BRUSSILOV’S MEMOIRS

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1929, Page 12

BRUSSILOV’S MEMOIRS

THE WAR AND AETEfy

General A. A. Brussilov’s volume of memoirs, issued by the Soviet State Publishing House three years after the author’s death under the title, ‘My Reminiscences,’ is something in the nature of an “apologia pro mea vita” (says a writer in the ‘Observer’). This distinguished soldier, whose successful offensive against the Austro-German forces in the summer of 1916 perhaps just fell short of being one of the great decisive victories of the World War, is concerned first with vindicating his■ military reputation, and then with the still more complicated problem of explaining his attiutde towards the revolution.

While Brussilov’s work is too scantily documented, and in places too intensely subjective to rank among the outstanding works on the history of the World War, it casts much interesting light upon the reasons for Russia’s military defeat and the collapse of the Tsarist State structure, two developments which Brussilov constantly links together as cause and effect. He emphasises Russia’s appalling inferiority to Germany in almost every branch of modern warfare —in aviation, in artillery (the extreme shortage of shells made itself felt very disastrously after the early Russian victories in Galicia), in machine guns, in training and capacity for trench warfare. He returns more than once to the idea that Russia had to pay for its technical inferiority with superfluous bloodshed; that this shattered the nerves of the troops and paved the way for the collapse in 1917. Outspoken in his admonition for the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevitch, Brussilov regards the replacement of the latter by the Tsar as one of the most unfortunate decisions in the course of the war. “The assumption of the office of Commander-in-Chief,” writes Brussilov, “was the final blow which Nicholas 11. inbicted upon himself, and which brought after itself the pitiful end of his monarchy.” Elaborating this point, the author declares that the Tsar possessed neither taste nor aptitude for military affairs. He was ill at ease even in-the performance of such routine functions as reviewing parades and bestowing decorations. His activities as Com-mander-in-Chief were purely nominal, and consisted merely of listening to a daily report presented to 'him by his chief of staff, General Alekseev. Time hung heavily on the Tsar’s hands at General Staff Headquarters, and lie often went off to visit his family at Tsarskoe Selo, or made trips through the country without keeping up any sort of adequate communication with the front.

Unde rthese circumstances the whole responsibility foi’ directing the conduct of the war in the field devolved upon General Alekseev. Brussilov characterises him as a good theoretical startegist, who might have been very serviceable to an energetic commander-in-chief, but as a man of rather weak and indecisive character quite incapable of filling the gap left by the absence of a real commander. Students of military history will find interesting material in. Brussilov’s description of his major offensive against the armies of the Central Powers in 1916. This offensive was one of the few brilliant Russian successes during the war. It yielded hundreds of thousands of prisoners and a considerable gain in territory ; it relieved Austrian pressure against the Italian front and German pressure against Verdun; it hastened Rumania’s entrance into the war on the side of the Allies. But Brussilov is himself keenly conscious that his drive Jacked the decisive significance which, as he believes, it might easily have achieved if the commanders of the .western and northem fronts, Generals Evert and Kuropatkin, had. not failed to support him. He inveighs bitterly against Evert and Kuropatkin, and against Alekseev for not prodding them into action, observing in this connection: If we had possessed a real, commander-in-chief and all the commanders of the fronts had acted according to his orders, my armies could have moved forward so far and the strategic position of the enemy would have become so difficult that, even without battle, he would have been obliged to withdraw to his own frontiers, the course of the war would have assumed a completely different inspect, and its end would have been considerably accelerated.”

; THE REVOLUTION. , Convinced that the Russian old re- , gime was quite incapable of prosecuting the war to a victorious conclusion , Bru'ssilov welcomed the March Revolution. An old-fashioned Russian patriot . in his political outlook, he was profoundly grieved by the subsequent disintegration of the army and the drift of the country into social revolution and civil war. Yet his appraisal of . the strength of Bolshevism was far more realistic than that of most of his colleagueas. Holding the office of Commander-in - Chief for a short time in the summer of 1917, when the chief objectives of the holc&er of that ungrateful post were to prevemt the murder of officers by the soldiers, and to hold back a, tumultuous homeward rush of the mutinous armies from the trenches, he rejected the idea of a dictatorship, either by Kerensky or by himself, as futile and certain to produce nothing but further useless bloodshed. The fate of Kornilov’s ill-starred coup tended to prove that his judgment on this question was correct. Eor Kerensky he expresses a considerable - measure of contempt, depicting him as a showy talker and actor, quite incapable of acliieving practical results. On Kerensky’s decree, restoring the death penalty at the front in Judy, 1917, he offers the following drily ironical comment: — “In principle it was impossible to object to this demand in war time, but the question arose as to who would carry out the se ' sentences. In that stage of the Revolution which we lived through then it would Have been difficult to find members of a court martial and executioners of its sentences, be-1 cause they would have been imme- 1 diately killed, and the sentences would? have rem; lined unexecuted, which I wculd have been the final destruction’ of the remnants of discipline. Nevertheless, a t Kerensky’s insistence, I signed tlii s order and circulated it by telegraph.. I must, however, confess that it w as not fulfilled, and remained only on paper.” Brussi? .ov’s last years were heavily clouded , with sorrow. He was accidentally' wounded'by shell‘fire during the street fighting in Moscow in No-■ vembery 1917, and lived in poverty and objscurity throughout the period I of the* civil war, being for a time, under house aii’est. His only son, it

after an unfortunate marriage, disappeared, ’ and was never heard of again. A rumour grew up that lie had passed over to the Whites, and had been shot by them as a suspected Bolshevist but Brussilov professes entire ignorance as to his son’s fate.