the 1830s had accomplished a great deal.The task of maintaining an active army one-ninth the size of that of 1853 had overwhelmed

Conclusion

243

the administration of 1828; its performance in 1831 had been little better. But the monumental task of maintaining a force of more than two and a half million men—a force more than half the size of the fully mobilized strength of France in 1914—did not overwhelm the administration of 1856.That is not to say that there were no difficulties and major failures— it is only to say that the Crimean War was not lost because of administrative failure. The causes of the Crimean defeat are too complicated to discuss here, but it is worth pointing out that the 320,000-odd men in the Crimea represented less than one-quarter of Russia’s mobile forces.That fact was due only in part to the difficulties of maintaining a large force in that region— it was mostly due to the same nightmarish strategic situation that had almost defeated the armies of 1828 and 1831, and at which Nicholas had stared down the barrel throughout the 1830s. In the spring of 1855, of the 1.2 million forces deployed in the field, 260,000 guarded the Baltic Coast, 293,000 held Poland and Western Ukraine (Podol’skaia, Volynskaia, Kievskaia, and Poltavskaia provinces), 121,000 were stationed in Bessarabia and along the Black Sea coast, and 183,000 fought both the Turks and the Caucasian mountaineers in the Caucasus region.12 More than 860,000 soldiers—a force about the size of the entire peacetime army— were needed, then, to guard the rest of the empire from France, England, and Austria because of Russia’s exposed geographical position and its vulnerability to a strong naval power. Even so cursory an examination of the Crimean War as has been possible here brings sharply into question the notion that the defeat of 1856 “discredited” Nicholas’s army and military system, as is almost universally alleged. That there were defects in the army there can be no doubt. That there were important failures at all levels of the army and of the administration is sure. It is even possible to imagine that a superb Russian army might have beaten off the attack against Sevastopol and, in the process of that defense, might have inflicted sufficient damage on the Anglo-French forces to drive them to sue for peace. Such a situation seems unlikely, however, considering that the strategic situation guaranteed that there would be weak points in Russia’s defenses and that the Anglo-French forces could and would take advantage of them, and that Russia had no way of striking back at England and France to bring the war home to them. The defects in the army and the administration seem to be less important than Russia’s very bad strategic situation.13 The deployment of two and a half million men, in fact, may have been one of the most impressive achievements of Russian arms in the nineteenth century.

244

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

The notion that the Crimean War discredited Nicholas’s military policy has encouraged the view that the reforms of the 1860s–1870s represented a sharp break with that policy under War Minister D. A. Miliutin’s guiding genius. Such a view misses the important continuities of military policy from Nicholas’s time to the end of Alexander II’s reign and has helped to hide the real achievements of Nicholas’s reign. In the first place, military leaders in the 1850s faced the same problems that had plagued Nicholas and Chernyshev throughout the 1830s and 1840s, especially with regard to manpower. In the second place, the solutions they advocated were in the first instance simply logical extensions of solutions adopted by Nicholas. An evaluation of Russia’s problems written in 1859 by General P. K. Men’kov, an officer of the General Staff who had served extensively in the Crimean War,14 resonated strongly with Chernyshev’s evaluation of the manpower situation of 1835. Men’kov wrote, There is no doubt that not a single State of Europe, as relates to the size of its armed forces, finds itself in such circumstances as does Russia. The enormous expanse of the Empire, the extent of its borders, and the necessity to have significant strengths of active forces constantly in the western border belt and in the Caucasus requires Russia to maintain armed forces of a size significantly greater than the armed forces of other states of Europe. In the meantime, in our time, we feel it urgently necessary to adopt such a system of organization of forces as would harmonize military demands with economic ones and would make it possible to reduce the number of troops in peacetime, [while] having a strong, well-organized, army terrible to the enemy in the event of war. In Russia . . . the system of organizing troops and the means of filling their ranks, in the course of a century and a half [has not changed] in its essentials and remains so even today. All of the weight of liability for the draft now, as before, lies not on the entire population, but only on the [serf] class, comprising a little more than one-third of the overall mass of the population of the State (less than 25 million revised souls).15

Men’kov proposed two measures to correct this situation: expand the manpower base of the army by requiring merchants to serve instead of purchasing exemptions, and reduce the term of service at the least to 15 years, of which the recruit would serve 10 with the colors and 5 in the reserve on indefinite furlough.These suggestions, written even as the committees labored to work out the details of emancipation, comprised the measures Chernyshev himself would probably have suggested in 1835, but

Conclusion

245

could only allude to as possibilities for the future—a future in which emancipation was a reality. It was Miliutin, of course, and not Men’kov who carried out the reforms of the 1860s and 1870s, but even Miliutin’s proposals, which he started to work out as early as 1856, took the manpower problem as their starting point. Pointing out that serfdom rendered significant changes in manpower policy impossible16 (well in advance of any definite public indication on Alexander’s part that he was willing to consider such a thing), Miliutin identified as one of the principal faults of the Russian military system the fact that our army in the event of war cannot grow by any significant degree at all as against its normal peacetime strength. The constant maintenance of enormous forces on the western border and in the Caucasus is extremely burdensome for the state and in the event of war the formation of reserve and second reserve (zapasnyi) units from indefinitely furloughed soldiers encounters many difficulties because of the insufficiency of cadres, and especially [cadres] of commanders and officers. The experience of the last war showed clearly this side of our system. The number of indefinitely furloughed soldiers turned out to be insufficient according to the measure of those forces that were needed to cover the inordinate expanse of border from Torneo to Ararat. It was necessary to have recourse in the course of two years to several extraordinary and forced drafts, and to calling up a militia; but such measures are extraordinarily burdensome for the state, exhausting the very source of future replenishment of the army; the militia, since it was not formed successfully, did not hasten to its duties in a timely fashion and because of its composition could not be used on an equal footing with regular troops. The training of newly inducted recruits and recruits in the militia also met with extreme difficulties because of the inadequate number of cadres, of officers, and of the material means necessary for this.17

None of the defects in the organization of the old army that Miliutin found would have been news to Chernyshev and Nicholas, nor does Miliutin ever imply that the previous administration was in any way to blame for the sorry state of affairs of the army in 1856—such an implication would have been foolish in light of the fact that Miliutin himself did not believe that the problems could be solved without emancipating the serfs. That the army was burdensome to the state Nicholas knew very well— the system of indefinite furloughs had been but one of many attempts to alleviate that burden. But the administration was also aware that there were

246

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

serious faults in the system of indefinite furloughs itself, beyond its obvious numerical inadequacy—a function, once again, of the system of serfdom. Nicholas had acknowledged in 1831 that finding officers, NCOs, and experienced cadres for the “temporary force” would be a problem. He found partial solutions (assigning Guards reservists as NCOs, calling up retired officers, and so forth), and he tasked the Secret Committee of 1831 with seeking others, but no good ideas were forthcoming. This problem was made even worse in 1833 by the reorganization of the army infantry, which increased unit sizes so as to reduce the number of officers carried on the rolls of the army.The reform aimed to use the savings made possible by reducing the number of officers to increase the salaries of the remaining officers—a measure felt to be essential because officers were no longer able to live on their salaries. As a result the number of generals serving with the active forces fell by 42 percent and the number of staff officers by 22 percent while the number of NCOs and enlisted men increased by 10 percent each.18 The effect on the ability of the army to mobilize new units, however, was negative, for the number of NCOs was (theoretically) held at precisely what was necessary to man all of the units and no more, while the number of senior officers, who would be needed to command newly formed divisions and their staffs, was cut sharply.The mobilization of an auxiliary corps to assist in crushing the Hungarian revolution of 1849 revealed these problems sharply, especially the lack of experienced NCOs to assist in turning recruits into soldiers. A number of solutions were suggested, usually foundering on monetary concerns.19 This problem, like the ones Miliutin and Men’kov pointed out, did not admit of easy solutions.The lack of NCOs and officers could only be made good by carrying sufficient numbers of supernumeraries in both categories to form the necessary cadre units to train new recruits and then to lead the new units. Since salaries for officers and NCOs comprised a significant portion of the army budget, such a project called for large increases in the military estimates—increases that were simply not compatible with Nicholas’s attempts to reestablish the economy on a firm footing. Inadequacies in the supply of weapons and war materiel essential to the training of the new recruits was also not a new problem—Chernyshev reported to the Secret Committee of 1831 that although the temporary force could be ready within four months, the administration required six months to produce its equipment.The decision not to call up the temporary armament just then was accompanied by a decision to order the administration to produce the necessary equipment—a measure that was not feasible in 1849 and 1853 when the crises took place, in fact, on schedule.

Conclusion

247

If the criticisms that Miliutin and Men’kov made of Nicholas’s army did not amount to a repudiation of it, their suggestions also did not amount to a revolution in Russian military and military-administrative thought. The two most important aspects of the reforms of the 1860s–1870s, the introduction of the military districts system and the creation of a mass cadre-and-reserve army, both had important antecedents in Nicholas’s time.The creation of the system of indefinite furloughs in 1834 was a step toward the development of a cadre-and-reserve army. The experience with the problems of such an army in the period 1833–1856, even on the small scale possible before the emancipation, was invaluable to the further development of the cadre-and-reserve principle. If the development of the Prussian reserve system during and after the Napoleonic wars is to be seen as the precursor of the mass army with which Prussia unified Germany—as it is and should be seen—then the indefinite furlough system is even more pertinent to the development of the mass army in Russia. The most important aspect of such a system is not the size of the reserve, but the process of learning how best to organize the system: how to create and maintain cadres, how to keep track of reservists, how to call them up and get them to their initial concentration points, how to train them quickly and get them to the theater of war, what reservists can be used for and what they cannot be used for. These questions are as important for a reserve of 200,000 as they are for one of 2 million, although they are, of course, easier to solve for a smaller reserve. The Russian army first realized that there were such problems and first began to cope with them under Nicholas, and those lessons remained important in the later period.20 The institution of military districts was even more firmly rooted in Nicholaevan tradition. The essential prerequisite for the development of military districts was the complete domination of the War Ministry over the commanders, for the military districts, which were directly subordinate to the war minister, displaced not only army, but corps commanders as well. Miliutin argued that since no army, and hardly any corps, had fought in the Crimean War with the organization or commander it had had before the war, there was no point in maintaining such units in peacetime, as they were clearly not effective in making the transition from peace to war.21 The creation of military districts, whose primary concern was precisely with the transition from peace to war, Miliutin argued, would not only improve upon the useless corps and army groupings but would also ease the burden of the army on the state. The military districts, spread

248

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

throughout the entire country, would distribute the weight of the army more evenly and would not overburden the western provinces, which were less able to maintain the army at any rate. Miliutin, of course, took for granted the essential precondition that the War Ministry had to hold a dominating position over the commanders, which it did in 1856.That position, however, so important for the success of Miliutin’s reforms, was only possible because of the administrative reforms of the 1830s. The Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty had dominated both the army and the military administration before 1832 and had had effective direct control over the army and corps commanders. The two Chiefs of the Main Staff,Volkonskii and Dibich, had come from the army and behaved like commanders.With Dibich’s death the position would have devolved on Paskevich. With Paskevich’s passing it would probably have passed to the leading (or favorite) general of the Crimean War. In any event, the position would have been greatly solidified in its power and stability—it is likely, in fact, that it would have absorbed the crippled War Ministry altogether, and it is possible that it would have developed along the organizational (although not professional) path of the German General Staff. In no event is it likely that Miliutin could have proposed abolishing corps and armies and the command and staff positions that went with them if the Main Staff had predominated.That reform was entirely dependent upon the destruction of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty—upon Chernyshev’s reform. The ultimate origins of the concept of military districts remain a mystery, but it is clear that the strongest single impetus that impressed the notion on Miliutin and recommended it to Alexander II was the success that the Independent Caucasus Corps had attained both as a fighting force and in the task of pacifying the captured territory. But the Independent Caucasus Corps did not come into being in a vacuum—on the contrary, it developed in an environment, created by Nicholas, Chernyshev, and the reforms and projects of the 1830s, which was specifically favorable to the elements of the organization of the corps most important to the concept of military districts: the symbiosis between military and civil organization and infrastructure, and the concept of decentralization to local territorial commands. Critical to both elements is an awareness on the part of the overall commander (War Minister or Chief of the Main Staff) that the army is an integral part of the economy and the society and that considerations of the army’s impact on the economy and the society must weigh heavily in developing military policy. Neither Volkonskii nor Dibich showed signs of

Conclusion

249

any such awareness, nor was it likely that any chief of the Main Staff would do so, for the Main Staff had been carefully divorced from economic and social matters, and its leaders were eager to maintain their distance from such considerations, as we have seen. Chernyshev, however, had a keen understanding of the difficult social problems that the large size and small manpower base of Russia’s army created, and he showed that he understood the importance of assisting in the state’s economic policy by reducing the military budget as much as possible, by forcing cuts on the bureaucracy that previous ministers had refused, and by creating an environment in which Pozen could suggest (and have the suggestion approved by the Military Council) that the social and economic objectives of the War Ministry were as important as the task of keeping the army ready for war. The decentralization of authority that the military districts required was also a component part of the atmosphere of the War Ministry under Chernyshev, for the 1830s saw the expansion of the rights and staffs of the existing territorial military organizations (the Orenburg, Siberian, and Caucasus Independent Corps), based on the model of the commander in chief of an Independent Corps (modeled in turn on the rights of the CINC of a Large Active Army).22 The commanders of those corps grew ever more involved in the administration of the civilian areas in which the troops were stationed, and in this respect the Caucasus Corps, which was the birthplace of Miliutin’s ideas, was not unique. All such changes required that the War Ministry dominate the army and the military administration. An army (in the form of a Main Staff or General Staff) can divorce itself from economic and social affairs, and even to a considerable extent from political and diplomatic affairs, concentrating exclusively on planning and tactics. Even after the reforms of the 1830s had established the predominance of the War Ministry, there were attempts to restore such a division by reviving the Main Staff. Field Marshal A. I. Bariatinskii, Miliutin’s commander in the Caucasus Corps, for one, sought to separate “the administrative and logistical functions of the army from the tactical elements. The War Ministry would become a purely bureaucratic support agency charged with feeding, clothing, equipping, and housing the army. The real functions of leadership would rest in the hands of the Chief of Staff, who would be charged with the drafting of all war plans.”23 In other words, Bariatinskii sought a return to the situation that had existed prior to 1832, now recast as the “Prussian model.” It has been argued that this separation was taken to such an extent in Germany as to cause ultimate disaster.24 Indeed, Helmuth von Moltke the

250

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

elder, the architect of the German General Staff, wrote that “political elements merit consideration only to the extent that they do not make demands that are militarily improper or impossible.”25 The German view of economics/logistics at the end of the century was no better.26 Chernyshev would have been revolted by the notion that politics did not merit consideration even during the hottest moments of the fight.The war with Turkey was guided throughout by political considerations, from the question of whether or not to attempt to raise the Serbs to the question of whether or not to take Constantinople and smash the Ottoman Empire. In 1829, it is true, there was no difference in view between War Minister Chernyshev and Chief of the Main Staff Dibich on the importance of politics. Bariatinskii’s desire to redivide planning from economics, to create a mirror of the technocracy that ruled Prussia’s army at the time, however, shows how Russia might have developed had the organization of 1815–1832 been maintained. However that may be, an integrated civilmilitary complex such as the Caucasus regional command was not likely to have flourished in an environment that placed such emphasis on the technical aspects of planning and mobilization and eschewed all involvement in logistical, financial, and economic affairs. The reforms of the 1830s, then, were critically important to the development of the Russian army. They laid the basic framework for many of the advances of the 1860s and 1870s, which could not have been made under Nicholas because of the persistence of serfdom. The assertion that the need for change in the military manpower policy was, in fact, the driving force behind Alexander’s determination to proceed with emancipation remains unproved but compelling.27 A mass of circumstantial evidence supports such a conclusion: Miliutin submitted a memorandum to Alexander in 1856 making it clear that vital military reforms could not be carried out without emancipation; Alexander determined to proceed with emancipation, appointing committees to work it out, but he reduced the term of service from 25 years to 15 in 1859 before the committees had completed their tasks; Alexander appointed Miliutin War Minister even as the emancipation became fact; Alexander then steadfastly supported Miliutin’s projects, many of which had been advanced in the memorandum of 1856, in the face of serious opposition.This chain of circumstances can be brushed aside only by calling it an extraordinary set of coincidences—or by claiming that military manpower necessity was only one of the critical driving forces behind the emancipation of the serfs. The present study has attempted to show, among other things, that the military need for emancipation, far from being news in 1856, was not even

Conclusion

251

news in 1835.The arguments that have been thus far advanced in support of this thesis have taken their starting points from the Crimean defeat, and they therefore credit Alexander with having grasped a complicated problem extremely quickly and with having resolved at once on forthright measures to resolve it. In fact, Alexander had probably gained his understanding of the problem and of its only possible solution throughout his training to become tsar, for even Chernyshev, it appears, had come not only to realize the situation, but even to intimate it to Nicholas. Alexander’s sudden move to eliminate serfdom may have reflected not a sudden understanding of the problem, but a sudden understanding that it was now possible to proceed to solve it. What made it possible in 1861 and not in 1831? First, the nobility acquiesced.Although I do not believe that the fear of peasant rebellion drove Alexander, it may well have cowed the nobility and enabled Alexander to push the reform past them. Second, the population acquiesced. If Nicholas had undertaken emancipation he would have been tearing up the roots of a society that had known only victory in war for over a century, whereas Alexander could argue credibly, on the basis of the Crimean defeat, that the old ways had to be abandoned.Third, the administrative task of emancipating the peasants was now realistic. Just as the military administration of 1856 could accomplish tasks inconceivable in 1836, so, in all probability, could the rest of Russia’s administration. For what we have seen above all is that the reign of Nicholas I was an era of administrative development in which the bureaucratic basis for a modern Russian state was created.That development was not limited only to the changes indicated in the present study but included the first compilation of Russian military law, the development of civil service norms and the extension of those norms to the military administration, improvements in military law, and the creation of a bureaucratic framework in which the various agencies of the government cooperated with and also checked each other with minimal interference from the tsar. Nicholas I had inherited an eighteenth-century “feudal” army. He passed on to his son an almost modern army, although it was incapable of measuring up to a task that had seemed insuperable all along. It remains for other studies to examine how those seeds germinated and to try to understand why the reforms of the 1860s–1870s produced an army almost incapable of winning wars. Such studies will have to conclude in part, however, that Russia suffered from a large number of serious handicaps from which it could never entirely free itself. They will certainly not be able to escape the conclusion that the reforms of the 1830s saw the birth of the modern Russian army.

This page intentionally left blank

A Note on Russian Laws

The Russian army and military administration in the first half of the nineteenth century was defined by a series of major laws issued in 1802, 1812, 1815–1816, 1836, and 1846 and modified by innumerable minor decrees throughout the period. These major laws have not received the attention they deserve.They are contained in the Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire), the results of M. M. Speranskii’s codification efforts during Nicholas’s reign, and include: the creation of the War Ministry in 1802 (PSZ I, no. 20,406), the Regulation on the Administration of the Large Active Army (PSZ I, no. 24,975) and the first reform of the War Ministry (PSZ I, no. 24,971) in 1812, the second reform of the ministry and the establishment of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty in 1815 (PSZ I, nos. 26,021, 26,022, and others), the third reform of the ministry and the abolition of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty in 1832 (PSZ II, no. 5,318) and 1836 (PSZ II, no. 9,038), and the Regulation on the Administration of Armies in Peactime and Wartime in 1846 (PSZ II, no. 20,670). The legislative basis of the military administration became increasingly more complex and better adapted to the reality of warfare. The laws of the 1830s and 1840s were much longer than those that had preceded them, and their increased length reflected their drafters’ more sophisticated understanding of the arts of war and military administration. The bureaucratic sources available now in Russian archives show why this was so: the process of writing military legislation changed radically from 1802 to 1846. In 1802 Alexander I and his trusted advisors—men who held no positions in the military administration—drafted the law on ministries in accord with how they thought things ought to be. The laws establishing the Main Staff in 1815 were based entirely on the situation as it was, with little or no thought to how it should be. Not until the 1830s were the people who actually had to live with the laws—the bureaucrats

254

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

in the army and the ministry—called upon to consider both how things were and how they should be. This increasing sophistication both in the process of lawmaking and in the resulting laws is a critical aspect of the development of the Russian state and army in the nineteenth century—only one of many that the close study of the core legislation on the army in its bureaucratic context makes possible. One of the obstacles to the close study of Russian legislation is that the only guides to the PSZ are the contemporary indices, which are cumbersome to use and do not necessarily categorize military law in the most convenient way for scholars.This difficulty can be eased if scholars working on Russian administration of all types cite the principal laws relevant to their topics, instead of simply referring to PSZ, Series I or Series II.To that end I append here a list of the most important laws and regulations in the PSZ for the present study.

I. Fundamental Legislation on the War Ministry and the Military Administration PSZ, Series I No. 20,406, Ob uchrezhdenii Ministerstv (On the Establishment of Ministries). 8 September 1802. No. 24,686, Obshchee Uchrezhdenie Ministerstv (General Establishment of Ministries). 25 June 1811. No. 24,971,Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe uchrezhdenie Voennago Ministerstva (Supremeley Confirmed Establishment of the War Ministry). 27 January 1812. No. 24,975, Uchrezhdenie dlia upravleniia Bol’shoi Deistvuiushchei Armii (Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army). 27 January 1812. No. 25,012, Imennyi dannyi Voennomu Ministru o shtatakh Voennago Ministerstva (Decree Given to the War Minister about the Complement of the War Ministry). 28 February 1812. No. 26,021, Ob upravlenii Voennago Departamenta (On the Administration of the War Department). 12 December 1815. No. 26,022, O pravilakh, po koim dolzhny Glavnokomanduiushchie upravliat’ armiiami v mirnoe vremia (On the Rules According to Which the Commander in Chief Must Administer Armies in Peacetime). 12 December 1815.

A Note on Russian Laws

255

PSZ, Series II No. 5,318, Vysochaishe utverzhdennyi proekt obrazovaniia Voennago Ministerstva (Supremely Confirmed Project of the Reorganization of the War Ministry). 1 May 1832. No. 9,038,Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe Uchrezhdenie Voennago Ministerstva (Supremely Confirmed Establishment of the War Ministry). 29 March 1836. No. 9,039, Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe Polozhenie o poriadke proizvodstva del v Voennom Ministerstve (Supremely Confirmed Proposition about the Order of the Conduct of Affairs in the War Ministry). 29 March 1836. No. 20,670,Vysochaishe utverzhdennyi Ustav dlia upravleniia armiiami v mirnoe i voennoe vremia (Supremely Confirmed Regulation for the Administration of Armies in Peacetime and in Wartime). 5 December 1846.

II. Legislation Establishing or Changing Departments of the War Ministry or Administrations of the Main Staff PSZ, Series I No. 26,129, Obrazovanie Dezhurstva Glavnago Shtaba Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva (Establishment of the Duty Administration of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty). 7 February 1816. No. 26,155, Shtat Inspektorskago Departamenta Glavnago Shtaba Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva (Complement of the Inspectorate Department of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty). 22 February 1816. No. 26,206, O Proviantskom Upravlenii (On the Provisions Administration). 23 March 1816.

PSZ, Series II No. 5,423, O novom sostave Kommisariatskago Departamenta Voennago Ministerstva (On the New Complement of the Commissariat Department of the War Ministry). 9 June 1832. No. 7,843, Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe Polozhenie o pereobrazovanii Proviantskago Departamenta Voennago Ministerstva (Supremely Confirmed

256

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Proposition about the Reorganization of the Provisions Department of the War Ministry). 6 February 1833. No. 7,844,Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe obrazovanie Proviantskago Departamenta (Supremely Confirmed Organization of the Provisions Department). 6 February 1833. No. 8,233, Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe Polozhenie o preobrazovanii Departamenta Voennykh Poseleneii Voennago Ministerstva (Supremely Confirmed Proposition about the Reorganization of the Department of Military Colonies of the War Ministry). 10 June 1835.

III. Legislation Relating to Chanceries of the War Ministry and the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty and to the Council of the War Minister and the Military Council PSZ, Series I No. 26,025, Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe Polozhenie Kantseliarii Nachal’nika Glavnago Shtaba Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva (Supremely Confirmed Proposition of the Chancery of the Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty). 16 December 1815. No. 26,030, Imennyi, dannyi Senatu, s prilozheniem Vysochaishe utverzhdennykh 16 Dekabria shtatov Kantseliarii: Nachal’nika Glavnago Shtaba Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva i Voennago Ministra (Decree, Given to the Senate, with the Supremely Confirmed on 16 December Complements of the Chanceries: of the Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty and of the War Minister). 19 December 1815. No. 30,525, O dopolneniiakh k shtatu Soveta Voennago Ministra i o poriadke proizvodstva del v onom Sovete (On Additions to the Complement of the Council of the War Minister and on the Order of the Conduct of Affairs in that Council). 8 October 1825. PSZ, Series II No. 9,040,Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe polozhenie o Voenno-Pokhodnoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Kantseliarii (Supremely Confirmed Proposition about the Campaign Chancery of His Imperial Majesty). 29 March 1836.

A Note on Russian Laws

257

IV. Other Important Legislation PSZ, Series II No. 4,677, Vysochaishe utverzhdennyi Ustav Rekrutskii (Supremely Confirmed Recruiting Regulation). 28 June 1831. No. 5,943,Vysochaishe utverzhdennyi proekt Polozheniia o pereobrazovanii Armeiskoi pekhoty (Supremely Confirmed Project of the Reorganization of the Army Infantry). 28 January 1833. No. 6,864, Ob uvol’nenii v bezsrochnyi otpusk nizhnikh chinov rezervnykh batalionov 1,2,3,4,5 i 6 pekhotnykh Korpusov (On the Indefinite Furloughing of Lower Ranks of the Reserve Battalions of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 Infantry Corps). 28 February 1834.

