A Brief Note On The World War I

By 1916 russia had 4 and a half times more men captured than killed. In contrast England had 5 times more killed than taken prisoner. This was mainly due to the lack of equipment and weapons the Russian troops had.

After suffering a bloody defeat against the Turks in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-1878, the Russians were looking to modernize the Imperial Army’s arsenal by adopting a new service rifle. In 1889, two test rifles were submitted; one by Captain Sergei Ivanovich Mosin, and another by Belgian designer Léon Nagant. In the testing trials, both rifles were found to have issues and the best components of both were incorporated into each other to make the Mosin Nagant 1891 or M91. It first saw extensive use in World War 1 with success. Its design was later improved in 1930, creating the Mosin

This demonstrates that since the stress of waging war was tremendous, it should be no surprise that the first war could be a primary cause of the Russian Revolution. Moreover, the major powers of Europe hurt Russia in World War I; yet, by 1917, all the combatants horrifically suffered from the strains of war economically, proving this to be a long-term cause. This was, to a great extent, considerable because the military defeats and social strains of World War I had created a crisis in Imperial Russia. Before, Russia had some military accomplishments and they were on their way to being successful. Nevertheless, their triumphs were not long-standing; hence, Russia was not able to be victorious due to the fact that Russia decreased in economy because of the limitations in Russia. Similarly, restraints included the shortage of food and the huge problems with getting the obligatory materials for the army during World War I, which shows that this was momentous. Along with Russia being defeated and having a scarcity of supplies, Russia also showed economic oppression due to the pressure in jobs workers faced.

The argument that the First World War led to the downfall of the Tsardom in Russia is supported by how unprepared the military were from the outset and throughout the war. Poor conditions and lack of weaponry led to low morale. Production of weapons was seriously flawed as seen in the Russian front at Gorlice, where “many soldiers had no rifles and had to wait for a comrade to be killed before taking his weapon”3. “By the end of December 1914, 6,554,000 men had been mobilized with only 4,652,000 rifles available to them”4. Furthermore the appalling conditions that were reported in the Russian trenches caused outbreaks of diseases such as typhoid and cholera creating tensions amongst Russia's “indestructible army”5. The dreadful conditions caused soldiers to turn against their

Russia had a smaller economy, Russia was technologically limited, Russia was bigger, exerted more power

In the 1800s, Europe began to industrialize, slowly transitioning from an agricultural to industrial economy. As people began to migrate to cities and factories began pop up all over, along with railroads and telegraphs, the militaries and economic might of these countries began to grow. However, while Europe was busy industrializing, Russia and Japan remained isolated with agriculture-based economies. When Japan’s weakness was revealed by the arrival of Commodore Perry with large gunboats and a powerful US Navy, Russia’s inferiority was revealed when they decisively lost the Crimean War to the better-equipped European military. Afterward, both resolved to better themselves and modernize like their European counterparts. While Japan and Russia’s

The development of iron and coal industries in the area of Moskow, St. Petersburg,the Baltic coast and the Ural Mountains to the east was heavily. This industrial growth helped Russia being the fourth largest industrail economy in those times.

The Russian’s would take out several people with one throw of some type of artillery. “All the powder wagons stood in the crowd; many of these were ignited by the grenades, killing hundreds of people and horses standing about them.” There was another time where the Russians approached the soldier, the captain, and the captain’s attendant. The Russians started to attack the captain and the attendant, and then came after the soldier. The soldier then acted dead and fell off the horse into the snow. The horse followed by laying on top of the soldier. They laid there like they were dead, so the Russians would leave them alone. After the soldier knew the path was safe again, he got up on his horse and

Furthermore, while these rifles were better, the soldiers were not properly trained in using them; therefore, they were often use erroneously. This misuse hindered their accuracy. With the misuse and the lack of ammunition, they were not actually any better than the previous rifles.

The Hero of Russia, Vasily Grigoryevich Zaytsev was a Soviet sniper and a Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II. He was very smart with his actions, he killed more than 300 Nazi soldiers in the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II and taught scores of other snipers. His grandfather taught him to hunt at a very early age as a child, Vasily would spend days in the taiga together with his younger brother, tracking wolves, setting traps and sleeping in the snow. When they usually killed wolves, he would shot them with a single bullet from his first personal weapon, a large single-barreled Berdan rifle. The Berdan rifle is a Russian rifle created by famous American firearms expert and inventor Hiram Berdan in 1868. It was standard issue rifle in the Russian army from 1870 to 1891. It was very well

This was because they had no materials for shelter, a shortage of food and medical services, and they were in bad fighting conditions. Of the 6,553,000 men in the army in December1914, only 4,652,000 had rifles. Untrained troops had to enter the battle without sufficient arms or ammunition. Furthermore, it was reported that 100,000 new rifles were needed each month but Russian factories could not even produce half of this. Wounded soldiers often had to go five days before they were attended to, as neither wagons, horses, first aid, nor any other organisations were allowed to go the forward areas.

Although there are various factors which triggered the German’s efforts in Stalingrad to become futile, the extreme weather conditions that the German and Red army troops faced was unquestionably the most impactful. In spite of both forces having to cope with fighting against the weather, the reason that the German’s struggled whilst the Russians prevailed was due to differing and very distinct coping methods which were developed to aid both forces whilst in fight. The Russian Army adapted to the harsh weather conditions that they were facing in many ways that the Germans did not; an example of this is the addition of gasoline to the oil within their guns which prevented the oil from freezing. This addition allowed the Red Army to shoot with ease whilst the Germans continued to struggle to shoot due to the freezing of the oil within their guns.

The artillery and small arms were years behind that of France. The Russian army was a conscription army, meaning that local farmers had to furnish a certain number of surfs for military service, as opposed to a professional, trained army where the government supplies the soldiers with all of their needs. An amazing half-million soldiers had enlisted in Napoleon’s Grand Armée (Saglamer, Beginning of the March). This was the largest army gathered for one single invasion. Russia’s army was out numbered 3:1 with only one hundred-seventy thousand soldiers. Not only was the Russian army not well trained, they were also ill equipped. Napoleon recognized that it would be difficult and extremely slow for Russia to mobilize her army due to her enormous size and weak infrastructure. If Napoleon invaded now, he knew that he could be well into the Russian territory before meeting any major opposition. On June 24, 1812, Napoleon began his fatal Russian campaign. The Grand Armée, led by Napoleon, crossed the Nieman River, into Russia. On the journey to Moscow, Napoleon met virtually no major opposition. The first stop in the campaign was Kovono. Early into the campaign, the Grand Armée was affected by a colic epidemic that claimed the life of nine thousand horses and thousands of soldiers (Web, Russian Embassy). This slowed the pace of the army. Harsh weather conditions caused the dry roads to turn to mud, making it extremely difficult to maneuver the

During WW I, a huge Imperial Russian army (estimated at 19 million soldiers and officers representing over 15% of the Russian population) had been fighting Germany on the Eastern front with little success. Under-equipped, poorly trained and supervised, it had lost close to 9 million soldiers through desertions, deaths, wounded or prisoners.

From the go Russia was mobilized and war ready faster than the Germans and themselves expected, they was only expecting a short war. Russia had no extended war plans of ammo, food, clothing and equipment and extremely bad organisation led to many un-necessary deaths and illnesses. They naively thought that 7 million shells would last the whole war, but in 1916 that was just enough for 10 days. In 1914 only 41 rifles were