The Military History of Tsarist Russia edited on Frederick W.

The Military History of Tsarist Russia edited on Frederick W. Kagan and Robin Higham. Palgrave Macmillan (http://www.palgrave-usa.com), 175 Fifth Avenue, fresh York, New York 10010, 2002 272 pages, $5995 (hardcover).

This part the first one-volume overall view in English of the progress to maturity of Russia's armed forces, consists of 13 monographs ranging from the rise of the Muscovite army of the 1400 to the collapse of the tsarist army in 1917 It is the companion to the editors' follow-on book The Military History of the Soviet Union, which screens the period 1918-91. The essays generally review successive periods of the army's evolution The collection, however, does include individual piece on the tsarist navy and several others mention significant naval evolutions The editors are well qualified to bring forward this newest addition to the existing works onward Russian military history Frederick Kagan, son of the eminent historian Donald Kagan, is an assistant professor at the US Military Academy at West Point and has authored several works on Russian military history as well as contemporary US defense policy and military readiness. Robin Higham, the co-editor, is professor of military history emeritus at Kansas State University and has serv as the editor of the journals Military Affairs and Aerospace Historian. The authors of the essays are also well qualified in their hold right.

The editors provide well-written introductory and summary essays. The former is a general overview of Russian military history during this period. It existings the major factors--geographical vastness, ethnic diversity, natural resources, economic progressive growth social development, and changing relationships with neighbors--that affected the disclosure of Russia's military forces and ensuing historical adventures The authors of the after essays then use these factors, to varying stages to discuss a particular period of evolution of the Russian military forces subordinate to the tsars (and tsarinas). Collectively, these essays are well written and to a high degree informative about Russia's military history in the tsarist era, conveying especially well in what manner political, social, and economic factors affected military progress to maturity and the conduct of military operations. In the summary essay, the editors review these factors again in light of the preceding essays, noting the generally fit conduct and fighting abilities of Russia's a rmy during the eighteenth hundred and its decline during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The authors of in the greatest degree of the essays provide areas for coming historical research, especially now that Russian archives are more readily accessible to historians.

completely through these essays, the reader finds couple significant themes. First, the editors wish to dispel the view that the Russian army was historically incapable of winning wars, a view that expanded from the decline of Russian military capability after 1854 They want the reader to understand clearly that the Russian army did win battles and wars in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries against the powers of those times, including Sweden, Turkey and unruffled Prussia and Napoleonic France. In doing likewise Russia's rulers obtained a vast and potentially rich empire, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Far East and from the Arctic to the Middle East and Central Asia. At the same time, the garner uped essays remind us that the attainment of this vast empire would also be a source of Russia's relative military decline toward the expiration of the nineteenth century as it faced fresh modernizing, and relatively more powerful enemies--Germany in the west and Japan in the east.

The next to the first significant theme that permeates these essays is that a nation's economic and social disclosure has a significant effect forward the development of its military power--armies and navies do not perform the operations indicated in solely in the realm of politics. The Russian army scored great victories in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries because its enemys were similarly armed and organized. The origins of the Russian military's decline, as the essays point public are found in its delayed social unfolding (serfdom was not abolished until 1867 consequently depriving the army of an adequate source of recruits for a large, adequately trained lay by in the age of mass armies) and economic disentanglement The latter had two aspects. First, inadequate economic progression in a continuously ascending gradation (movement toward capitalism and industrialization, as in the West) meant that Russian lords after 1854 found themselves increasingly unable to afford military modernization (for example, equipping centurys of thousands of soldiers with rifled breechloaders) a nd unable to breed modern weapons (Russia depended relating to foreign arms when it went to war in August 1914) Therefore, as the latter essays point gone out the Russian army after 1900 was inadequately trained and armed to face the more recent Japanese army in 1904-5 and the German army in 1914-17 However, the Russian army and any of its generals did do well against the Austro-Hungarian army in the early years of World War I.