This page intentionally left blank

A Note on Archival Materials

This work would not have been possible without the extensive access to archival materials in the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RGVIA), the principal repository of archival material relating to the Russian Army in the Nineteenth Century, that has only recently become available. Several groups of files (dela) from the Archive of the Chancery of the War Ministry (fond 1), from the Military-Scholarly Archive (VoennoUchenyi Arkhiv—fond VUA), and from the Archive of the Campaign Chancery of His Imperial Majesty (Voenno-Pokhodnaia Kantseliaria EIV—fond 970) have served as the basis for this study of the Russian military administration and strategic perception. The basic documents for the reform of the military administration of 1832–1836 are contained in fond (collection) 1, opis’ (index) 1, tom (volume) 4, delo (item) 8538a (1832); and fond 970, opis’ 2, dela 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, and 14 (1833–36). (See list below for titles.) The division of these documents between two fondy is itself significant—the Chancery of the War Ministry controlled the reform until mid-1833, so the documents relating to the earliest beginnings of the change are in the archive of that chancery, fond 1.The Campaign Chancery of His Imperial Majesty (HIM) took over the reform in 1833 and preserved the rest of the documents in its archive, fond 970. These dela contain intraministerial and interagency correspondence, draft legislation, journals of meetings of the Military Council and of other relevant bodies, and Nicholas’s marginal comments and the responses formally made to them. These documents were collected and bound sometime during the 19th Century (the cover sheets and indices are written in a clerk’s hand and use Imperial spelling) and are almost certainly incomplete. Notably absent are minutes of meetings—these seem either not to have been taken or not to have been preserved. The extensive intraministerial correspondence they do contain, however, makes possible a much finer-grained analysis of the functioning of the

260

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Russian military bureaucracy and the formation of Russian military policy than has hitherto been possible. The group of documents from the VUA, including dela 1107, 18021, 18022, and 18045, provides a view of Russia’s strategic perception in the early 1830s that has not been generally understood heretofore. For reasons I have already indicated, the secret committee whose journals are reproduced in delo 18021 has remained hidden from historians until now. Its journals are more lively and informative than those of the Military Council meetings reproduced in documents in fond 970.They include divergent viewpoints and summaries of data presented to the committee. The documents in delo 18022 were reports submitted to the committee for its information from many different agencies of the imperial government. They include detailed, province-by-province breakdowns of the population of revised male serfs, including Jews, throughout the empire, as well as precise mobilization figures for levies ranging from 1 in 500 to 10 in 500. They also include summaries of Russia’s preparations for the defense of its coasts against the possibility of a British attack in 1810 and 1828, as well as detailed descriptions of the state of Russia’s fortifications in the early 1830s.The present work has by no means exhausted the significance of these materials.

Archival Sources Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voenno-Istoricheskii Arkhiv (RGVIA)

Fond 1—Kantseliaria Voennogo Ministerstva Opis’ 1, tom 2a delo 3596, “Zamechaniia o zapasakh proviantskogo dovol’stviia v gosudarstve i o zloupotrebleniiakh v proviantskom upravlenii” (Notes on the Reserves of Provisions Supplies in the State and about Corruption in the Provisions Administration). delo 3600, “Delo o postavke v Komissariat veshchei za 1822–23 gg. i o zloupotreblenii v Stavropol’skoi Komissariatskoi komissii” (Matters Concerning Commissariat Items for 1822–1823 and about Corruption in the Starvopol Commissariat Commission). delo 3707, “Perepiska s Nessel’rode, Greigom, Golitsynym, Tolstym i drugimi litsami o svedeniiakh, poluchennykh iz Turtsii: svedeniia o polozhenii v Turtsii, raporty Nachal’niku Glavnogo Shtaba EIV Dibichu ot nachal’nika Glavnogo Shtaba 2-oi armii v sviazi s podgotovkoi k voine s Turtsiei” (Correspondence of Nessel’rode, Greig, Golitsyn, Tolstoi, and Other Persons about Information Received From Turkey: Information about the Situation in Turkey, Reports to Chief of the Main Staff HIM Dibich from the Chief of the Main Staff of Second Army in Connection with Preparations for War with Turkey). delo 3795, “Zapiska General-Ad”iutanta Grafa Dibicha, soderzhashchaia zamechanii o prichinakh, umen’shivshikh uspekhi v Kampanii 1828 g. protivu Turok,—i mnenii ego o preobrazovanii voennago upravleniia” (Note of Adjutant General Count Dibich Containing Comments on the Reasons for the Diminution of Success in the Cam-

262

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

paign of 1828 against the Turks, and His Opinions about the Reorganization of the Military Administration). delo 3826, “Zapiska Generala Sabaneeva ob uluchshenii sostoianiia armii” (Note of General Sabaneev about Improving the Condition of the Army). delo 3865,“Delo o formirovanii novykh shtatov po Glavnomu Shtabu i Voennomu Ministerstvu” (Matter relating to the Formation of New Complements for the Main Staff an the War Ministry). Opis’ 1, tom 3 delo 6108, “Po otnosheniiu Nachal’nika Glavnogo Shtaba EIV o zloupotrebleniiakh starshogo kontrolera Komissariatskogo Departamenta 9-go klassa Borisova” (About the Communication of the Chief of the Main Staff HIM about the Corruption of Senior Controller of the Commissariat Department 9th Class Borisov). delo 6256, “Perepiska voennogo vedomstva o vozobnovlenii raboty Komissii dlia sostavleniia svoda voennykh uzakonenii i postanovlenii” (Correspondence of the Military Administration about Restarting the Work of the Commission for the Composition of a Digest of Military Rules and Regulations). delo 6380, “Polozhenie i shtat kantseliarskim sluzhiteliam” (Organization and Complement of Chancery Workers). delo 7535,“O redaktsii Svoda Voennykh Postanovlenii” (On the Editing of the Digest of Military Regulations). Opis’ 1, tom 4 delo 8538a, “O preobrazovanii Voennogo Ministerstva” (On the Reorganization of the War Ministry). delo 9113,“Otchet Voennogo Ministerstva za 1833 god” (Report of the War Ministry for 1833). delo 9616, “Po otnosheniiu Ministra Finansov o sostavlenii normal’noi smety na 1836 god raskhodam Voennogo Ministerstva” (About the Communication of the Minister of Finance about the Composition of a Normal Estimate of the Expenditures of the War Ministry for 1836). delo 9665, “O sostavlenii proekta ustava dlia upravleniia armieiu i korpusami” (On the Composition of a Project of a Regulation for the Administration of Armies and Corps).

Archival Sources

263

delo 9790, “O vidakh i predpolozheniiakh k usovershenstvovaniiu chastei Voennogo Ministerstva” (On Ways and Proposals for the Perfection of the Unites of the War Ministry).

Opis’ 1, tom 6 delo 15,498, “O sostavlenii ustava dlia upravleniia armiiami v mirnoe i voennoe vremia” (On the Composition of a Regulation for the Administration of Armies in Peacetime and in Wartime). delo 15,738, “Po otnosheniiu Ministra Finansov o merakh k podderzhaniiu v Rossii selitrennoi promyshlennosti “ (On the Communication of the Minister of Finance about Means for Supporting the Saltpetre Industry in Russia).

Fond 28, Kantseliariia Soveta Voennago Ministra Opis’ 1, tom 1 delo 1110, “Zapiska vitse direktora Komissariatskogo departamenta o sostavlenii metodicheskogo svoda voennykh uzakonenii i rassmotrenie dannogo voprosa v Sovete Voennogo Ministra” (Note of the Vice Director of the Commissariat Department about the Composition of a Methodical Digest of Military Regulations and the Review of this Question in the Council of the War Minister). delo 1132,“Reshenie Soveta Voennogo Ministra s prilozheniem materialov o sokrashchenii shtata departamentov Voennogo Ministerstva” (Decision of the Council of the War Minister with the Addition of Materials about the Reduction in the Complements of the Departments of the War Ministry).

Opis’ 1, tom 2 delo 1344,“Zapiska Kantseliarii Voennogo Ministerstva ob uvol’nenii za zloupotrebleniia i upushcheniia po sluzhbe nachal’nika schetnogo otdeleniia Komissariatskogo vedomstva i reshenie po dannomu voprosu Sovet Voennogo Ministerstva” (Note of the Chancery of the War Minister Concerning the Discharge for Corruption and Malfeasance of the Chief of the

264

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Accounting Section of the Commissariat Administration and the Decision on this Question of the Council of the War Ministry). delo 1411, “Predstavlenie Komissariatskogo Departamenta s prilozheniem materialov i kopiia resheniia Sovet Voennogo Ministerstva ob uvol’nenii upravliaiushchogo 4 Otdeleniem Komissariatskogo Departamenta Martyntsova ot sluzhby za zloupotrebleniia” (Presentation of the Commissariat Department with the Addition of Materials and Copies of the Decision of the Council of the War Ministry about the Discharge of the Director of the 4th Section of the Commissariat Department, Martyntsov, for Corruption). delo 1521, “Predlozhenie upravliaiushchogo Voennym Ministerstvom i reshenie Sovet Voennogo Ministerstva o rassmotrenii shtata chinovnikov Voennogo Ministerstva” (Proposition of the Acting War Minister and Decision of the Council of the War Ministry on the Review of the Complements of Officials of the War Ministry).

Fond VUA, (also listed as fond 846),Voenno-Uchenyi Arkhiv delo 1107,“O sostave armii, prednaznachaemoi dlia voiny na zapade i o voennykh prigotovleniiakh na sluchai razryva s Anglieiu i Frantsieiu” (On the Composition of an Army Designated for War in the West and about the Military Preparations in the Event of a Break with England and France). delo 18009, “Delo po predlozheniiu o preobrazovanii voennogo vedomstva v 1827” (Matter Concerning a Proposition for the Reorganization of the Military Administration in 1827). delo 18021, “Delo s zhurnalami sekretnogo komiteta, byvshogo v 1831 godu, dlia izyskaniia mer k usileniiu voennykh sposobov Rossii, posredstvom nabora rekrut i sformirovaniia novykh voisk” (Matter with the Journals of the Secret Committee of 1831 for Finding Ways to Strengthen the Military Resources of Russia through a Recruit Draft and the Formation of New Forces). delo 18022, “Delo o raznykh svedeniiakh, predstavliaemykh dlia sekretnogo komiteta, uchrezhdennogo v 1831 dlia izyskaniia mer k usileniiu voennykh sposobov Rossii, posredstvom nabora rekrut i sformirovaniia novykh voisk” (Matter Concerning Various Informations Presented to the Secret Committee Established in 1831 for Finding Means to Strengthen the Military Resources of Russia Through a Recruit Draft and the Formation of New Forces).

Archival Sources

265

delo 18034,“Delo po pis’mu d[eistvitel’nogo] t[ainogo] s[ovetnika] kniazia Kochubeia, s mneniem ego i zamechaniiami na 2-iu chast’, t.e. nakaza Voennogo Ministerstva” (Affair Concerning the Letter of A[ctual] P[rivy] C[ouncillor] Prince Kochubei, with His Opinion and Comments on the 2nd Part, that is, the Charge of the War Ministry). delo 18045, “Delo o nekotorykh bumagakh, ostavshikhsia po smerti d[eistvitel’nogo] t[ainogo] s[ovetnika] Dashkova, po delam sekretnogo komiteta 1831 god dlia izyskaniia mer . . .” (Affair Concerning Various Papers, Remaining after the Death of A[ctual] P[rivy] C[ouncillor] Dashkov, Concerning the Affairs of the Secret Committee of 1831 for Finding Ways . . .). delo 18068, “Raboty po voprosam Voennogo Ministerstva: 1) Zapiska g[eneral-] l[eitenanta] Miliutina, s prilozheniem programmy “Pamiatnoi knizhki dlia soldat” 1861; 2) Zapiska po voprosu ob ustroistve rezervov 1859; 3) Zapiska o razdelenii Imperii na voennye okrugi. 1862; 4) Zapiski i mneniia po preobrazovaniiu general’nogo shtaba 1862–5; . . . 7) Polozhenie o Glavnom Shtabe” (Work on Questions of the War Ministry: 1) Note of L[ieutenant] G[eneral] Miliutin, with the Addition of a Program of “Soldier’s Guidebook” 1861; 2) Note on the Question of the Creation of Reserves 1859; 3) note on the Division of the Empire into Military Districts 1862; 4) Notes and Opinions on the Reorganization of the General Staff 1862–1865; . . . 7) Proposition about the General Staff).

Fond 970, Voenno-Pokhodnaia Kantseliariia Opis’ 2 delo 4, “Delo o proizvodstvii i vvedenii novogo Svoda Voennykh Postanovlenii” (Matter Concerning the Production and Introduction of a new Digest of Military Regulations). delo 5, “Delo o sostavlenii i vedenii v deistvie novago Uchrezhdeniia Voennago Ministerstva” (Matter Concerning the Composition and Bringing into Action of a New Establishment of the War Ministry). delo 6, “Delo o sostavlenii proektov polozheniia i nakaza dlia Proviantskogo Departamenta v sviazi s ego reorganizatsiei” (Matter Concerning the Composition of a Project of the Organization and Charge of the Provisions Department in Connection with its Reorganization). delo 8, “Delo o sostavlenii proektov polozheniia shtatov i nakaza dlia Departamenta voennykh poselenii v sviazi s ego preobrazovaniem”

266

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

(Matter Concerning the Composition of a Project of the Organization, Complement, and Charge of the Department of Military Colonies in Connection with its Reorganization). delo 9, “Delo o sostavlenii proektov polozheniia i nakaza dlia Departamenta General’nogo Shtaba” (Matter Concerning the Composition of a Project of the Organization and Charge of the Department of the General Staff). delo 10, “Delo o sostavlenii proektov polozheniia, shtatov, i nakaza dlia Inspektorskogo Departamenta” (Matter Concerning the Composition of the Organization, Complement, and Charge of the Inspectorate Department). delo 13, “Delo o sostavlenii proektov polozheniia i nakaza dlia Kommisariatskogo Departamenta” (Matter Concerning the Composition of a Project of the Organization and Charge of the Commissariat Department). delo 14, “Delo o sostavlenii proektov polozheniia, shtatov, i nakaza dlia Artilleriiskogo Departamenta” (Matter Concerning the Composition of a Project of the Organization, Complement, and Charge of the Artillery Department).

Fond 15481, Glavnyi shtab vsekh rezervnykh i zapasnykh voisk gvardii i armii Opis’ 1, delo 8, “Zamechanie i zapiski Nachal’nika vsekh rezervov i zapasnykh voisk” (Comments and Notes of the Chief of All Reserve and Second Reserve Forces).

Otdel’ Rukopisei Gosudarstvennoi Biblioteki imeni V. I. Lenina (ORGBL) Fond 169, D. A. Miliutin karton 20, papka 29,“Mysli o nevygodakh sushestvuiushchei v Rossii voennoi sistemy i o sredstvakh ustraneniiu ikh” (Thoughts Concerning Problems Existing in Russia’s Military System and about Means for Solving Them).

Secondary Literature

Books Baumann, Robert F. The Debates over Universal Military Service in Russia, 1870–1874 (unpublished dissertation). New Haven:Yale University, 1982. Beskrovnyi, L. G. Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda. Moscow: Social-Economic Literature Press, 1962. ———. Russkaia armiia i flot v XIX veke: Voenno-ekonomicheskii potentsial Rossii. Moscow: “Nauka,” 1973. Blackwell, William. The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization 1800–1860. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. Bliokh, Ivan S. Finansy Rossii XIX stoletiia: Istoriia, statistika. Saint Petersburg: 1882. Also catalogued as Jean Bloch. Bogdanovich, M. I. Istoricheskii ocherk deiatel’nosti voennago upravleniia v pervoe dvadtsati-piati-letie blagopoluchnago tsarstvovaniia Gosudaria Imperatora Aleksandra Nikolaevicha (1855–1880 gg.). Saint Petersburg: 1880. Chandler, David. The Campaigns of Napoleon. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Craig, Gordon A. The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. van Creveld, Martin. Command in War. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985. ———. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Crummey, Robert O., ed. Reform in Russia and the USSR: Past and Prospects. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Curtiss, John Shelton. Russia’s Crimean War. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979 ———. The Russian Army under Nicholas I, 1825–1855. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1965. Delmas, Jean, ed. Histoire Militaire de la France. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992. Epanchin, Nikolai Alekseevich. Ocherk pokhoda 1829 g. v evropeiskoi turtsii. Saint Petersburg: 1905.

268

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Eroshkin, N. P. Istoriia gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii. Moscow: 1983. ———. Ministerstva Rossii pervoi poloviny XIX veka: Fondoobrazovateli tsentral’nykh gosudarstvennykh arkhivov SSSR. Moscow: Glavnoe Arkhivnoe Upravlenie, 1980. Flynn, James T. The University Reform of Tsar Alexander I 1802–1835. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1988. Fortescue, J.W. A History of the British Army. London: MacMillan and Co., 1920. Fuller, William. Strategy and Power in Russia: 1600–1914. New York: Free Press, 1992. Grenville, J. A. S. Europe Reshaped, 1848–1878. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980. Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I: Political Attitudes and the Conduct of Russian Diplomacy, 1801–1825. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Hittle, J. D. The Military Staff: Its History and Development. Harrisburg, Penn.: Military Service Publishing Company, 1944. Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany, 1648–1840. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Ingle, Harold. Nesselrode and the Russian Rapprochement with Britain, 1836–1844. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976. Jones, David R., ed. The Military-Naval Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union. Academic International Press, 1980. Josselson, Michael. The Commander: A Life of Barclay de Tolly. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Kahan, Arcadius. The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Keep, John L. Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia 1462–1874. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Ashfield Press, 1987. ———. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York: Random House, 1987. Kinross, John Patrick Douglas Balfour, Baron. The Ottoman Centuries:The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire. New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1977. Lambert, Andrew D. The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy, 1853–56. New York: Manchester University Press, 1990. Liakhov,V. A. Russkaia Armiia i Flot v Voine s Ottomanskoi Turtsiei v 1828–1829 godakh. Iaroslavl’: 1972. Lincoln, W. Bruce. In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats 1825–1861. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982. ———. Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1989. ———. The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990.

Secondary Literature

269

Lukianovich, Nikolai. Opisanie turetskoi voiny 1828 i 1829 godov. Saint Petersburg: 1844–1847. Maikov, P. M. Vtoroe otdelenie sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva kantseliarii 1826–1882. St. Petersburg: 1906. Mazour, Anatole. The First Russian Revolution, 1825. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971. Menning, Bruce. Bayonets before Bullets:The Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992. Miller, Forrestt A. Dmitrii Miliutin and the Reform Era in Russia. Charlotte, N.C.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968 von Moltke, Helmuth. The Russians in Bulgaria and Rumelia in 1828 and 1829; during the Campaigns of the Danube, the Sieges of Brailov, Varna, Silistria, Shumla, and the Passage of the Balkans by Marshal Diebitsch. London: J. Murray, 1854. Nikolai Mikhailovich, Grand Duke. Le Comte Paul Stroganov. Translated by F. Billecocq. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1905. Odom, William E. The Soviet Volunteers: Modernization and Bureaucracy in a Public Mass Organization. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. ———and Robert Dujarric. Commonwealth or Empire? Russia, Central Asia, and the Transcaucasus. Indianapolis: Hudson Institute, 1995. Orlovsky, Daniel T. The Limits of Reform: The Ministry of Internal Affairs in Imperial Russia, 1802–1881. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981. Paret, Peter, Gordon Craig, and Felix Gilbert, eds. Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Pintner,Walter. Russian Economic Policy under Nicholas I. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967. ———and Don Karl Rowney, eds. Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Raeff, Marc. Understanding Imperial Russia. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. ———. Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia 1772–1839. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969. Riasanovsky, Nicholas. Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Rieber, Alfred J., ed. The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii, 1857–1864. Paris: Moulton & Company, 1966. Rothenberg, Gunther. Napoleon’s Great Adversary:The Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army, 1792–1814. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1982. ———. The Army of Francis Joseph. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1976. ———. The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.

270

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Russia. Gosudarstvennaia Kantseliariia. Gosudarstvennyi Sovet 1801–1901. St. Petersburg: 1901. ———. Gosudarstvennyi Kontrol’. Gosudarstvennyi Kontrol’, 1811–1911. St. Petersburg: 1911. ———. Kantseliariia Komiteta Ministrov. K stolietiiu Komiteta Ministrov 1802–1902: Istoricheskii obzor deiatel’nosti Komiteta Ministrov. St. Petersburg: 1902. ———. Ministerstvo Finansov, Ministerstvo Finansov, 1802–1902, chast’ pervaia. Saint Petersburg: 1902. ———. Sobstvennaia Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Kantseliariia. Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiisskoi Imperii. St. Petersburg: various dates. ———. Sobstvennaia Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Kantseliariia. Stolietie Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Kantseliarii. St. Petersburg: 1912. ———.Voennoe Ministerstvo. Stolietie voennago ministerstva 1802–1902. St. Petersburg: 1902. ———.Voennoe Ministerstvo. Svod voennykh postanovlenii. St. Petersburg: 1839. von Schellendorf, Bronsart. The Duties of the General Staff. Fourth edition. London: 1905. Schroeder, Paul W. The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Shanahan,William O. Prussian Military Reforms 1786–1813. New York: AMS Press, 1966. Shil’der, N. K. Imperator Nikolai Pervyi, ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie. Saint Petersburg: 1903. Starr, S. Frederick. Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 1830–1870. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. Steiner, Zara. The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Strachan, Hew. European Armies and the Conduct of War. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983. ———. Wellington’s Legacy: The Reform of the British Army, 1830–1854. Dover, N. H.: Manchester University Press, 1984. Syroechkovskii, B. E., ed. Mezhdutsarstvie 1825 goda i vosstanie dekabristov v perepiske i memuarakh chlenov tsarksoi sem’i. Moscow-Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1926. Tatishchev, S. S. Imperator Aleksandr II, ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie. Saint Petersburg: 1903. ———. Vneshniaia politika Imperatora Nikolaia I:Vvedenie v istoriiu vneshnikh snoshenii Rossii v epokhu Sevastopol’skoi voiny. Saint Petersburg: 1887. Taylor, A. J. P. The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848–1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Tegoborski, M. L. Etudes sur les Forces Productives de la Russie. Paris: 1854–1855.

Secondary Literature

271

Temperley, Harold. England and the Near East: The Crimea. N.p.: Archon Books, 1964. de Tocqueville,Alexis. Democracy in America. Edited by Phillips Bradley, translated by Henry Reeve. New York:Vintage Books, 1945. Torke, Hans-Joachim. Das russische Beamtentum in der ersten Hälfte des 19 Jahrhunderts. Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte, vol. XIII. Berlin: 1967. Webster, Charles. The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 1830–1841: Britain, the Liberal Movement, and the Eastern Question, Volume I. New York: Humanities Press, 1969. Wortman, Richard S. The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Yaney, George L. The Systematization of Russian Government: Social Evolution in the Domestic Administration of Imperial Russia, 1711–1905. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1973. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, A. P. Graf P. D. Kiselev i ego vremia, Saint Petersburg: 1882. Zaionchkovskii, A. M. Vostochnaia voina 1853–1856 gg.: v sviazy s sovremennoi ei politicheskoi obstanovki. Saint Petersburg: 1908. Zaionchkovskii, P.A. Pravitel’stvennyi apparat samoderzhavnoi Rossii v XIX v. Moscow: 1978. ———. Voennye reformy 1860–1870 godov v Rossii. Moscow: Moscow University Press, 1952.

Articles Bennett, Helju Aulik.“Evolution of the Meanings of Chin:An Introduction to the Russian Institution of Rank Ordering and Niche Assignment from the Time of Peter the Great’s Table of Ranks to the Bolshevik Revolution,” California Slavic Studies, Volume 10 (1970), pp. 1–43. Flynn, James T. “The Universities, the Gentry, and the Russian Imperial Services, 1815–1825,” Canadian Slavic Studies, Volume II, Number 4 (Winter 1968), pp. 486–503. Hidas, P.“The Russian Army in Hungary 1849,” in J. G. Purves and D.A.West, eds. War and Society in the Nineteenth Century Russian Empire: Selected Papers Presented in a Seminar Held at McGill University, 1969–1971. Toronto: New Review Books, 1972, pp. 73–83. Irvine, Dallas D. “The Origin of Capital Staffs,” The Journal of Modern History, Volume X, No. 2 (June 1938), pp. 161–179. Keep, John L. H. “Soldiering in Tsarist Russia,” in Carl W. Reddel, ed., Transformation in Russian and Soviet Military History, United States Air Force Academy, Office of Air Force History, United States Air Force, Washington, DC, 1990, pp. 5–20.

272

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

———.“Light and Shade in the History of the Russian Administration,” CanadianAmerican Slavic Studies, Volume VI, Number 1 (Spring 1972), pp. 1–9. ———.“Programming the Past: Imperial Russian Bureaucracy and Society Under the Scrutiny of Mr. George Yaney,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, Volume VIII, Number 4 (Winter 1974), pp. 569–80. ———. “The Russian Army’s Response to the French Revolution,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, band 28, 1980, heft 4, p. 502ff. Kipp, Jacob. “Consequences of Defeat: Modernizing the Russian Navy, 1856–1863,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Band 20, 1972, pp. 210–25. ———and W. Bruce Lincoln. “Autocracy and Reform: Bureaucratic Absolutism and Political Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” Russian History, Volume 6, Part 1 (1979), pp. 1–21. Knoppers, J.“The Baltic During the Crimean War,” in J. G. Purves and D. A.West, eds. War and Society in the Nineteenth Century Russian Empire: Selected Papers Presented in a Seminar Held at McGill University, 1969–1971. Toronto: New Review Books, 1972, pp. 84–94. Laine, E. W. “Finland’s Military Significance for Nineteenth Century Russia,” in J. G. Purves and D. A.West, eds. War and Society in the Nineteenth Century Russian Empire: Selected Papers Presented in a Seminar Held at McGill University, 1969–1971. Toronto: New Review Books, 1972, pp. 34–44. Lincoln, W. Bruce. “The Genesis of an ‘Enlightened’ Bureaucracy in Russia, 1825–1855,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, XX, No. 3 (September 1972), pp. 321–30. ———.“A Profile of the Russian Bureaucracy on the Eve of the Great Reforms,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteruopas, Neue Folge, Band 27, 1979, Heft 2, pp. 181–96. ———.“Count P. D. Kiselev:A Reformer in Imperial Russia,” The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Volume XVI, No. 2 (August 1970), pp. 177–88. ———.“M.V. Butashevich-Petrashevskii and His Circle: Some notes on the intellectual and social climate of St. Petersburg in the 1840s,” The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Volume XIX, No. 3 (December 1973), pp. 366–76. ———. “N. A. Miliutin and the St. Petersburg Municipal Act of 1846: A Study in Reform Under Nicholas I,” Slavic Review, Volume 33, Number 1 (March 1974), pp. 55–68. ———.“Reform in Action:The Implementation of the Municipal Reform Act of 1846 in St. Petersburg,” Slavonic and Eastern European Review, Volume LIII, Number 131 (April 1975), pp. 202–9. ———. “Russia’s ‘Enlightened’ Bureaucrats and the Problem of State Reform 1848–1856,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique, Volume XII, No. 4 (OctoberDecember 1971), pp. 410–21. ———.“Russia on the Eve of Reform: A Chinovnik’s View,” The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 59, Number 2 (April 1981), pp. 264–71. ———.“The Composition of the Imperial Russian State Council under Nicholas I,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, Volume 10, Number 3 (Fall 1976), pp. 369–81.

Secondary Literature

273

———. “The Daily Life of St. Petersburg Officials in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series,Volume VIII (1975), pp. 82–100. ———. “The Last Years of the Nicholas ‘System:’ The Unpublished Diaries and Memoirs of Baron Korf and General Tsimmerman,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series,Volume VI (1973), pp.12–27. ———. “The Ministers of Alexander II: A Survey of Their Backgrounds and Service Careers,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique, Volume XVII, Number 4 (October-December 1976), pp. 467–83. ———. “The Russian State and its Cities: A Search for Effective Municipal Government, 1786–1842,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, Band 17, Heft 4, 1969, pp. 531–41. McFarlin, Harold. “The Expansion of the Imperial Russian Civil Service to the Lowest Office Holder: The Creation of the Chancery Clerkship, 1827–1833,” Russian History, Volume 1, Part 1 (1974), pp. 1–17. Menning, Bruce W. “The Army and Frontier in Russia,” Transformation in Russian and Soviet Military History, pp. 25–38. ———. “A. I. Chernyshev: A Russian Lycurgus,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, Volume XXX, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 192–219. Miliutin, D. A. “Voennye reformy imperatora Aleksandra I,” Vestnik evropy, Volume XCIII, Number 1 (January 1882), pp. 5–35. Murray, Williamson. “Clausewitz: Some Thoughts on What the Germans Got Right,” in German Military Effectiveness. Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1992. Pintner, Walter M. “Mobilization for War and Russian Society,” Transformation in Russian and Soviet Military History, pp. 39–50. Purves, J. G.“19th Century Russia and the Revolution in Military Technology,” in J. G. Purves and D. A.West, eds. War and Society in the Nineteenth Century Russian Empire: Selected Papers Presented in a Seminar Held at McGill University, 1969–1971. Toronto: New Review Books, 1972, pp. 7–22. Raeff, Marc.“Russia’s Autocracy and Paradoxes of Modernization,” in Political Ideas and Institutions in Imperial Russia. Boulder, Co.:Westview Press, 1994, pp. 116–25. ———. “The Russian Autocracy and Its Officials,” in Political Ideas and Institutions in Imperial Russia. Boulder, Co.:Westview Press, 1994, pp. 76–87. ———. “The Well-Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernity in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Eruope: An Attempt at a Comparative Approach,” in Political Ideas and Institutions in Imperial Russia. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1994, pp. 309–33. Rediger, A. “Ustroistvo polevago upravleniia v nashei armii,” Voennyi sbornik, No. 4 (1890), pp. 215–47. Shil’der, N. K.“Svetleishii Kniaz’Aleksandr Ivanovich Chernyshev,” Voennyi sbornik, No. 1 (1902); No. 2 (1902); pp. 30–46, No. 3 (1902); pp. 24–42; and No. 4 (1902); pp. 21–40. Sirotkin, V. G. “Finansovo-ekonomicheskie posledstviia napoleonovskikh voin i rossiia v 1814–1824 gody,” Istoriia SSSR, No. 4, (July-August 1974), pp. 46–62.

274

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Torke, Hans Joachim. “Continuity and Change in the Relations between Bureaucracy and Society in Russia, 1613–1861,” Canadian Slavic Studies, Volume V, Number 4 (Winter 1971), pp. 457–76. ———. “More Shade than Light,” Canadian American Slavic Studies, Volume VI, Number 1 (Spring 1972), pp. 10–12. West, Dalton A.“The Russian Military under Alexander I,” in J. G. Purves and D.A. West, eds. War and Society in the Nineteenth Century Russian Empire: Selected Papers Presented in a Seminar Held at McGill University, 1969–1971. Toronto: New Review Books, 1972, pp. 44–58. Württemberg, Prince Eugene. “Turetskii pokhod 1828 goda i sobytija, za nim sledovavshiia: Zapiski Printsa Evgenija Virtembergskago,” Russkaia Starina, Volume 27 (1880).

Notes

Introduction 1. [Dmitrii Miliutin], “Voennye reformy imperatora Aleksandra I,” Vestnik Evropy XCIII, no. 1 (January 1882): 11. 2. Marc Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 168. 3. W. Bruce Lincoln, “The Daily Life of St. Petersburg Officials in the MidNineteenth Century,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series,VIII (1975): 88. 4. W. Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats 1825–1861 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982). 5. Hans-Joachim Torke,“Continuity and Change in the Relations between Bureaucracy and Society in Russia, 1613–1861,” Canadian Slavic Studies 5, no. 4 (Winter 1971): 474. 6. Richard S. Wortman, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1976). 7. Walter Pintner and Don Karl Rowney, Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), p. 209. 8. Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia, pp. 168ff. 9. See, among others, Pinter and Rowney, Russian Officialdom; George L.Yaney, The Systematization of Russian Government: Social Evolution in the Domestic Administration of Imperial Russia, 1711–1905 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1973); Hans-Joachim Torke, Das russische Beamtentum in der ersten Hälfte des 19 Jahrhunderts. Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte vol. XIII (Berlin, 1967). 10. John Shelton Curtiss, The Russian Army under Nicholas I: 1825–1855 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1965). Curtiss deals with the military administration in a chapter of 16 pages (Chapter V). 11. William Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia: 1600–1914 (New York:The Free Press, 1992); John L. Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462–1874. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 12. Data for 1842. K stoliietiiu Komiteta Ministrov (1802–1902) vol. II, part II (St. Petersburg: Izdanie Kantseliarii Komiteta Ministrov, 1902), p. 43.

276

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

13. See, e.g., Jacob W. Kipp and W. Bruce Lincoln,“Autocracy and Reform: Bureaucratic Absolutism and Political Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” Russian History 6, part 1 (1979): 4. See also Robert O. Crummey, ed., Reform in Russia and the USSR: Past and Prospects (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. 1ff for an interesting discussion of various concepts of “reform” and “modernization.” 14. Marc Raeff,“Russia’s Autocracy and Paradoxes of Modernization,” in Political Ideas and Institutions in Imperial Russia (Boulder, Colorado:Westview Press, 1994), p. 116. 15. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, ed. Phillips Bradley, trans. Henry Reeve (New York:Vintage Books, 1945), p. 452. 16. See Harold Temperley, England and the Near East: The Crimea (n.p.: Archon Books, 1964) and Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 1830–1841: Britain, the Liberal Movement, and the Eastern Question (New York: Humanities Press, 1969) for excellent and detailed discussions of the strategic perceptions and ideological preconceptions that drove Palmerston’s foreign policy. 17. The problems that Sabaneev discussed were problems of command and control, although the concept of command and control did not exist as a neatly defined category in Russian military thinking of the time. Throughout this study I have made use of modern categories in an attempt to achieve a greater and more concise understanding of the Russian military organism than would be possible by adhering to the linguistic and conceptual restrictions of the time. I will indicate when the use of such modern terms is anachronistic. 18. I. S. Bliokh, Finansy Rossii XIX stoletiia: Istoriia—Statistika, vol. I (Saint Petersburg: 1882) p. 165.

Chapter I 1. See Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), Chapter II, for the logistical problems involved and Gunther Rothenberg, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980) for a good discussion of the tactical, administrative, and organizational changes the new armies required. 2. See Chapter IX for a discussion of some of the reasons why Russia did not adopt a reserve system. 3. William Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia: 1600–1914 (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 34. 4. Ibid., pp. 99–100. 5. Russia’s economic and financial history in the nineteenth century (and earlier) remains incomplete. The basic secondary works on Russian economic

Notes

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

277

policy under Nicholas are Walter Pintner, Russian Economic Policy under Nicholas I (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1967) and William Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization 1800–1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). Both authors argue that Nicholas’s reign was not simply a period of stagnation, but an important stage in the development of the industrialization process in Russia. Neither had access to Soviet archives. In the absence of archival materials historians have had to rely mainly on the figures given in Ministerstvo Finansov, 1802–1902 (St. Petersburg: 1902) and on the work of Ivan Bliokh (I. S. Bliokh, Finansy Rossii XIX stoletiia: Istoriia—Statistika, vol. I [Saint Petersburg: 1882]). Although both Bliokh and the official history of the Ministry of Finance had access to primary materials, there is reason to doubt the complete accuracy of their portrayals of the state of Russia’s fiscal affairs, if only because those affairs were far more complicated than can be stated in tables and charts.The comparison of military budgets given in these works with those cited in War Ministry documents, however, reveals that the inaccuracies, although noticeable, are not such as to distort our view of the economic situation of the country out of easy recognition. For example, for the year 1835, Ministerstvo Finansov gives the War Ministry budget as 201,446,000 rubles (p. 628), while Bliokh gives the “supremely accepted” budget as 198,275,000 rubles (p. 206). Rossisskii Gosudarstvennyi Voenno-Istoricheskii Arkhiv (hereafter RGVIA), fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 9616, Po otnosheniiu Ministra Finansov o sostavlenii normal’noi smety na 1836 god raskhodam Voennogo Ministerstva, list 7 oborot gives the budget assigned to the War Ministry for 1835 as 197,729,122 rubles, although it notes that only 188,639,969 rubles were to come from the State Treasury, while the rest were to come from the revenues of the Kingdom of Poland. The figures given in the secondary sources are not “right” in the sense of being completely accurate or even clear, but they are more than adequate for conveying an impression of the economic situation of the state and the relative budget sizes of the various state bodies. Bliokh, p. 59. Throughout this work money is designated in paper rubles (assignats) unless specifically noted as silver rubles. Arcadius Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Russia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) 346. Ibid., p. 337. One silver ruble was worth 1.32 paper rubles in 1803. Ministerstvo Finansov, p. 622. Russia’s participation in the 1809 campaign in Austria was desultory, but it did require the mobilization and movement of a sizable army. Russia’s naval expenditures were very small in comparison with the funds given to the ground forces. From being about a quarter the size of the War Ministry budget in 1803 (10 million as against 40 million), the naval budget fell to a figure one-tenth the size of the ground forces budget in 1811–12

278

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

(23 million as against 161 million in 1811 and 20 million as against 265 million in 1812). The naval budget was usually about one-fifth of the ground forces budget during Nicholas’s reign, that is, about one-half of what Russia paid annually to service her debt (Ministerstvo Finansov, pp. 620 and 628). 12. From Ministerstvo Finansov, pp. 616–21:

Year

Normal Revenue

War Ministry

Total Expenditure

% of Normal Revenue

1808 1809

127,459 135,626

118,525 112,279

248,213 278,455

194.7 205.3

13. Ministerstvo Finansov, p. 617: income from the Assignatsionnyi bank was 92,049,000 rubles in 1808 and 127,573,000 rubles in 1809. 14. Bliokh, p. 84. In 1805 there were 292,199,000 paper rubles in circulation as opposed to 579,373,000 in 1810. 15. Ibid., p. 85. 16. Ministerstvo Finansov, p. 622. 17. The Continental System was Napoleon’s effort to force Britain to sue for peace by starving her of vital resources. All states under Napoleon’s sway were forbidden to trade with England. One of the conditions of the Treaty of Tilsit which ended the war of 1806 - 1807 between France and Prussia and Russia was that Russia adhere to the Continental System. 18. Ibid., p. 616. 19. See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 130ff. 20. Bliokh, p. 93. 21. Ibid., pp. 94–97. 22. Ibid., p. 102. 23. Ibid., p. 103. 24. The ruble tripled its value between January 1811 and its high in September 1812, but it had lost half its value again by September 1814. Ibid., pp. 112 and 136. 25. See John Keep, “The Russian Army’s Response to the French Revolution,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Ost Europas, band 28 (1980), heft 4, p. 502ff. V. G. Sirotkin points out that the Russian treasury suffered in addition from a quantity of counterfeit rubles that Napoleon began producing in 1810. See V. G. Sirotkin, “Finansovo-ekonomicheskie posledstviia napoleonovskikh voin i rossiia v 1814–1824 gody,” Istoriia SSSR no. 4 (July-August 1974), pp. 46–62 for this and other details of the financial crisis in Russia following the Napoleonic wars. 26. Bliokh, op. cit., p. 136.

Notes 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

279

Sirotkin, Table 3, p. 58. Bliokh, p. 136. Ibid., p. 151. The War College was part of the system of “colleges” (kollegii) with which Peter the Great replaced the old prikazy that had constituted Russia’s administration before the eighteenth century. They were called colleges because they were run by committees whose votes, in principle, determined policy. The administrations of the colleges consisted of a number of “expeditions” (ekspeditsii) made up of the clerks and bureaucrats who did the actual business of administration. Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiisskoi Imperii, Series I, (hereafter PSZ I), no. 20,406, Ob uchrezhdenii Ministerstv, 25 June 1811, Paragraph II defines the War, Admiralty, and Foreign Affairs Ministries. By decree of the Senate on 22 January 1812 (PSZ I, no. 24,961), a commission for the resolution of unresolved affairs of the War College and its expeditions began to close out the accounts of the college in preparation for its transfer of function to the War Ministry. An Imperial edict of 26 February 1812 (PSZ I, no. 25,008) brought the newly reorganized ministry into being, although it indicated that the departments of the new ministry, taken together, retained the name of the War College. As late as September of that year, it seems that officials were still directing correspondence to the War College, for a Senate decree (PSZ I, no. 25,231) issued on September 23, 1812, ordered all officials to direct correspondence only to the departments of the War Ministry.This law contains the last reference in the PSZ to a functioning War College. PSZ I, no. 24,971, Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe uchrezhdenie Voennago Ministerstva, 27 January 1812. PSZ I, no. 24,686, Obshchee Uchrezhdenie Ministerstv. See N. P. Eroshkin, Ministerstva Rossii pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Moscow: 1980), pp. 7–10. PSZ I, no. 24,975, Uchrezhdenie dlia upravleniia bol’shoi deistvuiushchei armii, issued on 27 January 1812. PSZ I, no. 24,975, §2. Ibid., §1. Ibid., §18. The consequences were especially unclear as this provision was only briefly implemented; Alexander retained supreme command over the CINCs of his armies (Barclay de Tolly, Bagration, Tormasov, and Chichagov) in the first part of the campaign of 1812. Kutuzov briefly held the real power of a CINC/LAA until his death, but when the Russian armies crossed the border, it was as part of an allied force the supreme commander of which was the Austrian General Schwarzenberg (A. Rediger, “Ustroistvo polevago upravleniia v nashei armii,” Voennyi Sbornik no. 4 [1890], pp. 221–22 and note 2).

280

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

40. PSZ I, no. 24,975, §31.The fourth section was called the Intendantstvo, which may be translated more accurately as “intendancy,” a form more familiar to historians of Napoleonic and previous military administrations.This term is antiquated, however, and obscures the important fact that the intendantstvo of the Russian army was not distinct in function from modern logistics administrations. 41. This designation is frequently mistranslated as “General du jour.” Although “du jour” is, no doubt, the etymological origin of the Russian “dezhurnyi,” by the nineteenth century the Russian term had acquired its own meaning of duty, expressed in the noun,“dezhurstvo.”The Dezhurnyi general was not a “General of the day.” His was a permanent position, not a rotating “duty.” 42. In fact, certain commissariat requirements, such as boots, clothing, and cloth, were frequently acquired locally, but the Field Commissariat Administration remained tied to the central administration in the event that local supplies proved insufficient. 43. Bronsart von Schellendorf, The Duties of the General Staff, 4th ed. (London: 1905), p. 5. 44. Ibid., p. 51. The prominence of the Artillery and Engineering Administrations, which also answered directly to the CINC/LAA, reflected age-old Russian tradition having nothing to do with whatever foreign models might have been followed. 45. The corps staff is defined in PSZ I, no. 24,975, §§52–56; the division staff in §§57–61. 46. Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 72–73.The Russian organization was copied from the Napoleonic system, with appropriate changes (perhaps improvements).The Russians were able to make this adjustment prior to Napoleon’s attack because of information obtained by Prince Petr Mikhailovich Volkonskii, who was to become Chief of the Main Staff in 1814, and by a young cavalry officer serving as Alexander’s liaison to the French court, Aleksandr Ivanovich Chernyshev. Chernyshev gathered much information when the French Emperor imprudently undertook to lecture him about the principles of war. Chernyshev’s reports are contained in Sbornik Imperatorskago Russkago Istoricheskago Obshchestva (hereafter SIRIO), vol. 21 (1877), (not titled—hereafter SIRIO 21), and “Bumagi A. I. Chernysheva za tsarstvovanie Imperatora Aleksandra I, 1809–1825gg.,” SIRIO, vol. 121 (1906), (hereafter SIRIO 121). See also the biographical note written by A. I. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii reproduced in “Zhizneopisanie, vsepoddanneishie doklady i perepiska Kniazia Alexandra Ivanovicha Chernysheva,” SIRIO, vol. 122 (1905) (hereafter SIRIO 122). Stolietie voennago ministerstva 1802–1902 (St. Petersburg, 1902), (hereafter SVM), vol. IV, part 1, book 2, section 1, p. 250ff contains a brief account of Volkonskii’s mission to Paris and his conclusions.

Notes

281

47. PSZ I, no. 24,975, §267, “The Main, Corps, and Division Staffs constitute a single general administration.” 48. Ibid., §89, “To the Chief of the Main Staff are subordinated all Chiefs of Corps and Division Staffs, with all of their Officials.” 49. Ibid., §272. 50. Ibid., §273. 51. Ibid., §268. 52. Von Schellendorf, p. 266. 53. PSZ I, no. 24,975, §92–93. The CMS replaced a deceased CINC even if there were generals with the army senior to him. 54. The differences between the two systems were by no means limited to structure, especially after the reforms of 1815–1816. It is not at all clear that a general staff of the sort that led Prussia to victory in the 1860s and 1870s, and to defeat in 1914–1918, could ever have developed in Russia; in fact, I do not believe it could have.The history of the development of the Russian staff provides illumination for that of the German General Staff, however, because the Russian structure so resembled that of the German system that the differences are enlightening for both. Nicholas I, furthermore, consciously turned away from the staff system Alexander had created, and the reasons for his rejection of that system are at least as significant for Germany as they were for Russia (see Chapter III). 55. PSZ I, no. 24,971. 56. The War College (Voennaia Kollegiia) had been divided into expeditions (ekspeditsii); the new ministries (ministerstva) consisted of departamenty, which consisted of sections (otdeleniia), which consisted of bureaus (stoly).The English terms “ministry,”“department,”“section,” and “bureau” used in this work always refer to ministerstvo, departament, otdelenie, and stol, unless specifically noted otherwise. 57. Any references to “departments” refer to ministerial organs; field administration organs were not at this time divided into departments. 58. SVM, vol. 5, part 1, p. 423. 59. Ibid., p. 423–24. Before the invasion of 1812 the Russian army numbered fewer than 400,000 men. 60. Ibid., pp. 448–49. 61. Ibid., p. 447. 62. English does not have as neat a way as Russian does to express the word deloproizvodstvo, a concept that is at the heart of discussions of bureaucracy in the Russian Empire and means literally, more or less, “getting things done.” The dictionary definitions of it as “office work,” “clerical work,” or “record-keeping,” do not do justice to its sense in the bureaucratic context of a carefully defined set of procedures for accomplishing the tasks required of an organization. Unfriendly observers of the Russian bureaucracy have attributed a variety of disparaging overtones to this term—usually with a great deal of justification.

282

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

63. The Ministry of Police was created in 1811 (PSZ I, no. 24,687) and the Ministry of Finance was reformed in that year (PSZ I, no. 24,688). 64. Memorandum from War Minister Aleksandr Ivanovich Chernyshev to Nicholas I from 1831, A Brief Review of the Nature of the Military Administration and Means for its Reorganization, reproduced in SVM, vol. I, appendix 1, p. 3. A copy of the draft charge to the minister is reproduced in RGVIA, fond Voenno-Uchenyi Arkhiv (hereafter VUA), delo 18034, Delo po pis’mu d[eistvitel’nogo] t[ainogo] s[ovetnika] kniazia Kochubeia, s mneniem ego i zamechaniiami na 2-iu chast’, t.e. nakaza Voennogo Ministerstva, list 3ff. 65. In the Soviet system, kontrol’ would come to have a political meaning; in Nicholas’s day it was purely a technical bookkeeping term and referred to the functions of keeping and verifying accounts. 66. The Judicial and Inspectorate Departments did not have accounting sections or control bureaus as they did not handle significant funds. 67. SVM, vol. 5, part 1, p. 389. 68. Ibid., p. 456. 69. Ibid., pp. 470–71. 70. Ibid., p. 488. Average annual figure for the eleven-year period. 71. Ibid., p. 496. 72. At the outset of the campaign there were only four officials: Barclay was both War Minister and CINC. Before long, however, it had become clear that he could not fill both positions, and Gorchakov was made Acting War Minister (upravliaiushchii voennym ministerstvom—a tricky expression that does not always mean “acting War Minister,” but may refer to the actual minister, being equivalent to voennyi ministr. In this context, however, the meaning is clear). The others were Bagration,Tormasov, and Chichagov. 73. See Michael Josselson, The Commander: A Life of Barclay de Tolly (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 99ff and especially p. 100; David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 783; L. G. Beskrovnyi, Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda (Moscow: Social-Economic Literature Press, 1962), pp. 293 and 305ff. 74. SVM, vol. 5, part 1, pp. 428–29. 75. Ibid., pp. 433–34. 76. SVM, vol. 3, part 6, p. 147. 77. Ibid., p. 148. 78. PSZ I, no. 26,021, Ob upravlenii Voennago Departamenta, 12 December 1815. 79. Economic: khoziaistvennyi; operations: frontovyi. Frontovyi usually refers (disparagingly) to the endless monotonous drills and what was called “paradomania” that occupied much of a soldier’s time in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the contexts in which it appears in these laws, however, it clearly has the meaning of “operations.” 80. This abbreviation will always refer to the Chief of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty unless otherwise noted.

Notes

283

81. The two active armies were established by a law of 28 October 1814, PSZ I, no. 25,723, On the Division of the Ground Forces into Two Armies (O razdelenii sukhoputnykh sil na dve armii). Barclay de Tolly commanded First Army, while Prince Bennigsen commanded Second Army. 82. Auditoriatskii Departament. To avoid confusion I have translated the title of this department loosely, according to the work it actually performed, rather than as “Auditoriat Department,” which has no clear meaning in English. 83. PSZ I, no. 26,021, §23. 84. Count A. A. Arakcheev, it has been noted, played an inordinate role in the formation of policy and conduct of affairs in the latter part of Alexander I’s reign, and his baleful influence on Russia’s military policy is well known, yet after leaving the post of Minister of Military Ground Forces in 1810 he never again held a post in the military administration. His power came from his influence with the tsar and his position as Chairman of the Department of Military Affairs of the State Council, a post that he held from 1812 to Alexander’s death. 85. The War Minister’s position in the State Council, Committee of Ministers, and Ruling Senate was reconfirmed in PSZ I, no. 26,021, §25; his right to report to those organs on the state of the army was confirmed in §26. The law specifically excluded the Chief of the Main Staff from participation in those bodies (§14), noting that he could, however, be invited to report to them if it was felt necessary to do so. 86. PSZ I, no. 26,022, 12 December 1815, On the Regulations by which the Commanders in Chief Must Administer Their Armies in Peacetime, paragraph X. 87. PSZ I, no. 26,021, §24. 88. PSZ I, no. 26,206, 23 March 1816, O Proviantskom Upravlenii. 89. Ibid., §26:“The responsibility of the War Minister is restricted to the timely issue of funds designated in the estimates of yearly expenditures.” 90. In addition to the two armies there were two independent corps: the Independent Georgian Corps (which would later become the Independent Caucasus Corps) and the Independent Orenburg Corps. The Corps of the Internal Guard also had the status of an independent corps, but its units were mostly deployed in regions occupied by one of the other armies or corps, which therefore became responsible for supplying the internal garrisons (ibid., §2). 91. A Provisions Commission was the body attached to the army or corps that actually located, purchased, transported, and distributed the provisions. 92. SVM, vol. 5, part 1, pp. 436–37. 93. “Bumagi Grafa Arseniia Andreevicha Zakrevskogo,” SIRIO, vol. 73, (1890), (hereafter SIRIO 73), doc. 143, p. 197, Ermolov to Zakrevskii, 18 November 1816. 94. There were no changes to the structure of either the field or the central Provisions Administration until after Nicholas I took the throne.The Commis-

284

95. 96. 97. 98.

99.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I sariat Department remained exactly the same in 1825 as it had been in 1812, despite deficiencies in its performance that led Alexander to make acidic remarks to War Minister Gorchakov similar to those cited above (SVM, vol. 5, part 1, p. 446). Miliutin, p. 9. See Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, for a discussion of the complexity and importance of the soldiers’ economic activities in keeping the army functioning. A. P. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Graf P. D. Kiselev i ego vremia (Saint Petersburg: 1882), p. 30, my emphasis. See Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I: Political Attitudes and the Conduct of Russian Diplomacy, 1801–1825 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 61–62; also Anatole Mazour, The First Russian Revolution, 1825 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), pp. 58–63. Volkonskii to Zakrevskii, SIRIO 73, doc. 39, pp. 54–5.

Chapter II 1. Richard S. Wortman, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 94. 2. Hans Joachim Torke, “More Shade than Light,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies VI, no. 1 (Spring 1972): 11. 3. Wortman, p. 16. 4. Volkonskii to Zakrevskii, 30 January 1821, SIRIO 73, doc. 34, p. 44, emphasis in the original. 5. PSZ I, no. 26,021, §30. 6. A. Rediger,“Ustroistvo polevago upravleniia v nashei armii,” Voennyi Sbornik no. 4 (1890), p. 230, gives as examples:“The division quartermaster was subordinate to the corps Over-Quartermaster, who was subordinate to the Quartermaster General of the Army,” and each was also subordinate to his commander: division Quartermaster to Division Commander, Over-Quartermaster to Corps Commander, and Quartermaster General to CINC. 7. Two laws of 1816 established the duty administration of the Main Staff: PSZ I, no. 26,129, 7 February 1816, Establishment of the Duty [Administration] of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty, and PSZ I, no. 26,155, 22 February 1816, Structure of the Inspectorate Department of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty. 8. Zakrevskii to Volkonskii, 19 November 1820, SIRIO 73, doc. 99, pp. 114–15. 9. Volkonskii to Zakrevskii, 4 December 1820, SIRIO 73, doc. 25, p. 27. 10. Zakrevskii to Volkonskii, 17 December 1820, SIRIO 73, doc. 103, p. 125, my emphasis. 11. Wortman, p. 17. 12. PSZ I, no. 26,129, 7 February 1816, Obrazovanie Dezhurstva Glavnago Shtaba Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva, §39.

Notes

285

13. A. A. Zakrevskii, Otchet general-ad”iutanta Zakrevskago po upravleniiu ego dezhurstvom Glavnago shtaba Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva s 12-go dekabria 1815 po 1-e sentiabria 1823 goda, in “Bumagi Grafa Arseniia Andreevicha Zakrevskago,” SIRIO, vol. 78 (1891), (hereafter SIRIO 78), p. 347. 14. Ibid., p. 346. 15. Ibid., p. 347. 16. By military law I mean not the code of military justice, but laws relating to the military. 17. Volkonskii to Zakrevskii, 8 March 1821, SIRIO 73, doc. 40, p. 56. 18. See James T. Flynn, The University Reform of Tsar Alexander I 1802–1835 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), especially pp. 84ff, for a discussion of Magnitskii’s role in that reform. 19. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 3, delo 6256, Perepiska voennogo vedomstva o vozobnovlenii raboty Komissii dlia sostavleniia svoda voennykh uzakonenii i postanovlenii, ll. 8 oborot–9. 20. SVM, vol. IV, part 1, book 2, section 1, pp. 284–85. 21. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, delo 6256, ll. 10–13. 22. Ibid., ll. 13–13 oborot. 23. Ibid., ll. 13 oborot–14 oborot. 24. Ibid., l. 14 oborot. 25. Ibid., ll. 16 oborot - 17. Z. G. Chernyshev was president of the War College from 1773 to 1784. 26. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 4, Delo o proizvodstvii i vvedenii novogo Svoda Voennykh Postanovlenii, l. 7. 27. The officials ranged in rank from 8th Rank to 5th Rank. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 3, delo 6256, l. 2 oborot. 28. Ibid. 29. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 4, ll. 7–7 oborot. 30. Ibid., l. 7 oborot. 31. Wortman, p. 17. 32. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 4, l. 5 oborot; primechanie describes the structure of the committee of 1811. 33. The story of Nicholas’s accession to the throne is told briefly in Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1989), pp. 22–31, and in great detail in N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Nikolai Pervyi, ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, vol. I (St. Petersburg: 1903), p. 177ff.There is no significant variation in accounts of these events because all accounts are based on the limited amount of source material that has been published and that contains few important contradictions. B. E. Syroechkovskii, ed., Mezhdutsarstvie 1825 goda i vosstanie dekabristov v perepiske i memuarakh chlenov tsarksoi sem’i (MoscowLeningrad: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1926) reproduces many letters and diaries, the most interesting of which are Nicholas’s account of the

286

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I events of November-December 1825 (pp. 9–36) and his marginal notes on the draft of Baron Korff ’s account of his succession (pp. 36–49). The private correspondence of Nicholas and Constantine was reprinted in “Perepiska Imperatora Nikolaia Pavlovicha s Velikim Kniazem Tsesarevichem Konstantinom Pavlovichem,” SIRIO, vol. 131 (1910), (hereafter SIRIO 131). (Documents 1–4 relate to the accession and the Decembrist uprising, although the latter topic monopolizes the correspondence for months after the event, unsurprisingly.) Shil’der, I:186; Syroechkovskii, p. 40. Syroechkovskii, pp. 13–14, among others Shil’der, I:186. Ibid., I:202; Syroechkovskii, p. 40. Anatole Mazour makes it clear that the delay and, especially, the evident confusion that held sway in Russia’s ruling circles tilted the scales toward action in the Northern Society’s discussions (Anatole Mazour, The First Russian Revolution, 1825 [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971], p. 157). Aleksandr Dmitrievich Borovkov, “Aleksandr Dmitrievich Borovkov i ego avtobiograficheskiia zapiski,” Russkaia starina, vol. 96 (November 1898), p. 354. Ibid., pp. 361–62. For Sluchevskii’s service record, see SVM, vol.V, book III, part. 5, pp. 16–17. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, delo 6256, ll. 1–1 oborot. These letters served as the main source for the history as described above. RGVIA, fond 28, opis’ 1, delo 1110, Zapiska vitse direktora Komissariatskogo departamenta o sostavlenii metodicheskogo svoda voennykh uzakonenii i rassmotrenie dannogo voprosa v Sovete Voennogo Ministra, list 2 oborot. Ibid., list 3. Ibid., list 3 oborot. For some instances of investigations and discharges for malfeasance during Nicholas’s reign, see, e.g., RGVIA, fond 28, opis’ 1, tom 2, delo 1344,“Note of the Chancery of the War Ministry about the discharge for malfeasance and dereliction of duty of the chief of the Accounting Section of the Commissariat Administration . . .” (10/21/1828 - 11/14/1828); RGVIA, fond 28, opis’ 1, tom 2, delo 1411,“Presentation of the Commissariat Department with attached materials and copy of the resolution of the Council of the War Minister about the discharge of the director of the Fourth Section of the Commissariat Department Martyntsov for malfeasance . . .” (3/22/1829 3/29/1829); RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 2a, delo 3596, “Comments on reserves of provisions supplies in the state and about malfeasance in the provisions administration . . .” (10/19/1826 - 10/22/1826); RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 2a, delo 3600, “File . . . about malfeasance in the Stavropol’ Commissariat Commission . . .” (11/23/1826 - 7/15/1829); and RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 3, delo 6108, “Concerning the communication of the Chief of the

Notes

48.

49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62.

287

Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty about the malfeasance of the senior controller of the Commissariat Department, official of the ninth class Borisov” (9/16/1826 - 8/17/1827). This list is not exhaustive for the period 1826–1832, and it does not include the many investigations of Alexander’s reign, of which the most prominent was the investigation into the affairs of the Provisions Department in 1817, in which the War Minister, Gorchakov, was implicated.The accused in that case were charged with “indulgence and inattentiveness to the clear improprieties of the suppliers, the inappropriate transfer to them of money, and releasing their deposits when they should have been kept” (SVM, vol. 5, part 1, p. 478). Some or all of these charges could have resulted from ignorance of regulations, but it is more likely that general ignorance of regulations facilitated chicanery. This was a problem that was not confined to the military administration. See, e.g., Marc Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia 1772–1839 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), pp. 325–27 for a discussion of the difficulties facing the Second Section in codifying Russian civil law. RGVIA, fond 28, opis’ 1, delo 1110, list 4. Data reproduced in SVM, vol. 3, part 5 show that officials rarely remained in a single department throughout their careers but transferred freely within and between ministries and departments.There are a number of cases of officials who entered military service in infantry and cavalry regiments and attained appointments in the Chancery of the War Ministry, as well as officials who transferred between the Provisions Department and the Commissariat Department. It is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of the present work to examine in detail career patterns and other essential details of the functioning of the military administration under Nicholas, but such studies are needed. RGVIA, fond 28, opis’ 1, delo 1110, list 5 oborot. Ibid., list 9. Ibid., list 8. Ibid., list 7 oborot. PSZ I, no. 26,021, §15. RGVIA, fond 28, opis’ 1, delo 1110, list 11. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 3, delo 7535, O redaktsii Svoda Voennykh Postanovlenii, list 1 oborot. Ibid., ll. 1 oborot through 3. The funds were to be drawn from general accounts within the War Ministry. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, delo 6256, ll. 30–31 oborot contains a “to-do” list of matters relating to gathering these papers.The items and the marginal comments correspond closely with the memoranda following the list, most of which were signed by Adlerberg. Ibid., ll. 37–37 oborot. Ibid., ll. 49–49 oborot. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 4, l. 9.

288

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

63. Supremely Confirmed Journal of the Committee Designated by Imperial Command for the Discussion of the Order of Review and Further Progress of the General Digest of Military Regulations, 18 February 1830, in RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, delo 7535, l. 27 oborot. The conclusions of the committee are also summarized in RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 4, ll. 9–10. 64. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, delo, 7535, ll. 28–28 oborot. 65. Ibid., ll. 28 oborot–29. 66. Ibid., ll. 37–37 oborot. 67. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 4, l. 10 oborot. 68. Ibid., l. 1. 69. Ibid., l. 10 oborot. 70. See Chapter VIII for a continuation of the story of the codification of Russian military law. 71. See Chapter VIII.

Chapter III 1. SIRIO 131, doc. 64, p. 103, Nicholas to Constantine, 25 November 1826. Italics in the original. 2. Cited in a note from Tatishchev to the Military Council of 16 March 1827, RGVIA, fond 28, opis’ 1, delo 1132, Reshenie Soveta Voennogo Ministra s prilozheniem materialov o sokrashchenii shtata departamentov Voennogo Ministerstva, ll. 2–2 oborot. 3. Ibid., ll. 2 oborot through 5. 4. Ibid., list 23. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., ll. 24–24 oborot. 7. Ibid., ll. 25 oborot and 26. Provisions commissionerates and commissions were the field arms of the Provisions Department, collecting, storing, and distributing grain in the various regions assigned to the department. 8. See Chapter I. 9. See SIRIO 78, doc. 230, pp. 333–34 for Zakrevskii’s statistics on paper flow in the Inspectorate Department from 1812 through 1823. 10. L. G. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot v XIX veke:Voenno-ekonomicheskii potentsial Rossii (Moscow:“Nauka,” 1973), pp. 14–15. Figures include both regular and irregular troops. Considering only regular troops, the increase was 83 percent. 11. Army sizes from Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot, pp. 14–15. The complement of 1812 is defined by PSZ I, 25,012; the complement of 1816 is defined by PSZ I, 26,155. 12. Cited in SVM, vol. 3, part 1, p. 236. 13. RGVIA, fond 28, opis’ 1, delo 1132, list 1.

Notes

289

14. PSZ I, 25,012. Figures for 1825 were not readily available but could not have been much different, considering that neither the size of the administration nor the salaries of its officials changed materially between 1812 and 1832. 15. Bliokh, p. 148. 16. See Chapter I. 17. RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18009, Delo po predlozheniiu o preobrazovanii voennogo vedomstva v 1827, list 1. Emphasis in the original. 18. The draft law is contained in VUA, delo 18009. This delo is problematic in other ways as well. The comments on the draft law on ll. 13 through 13 oborot, and on ll. 14 through 17, are undated and unsigned, as is the “Proposal Concerning the Reorganization of the Military Administration” on ll. 18 through 21; Prince P. A. Tolstoi’s “Opinion about the transformation of the military administration” on ll. 22 through 25 is also undated. The proposal on ll. 18 through 21 is actually a copy of Nicholas’s response to A. I. Chernyshev’s suggestions for reform in 1832. The first set of comments (ll. 13 and 13 oborot) I tentatively identify as those of P. A.Tolstoi, to whom the cover memorandum (which asked for Tolstoi to return his comments) of the draft law was addressed. The second set of comments I suggest belonged to Prince V. P. Kochubei, for reasons outlined below. Because P. A.Tolstoi’s proposal for a reorganization of the military administration (ll. 22 through 25) is undated and follows a document produced in 1832, I cannot even guess at a date. He might have written it in 1827 or before; he probably did not write it later than 1833, because in that year a reform similar to that outlined in this proposal occurred.The sources available to me do not permit greater accuracy at this point. 19. Ibid., list 3; §1. 20. Ibid., ll. 3–3 oborot. The list presented in §2 included the Inspector for Engineers and the Director of the Artillery Department but noted that they were under the Inspector-General of Engineers and the Inspector-General of Artillery, respectively. 21. Ibid., list 3 oborot, §4. The Edict of 12 December 1815 was On the Administration of the Military Department, PSZ I, no. 26,021. 22. Ibid., list 4 oborot, §16. 23. Ibid., list 5, §20. 24. PSZ I, no. 26,021, §14. 25. RGVIA,VUA, delo 18009, list 3 oborot, §6. 26. Ibid., list 6, §23. 27. Ibid., ll. 6–6 oborot, §24. 28. Ibid., §25 and §26. 29. Ibid., list 7, §§29–30. 30. Ibid., ll. 7 oborot–8, §§32 and 35. 31. Ibid., list 11 oborot, §53.

290

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

32. Ibid., list 9, §40. 33. PSZ I, no. 24,971, Supremely Confirmed Establishment of the War Ministry, §5, states, “The structure of the departments and chanceries, the composition of the council attached to the minister and the general councils (obshchie prisutstviia) attached to the departments, the order of conducting affairs, forms of correspondence, review, and accounts are determined by the General Establishment of Ministries.”The functions of the Council of the Main Staff described above differ very little from those described for the Council of the Minister in the General Establishment of Ministries, PSZ I, no. 24,686, §115, except that, whereas the General Establishment of Ministries is necessarily vague, the specific provisions of the draft law make very clear the scope of the council and the issues most important to it. It is, in effect, the specific interpretation of the General Establishment of Ministries for the military administration that should have been published in the Charge to the Minister, had such a law ever been promulgated for the War Ministry. 34. RGVIA,VUA, delo 18009, ll. 5–5 oborot, §19. 35. Ibid., ll. 4, §8 and §10, and 5–5 oborot, §19. 36. I have translated as “Inspector-General of Artillery” the cumbersome Russian phrase “General-fel’dtseikhmeister,” which should more properly be rendered as “Master-General of Ordnance” or “Field-gun-master-general”—neither of which phrases improve our understanding in any way.Translating it somewhat inaccurately as “Inspector-General of Artillery,” however, underlines the similarity between this office and that of Inspector-General of Engineers—offices that were functionally identical—and is a more convenient shorthand. Hereafter “Inspector-General of Artillery” will always refer to “General-fel’dtseikhmeister” unless specifically noted otherwise. 37. See Chapters IV and V for the problems engendered in the military administration and command structure by Dibich’s activities as nominal Chief of the Main Staff in the theater of war. 38. RGVIA,VUA, delo 18009, list 4 oborot. 39. SIRIO 73, doc. 101, p. 122: Zakrevskii sent proposals for awards for officials of his department to Volkonskii, then in Troppau. Other indications that Volkonskii continued to be involved in minor details of the military administration while he was at Laibach are scattered throughout the correspondence in SIRIO 73. 40. The fact that there was no such position as Deputy Chief of the Main Staff in 1827 does not seem to have bothered anyone. It appears that Chernyshev largely ran the administration,Tolstoi oversaw him, and they reported together to Nicholas (SIRIO 122, p. 176). It is quite possible that this arrangement suggested the draft law contained in RGVIA, VUA, delo 18009, but neither the law nor Dibich’s cover memo makes reference to it (not that such a reference to so recent an event and so obvious a similar-

Notes

41.

42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

291

ity would have been likely). For the dispute between Ermolov and Paskevich and Dibich’s role in composing it, see John Shelton Curtiss, The Russian Army under Nicholas I: 1825–1855 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1965), Chapter II. This dispute is, in truth, of very little consequence in Russian history and even in Russian military history, and it does not bear discussion except by those who wish to lambaste Nicholas and Dibich for their preference of the hated Paskevich to the more liberal and appealing Ermolov. The drafter of the law may have had in mind that a sharp Intendant General would have noticed this failing and drafted his own proposals to correct it. Section 33 states that “The Intendant General will take all measures for the improvement of the movement of affairs and the reduction of expenses in the Departments entrusted to him, presenting about all matters exceeding his competence to the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff ” (RGVIA, VUA, delo 18009, list 8). The Intendant General was an old agency with new functions. SIRIO 78, doc. 196, pp. 299–300, Zakrevskii to Kiselev, 24 July 1827. RGVIA,VUA, delo 18009, list 15 oborot. Kochubei was very familiar with the workings of the old colleges—especially their failings—as he had been intimately involved in Alexander’s attempts first to reform and then to abolish them. M. M. Speranskii had also, of course, been involved and could have drafted these comments, as could any number of other elder statesmen still around in 1827, but because Speranskii and Kochubei were the most active and influential of the elder statesmen, they are by far the most likely. Ibid., list 3 oborot. Curiously, although the draft law clearly implies the abolition of the War Ministry, going so far as to note that the Chancery of the War Minister would become the Chancery of the Deputy Chief of the Main Staff (§52) and that the Council of the War Minister would be abolished (§50), it never explicitly states that the War Ministry itself would be abolished. Ibid., list 14, reference to §6. On the Administration of the War Department, PSZ I, no. 26,021. See Chapter II. States §12: “The quartermaster administration, the Scientific (nauchnyi) Committee, the Military-Topographical Depot, the Corps of Topographers and everything belonging to these bodies remain under the complete direction of the Chief of the Main Staff ” (RGVIA, VUA, delo 18009, ll. 4–4 oborot). States §16: “The Deputy Chief of the Main Staff oversees the administrations of: the Quartermaster General, the Duty General and Intendant General in full measure. . . .” Comments on §12 and §16, ibid., list 14 oborot. It is not clear what Kochubei had in mind by “newly introduced person” (litso novovvodimoe), as the edict of 12 December 1815, On the Rules According

292

52.

53.

54. 55.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I to which the Commanders in Chief Must Administer Their Armies in Peacetime, PSZ I, no. 26,022, paragraph X, explicitly reconfirmed the continuation of the functions of Intendant General. These sections defined the new functions of the Intendant General, placing both the field and the internal Commissariat and Provisions Departments, as well as the Medical Department and Field Medical Administration, under his control, and they described, very roughly, the flow of papers and reports from those administrations to the Chief of the Main Staff, through his Deputy, and back again. Comments on §§29–34, RGVIA,VUA, delo 18009, ll. 15 through 16. There are, of course, difficulties inherent in this procedure as well; chiefly that, when bureaucratic functions are legislated in minute detail, the system tends to ossify and to lose its ability to change to meet new circumstances. I do not believe that there really is a “good” solution to this problem; only trial and error over time can (if the trials are fair and the errors are noticed and corrected) produce a system that works. Comments on §§37–47, ibid., ll. 16–16 oborot. §§775–84 define the duties, §§901–7 define the powers, and §§978–1013 define the relationships of the Military Council with other bodies of the military and state administrations.The paper routing is described in PSZ II, no. 9,039, Supremely Confirmed Statute about the Order of Conducting Affairs in the War Ministry, §§53–66 and §§74–110. See Chapter VII for a discussion of the structures established by the reforms of 1832–1836.

Chapter IV 1. See Harold Temperley, England and the Near East: The Crimea (n.p.: Archon Books, 1964), for an excellent discussion (from the British perspective) of the problems facing Sultan Mahmud and his various attempts to solve them. The sultan’s generally “western” or “liberal” policies and the disorder in his realm rendered his rule unstable and made him extremely vulnerable to the criticism that he was excessively subservient to the enemies of the faith (a faith which he himself was sometimes accused of subverting). 2. The sultan’s government was also known as the Porte, or the Sublime Porte. 3. Zichy to Metternich, 24 April 1828, in Clemens Metternich, Memoirs of Prince Metternich, 1815–1829, vol. 4, ed. Richard Metternich, trans. Mrs. Alexander Napier (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970), pp. 485–96. 4. SIRIO 131, passim. 5. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 2a, delo 3707, Perepiska s Nessel’rode, Greigom, Golitsynym, Tolstym i drugimi litsami o svedeniiakh, poluchennykh iz Turtsii: svedeniia o polozhenii v Turtsii, raporty Nachal’niku Glavnogo Shtaba EIV Dibichu ot

Notes

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

293

nachal’nika Glavnogo Shtaba 2-oi armii v sviazi s podgotovkoi k voine s Turtsiei, ll. 12 oborot–13 oborot. V.A. Liakhov, Russkaia armiia i flot v voine s ottomanskoi Turtsiei v 1828–1829 godakh (Iaroslavl’: 1972), p. 31.The fact that 50 percent of the grain got through is, presumably, a testimony to Russian ingenuity or Turkish incompetence. Ibid., p. 35, quoting N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksander I, vol. 4 (Saint Petersburg: 1898), p. 225. Fuller, p. 107. Kiselev to Zakrevskii, 16 June 1821, SIRIO 78, doc. 28, p. 70; Kiselev to Zakrevskii, 16 July 1821, SIRIO 78, doc. 30, pp. 71–73; Kiselev to Zakrevskii 24 January 1822, SIRIO 78, doc. 41, pp. 87–89. Zakrevskii to Kiselev, 29 June 1821, SIRIO 78, doc. 153, p. 246. See Temperley, England and the Near East, passim, on Palmerston’s (and others’) views of Russia’s aggressive intentions. N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Nikolai Pervyi, vol. II, p. 250. The committee consisted of A. N. Golitsyn, P. A. Tolsoi, Prince Nessel’rode, D.V. Dashkov, and A. I. Chernyshev, and it was chaired by V. P. Kochubei. Ibid. Ibid., p. 251. SIRIO 122, p. 304. Ibid., pp. 306–7. See S. S.Tatishchev, Vneshniaia politika Imperatora Nikolaia I:Vvedenie v istoriiu vneshnikh snoshenii Rossii v epokhu Sevastopol’skoi voiny (St. Petersburg: 1887) for a detailed discussion of Nicholas’s diplomacy toward Turkey in the first half of the nineteenth century. Temperley, p. 54. See Chapter IX for a discussion of the impact of Palmerston’s foreign policy on Russia’s security situation. “Materialy i cherty k biografii Imperatora Nikolaia I i k istorii ego tsarstvovaniia,” in SIRIO, vol. 98 (1896), (hereafter SIRIO 98), p. 303. Initial deployment of 1825, which was not changed until after 1829, appears on pp. 300–1. Operational intelligence about the concentrations and deployments of Austrian and Prussian forces were gathered by the Army of Poland, commanded by Grand Duke Constantine, and by Second Army. On 3 December 1827 Constantine reported to the commander of First Army, Count Sacken, that the Austrians were forming an observation corps of between 30,000 and 60,000 men in Galicia (Shil’der, II:520). On 1 January 1828 he reported to the Emperor that Austria had formed another observation corps in Hungary and that the combined total of both corps was 70,000 men (II:522). We must remember that the Russian troops in the Balkan theater were operating on a thin line of communications, and that, had the Austrians attacked, the Russians could have found themselves trapped between Turkish

294

23.

24. 25.

26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33. 34.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I resistance based on the Balkans and the Danubian forts and the Austrian army marching to the sea. Nor was the Russian Black Sea fleet up to the task of supplying a 100,000-strong army caught in such a predicament. (It was not even capable of supplying a much smaller army not caught in such a predicament, as will be shown.) The corps were III,VI, and VII Infantry and IV Reserve Cavalry, as well as the 2nd and 3rd Pioneer Brigades. These forces totaled some 95,000 combatants and some 115,000 men overall (Nikolai Alekseevich Epanchin, Ocherk Pokhoda 1829 g. v Evropeiskoi Turtsii, vol. I [Saint Petersburg: 1905], p. 358). This chapter considers only the operations against European Turkey, both because that was (and had to be) the decisive theater of the war and because Nicholas himself was present in that theater for much of the campaign of 1828. Ibid., p. 245. Helmuth von Moltke, The Russians in Bulgaria and Rumelia in 1828 and 1829: During the Campaigns of the Danube, the Sieges of Brailov,Varna, Silistria, Shumla, and the Passage of the Balkans by Marshal Diebitsch (London: J. Murray, 1854), p. 258. Shil’der, II:207. The six corps were: II, III,VI, and VII Infantry; IV Reserve Cavalry; and the Guards Corps.“Combatants” means privates, NCOs, and musicians (buglers, drummers, etc.). Epanchin, II:53. Ibid., Appendix no. 6, pp. 20–21. The Russian army had designated reserve units for each active unit, the so-called third battalions. In 1828 a division consisted of three brigades with two regiments each. Each regiment consisted, nominally, of three battalions, but of these only the first two marched with the regiment, while the third remained in the rear to serve as reserves. When reserves of these third battalions were sent to the front, the deficiencies were made up by recruits. Draft no. 91, 26 August 1827 (PSZ II, no. 1,331), drew 2 recruits from every 500 peasants, producing 61,996 men. Draft no. 92, 14 April 1828 (PSZ II, no. 1,949), also drew 2 recruits per 500, producing 59,906 men. Draft no. 93, 21 August 1828 (PSZ II, no. 2,246), drew 4 recruits per 500, producing 134,915 men. SVM vol. 4, part 2, book 1, section 2, pp. 5–16; Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot, pp. 73–76. L. G. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot v XIX veke:Voenno-ekonomicheskii potentsial Rossii (Moscow: “Nauka,” 1973), pp. 73–76. Constantine to Sacken, 3 December 1827, cited in Shil’der, II:520. Additional correspondence concerning Austrian preparations for war can be found in RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 2a, delo 3707, passim. Constantine to Nicholas, 14 December 1827, cited in Shil’der, II:522. Constantine to Nicholas, 1 January 1828, ibid.

Notes

295

35. Nicholas to Constantine, 12 November 1827, SIRIO 131, doc. 112, p. 192. 36. Zakrevskii to Kiselev, 10 December 1827, SIRIO 78, doc. 74, p. 151. 37. Reports of the Tsesarevich of 18 and 22 November 1827, cited in Shil’der, II:519. 38. Constantine to Nicholas, 20 November 1827, SIRIO 131, doc. 113, p. 196; report of Constantine’s agent appended to report of 25 November 1827. 39. Constantine to Nicholas, 7 January 1828, cited in Shil’der, II:522. 40. Constantine to Nicholas, 14 February 1828, ibid., p. 523. 41. Nicholas to Constantine, 17 February 1828, SIRIO 131, doc. 120, p. 208. 42. Nicholas to Constantine, 23 April 1828, SIRIO 131, doc. 127, p. 222, emphasis in original. 43. Prince Eugene of Württemberg, “Turetskii pokhod 1828 goda i sobytiia, za nim sledovavshiia: Zapiski Printsa Evgeniia Virtembergskago,” Russkaia starina, vol. 27 (1880), p. 80. 44. Nicholas to Constantine, 9 June 1828, SIRIO 131, doc. 134, p. 239. 45. Constantine to Nicholas, 28 February 1828, SIRIO 131, doc. 121, p. 210. 46. Constantine to Nicholas, 15 June 1828, SIRIO 131, doc. 135, p. 242. 47. Cited in Epanchin, II:4. 48. Nesselrode to Russian Ambassador in Berlin, 26 October 1828, ibid., p. 7. 49. Constantine to Nicholas, 1 December 1828, cited in Shil’der, II:192, n. 264. 50. Constantine to Nicholas, 8 December 1828, ibid. 51. Constantine to Nicholas, 20 December 1828, ibid. 52. Chernyshev to Dibich, 2 May 1829, cited in Epanchin, vol. II, p. 4. 53. Estimates reproduced in RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 1107, O sostave armii, prednaznachaemoi dlia voiny na zapade i o voennykh prigotovleniiakh na sluchai razryva s Anglieiu i Frantsieiu, ll. 71–78 oborot. 54. Ibid., list 58. 55. Report of the Secret Committee of 16 October 1828, signed by V. P. Kochubei, P. A.Tolstoi, and A. I. Golitsyn. Cited in Shil’der, II:554. 56. Compiled from Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot, pp. 482–83; Ministerstvo Finansov, 1802–1902 (St. Petersburg: 1902), pp. 628–29; and I. S. Bliokh, Finansy Rossii XIX stoletiia: Istoriia—Statistika, vol. I (Saint Petersburg: 1882), pp. 188–89. The data do not agree, and the information for 1828 does not agree with the data presented in Epanchin, I:354–57. Beskrovnyi cites both Ministerstvo Finansov and Bliokh, as well as RGVIA, fond 831, opis’ 1, delo 1, ll. 10–10 oborot, 39 oborot, and 51 oborot. I have used Beskrovnyi’s figures for extraordinary expenditures (Bliokh gives: 1827—24,924; 1828—85,928; 1829—122,421; 1830—65,767; 1831—97,258) except for 1830 and 1831, years for which Beskrovnyi does not give discrete figures for ordinary and extraordinary expenditures.The differences and discrepancies are not important for the present work; the figures presented above are the lowest available to me, and there is reason to believe that the actual figures are higher (see below). There can be no doubt that the wars with Turkey and Persia cost

296

57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I Russia in excess of 190 million rubles above the annual War Ministry budgets of some 470 million for those three years, and that this total was somewhat more than half of all ordinary budgetary expenditures for those years. Bliokh, pp. 188–89. SVM, vol. 4, part 2, book 1, section 2, p. 4.The figures come from Chernyshev’s report of 1850, p. 326. Ibid., pp. 4 and 12. The army released 17,362 soldiers for completing their 20- and 22-year terms of service, 272 under punishment, and 2,673 for being unfit for service; 4,440 transferred to the civil administration, 5,106 deserted, and 18,515 died; 444 were lost for various other reasons. Constantine to Nicholas, 28 June 1828, cited in SIRIO 131, doc. 135, p. 242. See Chapter V. From Dibich’s Proposal Concerning Bringing Second Army to Readiness for Movement of 7 August 1827, cited in Epanchin, I:184. Kiselev’s report to Dibich of 31 October 1827, cited in Epanchin, p. 201. Ibid., p. 322. See ibid., Chapters V-IX, for the most detailed description available of the course of Russia’s preparations for the war of 1828. Epanchin bitterly criticizes Nicholas and his advisors for allowing financial considerations to dominate their thinking, but although many of his criticisms are sound, he does not acknowledge the possibility that the central leadership’s concern for economy was based on real problems. Ibid., p. 159. Twenty four million rubles was Dibich’s estimate for Second Army’s mobilization expenses—the actual cost was almost certainly higher (see ibid., p. 240). It is true that the Army of Poland, the Guards Corps, the Grenadiers Corps, and all of First Army stood as potential reserves, and that the Guards Corps and II Corps were on their way from the beginning of the campaign toward the theater of war. It is equally true that no reserves whatsoever were available to Second Army before September 1828 (when the Guards and II Corps would arrive—any other units would have had to have been mobilized and then marched down to the Balkans and would almost certainly have arrived even later), and that all of this potential “reserve” was deployed against various possible threats already.

Chapter V 1. Epanchin reproduced many of these plans in his work and its appendices. See Epanchin, Ocherk Pokhoda 1829 g. v Evropeiskoi Turtsii, vol. I (Saint Petersburg: 1905), passim. 2. Both Dibich’s plans of winter 1827 and Kiselev’s plans of that year supposed that the ultimate objective of the war was either to capture Constantinople,

Notes

3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

297

or, by marching directly on it, to compel the sultan to sign a peace beneath the walls of his capital. (See ibid., p. 245 for Dibich’s plan and Appendix 15 for Kiselev’s plan). Later estimates of Turkish strength placed over 155,000 troops in Constantinople, Thessaly, the Danubian fortresses, Adrianople, and Shumla, with an additional 25,000 deployed in various fortresses in Europe and Asia (ibid., p. 125). The Russian army that crossed the border numbered over 115,000 in all. Of those,VI Corps was immobilized in the Principalities, where it encountered practically no Turkish troops. Dibich took Adrianople with 12,200 infantry, 4,500 cavalry, and 100 guns (N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Nikolai Pervyi, ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, vol. II [St. Petersburg: 1903], p. 244). Epanchin, vol. I, passim. Ibid., p. 348. Ibid., p. 358. Nikolai Lukianovich, Opisanie Turetskoi voiny 1828 i 1829 godov, vol. II (Saint Petersburg: 1844), p. 347, reproducing Kiselev’s report from just before the campaign, gives a total of 113,108 men and 29,688 horses in the line units that crossed the border. II Corps comprised some 40,000 men and the elements of the Guards Corps some 25,000 (II Corps Order of Battle in ibid., Appendix VI; Guards Corps size from Shil’der,II:439, n. 248). Epanchin, I:348. Ibid., p. 349. Ibid., p. 381. Ibid. Letter from Dibich (at Shumla) to Nicholas (in Odessa) of 23 August 1828, “Imperator Nikolai Pavlovich i Gr. Dibich-Zabalkanskii: Perepiska 1828–1830 gg,” Russkaia starina, vol. 27 (1880), p. 779. Letter from Dibich to Nicholas, 21 August 1828, ibid., p. 777. Dibich to Nicholas, 23 August 1828, ibid., p. 779. Epanchin, I:349 and 380–81. The loss of horses was so serious that in September Dibich was forced to curtail the use of couriers, which had been running daily between himself and Nicholas. Continuing this schedule, he wrote, “would significantly harm that small number of horses that we have at the posts” (Dibich to Nicholas, 2 September 1828, Russkaia starina, vol. 29 (1880), p. 894.) See Chapter IV. Epanchin, I:351–52. Ibid., p. 352. Kankrin to Dibich, 9 February 1828, ibid., p. 354. Ibid. Chernyshev to Dibich, 14 March 1828, ibid., p. 353. Ibid., p. 355.

298 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

38.

39.

40.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I Ibid., p. 356. Ibid., p. 354. Chernyshev to Dibich, 20 June 1828, ibid., p. 357. RGVIA fond 28, opis’ 1, tom 2, dela 1344 and 1411. Dibich had direct control (but not command authority) both over the CINC of Second Army and over the Chief of the Main Staff of Second Army, and the law did not require him to consult the former in issuing orders to the latter. The tsar, of course, had direct command authority over everyone in the army, although the law required him to send orders only through Dibich—which he always did. The edict was issued on 24 May 1828 (Shil’der, II:132). Wittgenstein signed Kiselev’s draft orders, which made them technically legal, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who, besides Dibich, was actually running Second Army. Epanchin, I:103–5. In A. I. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, “Zapiski Aleksandra Ivanovicha Mikhailovskago-Danilevskago,” Russkaia starina, vol. 79 (1893), p. 356. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii became Duty General of Second Army in the reshuffling following Wittgenstein’s retirement/dismissal. Shil’der, II:132. Nicholas to Dibich, 14 August 1828, Russkaia starina, vol. 27 (1880), p. 525. “Aperçu sur la campagne de l’année 1828,” reproduced in Shil’der, II:554–58. Neither Shil’der nor Epanchin, who cites this document translated into Russian, provide any date for it, although Shil’der’s timeline makes it clear that it must have been received a few days before the meeting of 19 November that it appeared to suggest. As told by Kiselev to Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, reported in MikhailovksiiDanilevskii, p. 199. This would presumably be Dibich, but might as well be Kiselev. Both prepared plans of campaign, but it was Dibich’s that was put into execution. It is hard to know, however, what Vasil’chikov knew of or believed in Dibich’s involvement in the planning. See Epanchin, passim. One of the central themes of Epanchin’s work is that Dibich (and Nicholas) tried to control everything and make all plans from St. Petersburg without consulting Kiselev or taking his suggestions into consideration. Epanchin goes too far in this criticism and, in the process, gives Kiselev too much credit, but he is nevertheless not far off the mark. See Epanchin, passim. It is difficult to know with whom Kiselev consulted, for this would probably have taken place orally at Second Army headquarters. It is a fact, however, that neither his own plans nor his complaints against Dibich’s plans (which were clearly out of touch with logistical reality), reveal any keener understanding of those problems than Dibich had. See Chapter II.

Notes

299

41. See, e.g., Epanchin, I:272–73. 42. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 2a, delo 3795, Zapiska General-Ad”iutanta Grafa Dibicha, soderzhashchaia zamechanii o prichinakh, umen’shivshikh uspekhi v Kampanii 1828 g. protivu Turok,—i mnenii ego o preobrazovanii voennago upravleniia [“Notes of Adjutant-General Dibich, containing reflections on the reasons that reduced the success of the Campaign of 1828 against the Turks, and his opinions about the transformation of the military administration”]. 43. Ibid., ll. 1–1 oborot. Dibich was never at home in Russian and usually wrote to Nicholas in French. It was customary, however, by this time at least, for official documents to be written in Russian, and the fact that Dibich wrote this note in Russian indicates that he saw it as an official memorandum from the Chief of the Main Staff to His Majesty the Emperor. Nevertheless, his rambling and florid Russian is not easily rendered into coherent English. 44. It also confirms the general view of Dibich that his colleagues held: he was a loner and managed to antagonize almost everyone around him—except the tsar, toward whom he was sycophantic in the extreme. Dibich’s failure to consult with other officers while planning the campaign of 1828 almost certainly stemmed mainly from his character, rather than from the system.The fact remains, however, that neither the organization nor the customary operation of the system at that time required or even encouraged Dibich to seek out advice against his nature, nor did it encourage others to try to participate in the planning process. 45. Ibid., list 1 oborot. 46. Ibid., ll. 2–2 oborot. 47. Ibid., ll. 3–3 oborot. 48. Ibid., list 4. 49. It is possible that Dibich imagined Wittgenstein would seek Kiselev’s removal at once as well. If so, he would probably have been disappointed— Wittgenstein seems to have resigned himself more or less happily to Kiselev’s control. 50. Administrations of all sorts, both civil and military, directed inquiries at commanders concerning everything from the sizes and locations of their forces to whether Colonel Kizhe was enrolled in a given unit. 51. Wittgenstein to Dibich, 12 December 1828, cited in Shil’der, vol. II, note 276. Shil’der notes that Wittgenstein “entrusted” (vruchil) this note to Dibich, and, although Shil’der does not explicitly state that Nicholas ever saw it, it is unlikely that Dibich failed either to deliver it or to mention it, especially as it would have done little to weaken Dibich’s own position while it did expose Wittgenstein to the accusation of seeking to enhance his own power. Thus there was no reason for Dibich to suppress it, and good reason to deliver it, for it would have been embarrassing for the Chief of

300

52.

53.

54.

55. 56.

57. 58. 59.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I the Main Staff if Wittgenstein requested a response to a message Dibich had failed to deliver. None of the laws establishing the powers of the Chief of the Main Staff gave him authority to issue orders in his own name to the CINC of an active army or the units of that army. Dibich’s correspondence with Nicholas, however, makes it clear that Dibich was directing operations on a tactical level that Nicholas could not possibly have controlled from Odessa. (The correspondence does not show that Nicholas even tried to control operations on that level.) See Nicholas’s correspondence with Dibich in Russkaia starina, volumes 27–29 (1880) (see the bibliography for details). The term “front” is used here in the modern Soviet sense of a grouping of armies.There was no remote equivalent in Russia in the 1820s of the higher Soviet groupings of fronts into strategic directions, and of strategic directions into theaters of war. In terms of actual organization, the use of the term “front” here is inappropriate, as there was not even in theory a front commander who controlled both the Caucasus and the Balkan theaters—which was the main reason for the almost complete lack of coordination between those theaters, and for the confusion of the role of the Black Sea Fleet.The fact remains, however, that two separate armies, with Commanders in Chief vested with the powers pertaining to that position according to the Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army, operated independently against Turkey, while at least two armies would have operated against Austria and/or Prussia (First Army, the Army of Poland, and Second Army would all have taken part in operations against Austria, and at least First Army and the Army of Poland against Prussia). This discussion concerns only Russia.The ancient Greeks and Romans, for example, had a solid grasp on the realities of military manpower policy, and various commanders throughout history have had better understandings of strategic threat evaluation than Alexander evinced. Russian tsars and generals in the 1820s, however, were still learning their trade. See Chapter I. It is true that Nicholas was merely in his fifties during the crisis leading up to the Crimean War—hardly an old man by calendar age.Yet the strain of sovereignty lay very heavily upon him—more heavily, perhaps, than on any other tsar—so that the outbreak of a new eastern crisis found him old, stubbornly determined, and weakened before his time. See Nicholas Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), Chapter I, passim. See Chapter IV. Dibich to Nicholas, 5 October 1828, in Russkaia starina, vol. 29 (1880), pp. 914–15, emphasis in the original. Nicholas to Dibich, 16 October 1828, ibid., p. 930.

Notes

301

60. Presumably Nicholas meant by this that it had become clear that Austria would not intervene and that he should and could concentrate solely on bringing Turkey to terms. For one thing, considering the multiethnic nature of the Austrian empire, it is unlikely that Nicholas would have referred to Austria as a “nation,” whereas in thinking of the Ottoman Empire (which was no less polyglot) Nicholas thought exclusively in terms of the ethnically homogeneous Muslim overlords of that empire. 61. Presumably Silistria and Shumla. 62. Nicholas to Dibich, 10 November 1828, ibid., pp. 931–32, emphasis in the original. 63. Kankrin to Nicholas, 7 November 1828, cited in Shil’der, vol. II, note 279. 64. Without an accurate date for Vasil’chikov’s memorandum, it is impossible to know exactly what was the sequence of events in November 1828, but the tenor of Nicholas’s letters to Dibich and others convinces me that Vasil’chikov’s was the last in the series of notes that Nicholas received, and that he must have received it between 10 November, the date of his letter to Dibich announcing his adoption of Kankrin’s plan, and 19 November, the date of the meeting of the committee to advise him on the further prosecution of the war. It is also possible that Vasil’chikov’s memorandum predated Kankrin’s, and that Nicholas had either decided to set the date for the meeting of the committee that Vasil’chikov proposed later in the month, or he was debating whether or not to convene such a committee at all. In the first instance he would have been continuing to worry the problem of strategy for the next campaign after having decided to convoke a council to help him decide it, which is possible but not likely. In the latter case, some event must have occurred subsequent to his receipt of Vasil’chikov’s memorandum to convince him that he did, after all, have to convoke the meeting. This variant is quite possible, but if it was the case, then the event that caused Nicholas to change his mind yet again has not made it into the published historical record. The likeliest sequence of events was that Nicholas received Vasil’chikov’s memorandum after 10 November, adopted it at once, and met with his advisors at the first possible instant thereafter. 65. Epanchin, II:23. It is interesting to note the contrast in ethnic makeup between this committee, of which only one of the four members was German, and the committees that advised Alexander in 1812, in which Germans and other foreigners dominated.The commanders of the army in the Balkan theater in 1828–1829 had such names as Dibich (Diebitsch), Württemberg, Roth, Wittgenstein, and so forth, but the men who decided upon the strategy were, except for Tol’, Russian. It is very easy to make too much of such details—Dibich and Wittgenstein were no less loyal to the country and the throne than Chernyshev and Paskevich. But it is a fact frequently overlooked in the discussions of Nicholas’s Prussophilia that the

302

66.

67.

68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I thorough Russianization of the upper level of military commands and administrations occurred during his reign. Chernyshev’s career prior to 1825 is well known, but there is practically no information on the most significant epoch of his life, his 25 years as War Minister. See Bruce Menning, “A. I. Chernyshev: A Russian Lycurgus,” Canadian Slavonic Papers XXX, no. 2 (June 1988), pp. 192–219; N. K. Shil’der, “Svetleishii Kniaz’ Aleksandr Ivanovich Chernyshev,” Voennyi sbornik, no. 1 (1902); no. 2 (1902), pp. 30–46; no. 3 (1902), pp. 24–42; and no. 4 (1902), pp. 21–40; A. I. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, “Zhizneopisanie Kniazia Aleksandra Ivanovicha Chernysheva,” SIRIO 122, pp. 1–288. The record of this meeting comes from Chernyshev’s aide-mémoire to the tsar, composed on 26 November 1828, summarizing the course of the session. Considering that Nicholas had been presiding at the meeting, this document has a very high degree of reliability, for Chernyshev could hardly afford to misrepresent statements that Nicholas himself had heard only a week before. The words, nevertheless, were Chernyshev’s. It is cited in Epanchin II:23–30. From “The Report of G[eneral]. A[d”jutant]. Kiselev About Considerations Concerning the Composition of a Plan of War, Received from Count Dibich attached to the Report No. 355,” read to and approved by Wittgenstein on 21 September 1827, reproduced in full as appendix 15 in Epanchin, vol. I. Epanchin, II:24. Ibid., pp. 24–25. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid. See above, notes 13, 14, and 15. Ibid., pp. 26–29. From Dibich’s plan of war submitted on 8 January 1829, ibid., p. 44. The reshuffle of commands occurred on 9 February 1829. Ibid., p. 39. See Chapter VI. Shil’der, II:210. Ibid., note 294. Cited in Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, p. 180. In addition to the observations and recommendations of Vasil’chikov, Wittgenstein, and Dibich that have already been discussed, General Sabaneev, a corps commander during the war, submitted to Nicholas a memorandum on 31 January 1829 outlining his own view of the reasons for success and failure in the campaign of 1828 and making recommendations for minor changes in organization and tactics. Included among those recommendations, however, was one for reducing the term of service throughout the army by five years, releasing those who had served the reduced term to their homes upon the completion of the war. (Presumably Sabaneev had in mind the sort of reserve later created by the program of indefinite fur-

Notes

303

loughs, although his memorandum does not go into much detail.) RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 2a, delo 3826, Zapiska Generala Sabaneeva ob uluchshenii sostoianiia armii, list 2.

Chapter VI 1. The reader will observe that the suppression of the Polish Rebellion of 1830–1831 has been skipped. The reason for this omission is that although the Polish Rebellion further revealed the serious defects in the military administration, with a few exceptions suggestions for reform of that administration were not made again.The exceptions form the subject of Chapter IX. 2. “Graf A. Kh. Benkendorf o Rossii v 1827–1830 gg.,” Krasnyi Arkhiv, vol. 38 (1930), p. 129. 3. SVM, vol. I, p. 237; and A. I. Chernyshev,“Istoricheskoe obozrienie voennosukhoputnago upravleniia s 1825 po 1850 god,” SIRIO 98, p. 299ff. 4. Changes in the organization of the command structure of the armies in 1829–1831 had already largely implemented the suggestions of Dibich, Wittgenstein, and Vasil’chikov. Second Army, for example, was eliminated in 1830 and its component units reassigned to First Army (see PSZ II, no. 3,768, 1 July 1830, On the unification of the troops of Second Army and the general complement of First Army and about the consideration of Second Army as abolished). Additional changes occurred throughout the rest of Nicholas’s reign. 5. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, O preobrazovanii Voennogo Ministerstva, list 1ff, 23 June 1831. Reproduced in SVM, vol. I,Appendix 1, as “Doklad upravliaiushchago glavnym shtabom Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva, general-ad”iutanta kniazia Chernysheva, o neobkhodimosti preobrazovanii v ustroistve voennago upravleniia” (Report of the Head of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty, Adjutant-General Chernyshev, on the Necessity for Reform in the Organization of the Military Administration). 6. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, ll. 6 oborot–7 oborot. Also in SVM, vol. I, Appendix I, pp. 6–7. Italics represent Nicholas’s underlining. 7. The words “War Ministry” were underlined in the report, but the words “Main Staff ” were not.The underlining was Chernyshev’s (Nicholas used a pencil to comment on this report, and the underlining was in pen).Was this Chernyshev’s way of indicating his preference? Or was it simply a “clerical error?” 8. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, ll. 8–9 oborot, and SVM, vol. I, Appendix 1, p. 7. 9. See Zakrevskii to Kiselev, 31 January 1827, SIRIO 78, doc. 194, p. 296. 10. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, list 9 oborot; SVM, vol. I, Appendix 1, p. 8.

304

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

11. The Judicial Department had been constituted in 1812 as a department of the War Ministry (see PSZ I, no. 24,971, §2 and §§65–74) but was transferred to the control of the Duty General of the Main Staff in 1816 (see PSZ I, no. 26,021, §9 and PSZ I, no. 26,129, Organization of the Duty Administration of the Main Staff of His Imperial Highness, 7 February 1816).The report also asked four other questions concerning the medical administration (which falls outside the scope of the present work) and two minor questions: whether or not the Commandant of Imperial Headquarters and the Wagonmaster-General belong to the Main Staff or to the War Ministry, and whether the Duty General and the Quartermaster General would be obliged to serve as members of the Council of the War Minister (SVM, vol. I, Appendix 1, p. 9). 12. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, ll. 11 oborot–12; and SVM, vol. I, Appendix I, p. 9. 13. Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, F. Billecocq, trans., Le Comte Paul Stroganov, vol. I (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1905), pp. 56–59. 14. The reforms of 1833–1836 contained important components aimed at improving the quality of the bureaucrats within the ministry. These probably did improve the administration in the long run but had very little effect in the short run. See Chapter VII. 15. See Chapter III. 16. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, ll. 13–14 oborot contains Nicholas’s handwritten copy, ll. 15–16 oborot contains a fair copy.This document is reproduced in SVM I, Appendix I, pp. 10–11; still another copy appeared in RGVIA,VUA, delo 18009, for reasons unknown. Scholars seeking access to this document may have better luck with this last citation, as RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a is in poor condition, and the archive is understandably reluctant to produce it. 17. PSZ I, no. 26,021, 12 December 1815, On the Administration of the War Department, §3. 18. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, ll. 15–15 oborot and SVM, vol. I,Appendix I, p. 10, point 6. Emphasis is mine. 19. The War Ministry was created in 1802, but the War College was not disbanded until 1812. For the brief period of the Napoleonic invasion the central military administration was united—but the War Minister himself was at the front commanding the army. By 1814 the elements of what would become the Main Staff were already coalescing around Prince Volkonskii, and in 1815 the Main Staff was formally established alongside the War Ministry. 20. PSZ I, no. 24,686, General Establishment of Ministries, 25 June 1811, Part I, §§25–30. 21. PSZ I, no. 24,686, §25. 22. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, list 18; and SVM, vol. I, Appendix I, p. 10. 23. Points 8 through 13.

Notes

305

24. The Military Colonies Administration was reborn as the Department of Military Colonies during the second phase of the reform. 25. Nicholas was fond of telling foreign diplomats soon after his accession,“I am a brigadier general who knows little about political affairs.” Cited in Tatishchev, Vneshniaia Politika Imperatora Nikolaia I, p. 135. 26. PSZ II, no. 5,318, Vysochaishe utverzhdennyi proekt obrazovaniia Voennago Ministerstva, 1 May 1832, hereafter referred to as “the Project.” 27. The Campaign Chancery had existed until 1812, when it was abolished.The Project also addressed the recreation of the Judicial Department, a subject that is outside the scope of the current work.A study of Russian military law, its development and implementation, is urgently necessary, but it would require first the development of a solid base of understanding of the system of Russian law and legislation in general in the early nineteenth century, which has not yet been undertaken. 28. The Project did not address the question of the recomposition of the Main Staff and the appointment of a Chief of the Main Staff in the event of war, although it hinted at the possibility (PSZ II, no. 5,318, §2). 29. Ibid., §§5 and 6. 30. Ibid., §8. 31. PSZ I, no. 26,021, §3: “The Chief of the Staff is that official through whom all matters relating to the ground forces reach Me and through whom My resolutions or new regulations are promulgated”; §16 required the Inspectors-General of Artillery and Engineers to report “about economic affairs to the War Minister, and about others to Me. . . .” 32. PSZ II, no. 5,318, §19 stated, “The relations of the Inspector-General of Artillery and the Inspector-General of Engineers to the War Minister remain exactly those which they had to the Chief of the Main Staff of His Majesty.” This provision, which is the only provision in the Project addressing these two offices, makes no mention, however, of their relationships to the tsar, which is the matter at issue. If Michael wished to argue on the basis of the letter of the law that his right of direct access to the tsar had not been revoked, he would have had considerable justification. The point is almost certainly moot in any case—Michael could never really be deprived of the right of appealing to his brother, and Nicholas probably would not have taken kindly to attempts by Michael to use such access to circumvent a War Minister who held Nicholas’s confidence, whatever the letter of the law. 33. PSZ II, no. 5,318, §3. 34. Ibid., §§15 and 26. 35. Ibid., §14.The Department of the General Staff was comprised of the General Staff administration of the old Main Staff, the Military-Topographical Depot and the Corps of Topographers. Its Director was the Quartermaster General (§§12–14).

306

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

36. They are also difficult to assess.The Project lumped elements of the Artillery and Engineering Departments together, stating that these departments retained their current rosters and organizations. The fact that the Chanceries of these departments had belonged to the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty, while the departments themselves belonged to the War Ministry, however, meant that further changes in procedure at least were necessary, even for the departments to continue to function. It is likely that the directors of the departments made the necessary changes, which were within their power, but that the documents reflecting them have not been preserved. 37. PSZ I, no. 24,686, General Establishment of Ministries, 25 June 1811, §25. 38. The Council of the War Minister was established by the Establishment of the War Ministry, PSZ I, no. 24,971, 27 January 1812, on the basis of the General Establishment of Ministries, but with a number of exceptions, which will be discussed below. 39. PSZ I, no. 24,686, §§27–28. 40. Ibid., §29. 41. PSZ I, no. 24,971, §§149–52; PSZ I, no. 25,012, Supremely Confirmed Provisional Roster of the Departments of the War Ministry, Table II, Provisional Roster of the Council of the War Minister.The departments of the War Ministry in 1812 were: artillery, judicial, commissariat, engineers, inspectorate, medical, and provisions. 42. The chancery staff was in reality probably larger, for one of the line-items of the roster was “for chancery servants . . . 2,000 rubles.” Such a sum could serve as salary for as few as 4 and as many as 20 or so men, depending on precisely what rank the chancery servants held (PSZ I, no. 25,012,Table II). 43. PSZ I, no. 24,686, §115. Because the Charge to the War Minister drafted in 1812 never became law, there was no formal adjustment of the general regulations established in the General Establishment of Ministries to the particular needs of the War Ministry. 44. Ibid., §128. 45. Ibid., §129–30. 46. Ibid., §132:“The Council by itself has no executive power whatsoever. Upon the Minister’s confirmation [of a resolution of the Council], its execution is left to that Department to which the matter belongs. Exceptions to this rule in those Ministries in which some areas of execution may be laid upon the Council shall be designated by their particular Establishments.” The Establishment of the War Ministry did not make any such exceptions. 47. On the Administration of the War Department, PSZ I, no. 26,021, §15 stated that: “Equally, if there should be the need in parts of the administration of the Main Staff for consultation about the issue of some sort of new statute, about the organization or reform of the army, then the Chief of the Main Staff shall present such matters to the judgment of the Council of the War Minister, attending it himself and bringing with him the Quartermaster

Notes

48.

49.

50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

307

General and the Duty General.” Considering that there were few such matters in the last decade of Alexander I’s reign, this provision was probably largely a dead letter. PSZ I, no. 30,525, 8 October 1825, Supremely Confirmed Opinion of the State Council, On Additions to the Roster of the Council of the War Minister and about the conduct of affairs in that Council. The roster appended to PSZ I, no. 30,525 listed the number of directors of departments as seven, even though there were only five departments under the complete or partial control of the War Minister. It is possible that the Directors of the Inspectorate and Judicial Departments of the Main Staff continued to attend the Council of the War Minister, but On the Administration of the War Department is entirely unclear on the matter. It is also possible that the increase in the size of the chancery was smaller than it appears, for whereas the initial roster of 1812 did not list the number of “chancery servants,” PSZ I, no. 30,525 did.The law of 1825 provided for four permanent members from among army generals but eliminated the two rotating members provided for by the law of 1812.The new regulations appended to the Journal of the State Council mainly concerned regulations for setting meeting dates and times and for absences of Council members. PSZ II, no. 5,318, Preamble, paragraph 3, abolished the Council of the War Minister and its Chancery as of 1 January 1833, specifying that unresolved matters of the Council be transferred to the Chancery of the War Ministry for disposition. PSZ II, no. 5,318, §§36–39. See, e.g., RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, Delo o sostavlenii i vedenii v deistvie novago Uchrezhdeniia Voennago Ministerstva, passim. PSZ II, no. 5,318, §§42–43. See below. PSZ II, no. 5,318, §22.The Military Council also received jurisdiction over the Temporary Department of Military Colonies (§23).The competence of the Military Council was defined as follows: “The Military Council, overseeing the economic part of the War Ministry is established: 1) to take those measures necessary for the execution of activities relating to this area and especially relating to the organization of the supply of the troops with all necessities; 2) for the resolution by the force of laws, regulations, and special power given to the Council of all difficulties that might arise in the implementation of these measures and 3) to take measures for the rectification of units of the economic administration of the War Ministry that are noted to be inactive or in divergence from the lawful order” (§44).The determination that the Military Council was to focus only on such affairs was reaffirmed by §68: “ . . . the War Minister has the right to present for the consideration of the Council affairs also of other Departments and units of the ground forces administration, but only with Imperial permission, which must be sought especially

308

56.

57. 58. 59.

60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I for each specific matter” (my italics). The desire not to disturb Nicholas with what might seem to him to be foolish requests probably served as a considerable deterrent. PSZ II, no. 5,318, §62 stated, however, that the minister “preserved even as regards these Departments the full right of a Minister relating to hiring, dismissing, presenting for awards and ordering investigations of Officials belonging to them.” This provision is odd, because when Chernyshev specifically asked Nicholas whether he wanted this power to belong to the Minister or the Military Council, Nicholas had responded that it should belong to the Military Council (RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, list 18 oborot and SVM, vol. I, p. 252).This matter reveals one of the fundamental difficulties involved in institutional history at this level of detail in this period. Chernyshev met with Nicholas several times a week throughout his tenure as War Minister.There is no indication in any record I have seen that minutes of these meetings were taken; if they were, they do not appear to have been preserved. It is likely that, in the course of his meetings with Nicholas, Chernyshev changed the Tsar’s mind about the Minister’s power, but the only evidence for this is that Nicholas signed a law implementing the opposite of what he had proposed. A similar difficulty bedevils the evaluation of the effect of the Military Council—its journals were carefully and fully preserved, but the minutes of its meetings, through which we might see if there were arguments or exchanges of opinion, no longer seem to exist. PSZ II, no. 5,318, §46. Ibid., §53. Ibid., §55: “ . . . the War Minister may not in any circumstance by himself change measures adopted by the Council, nor may he, bypassing the Council, seek such changes from the supreme executive, legislative, or Autocratic powers.” Ibid., §111. Both the Council of the War Minister and the Military Council were empowered to make final decisions on certain matters (determined by the scope of the matter, the amount of money involved, whether new laws or regulations or changes to old laws or regulations were proposed, and so forth), but they had to submit their resolutions to higher authority (i.e., the State Council, the Committee of Ministers, or the tsar) for the rest. Ibid., §112. Ibid., §106, §§108–9. Istoricheskoe obozrienie voenno-sukhoputnago upravleniia s 1825 po 1850 god in SIRIO 98, p. 354ff. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, list 28. SVM, vol. III, part 6, p. 217. PSZ II, no. 9,038, roster. The Chancery of the War Ministry could not, however, prevent Chernyshev himself, Nicholas, or the members of the Military Council from changing

Notes

68. 69.

70.

71.

72.

73.

74.

309

those aims, as Nicholas did, on Chernyshev’s recommendation, after the promulgation of the Project of 1832. PSZ I, no. 24,971, §§123–29. PSZ I, no. 25,012,Table VI, Provisional Roster of the General Chancery of the War Minister. The provisional rosters in this decree list only sums designated for the salaries of clerks, from which I cannot with any confidence estimate the size of the clerk establishment. Under “staff ” I include couriers, guards, and various others who did not assist in the actual work of the administration. “Officials” were klassnye chinovniki, i.e., officials who held a position on the Table of Ranks. The Chancery of the Chief of the Main Staff was defined in PSZ I, no. 26,025, Supremely Confirmed Statute of the Chancery of the Chief of the Main Staff HIM, 16 December 1815; its roster, together with the roster of the Chancery of the War Minister, was decreed in PSZ I, no. 26,030, Supremely Confirmed on 16 December Rosters of the Chanceries: of the Chief of the Main Staff and the War Minister, 19 December 1815. The chanceries of the Duty General and the Vice-Director of the Inspectorate Department of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty were defined in rosters appended to PSZ I, no. 26,155, Roster of the Inspectorate Department of the Main Staff of HIM, 22 February 1816. The Chancery of the Council of the War Minister took its final form in PSZ I, no. 30,525, Roster of the Council of the War Minister, 8 October 1825. PSZ I, no. 26,021, On the Administration of the War Department, 12 December 1815, §6: “All affairs of the Military administration are divided into two types: to the first belong, so to say, the combat area, i.e., the enumeration of people in the army, . . . and so forth; and to the second [type] without exception all that concerning the circulation of fiscal funds, in a word, the economic area”; §7:“Affairs of the first type are conducted by the Chief of Staff, of the second type by the War Minister.” PSZ I, no. 26,025, Supremely Confirmed Statute of the Chancery of the Chief of the Main Staff, however, explicitly divided the duties of the Chancery of the Chief of the Main Staff into an economic and an inspectorate (or combat—frontovaia) area. The Chancery of the Vice-Director of the Inspectorate Department became the Chancery of the Inspectorate Department, with the same composition and charge, still under the direction of the Vice-Director of the Department. The Chanceries of the Council of the War Minister, of the War Minister, and of the Main Staff were combined into the Chancery of the War Ministry.The Chancery of the Duty General was abolished. PSZ II, no. 5,318, preamble. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, ll. 8 - 9 and SVM, vol. I, Appendix I, for the original proposal; RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 8538a, ll. 19–19 oborot and SVM, vol. I, p. 253 for Chernyshev’s request for clarification and Nicholas’s comment. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 2a, delo 3865, Delo o formirovanii novykh shtatov po Glavnomu Shtabu i Voennomu Ministerstvu, list 46ff.

310

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

75. PSZ II, no. 5,318, §159. 76. I do not know if this eligibility was established in any law, but entrusting the War Ministry, especially after its reformulation in 1832, to a civilian would have been inconceivable. Every war minister, from the foundation of the ministry in 1802 to the fall of the Romanov dynasty, at any rate, held military rank, even if he only held staff positions and never saw combat. If jealousy was not the root of Chernyshev’s opposition to the complete centralization, it is not clear what was. He may, perhaps, have honestly believed that the centralized body would be incapable of fulfilling its many and complicated duties, but, if so, he did not argue the case very convincingly. 77. The Deputy War Minister, who held the rank above that of the Director of the Chancery of the War Ministry, did not have formal administrative authority over any part of the ministry, although his rank was such that he could interfere, with the support of the minister, in whatever area he pleased. 78. In contrast, for example, with the system prevalent in the British Foreign Office, in which the distinction between “clerks” and “officials” was much smaller. In Russia after 1832, clerks were soldiers from the military colonies, trained in schools in those colonies, and, although on very rare occasions they could rise into the ranks of “classed officials,” they could never assume administrative responsibilities while they were clerks. (See Zara Steiner, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898–1914. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969]). In a dispute during the reforms of the Inspectorate Department of 1834, the Duty General responded unfavorably to a suggestion that the duties of journalists in the sections of the departments might be carried out by clerks by pointing out that “only Officials themselves bear personal responsibility,” even for the simple task of making entries in journals (RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 10, list 91 oborot). 79. PSZ II, no. 5,318. The creation and role of the General Council [Obshchee Prisutstvie] of a Department, which paralleled, for the most part, those of the Military Council, will be discussed in Chapter VII.

Chapter VII 1. The note is in RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 1–10 oborot. Although it is without title, author, or date, a portion of it is reproduced in the following document, the Journal of the Military Council of 24 February 1833, and identified as a “note of the Chancery of the War Ministry.” 2. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 6–6 oborot. 3. PSZ I, no. 26,129, Organization of the Duty Administration of the Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty, 7 February 1816, §§54 and 55.

Notes

311

4. By the roster of 1812, the Inspectorate Department consisted of 6 heads of sections (including the head of the archive), 18 bureau chiefs, and 38 assistant bureau chiefs; in 1816 the department was assigned 6 section chiefs, 17 bureau chiefs, and 38 assistant bureau chiefs (PSZ I, no. 25,012; and PSZ I, no. 26,155). 5. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, list 9. 6. Ibid., list 9 oborot. 7. Nicholas confirmed the Journal of the Military Council, thereby giving it the force of law, on 1 March 1833. 8. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 14–14 oborot. 9. Ibid., list 15. 10. Ibid., list 17. 11. The combination of the organization and the charge was also called the Charge (Nakaz), and the organization was usually called the “first part of the Charge,” while the charge itself was the second part. 12. Obshchee prisutstvie. The literal meaning would be “common presence,” or “general audience,” but the body was so akin in structure and function to the Military Council that it seems appropriate to translate it loosely in this way. 13. The Campaign Chancery took charge of the reform in the course of 1833 and controlled it and subsequent reforms throughout Nicholas’s reign. 14. The two documents relating to this matter appear in RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 28–44.They are not dated, signed, or addressed, but the first contains marginal notes indicating that it was presented to (or confirmed by) the Tsar on 15 April 1833. The writing style is Pozen’s, and the word “mechanism” (mekhanizm) appears in the documents referring to the administrative process—I have only encountered this use of that word among Pozen’s writings. Pozen’s authorship is also indicated by a process of elimination: he, Chernyshev, and Nicholas were the only senior officials who guided the course of the reform with memoranda of this type. Nicholas certainly did not write—and then confirm—this document, and the style is definitely not Chernyshev’s, leaving only Pozen. 15. PSZ I, no. 24,686, General Establishment of Ministries, 25 June 1811, §§31–34 and 135. 16. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 29 oborot–30. 17. Ibid., ll. 30 oborot–31. 18. “Goal displacement” may be defined as “the tendency for ‘means’ to become ‘ends’ in the eyes of members of subunits of the bureaucracy and for subunits to develop parochial ideologies to justify subunit values even at the expense of the organizational goals” (William Odom, The Soviet Volunteers: Modernization and Bureaucracy in a Public Mass Organization. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973], p. 310). 19. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 36 oborot–37 oborot. Emphasis is mine.

312

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

20. Nicholas’s efforts on the subject of recruitment will be the subject of Chapter VIII. See, e.g., RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 6, delo 15,738, Po otnosheniiu Ministra Finansov o merakh k podderzhaniiu v Rossii selitrennoi promyshlennosti, for one of several exchanges relating to proposals for changing military procurement patterns or the operation of military industries so as to benefit specific sectors of the private economy. 21. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, list 38. 22. Ibid., ll. 39 oborot–40. Pozen proposed to establish General Councils only in the Artillery, Engineers, Provisions and Commissariat Departments and the Temporary Department of Military Colonies, and to abolish them in the other departments. 23. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 84–89 oborot. 24. The entire Journal, including comments on each department’s proposal, is reproduced in ibid., list 47ff. Excerpts of the Journal, including the general principles and the instructions for each specific department, are reproduced in each delo dealing with the reform of that department. 25. The parts of these memoranda relating to the General Councils were reproduced word-for-word on ll. 49–52 oborot. 26. Ibid., ll. 52 oborot–53. 27. It had this right under the following conditions: the funds had to have been designated in the budget, the contracts had to have been concluded according to the established procedures for concluding contracts, and the prices had not to exceed the budgetary authorizations (Ibid., ll. 75–75 oborot). 28. The precise relationship of these members of the General Council from State Control to State Control itself was unclear, as yet, but it was certain that they would remain subordinate only to State Control—they would never come under the jurisdiction of War Ministry officials. 29. Although Michael was Inspector-General of both Artillery and Engineers, artillery was by far the larger and the more important of the two departments, and, since the issues involved affected both departments equally, for the sake of brevity I present the discussion as it involved the Artillery Department. It is essential to remember during this discussion that the Inspector-General of Artillery was not the same as the Director of the Artillery Department. Michael’s dispute with Chernyshev concerning his own powers is too complicated to be discussed here in detail. In outline, Chernyshev sought to subordinate all economic aspects of artillery administration to himself, while Michael sought to maintain the independence of the entire artillery administration under his own control.The matter ended in a compromise; Chernyshev received some measure of control, but not all he had looked for. See RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 14, Delo o sostavlenii proektov polozheniia, shtatov, i nakaza dlia Artilleriiskogo Departamenta, passim for details on this bureaucratic brush-war. 30. Ibid., ll. 22ff, Memorandum from the Inspector-General of Artillery to the War Minister, 8 November 1833.

Notes

313

31. Ibid., ll. 23 oborot–24. 32. The assertion of the uniqueness of each administration is a common feature of bureaucratic infighting and was not lacking from any of the departments of the War Ministry in their struggle to stave off reform.The Commissariat, Provisions, Artillery, and Inspectorate Departments all found themselves in uniquely difficult positions that should except them from reforms that would be especially dreadful for them. This appeal, needless to say, was very, very rarely effective. 33. Ibid., ll. 24 oborot–25. 34. Ibid., list 25. 35. It is not clear why Euler and Michael both took it for granted that the members of the General Council would be junior to the director—except perhaps that they very much wanted it to be that way. The members of the Military Council were by no means necessarily junior to the War Minister— the implementing laws contained special provisions to ensure that the War Minister was the chairman of the council even if some members are senior to him (See PSZ II, no. 5,318, §37 and PSZ II, no. 9,038, §35). 36. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 14, list 40, Memorandum from Euler to Chernyshev, 9 November 1833. 37. Ibid., list 93. 38. Ibid., ll. 97 oborot–98 oborot. 39. It is perhaps worth noting here that Pozen was himself a civilian who had entered the civil service in the Department of Popular Enlightenment and had only been transferred to the War Ministry in 1828. See his biography in SVM, vol. III, part 5, pp. 140–41. 40. PSZ II, no. 9,038, §20.The situation was the same in the Department of Engineers; all nominees had to be confirmed by the tsar. 41. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, list 308 oborot. 42. Most of the departments received temporary establishments during the working-out of the reforms: the Commissariat Department received its new organization before the reforms properly began (PSZ II, no. 5,423, About the New Organization of the Commissariat Department of the War Ministry, 9 June 1832), the Judicial Department in 1833 (PSZ II, no. 6,008, 23 February 1833), the Provisions Department (PSZ II, no. 7,843, Supremely Confirmed Statute about the Reorganization of the Provisions Department of the War Ministry, 6 February 1835; and PSZ II, no. 7,844, Supremely Confirmed Organization of the Provisions Department, 6 February 1835), and the Department of Military Colonies in 1835 (PSZ II, no. 8,233, Supremely Confirmed Statute about the Reorganization of the Department of Military Colonies of the War Ministry, 10 June 1835). 43. Both the compromise and Chernyshev’s defense of it when Nicholas almost insisted that he get his own way are probably testimony to Chernyshev’s courtier’s skill. Even though episodes such as this one indicate that Nicholas would not always support Michael, Chernyshev knew that Michael’s anger

314

44.

45.

46. 47. 48.

49.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I at being thwarted would fall not on Nicholas, but on him. It certainly was not in his interest to have Michael devote his energies to using his power, which was greater in 1836 than that of any other man in the empire save Nicholas, to destroy him. It may be that Chernyshev never wanted to engage in this struggle, but that Nicholas required it from the outset of the reform by demanding in his own memorandum in 1831 that the artillery and engineering administrations be joined to the War Ministry. Chernyshev may have been testing Michael to see if he would hold firm, in which case the wily War Minister withdrew as quickly as possible when it became clear that he would. Inspectorate Department from RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 10, list 40, 7 May 1833; and RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, list 58; Provisions Department from RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 6, Delo o sostavlenii proektov polozheniia i nakaza dlia Proviantskogo Departamenta v sviazi s ego reorganizatsiei, list 47, 19 June 1833; General Staff and Engineering Departments from RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 55 oborot and 62 oborot respectively.The Artillery and Commissariat Departments did not get their draft organizations in until the end of the year. Of the existing officials of the Inspectorate Department, 12 belonged either to the Chancery of the Duty General, which was to be abolished, or to the military education administration, which was to be transferred to the Department of Military Colonies; the addition requested by the department was, therefore, 30 officials to a staff of 82. Budgets from RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 10, list 370; salary scale from ll. 3–3 oborot. In any large department the number of bureau chiefs and assistant bureau chiefs was the largest component of the staff of officials (there were, of course, many more clerks), and salaries were relatively high: after the salary increase, a section chief received 3,500, a bureau chief 2,000, and an assistant bureau chief 1,200 rubles each year, as compared, for instance, with clerks, who received about 100 rubles per year. The Journal of 5 September 1833. See above, note 24. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 10, list 43. A more complete list of the duties transferred from the Inspectorate Department to other departments of the War Ministry appears in RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 10, ll. 80–80 oborot. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 67–67 oborot. Assistant section chiefs were superfluous, the Military Council argued, because the bureau chiefs were the actual assistants to the section chiefs; likewise, special “officials for correspondence” (chinovniki dlia pis’ma) were unnecessary because their duties could be performed just as well by clerks. The Military Council proposed also to restrict the individual incoming and outgoing journals of the sections to the very briefest notations, which would make special section journalists unnecessary; these brief journals could be kept just as well by assistant bureau chiefs or clerks.

Notes

315

50. Reductions obtained by comparing figures in the roster of PSZ II, no. 9,038 with original sizes of the departments given in RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 13, list 76; delo 14, list 72; delo 10, list 78; and delo 6, list 47. 51. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 10, list 88 oborot. 52. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 13, Delo o sostavlenii proektov polozheniia i nakaza dlia Kommisariatskogo Departamenta, ll. 179 oborot and following; delo 14, ll. 45–6. 53. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, list 172. 54. Ibid., ll. 196 oborot–197. 55. Ibid., list 198. 56. Ibid., list 199. 57. Ibid., list 199–199 oborot. 58. Ibid., list 199 oborot–200. 59. Paskevich to Chernyshev, 29 September 1846, in RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 6, delo 15,498, O sostavlenii ustava dlia upravleniia armiiami v mirnoe i voennoe vremia, ll. 202 oborot–203. 60. See RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 186–189 oborot, for a note on the meeting, and ll. 232–235 oborot for the Journal of the Military Council of 11 February 1836 at which the note was presented. 61. Ibid., 235–235 oborot. 62. Ibid., 243–247 for the Journal of Military Council of 6 March 1836 and ll. 248–249 for the Journal of the Military Council of 27 March.The drafting of the Charge to the War Ministry, so significant to the development of the military administration, occasioned almost no arguments among the bureaucrats. The departments compiled their drafts (reproduced in the dela for the individual departmental reforms), Pozen edited and collated them, returned them to the departments for comment—there was usually very little—and recopied them into his final draft.The departments’ comments on Pozen’s changes almost invariably reflected relatively minor questions of precisely which bureaus should have responsibility for precisely which duties—matters that it is not possible to investigate in the present study. It was possible to conduct these exchanges with little or no heat because the departmental complements, as well as the departments’ duties in general, had already been decided upon, and so the exchanges over the “charge” could have had no effect on the number of officials or their pay, or over the competence of the departments.The department directors, therefore, did not find it worth their while to fight very hard. 63. Both the organization and the charge were contained in PSZ II, no. 9,038, Supremely Confirmed Establishment of the War Ministry. The functioning and paper flow of the ministry was defined minutely in PSZ II, no. 9,039, Supremely Confirmed Proposition on the Order of the Conduct of Affairs in the War Ministry, presented to the Senate and confirmed on the same day.The complement of the War Ministry was likewise confirmed on the same day, and it appears as an appendix to PSZ II, no. 9,038.

316

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

64. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 5, ll. 250–279 oborot, Review of the Bases Adopted for the Compilation of a New Establishment of the War Ministry. 65. Ibid., 254 oborot–255. 66. Ibid., 276–79 oborot. 67. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot, p. 71; David R. Jones, ed., The MilitaryNaval Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union, vol. 2 (Academic International Press, 1980), p. 82. 68. See the Introduction to this study. 69. See the Conclusion to this study. 70. Kommisiia or kommisionerstvo, of which “commissions” referred to larger and “commissionerates” to smaller or less important regions. 71. PSZ II, no. 9,038, §§165–83. 72. Ibid., §214. 73. Ibid., §§61 and 71. 74. Documents relating to those efforts are contained in RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 9665, O sostavlenii proekta ustava dlia upravleniia armieiu i korpusami; and RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 6, delo 15,498. 75. PSZ II, no. 20,670, 5 December 1846, Supremely Confirmed Regulation on the Administration of Armies in Peacetime and Wartime. 76. This law merits detailed and serious study that is, unfortunately, impossible in the present work. Among other interesting and important changes it introduced were the workable procedures for administering the armies in peacetime—a subject upon which the legislative silence had been deafening since 1812—and a new-born fascination with the problem of mobilization, which was only then just emerging as an issue in pre-railroad Russia. 77. PSZ II, no. 20,670, §127. 78. There is no indication in the files relating to this reform in RGVIA, or in the law itself, that Chernyshev ever had in mind making a serious attack on Paskevich’s prerogatives. 79. I. S. Bliokh, Finansy Rossii XIX stoletiia: Istoriia—Statistika, vol. I (Saint Petersburg: 1882), p. 102.

Chapter VIII 1. See Marc Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia 1772–1839 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969). Raeff argues cogently that too much can be made of Speranskii’s supposed liberalism and that his notions of “constitutionalism” were far from those then circulating in the West. The influence of enlightenment ideals and a certain degree of liberalism are clear even in Raeff ’s sober account, however. 2. Ibid., pp. 323–24. 3. See Chapter II.

Notes 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 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.

317

RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 4, list 11. Ibid., ll. 11 oborot–12. See SVM, vol. III, part 5, p. 120 for Borovkov’s service record. Borovkov, “Aleksandr Dmitrievich Borovkov,” pp. 610ff. Ibid., p. 597. RGVIA, fond 970, opis’ 2, delo 4, ll. 12–12 oborot. Chernyshev to Speranskii, 9 February 1833, ibid., list 14. Speranskii to Chernyshev, 27 February 1833, ibid., ll. 16–17. Chernyshev to Nicholas, 11 March 1833, ibid., ll. 20–23. Ibid., list 23. Ibid., ll. 23–24. Chernyshev to Speranskii, 14 March 1833, ibid., ll. 25–26 oborot. Speranskii to Chernyshev, 9 April 1835, ibid., list 71. Speranskii memorandum, “On the Review of the Digest of Military Regulations,” ibid., ll. 72–72 oborot. Ibid., list 73. Ibid. Chernyshev to Speranskii, 26 April 1835, ibid., list 82. Ibid., list 82 oborot. Ibid. Emphasis is mine. Speranskii to Chernyshev, 4 June 1835, ibid., list 92. Ibid., list 92 oborot. Ibid., list 93. Chernyshev to Nicholas, 17 June 1835, ibid., list 103. Ibid., ll. 103–4. Notation in pencil on list 100 indicates that it was presented to the Emperor and confirmed on 17 June. Borovkov to Chernyshev, 15 August 1835, requesting clerks, ibid., list 143; Chernyshev to P. A. Kleinmikhel’, 18 August 1835, ordering compliance, ibid., list 146. Borovkov to Chernyshev, 28 May 1836, ibid., list 172. Chernyshev to the Acting Vice-Director of the Inspectorate Department, 31 May 1836, ibid., list 173. Borovkov, “Aleksandr Dmitrievich Borovkov,” p. 607. Borovkov, Report to the War Minister, 5 July 1835, ibid., list 129. Borovkov to Chernyshev, 15 August 1835, ibid., ll. 144–144 oborot. Chernyshev approved the proposal on 18 August 1835, ibid., list 145. Borovkov to Chernyshev, 13 December 1835, ibid., ll. 154ff. Ibid., ll. 157–157 oborot. Ibid., list 157 oborot. Ibid., list 155. Ibid., list 158 oborot. Ibid., list 159.

318

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

41. Borovkov, “Aleksandr Dmitrievich Borovkov,” p. 598. 42. Speranskii to Chernyshev, 30 June 1835, ibid., list 124. 43. Chernyshev to Nicholas, 15 December 1835, with a marginal comment indicating that it was Imperially confirmed on 16 December, ibid., ll. 160ff. 44. Borovkov to Chernyshev, 18 June 1836, ibid., ll. 180ff. 45. See Raeff, Michael Speranskii.

Chapter IX 1. Harold Ingle, Nesselrode and the Russian Rapprochement with Britain, 1836–1844 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 37–38. 2. Harold Temperley, England and the Near East:The Crimea (n.p.:Archon Books, 1964), p. 60. 3. Cited in Temperely, p. 60. 4. Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 1830–1841: Britain, the Liberal Movement, and the Eastern Question (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), I:91. 5. Shil’der reports that Nicholas had, in fact, determined to break off diplomatic relations with France in the wake of the July Revolution and was only dissuaded from doing so by the clever arguments of the French ambassador in St. Petersburg. See Shil’der, II:290ff. 6. Nicholas to Chernyshev, 5 October 1830, ibid., Appendix XXI, pp. 574–76. 7. During the Russo-Turkish War Nicholas told Prince Eugene of Württemberg that he could send 80,000 men from the Polish army under Constantine to Vienna if the Austrians tried to intervene. See Chapter IV. 8. Lacking accurate Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) information for the Russian army in 1830, I estimate an infantry corps at about 50,000 and a cavalry corps at about 20,000, in line with standard rosters from later in the decade. These strength estimates are of TO&E strengths that, in 1830, probably very few Russian units could match. Likelier estimates of men actually with the colors are probably on the order of 35,000 for infantry corps and 15,000 for cavalry corps. The reader must bear in mind that the phrase “place on a war footing” did not yet imply bringing units up to established manpower levels, for which special drafts had to be levied by special imperial command. The ranks of the Guards and Grenadiers were generally kept mostly filled at about 50,000 men in each. 9. Nicholas to Constantine, 6/18 October 1830, “Perepiska Imperatora Nikolaia Pavlovicha s Velikim Kniaziam Konstantinom Pavlovichem,” SIRIO, vol. 132, (1911), (hereafter SIRIO 132), p. 56. 10. “General war” in 1830 meant, for Nicholas, the revival of the Napoleonic coalition of England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia against France. Although England’s participation in such a war had become highly doubtful by 1830,

Notes

11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

319

Nicholas still counted on Prussia (through which he intended to send both Constantine’s army and the reinforcements, if necessary) and, to a lesser degree, Austria. Nicholas to Paskevich in 1836, cited in Ingle, p. 58. The injunction to maintain complete secrecy laid upon the Secret Committee to Study Means of Strengthening Russia’s Military Power by Means of a Draft (hereafter the Secret Committee of 1831) strongly supports Fuller’s thesis that Nicholas’s military policy was based upon a strategy of bluff, but the charge given the committee, and Nicholas’s own view of the situation as expressed to the committee in Chernyshev’s report (see below), make it clear that Nicholas was not unaware that his bluff might be called, as Fuller sometimes suggests. See William Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia: 1600–1914. (New York:The Free Press, 1992), Chapter 6, passim. It is not clear why the story of the Secret Committee should not have been recounted in Shil’der’s biography of Nicholas, or at least indicated in an appendix, considering that Shil’der made use of much material from the Imperial predecessor of RGVIA.The advent of communism, however, sealed off the material on this committee from Western eyes, and the Soviet dislike of Nicholas practically assured that Soviet historians would not use it.The result was that this brief but important episode of early nineteenth-century history was buried in Soviet secrecy as thorough as that which guarded Soviet military preparations in the 1920s.This is but one example of the importance that the opening of Russia’s archives has even for periods that are thought to be well understood and documented. Chernyshev’s summary of Nicholas’s order of 1 December 1830, reproduced in SIRIO 122, pp. 338–39. In particular Dibich is blamed for not following up his success at Grochow Field with an attack across the Vistula into Warsaw, which was practically undefended at the time. See John Shelton Curtiss, The Russian Army under Nicholas I: 1825–1855 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1965), p. 80ff; N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Nikolai Pervyi, ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, vol. I (St. Petersburg: 1903), II:336ff. From a memorandum presented by Chernyshev to the committee on 16 April 1831, summarizing the Tsar’s charge to the committee, in RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18021, Delo s zhurnalami sekretnogo komiteta, byvshogo v 1831 godu, dlia izyskaniia mer k usileniiu voennykh sposobov Rossii, posredstvom nabora rekrut i sformirovaniia novykh voisk, list 12 oborot. Nicholas did not attend any of the meetings of the committee, and this overview was presented through Chernyshev, the chairman (ibid., list 6). Ibid., list 6 oborot. Ibid., list 7 oborot. The document studiously avoided using any names, taking refuge in the periphrastic constructions so prevalent in Russian to keep from laying any blame at Dibich’s feet.

320 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I Ibid., list 8. Ibid., ll. 8 oborot–9. Ibid., ll. 9–9 oborot, my emphasis. Ibid., list 9 oborot. III Corps was not explicitly committed in this discussion but must have formed part of the “troops from First Army” sent to the Lithuanian provinces, as it was deployed in and around that region. Ibid., ll. 11 oborot–12. The divizion (to be distinguished from diviziia: division) was the cavalry formation equivalent to a battalion. Cavalry regiments were divided into diviziony, which consisted of eskadrony (squadrons), which, in turn, consisted of vzvody (platoons). From a copy of Nicholas’s handwritten note outlining his proposal, presented to the committee on 16 April 1831, reproduced in RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18021, ll. 21–22 oborot. The active army at that time consisted of the Guards Corps (who were not counted in the tally and therefore not listed); the Grenadiers Corps with the 1st Uhlan Division; I, II, III, and VI Infantry Corps; III, IV, and V Reserve Cavalry Corps; and the Lithuanian Grenadiers Brigade. Reckoning an infantry battalion at 1,084 men and a cavalry divizion at 422 (statutory strengths), this force should have comprised 201,624 men in active infantry battalions, another 100,812 in reserve infantry battalions, and 74,272 men in cavalry regiments, or more than 376,000 in all. The actual strength of the Active Army, however, never approached that total (see below). Ibid., list 23. Ibid., ll. 23–24 oborot. These numbers add up to more than 130,000, but Nicholas figured in the standard loss rate of 10 percent of new draftees to death, desertion, and other things. He calculated that 30,362 soldiers had been released from the Guards and the army before the completion of their terms of service in 1826, 1827, and 1829. (No such releases occurred, obviously, when the army was deep in an unsuccessful campaign, as in 1828 and 1830).The earliest year from which a prematurely released soldier could still be called to the colors was 1826, for soldiers were never released before their twentieth year (out of a twenty-five year term). Recognizing that by no means all prematurely released soldiers would be in condition for a new campaign, Nicholas reckoned on getting only half of them. Ibid., ll. 26–26 oborot. Ibid., list 27 oborot. Ibid., ll. 28–28 oborot. The forces called up for the emergency defense of the country during Napoleon’s attack in 1812 had been an opolchenie. Lacking seasoned officers and veterans in the ranks, these forces were not found to have been effective in combat.

Notes

321

33. Ibid., list 53. 34. The Secret Committee omitted a step in the logic that was obvious to them but is less so now: the militia can not serve as a replacement pool because its members have not been drafted and do not have terms of service assigned to them—they cannot, therefore, be assigned to regular army units on the basis of the laws that called the militia into being in 1812. Nicholas’s (and the committee’s) proposals to change this rely on the development of a complicated mechanism for dealing with recruits drawn from the militia into the regular forces (see below). 35. Meaning a draft of 4 or 5 per 500, as opposed to the usual 1 or 2 per 500. 36. Ibid., ll. 53–53 oborot. 37. Ibid., list 119. 38. Russian regiments at this time consisted of three battalions, two active and one, the third, reserve. Reserve battalions did not deploy with, or sometimes even near, the active battalions of the regiment but served, generally, as a replacement pool. The forces in this “reserve” constituted an ordinary part of the standing army and were counted in manpower figures as though they were active troops. It was not unheard of, furthermore, for “third” battalions to be used independently of the active battalions of their regiments as frontline units. 39. Front-line units were active (deistvuiushchii), “third” battalions were reserve (rezervnyi), frequently grouped together into “reserve armies”; fourth and fifth battalions were “second reserve” (zapasnyi).This system of multiple classifications of “reserve” status among active units is reminiscent of the Soviet system of readiness categories, but in the 1830s these categories had nothing to do with manning levels—all third, fourth, and fifth battalions were nominally manned at the same levels as the active battalions.The organization and functioning of the “temporary force” is described in §§16–20 of the draft law produced by the committee, ibid., ll. 163 oborot–164. 40. Ibid., list 143. 41. Ibid., list 144 oborot. 42. In 1830 and early 1831 respectively. 43. In Russia in the 1830s there were only two types of such forces: regular army units and units of the Internal Guard.The latter were few, inefficient (many were disabled veterans), and mostly posted at the empire’s many fortresses— of which, of course, there were few in the “central Russian provinces” (Moscow through the central black earth region). The regular units, always few in that region, will have been called to the front. 44. Ibid., ll. 146–47 oborot. 45. Ibid., ll. 149 oborot–150, my emphasis. 46. This estimate of the population in 1831 is based on the fact that the population in 1840 was 50,234,000 and had been increasing by a little over 300,000 annually (M. L.Tegoborski, Etudes sur les forces productives de la Russie,

322

47. 48.

49. 50.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I vol. I [Paris: 1854–1855], p. 90).Austria’s population in 1846 was 35,550,684 (ibid., p. 94), while France’s in 1846 was 35,050,000 (ibid., p. 107). There were 17,703,379 male revised serfs (that is, male serfs counted in the last census)—the only people liable for service in the army—in all Russia in 1831 (RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18022, Delo o raznykh svedeniiakh, predstavliaemykh dlia sekretnogo komiteta, uchrezhdennogo v 1831 dlia izyskaniia mer k usileniiu voennykh sposobov Rossii, posredstvom nabora rekrut i sformirovaniia novykh voisk, list 89), giving a total population (my estimate) of a bit over 35,000,000, assuming a roughly even male-female ratio. Tegoborski, p. 107. 9,371,853 male revised serfs lived in the following provinces: Olonetskaia, Arkhangel’skaia, Vologodskaia, Novgorodskaia, Tverskaia, Tavricheskaia, Ekaterinoslavskaia, Voiska Donskago, Kavkazskaia, Astrakhanskaia, Saratovskaia, Penzenskaia, Tambovskaia, Voronezhskaia, Tul’skaia, Riazanskaia, Moskovskaia, Iaroslavskaia, Kostromskaia, Vladimirskaia, Nizhegorodskaia, Simbirskaia, Kazanskaia, Viatskaia, Permskaia, Orenburgskaia, Tobol’skaia, Tomskaia, Irkutskaia, Eniseiskaia, and Omskaia oblast’. Over 2 million serfs were concentrated in Saratovskaia, Tambovskaia, Penzenskaia, and Voronezhskaia provinces alone. Saratov and Penza are about 1,000 miles in a straight line from Warsaw;Tambov and Voronezh are about 800 miles from Warsaw (RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18022, list 89). Warsaw is chosen as the reference mark because Poland was always considered to be the jumpingoff point for operations in Europe. Voronezh, the most southerly of the provinces in the central black earth region, is still 600 miles from Jassy, the jumping-off point for operations against Turkey, and 800 miles from Tiflis, the headquarters of the army in the Caucasus. Demographics suited operations in the Baltic theater best: most of the most populous provinces were within 400–500 miles of St. Petersburg. The qualifiers “male revised” refer to the fact that the statistical tables presented to the committee recorded only “male revised serfs,” that is, only serfs liable for military service.This is one occasion on which governmental statistics may be taken as completely accurate: all calculations for levies took place on the basis of the periodical revisions—if a landowner had fewer serfs when the draft came than he had had at the last revision, he was still liable for the number established on the basis of that revision; if he had more, the state could not increase his quota until the next revision.The numbers of revised male serfs given here, therefore, reflect a completely accurate picture of the potential manpower pool actually available to the state (with important exceptions noted below). Report of Chernyshev to the Committee on 3 May 1831; RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18021, list 142. The Russian army stood, by statute, at about 850,000 in the 1830s, while the French army had about 250,000 effectives in its ranks in those years (Jean

Notes

51. 52.

53.

54.

55. 56.

57.

58.

59.

323

Delmas, ed., Histoire militaire de la France [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992], p. 413). The number of effectives in the Russian army was generally about 750,000. Ministerstvo Finansov, 1802–1902 (St. Petersburg: 1902), pp. 628–29. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 9790, O vidakh i predpolozheniiakh k usovershenstvovaniiu chastei Voennogo Ministerstva, list 125 oborot. The army numbered (by statute) 840,387 in 1832, and 874,796 in 1833, giving an average figure of 857,591. Ibid., 126 oborot. Chernyshev admitted that Russian demographics had by no means reached the point at which he could predict even what the age distribution of a given group was, let alone how many were healthy and physically able to serve. This estimate was, therefore, little more than a guess. Considering, however, that the average serf in the eligible age bracket (20 to 35 years old) could be expected to have a father too old to serve and a son or two too young to serve, this guess does not seem outrageous. The Russian army had lost 88,213 men for all reasons in 1832 and 66,513 in 1833, giving an average of 77,366 per year in losses that had to be made up in peacetime. Ibid., ll. 126 oborot–127. RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18022, list 89 placed the number of Jews eligible for recruitment in 1831 at 419,336. This meager population would produce only 8,364 recruits at the highest rate then imaginable, 10 per 500.The rest of the empire would furnish 346,682 recruits at that rate. ORGBL, fond 169, karton 22, papka 29, Mysli o nevygodakh sushestvuiushchei v Rossii voennoi sistemy i o sredstvakh ustraneniiu ikh, list 7. See below for the indefinite furlough system. It is, of course, possible that Chernyshev had no solution in mind, nor even conceived of the problem in this way, and that this sentence was simply the courtier’s attempt to sweeten the unpleasant news he brought by wishing the problem off into the distant future. Since there was, in fact, no solution to the problem that did not involve emancipation, however, and since Chernyshev had obviously looked into the problem in great detail, both in 1831 and in 1835, and, whatever his moral deficiencies, was assuredly a smart man, it is at least as likely that this statement was more than a platitude. It is worth noting, further, that this document was presented to Nicholas in 1835, after the indefinite furlough system had been set up, so that Chernyshev’s assertion that the problem might be solved some time in the distant future takes on added importance in that it foresaw the failure of Nicholas’s newest reform almost before it started. The rebellious Polish provinces were, of course, exempted from a draft, but the spread of the uprising eastward gradually eliminated Russia’s western borderlands from the manpower pool as well.

324

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

60. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 9113b, Otchet Voennogo Ministerstva za 1833 god, ll. 107 oborot–108. Some 61,917 officers and men were not attached to any unit as of 1 January 1834. 61. Counting troops not attached to units there were 264,502 unavailable. 62. Ibid. The 8 infantry corps had 379,899 officers and men, the cavalry corps had 44,463, and the reserve units had 75,378 actually with the colors. The Caucasus, Orenburg, and Siberian Corps, together with the Corps of Internal Guard, comprised 124,140 officers and men actually with their units. 63. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 9113zh, list 18 oborot. Deployment is as of 1 January 1833. 64. A future Polish rebellion would, obviously, require less force to suppress, for the Polish Army, which had been the nucleus of the rebels’ fighting forces, had been absorbed into the Russian army and thereby dispersed. It is open to question, however, whether one and a half or even two corps alone could keep the peace in a country the size of Poland should the Poles again have rebelled in earnest. 65. III Corps and VI Corps did participate in the campaign, but, pinned both by strategic reasons and by local uprisings, they could not be brought into the Kingdom of Poland (across the Nieman) and so could not assist in the fight against the only large, organized military force in the revolt. 66. Nicholas to Paskevich, 21 October 1838, cited in Ingle, p. 108. 67. Nicholas’s draft plan, in RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 1107, list 1. 68. For most of the 1830s the British would have been hard-pressed to find even a weak corps to put ashore in Russia—hardly a critical threat to Russia’s security.The addition of French resources, made possible by the strengthening of the Liberal Entente, made feasible the notion of landing a more sizable army capable either of taking several beachheads at once, or of landing at one location and then conducting further offensive operations. 69. Ibid., list 65 oborot gives the total of the forces to be employed in 1810 as 56 battalions (1,000 men per battalion) and 41 squadrons of cavalry (about 400 men per squadron), plus 120 guns and 2 Cossack regiments, which comes to something over 75,000 troops in total; ibid., ll. 72 oborot–78 oborot list the deployments proposed for 1828, including 28,700 infantry, 6 squadrons of cavalry, and 400 cavalrymen in independent detachments, as well as a few thousand artillerymen. 70. Copy of “Proposals concerning changes in the deployment of forces in the Baltic and other provinces and in Finland,” sent to the Provisionsmaster General so that he could make arrangements for supplying these troops in their new locations. Appended to a memorandum from Director of the Chancery of the War Ministry Briskorn to Provisionsmaster General Tsimbalistov, 29 December 1833. Ibid., ll. 154–155. 71. Ibid., ll. 215 oborot–216 oborot. 72. Ibid., list 95 oborot

Notes

325

73. Ibid., ll. 216 and 217 oborot. 74. Ibid., ll. 217–217 oborot. 75. In 1833 Nicholas had saved the sultan’s throne from the aggression of Muhammed Ali Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, by dispatching troops to defend Constantinople from Ali’s advancing troops. This deployment, incidentally, introduced a further complication into the planned defense against England’s attack, for when V Infantry Corps began the march to the sultan’s capital, IV Infantry Corps was ordered to take its place—thereby eliminating the possibility that forces around St. Petersburg under Anglo-French attack could be reinforced by troops from the east as well as from the west. This situation could have been extremely significant if an Anglo-French landing force had succeeded in dividing Russia’s forces in the Baltic region and Poland from those defending the capital (ibid.). However that might have been, Nicholas had no rational basis for believing that the sultan himself, let alone Turkey in general, had inclined permanently in his direction, whatever his emotions may have told him, and the experience of 1826–1828 had surely taught him that Turkish weakness was not in any way incompatible with Turkish belligerence. 76. Ingle, pp. 63ff, among others. 77. Shil’der, II:293. 78. In 1828 only the army’s very limited ability to supply forces operating along the littoral by sea from Odessa and the Crimea staved off complete logistical collapse. 79. Probably for the excellent reason that it did not.The last ten years of Alexander’s rule were characterized by a timid France, still recovering from the damages of Napoleon’s reign, and an England under the control of the moderate Tory ministry of Lord Liverpool, whose foreign policy, controlled first by Castlereagh and then by Canning, was, if anything, pro-Russian.The culmination (and death-knell) of this situation came in 1827 when the joint Anglo-Franco-Russian fleet destroyed the Turkish fleet at Navarino. In such an international climate it may well be argued that Alexander’s 800,000 man army was more than up to the tasks that might be set for it. 80. SVM, vol. 4, part 2, book 1, section 2, p. 1ff. 81. PSZ II, no. 4,677, Vysochaishe utverzhdennyi Ustav Rekrutskii, 28 June 1831. 82. SVM, vol. 4, part 2, book 1, section 2, p. 32. 83. Ibid., p. 33. 84. In Istoricheskii obozrienie voenno-sukhoputnago upravleniia s 1825 po 1850 god, SIRIO 98, p. 329.This document, written (or at any rate signed) by Chernyshev, is a panegyric to his time as War Minister and, as such, should be taken with a grain of salt. One should especially suspect the stated intentions of Chernyshev and Nicholas and the general conclusion that everything undertaken succeeded.There is no reason to doubt the facts and statistics given in this report, however: Chernyshev certainly had the best access of anyone

326

85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92.

93. 94.

95.

96.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I to the information presented in this document and is unlikely to have attempted to mislead a tsar who followed the affairs of the army and the War Ministry as closely as Nicholas did. Ibid., p. 331. Ibid., p. 330. Ibid., p. 329. Regulations also waived exemptions to various classes in the western provinces. Ibid., p. 331.The figure of Jews recruited in that time is not given but could not have been very large as there were only 419,336 Jews found to be eligible for recruitment in 1831 (RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18022, list 89). PSZ II, no. 6,864, On the Release on Indefinite Furlough of Enlisted Men of the Reserve Battalions of I, II, III, IV,V, and VI Infantry Corps, 28 February 1834. SIRIO 98, p. 334. Ibid., p. 335. Ibid., p. 336. A total of 176,525 soldiers were recalled, of whom 2,315 were permanently discharged, 2,840 were assigned to garrison battalions through incapacity to serve in active units, and 6,183 were found to have died before their recall notices reached them. A. M. Zaionchkovskii, Vostochnaia Voina 1853–1856 gg.: v Sviazy s Sovremennoi Ei Politicheskoi Obstanovki, vol. I. (Saint Petersburg: 1908), p. 468. The answers to both questions must lie outside of this study. They depend upon a careful and unbiased examination of English and Russian foreign policy in this period together with Russian, English, and Turkish domestic policies. The Crimean War, like most wars, arose as much from the domestic politics of the warring states as from diplomatic and military considerations, although the latter were by no means unimportant. Until a careful study of European diplomacy from 1828 through 1853 has taken account not only of the diplomatic activities of the various states, but of the effects thereon of, for instance, Russian Official Nationality, the rise of the Whigs in England, French Bonapartism, and domestic developments in Turkey, the origins of the Crimean War will remain enigmatic. See Alfred J. Rieber, ed., The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii, 1857–1864 (Paris: Moulton and Co., 1966), and Dmitrii Miliutin, “Mysli o nevygodakh sushchestvuiushchei v Rossii voennoi sistemy i o sredstvakh k ustraneniiu onykh,” 29 March 1856, in ORGBL, fond 169, karton 22, papka 29, especially list 7. The various disasters that befell Catherine’s armies at various times, or Alexander’s forces in the period before Tilsit, were in the nature of temporary setbacks and did not preclude the possibility that Russia might retrieve her fortunes against the same foe. No such hope existed after 1856 for the simple reason that Russia could not hurt her foes in any way, while her foes lost interest in the struggle after they had won all they desired.

Notes

327

Conclusion 1. “Nationality” is an unfortunate translation of “narodnost’” as it conjures up notions of nationalism that were completely alien to the concept that Nicholas and Uvarov had in mind. “Official nationality,” however, has come to be the established translation for the cultural program that Nicholas initiated, which is indicated by the title of one of the most important works on the subject: Nicholas Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). 2. Soviet historiography, in the strict classification of which Nicholas was a reactionary, has made this term current in epochs, like this one, for which it is inappropriate. Nicholas never sought to turn back the tide of the French revolution and all that followed from it. He never sought to undo the constitutional guarantees given to Poland—which he hated—until the Poles brought such change upon themselves by rebelling. His aim was always to conserve the order of things as he had found them—he was never enough of a revolutionary to be a reactionary. 3. Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1989), p. 151. 4. N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Nikolai Pervyi, ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, vol. I (St. Petersburg: 1903), pp. 583–84. 5. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987). 6. Cited in John Shelton Curtiss, Russia’s Crimean War (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1979), p. 500. 7. Cited in S. S.Tatishchev, Imperator Aleksandr II, ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, vol. I (Saint Petersburg: 1903), p. 183. 8. From a War Ministry report of 1870, cited in Robert F. Baumann,“The Debates over Universal Military Service in Russia, 1870–1874” (Ph.D. diss.,Yale University, 1982), p. 3. M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoricheskii ocherk deiatel’nosti voennago upravleniia v pervoe dvadtsati-piati-letie blagopoluchnago tsarstvovaniia Gosudaria Imperatora Aleksandra Nikolaevicha (1855–1880 gg.), vol. I (Saint Petersburg: 1880), Appendix 4, gives the strength of the regular forces as 1,777,656 officers and men as of 1 January 1856; Appendix 7 gives the strength of the militia as 358,328 as of 1 January 1856; and Appendix 24 gives the strength of the Cossack units as 161,632 as of 1 January 1856; for a total of 2,297,616 officers and men in the armed forces at the beginning of 1856. 9. It must be recalled that the figure of 1.2 million reflects the inclusion of the “temporary force” projected in 1831. 10. RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18068, Raboty po voprosam Voennogo Ministerstva: 1) Zapiska g[eneral-] l[eitenanta] Miliutina, s prilozheniem programmy “Pamiatnoi knizhki dlia soldat” 1861; 2) Zapiska po voprosu ob ustroistve rezervov 1859; 3)

328

11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I Zapiska o razdelenii Imperii na voennye okrugi. 1862; 4) Zapiski i mneniia po preobrazovaniiu general’nogo shtaba 1862–5; . . . 7) Polozhenie o Glavnom Shtabe, list 187 oborot. Bogdanovich, pp. 371–72. Ibid., pp. 370–72. It must also be noted that some of the “defects” of the army to which the defeat is attributed were not the fault of the army at all. Russia’s lack of rifles, for example, did not reflect a lack of understanding on Nicholas’s part that having rifles would be a good idea. It reflected instead the very sorry state of Russia’s military industry, which was not capable of producing rifles in sufficient quantity to re-arm the entire army.The matter of Russia’s military industry in general, and especially its development in the reign of Nicholas I, has not received the attention it merits. The limitations of that industry placed, in turn, serious limitations on Russia’s army, while the existence of such a large-scale state-owned industry, including a virtual state monopoly on metal ore mines, was an important retarding factor in the growth of capitalist industry in Russia. The War Ministry was not unaware of these facts and periodically undertook to limit the damage done by its own factories to the development of industry in Russia, usually without any great degree of success. See, for example, RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 6, delo 15,738, Relation of the Minister of Finance about Means of Supporting the Saltpeter Industry in Russia, 25 April 1845 through 3 October 1847. See his biography in SVM, vol. III, part 5, pp. 871–72. RGVIA, fond VUA, delo 18068, ll. 185 - 187 oborot. ORGBL, fond 169, karton 22, papka 29, list 7. Ibid., ll. 4–7. RGVIA, fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 9113v, Otchet Inspektorskago Departamenta za 1833 god, list 17.

Generals Staff Officers Officers NCOs Enlisted

Before the Reform

After the Reform

126 954 7,310 36,000 319,880

73 748 7,292 39,688 352,480

The reform affected the 6 infantry corps and the Grenadiers Corps. See also PSZ II, no. 5,943, Supremely Confirmed Project of a Statute about the Reorganization of the Army Infantry, 28 January 1833, the law implementing the reform. Each corps was to consist of 3 divisions instead of the previous 4 ; each division consisted of 2 brigades, rather than 3; each brigade consisted of 4 regiments; each regiment (in I, II, III, IV, and V Infantry Corps) consisted of 4 ac-

Notes

19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

329

tive battalions (1,000 men each), plus 1 combined reserve battalion in peacetime (800 men), which became 2 reserve battalions (1,000 each) in wartime. This reform, therefore, created 5 corps that could expand their complements by 25 percent from peacetime to wartime by adding 1,200 recruits to the combined reserve brigade.The reform required extensive redeployments, as a large number of regiments were broken up and their individual battalions marched around to join newly forming regiments elsewhere. See also fond 1, opis’ 1, tom 4, delo 7934 for the correspondence concerning this reform. See, for example, RGVIA, fond 15,481, opis’ 1, delo 8, Comments and Notes of the Commander of All Reserve and Second Reserve Forces, especially the note sent to Prince Dolgorukov (then Deputy War Minister) on 12 August 1851 on list 56ff. The problem of the development of a mass army in Russia has not received nearly enough attention, especially as distinct from the specific reforms of the 1860s–1870s. Russian manpower policy, in particular throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, has been a black hole even in the military historiography. Soviet historians have been hampered by the identification of that period of Russian history as “feudal,” which prevents them from pointing to “anachronistic” modernizing developments, such as movements toward a mass army, that, according to the Marxist view, belong to the period of developing capitalism that followed the emancipation.Western historians have been cut off almost entirely from the sources necessary to undertake such studies. It is to be hoped that now that those sources are once again available it will be possible to shed light on the true story of the historical development of Russia’s mass army. ORGBL, fond 169, karton 22, papka 29. Laws relating to the strengthening of the regional corps, especially the Caucasus Corps, are scattered throughout PSZ II in the 1830s; there are far too many to list here. Forrestt A. Miller, Dmitrii Miliutin and the Reform Era in Russia (Charlotte, North Carolina:Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), pp. 28–29. Williamson Murray,“Clausewitz: Some Thoughts on What the Germans Got Right,” in German Military Effectiveness (Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1992), p. 193ff. Cited in Murray, p. 195. All matters of military finance and logistics fell outside the area of concern of German General Staff officers. In army corps of the German army at the end of the nineteenth century they were handled by officers of the “routine staff ” who attended meetings of the Army Corps Staff, brought “forward their business first of all and [were] then as a rule allowed to go.”The logistics officers were not, therefore, present during discussions of planning, strategy, and tactics (Von Schellendorff, p. 51). See Alfred J. Rieber, ed., The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii, 1857–1864 (Paris: Moulton and Co., 1966), introductory essay.

This page intentionally left blank

Index

Abakumov, A. I., 101 Aberdeen, Lord, 84 Adlerberg,V. F., 54, 59, 140 administration, 6–9 Adrianople, 87, 98, 103, 121, 125, 128–129 Adrianople,Treaty of, 82 Akhsharumov, D. I., 50–60, 72, 190–195, 203–204, 206 Akkerman,Treaty of, 81, 83 Alexander I, 11–13, 15–17, 25, 26, 27–28, 31–34, 37–39, 41–45, 47–49, 51, 58, 59, 70, 72, 80, 98, 109, 111, 130, 133, 134, 135, 140, 144, 151–153, 157, 161, 200, 205, 223, 231, 235–236 Alexander II, 235, 245, 248, 250–251 Arakcheev, A. A., 33, 45–46, 51, 134, 140, I:84 Artillery Administration, 29 Artillery Section of the Main Staff, 18, 21 assignat rubles, 12–15, 31, 96–97 Austria, 11–12, 34–35, 37, 80, 82, 84, 86, 89–95, 98, 102–104, 127, 129, 210, 221, 223, 224, 226, 229–230, 233, 240, 241, 243 Austro-Prussian War of 1866, 2 Bagration, P. I., 27 Balkans, 20, 81, 85 Baltic coast, 95, 211, 224–228, 243

Balugianskii, M. A., 189 Barclay de Tolly, M. B., 16, 26, 27, 31, 45–47, 119, 144 Bariatinskii, A. I., 249–250 Bazardjik, 87 Belgian Revolution of 1830, 211–212 Benkendorff, A. Kh., 134, 237 von Bismarck, Otto, 3 Bludov, D. N., 213 bookkeeping. See control Borodino, battle of, 104 Borovkov, A. D., 50, 191, 199–204, 206 Bosphorus. See Turkish Straits Brailov, 87–88, 129 Briskorn, M. M., 160, 213 Bucharest,Treaty of, 78, 81 cadre-and-reserve system, 233–235, 247–250 Campaign Chancery of HIM, 148–149, 153, 156, 167 Canning, Sir George, 84, 209 Catherine the Great, 12, 16, 59–60, 205, 235 Caucasus, 37, 61, 70, 186, 235, 243, 244, 245, 250 central administration, 16–17, 19, 22, 25, 27, 30, 70 Central Asia, 85, 186, 224 Chancery of the Chief of the Main Staff, 139

332

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Chancery of the War Minister, 139, 143, 151, 191 Chancery of the War Ministry, 147–148, 150, 153, 157–160, 164–188, 201 Charge to the War Minister, 25 Chernyshev, A. I., 8, 32, 56–57, 59, 66, 70, 71, 75, 82, 95, 101, 102, 107–109, 119, 125, 128, 133–162, 164, 168–169, 171, 173–178, 182–183, 187, 189–207, 213, 218, 221, 231, 233–234, 237–238, 240, 244–246, 248–251, 280 n.46, 290 n.40, 323 n.58 Chichagov, P.V., 227 chief of the general staff, 2–3, 22 Chief of the Main Staff, 18–20, 22, 28–29, 32, 39–40, 53, 66–69, 71–74, 109–120, 133–162, 248 CINC. See Commander in Chief of the Large Active Army CMS. See Chief of the Main Staff codification commission of 1811, 43–47, 50–51, 55, 57 codification commission of 1823, 46–48, 50–51, 57–58 collegial system, 16, 71, 73, 151, 167–177 Commander in Chief of the Large Active Army, 18, 21–22, 25–28, 30, 39, 109–120, 249 Commissariat Administration, 19 Committee of Ministers, 29, 64, 67, 154, 176 conservative reform, 9, 59–60, 135, 141, 236 Constantine, 48–50, 61, 79, 89–94, 98–99, 102, 112, 211, 240 Constantinople, 81–85, 87, 98, 103–104, 112, 121, 127–128, 250 Continental System, 14, 278 n.17

control (kontrol’), 25–26, 30–31, 67, 109, 158, 170–172, 174, 185, 282 n.65 Corps of Internal Guard, 38, 224 corps system, 21 Council of the Main Staff, 68, 70, 73–74 Council of the War Minister, 53–55, 58, 64, 68, 72, 75, 141, 143, 151–157, 190 Crimean War, 83, 123, 130, 186, 209, 211, 228–229, 231, 233–234, 236, 237–238, 241–244, 247, 248, 251, 326 n.94 customs revenue, 12–13, 96 Danish Straits (Kattegat), 226 Danube, 20, 85, 87–88, 94, 103, 104, 112, 124, 129, 229–230 Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia), 78, 85, 87–88, 103, 106 Dardanelles. See Turkish Straits Dashkov, D.V., 82, 213 De Tocqueville, Alexis, 9 Decembrist uprising, 49–50 deloproizvodstvo, 5, 62, 170, 181, 281 n.62 Denmark, 14, 226–227 Deputy Chief of the Main Staff, 66–70, 73–74, 119, 140, 290 n.40 Deputy War Minister, 142 Dibich, I. I., 9, 51, 53–55, 58, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 82, 87–88, 95, 99, 100, 101–120, 122, 123, 124, 126–129, 133, 135, 137–138, 163, 212–214–215, 223, 230, 248, 290 n.40, 296 n.2, 319 n.14 Digest of military law, 51–60, 190–207 Digest of Military Regulations (Svod Voennykh Postanovlenii), 189–207 Duty Administration, 20, 29, 40–42, 74

Index Duty General, 19, 21, 24, 28, 31, 40–43, 50, 66–67, 72, 102, 117–118, 141, 158, 165, 180, 182, 280 n.41 emancipation of the serfs, 177, 233, 235–236, 244–245, 247, 250, 323 n.58, 329 n.20 Engineers Administration, 29, 50 Engineers Section of the Main Staff, 18, 21 England, 14, 78, 82, 84, 86,90, 94–95, 129, 209–212, 215, 223, 224–231, 227–230, 233, 235, 239, 241–246 enlightened bureaucrats, 6 Ermolov, A. P., 70, 290 n.40 Essen, P. K., 213 Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army, 18, 21, 28, 29–30, 39, 43, 45, 109, 116, 187 Establishment of the Artillery and Engineering Departments, 177 Establishment of the War Ministry, 1812, 17, 22, 25, 68, 151, 158, 168 Establishment of the War Ministry, 1836, 177, 183, 189, 204 Eugene of Württemberg, Prince, 92–93 Euler, A. Kh., 175–176, 180, 182 field administration, 16–18, 24–25, 27, 30, 39, 70 Field Commissariat Administration, 20, 68 Field Provisions Administration, 19, 68 Field Provisions-Master-General, 19, 101, 165 Field War-Commissary-General, 19, 134, 180 France, 11–12, 20, 35, 78, 82, 84, 210–212, 215, 220, 221, 223, 224, 226–230, 233, 243

333

France, July Revolution of 1830, 210–211, 229 France, military administration, 16, 18 Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, 2, 236 Franco-Russian War, 1812–1815, 15, 18, 24–7, 32–33, 45, 96, 97, 119, 158, 217 General Council of a department, 161, 167–177 General Establishment of Ministries, 17, 22, 25, 29, 67, 140, 147, 151, 158, 167, 170 General Regulation on Recruitment, 1766, 232 general staff system, 2–5, 21–22, 102–103, 109–120, 142, 248–249, 281 n.54 Georgia, 31, 70 German General Staff, 1–2, 4, 20–22, 32, 102, 118, 248–250, 281 n.54, 329 n.26 Germany, 20, 35 Gogol’, N.V., 237, 238 Golitsyn, A. N., 213 Gorchakov, A. I., 26–28, 32–33, 46 grain exports, 79–80 Grand Duchy of Finland, 85, 95, 186, 224, 227 Greek Revolution of 1821, 34, 77, 79–80 Grochow Field, Battle of, 212 Gur’ev, D. A., 35 His Majesty’s Own Chancery, Second Section, 54–55, 189, 200, 203 Hungary, Intervention in, 1849, 185, 233, 246 indefinite furlough, 222, 233–234, 244–247, 323 n.58

334

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

industrial revolution, 4, 13, 221, 328 n.13 Inspector-General of Artillery, 29, 40, 66, 69, 72, 101, 140, 146, 150, 177 Inspector-General of Engineers, 29, 40, 66, 69, 72, 101, 140, 146, 150 Intendant General, 19–21, 24–25, 29–30, 66–68, 70, 73–74, 109, 165 Janissaries, destruction of, 80–81 Jomini, Antoine Henri, 102 Kankrin, E. F., 10, 31, 97, 102, 107–109, 124–125, 138, 213, 239 Kiselev, P. D., 10, 34, 48, 80, 90, 99, 101–103, 109–120, 126, 128, 238, 241–242, 296 n.2 Kleinmikhel’, P. A., 55 Kochubei,V. P., 13–15, 17, 50, 71–74, 125, 187 Kulevcha, battle of, 128–129 Kutuzov, M. I., 27, 104 Kutuzov, P.V., 213 Labat, N. O., 31 Langeron, A. F., 123 Large Active Army, 18. See also Commander in Chief of the Large Active Army, Establishment for the Administration of the Large Active Army law, 29, 253–258. See also codification commission, Speranskii, Akhsharumov Lithuania, spread of Polish Rebellion to, 214, 218, 220 Liverpool, Lord, 84 logistics, 19–21, 24, 27–29, 31, 68, 70, 74, 80, 98–99, 101, 104–109,

127, 130, 158–159, 186, 329 n.26 Logistics Section of the Main Staff, 19, 21, 51–52, 67 Louis Philippe, King of France, 210, 229 Magnitskii, M. L., 44–48, 51, 52, 54 Mahmud, Sultan of Turkey, 78, 81, 84, 124, 126, 226, 292 n.1, 325 n.75 Main Chancery for Artillery and Fortifications, 184 Main Staff of His Imperial Majesty, 28, 32, 53, 55, 64, 75, 113, 133–162, 165, 190, 248–250 Main Staff of the Large Active Army, 18–24 Men’kov, P. K., 244–247 Michael, Grand Prince, 101, 140, 150, 172–177, 305 n.32 military administration, 7–8, 11, 16–17 military colonies, 33, 34, 140, 147, 149–150, 223, 232 Military Council, 75, 147–149, 151–157, 161, 164–188, 190, 192, 194, 197–198, 249, 307 n.55 military district system, 186, 247–250 military finance, 4–5, 11–12, 26, 28, 30, 33, 61, 67, 80, 96–99, 107–109, 138, 155–156, 158–159, 169–171, 187–188, 216, 239, 246, 295 n.56, 329 n.26 military industry, 328 n.13 military reforms of 1810–1812, 16–27 military reforms of 1815–1816, 28–32 military reforms of Alexander II, 5, 185–186, 189, 236, 244, 247–250, 251, 329 n.20 military terminology, use of modern, 121–122, 276 n.17, 300 n.53

Index militia (opolchenie), 216–217, 320 n.32 Miliutin, D. A., 5, 32, 135, 185–186, 189, 222, 244–250 ministerial responsibility, 17, 145 ministerial system, 3–4, 17, 144–145, 167–177 Ministry of Finance, 8, 17, 25, 30, 56, 67, 96–97, 102, 107 Ministry of Internal Affairs, 8 Ministry of Police, 25 mobilization, 4–5, 99–100, 221, 247, 250 mobilization, railway, 4, 221, 234–235 modernization, 8, 45, 60 Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, 78, 83 Moldavia. See Danubian Principalities von Moltke, Helmuth (the Elder), 3, 250 Napoleon Bonaparte, 1, 14–15, 21, 26, 27, 45, 78, 104, 133, 229, 280 n.46 Napoleon III, 230 Napoleonic wars, 1,3 Navarino, Battle of, 78, 81, 84, 90 Nessel’rode, K.V., 82, 94, 210, 220 Netherlands, 211 Nicholas, accession of, 48–49, 285 n.33 official nationality, 237, 238, 327 n.1 On the Administration of the War Department, 28, 39, 67, 72, 146, 150, 158, 168 On the Establishment of Ministries, 16 On the Provisions Administration, 30 opolchenie. See militia Opperman, K. I., 45, 46, 47, 50 Palmerston, Lord, 9, 81, 209–210 “paradomania,” 33 Paskevich, I. F., 70, 88, 102, 138–139, 182, 187, 226, 239–240, 248, 290 n.40

335

Paul I, 12, 16, 48–49 peasants, 13, 96, 216–218, 221–223, 233, 236, 242, 244, 322 n.48, 323 n.53. See also serfdom Persia, 12, 37, 61, 96, 235 Peter the Great, 12, 16, 45, 46, 59–60, 122, 136, 151, 189 Petrashevstsy, 238 Podolia Province, reduction of chancery of, 61–62 Poland, Army of, 86, 89, 93, 98, 102, 112, 211, 225 Poland, Kingdom of, 86, 90, 209–236, 238–241, 243 Polish rebellion of 1830–1831, 122, 133, 138–139, 163, 211–220, 235, 303 n.1, 319 n.14, 324 n.64 Potapov, A. N., 50–51 Pozen, M., 167–170, 175–177, 180–183, 249, 313 n.39 Pozzo di Borgo, K. O., 226 Project of 1832 (Supremely Confirmed Project of the Organization of the War Ministry), 149–161, 163, 165, 168 Provisions Administration, 19, 30–31 Provisions Chancery, 184 Prussia, 3–4, 11, 34, 82, 84, 86, 90–92, 94, 102, 104, 118, 210, 221, 223, 224, 226, 229–230, 233–234, 240, 247, 250 Quartermaster General, 19–21, 66–67, 72–74, 117–118, 139, 140, 149 readiness, 33, 98, 99–100 rechtstaat, 9 recruitment, 89, 98, 122, 214–225, 232–236, 244 Regulation for the Administration of Armies in Peacetime and Wartime, 187

336

The Military Reforms of Nicholas I

Regulation on Recruitment, 1831, 232, 233 Royal Navy, 226 Ruling Senate, 18, 29, 31, 54, 67, 140, 145, 176, 184 Russian Army, manpower, 89, 98, 212–236, 241–246, 249, 329 n.20 size and organization, 11–12, 14–16, 34–35, 98, 209–236 units, First Army, 86, 89, 95, 98, 101, 218, 223, 227 Second Army, 10, 80, 87, 92–94, 98–104, 109–120, 123, 303 n.4 Grenadiers Corps, 86, 211–212, 223–228 Guards Corps, 40, 72, 87–88, 92, 107, 108, 118, 152–153, 211–212, 214, 216, 223–228 I Corps, 211–212, 223–227 II Corps, 87, 211–212, 214, 223–226, 228, 230 III Corps, 87–88, 211, 223–226, 228, 230 IV Corps, 211–212, 214, 218, 223–226, 228, 230–231 V Corps, 211, 214, 223–226, 228, 230–231 VI Corps, 10, 87, 211, 214, 223–227 VII Corps, 87–88, 128, 211, 214 I Reserve Cavalry Corps, 86, 226 II Reserve Cavalry Corps, 214, 226, 228 III Reserve Cavalry Corps, 211–212, 226 IV Reserve Cavalry Corps, 87, 226 V Reserve Cavalry Corps, 211–212 Independent Georgian (Caucasus) Corps, 31, 70, 102, 186, 224, 248–250 Independent Lithuanian Corps, 212 Russian navy, 14

Russo-Persian War, 1826–1828, 61, 96, 107 Russo-Turkish War, 1806–1812, 14, 78 Sabaneev, I.V., 10, 302 n.81 Sacken, F.V., 89, 101, 123 Saltykov, S. N., 28 Schlieffen Plan, 3 second reserve (zapas), 218, 245 Semenovskii Guards, rebellion of, 1820, 34, 40–42, 72 serfdom, 5, 221–223, 233, 235–236, 246, 322 n.48. See also peasants, emancipation Shipov, S. P., 180–183 Shumla, 87–88, 93, 103, 105–107, 110, 112, 113, 120, 127–128, 129 Silistria, 87–88, 106, 127, 128 Sluchevskii, K. A., 50–51, 54, 57–58 Speranskii, M. M., 13, 17, 47, 54–57, 144, 189–207 State Control, 170–172, 174, 185 State Council, 13, 28, 29, 45, 67, 71, 73, 145, 153–154, 176, 191, 200 state debt, 12–13, 15, 97 state finance, 12–16, 79, 80, 96–99, 107–109, 169–170, 187–188, 216, 221, 231–232, 239, 241, 249, 295 n.56 Stroganov, P. A., 144 Sultan Mahmud of Turkey. See Mahmud, Sultan of Turkey Svod Voennykh Postanovlenii, 75 Sweden, 12, 14, 226 Tatishchev, A. I., 53, 59, 62, 64–66, 134–135, 152, 157, 172, 175, 178, 191 taxation, 12–13, 15, 79, 96, 219, 221, 241 Tilsit,Treaty of, 13, 16, 134, 227 Tol’, K. F., 101, 125, 128

Index Tolstoi, P. A., 54–55, 57, 66, 70, 139, 290 n.40 training, 33 Turkish embargo of Russian shipping, 79 Turkish Straits (Dardanelles and Bosphorus), 78–81, 124, 226–227 universal military service, 236 Uvarov, S. S., 237 Varna, 87–88, 93, 103, 105, 107, 111–112, 124 Vasil’chikov, I.V., 40–42, 111–118, 122, 125, 128, 129, 133, 135, 148, 163, 213 Vixen affair, 229 Volkonskii, P. M., 10, 32–33, 34–35, 38–42, 44–45, 46–48, 69–70, 72, 248, 280 n.46 Vorontsov, M. S., 106 Wallachia. See Danubian Principalities War College, 16–17, 24, 71, 73–74, 136, 184, 279 n.30, 279 n.32 war minister, 3,5, 26–30, 39, 66–67, 71–73, 133–162 war ministry, 4–5, 8, 12, 16–17, 22–26, 29, 32, 53, 64, 68, 113, 133–207, 221, 237, 247–250 War Ministry Departments, 26, 46, 53, 55–56, 62, 157–158, 165–188, 306 n.43 Artillery Department, 24, 62, 143, 151, 161, 164, 173–177, 179–180, 182, 184–187

337

Commissariat Department, 24, 26, 29, 51–52, 62–63, 68, 73, 109, 135, 151, 155, 161, 164, 179–183, 185–187 Department of Military Colonies, 143, 149–150, 166, 179, 182, 200 Department of the General Staff, 151, 166, 177–178, 185 Engineers Department, 24, 62, 143, 151, 161, 164, 177–179, 182, 185–187 Inspectorate Department, 24, 28, 56–57, 63–64, 139, 149, 151–152, 158, 165–166, 177–179, 182, 184–185, 200 Judicial Department, 28, 40, 56, 141, 149, 152, 166, 182 Medical Department, 29, 38–39, 68, 73, 151, 165–166, 184 Provisions Department, 24, 26–27, 29–32, 52, 56, 62–63, 68, 73, 161, 164, 177–179, 182, 187 Warsaw, 213 Wehrmacht, 3 Wellington, Duke of, 84 westernization, 8–9, 45 Whig Party, 209–211, 225, 229 Wittgenstein, P. Kh., 69, 87, 99, 101, 109–120, 122, 128, 133, 135, 163 World War I, 3 World War II, 3 Zakrevskii, A. A., 39–44, 48, 50, 63, 70, 72, 80, 90, 213 zapas. See second reserve