by James Millar
Ultimately, a combination of seemingly endless bloodletting, war-weariness, governmental inefficiency, and the regime’s political ineptness facilitated the spread of pacifist and revolutionary sentiment in both the army and navy. By the beginning of 1917, sufficient malaise had set in to render both services incapable either of consistent loyalty or of sustained and effective combat operations. In the end, neither the army nor the navy offered proof against the tsar’s internal and external enemies. Fuller, William C., Jr. (1992). Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914. New York: The Free Press. Kagan, Frederick W. (1999). The Military Reforms of Nicholas I: The Origins of the Modern Russian Army. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Kagan, Frederick W., and Higham, Robin, eds. (2002). The Military History of Tsarist Russia. New York: Pal-grave. Keep, John L.H. (1985). Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462-1874. Oxford: Clarendon Press. LeDonne, John P. (2003). The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire, 1650-1831. New York: Oxford University Press. Menning, Bruce W. (2000). Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mitchell, Donald W. (1974). A History of Russian and Soviet Sea Power. New York: Macmillan. Reddel, Carl F., ed. (1990). Transformation in Russian and Soviet Military History. Washington, DC: U. S. Air Force Academy and Office of Air Force History. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David, and Menning, Bruce W., eds. (2003). Reforming the Tsar’s Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stone, Norman. (1975). The Eastern Front 1914-1917. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Westwood, J.N. (1986). Russia against Japan, 1904-1905. Albany: State University of New York Press. Woodward, David. (1965). The Russians at Sea: A History of the Russian Navy. New York: Frederick A. Praeger.
BRUCE W. MENNING
See also: ADMINISTRATION, MILITARY; BALKAN WARS; BALTIC FLEET; CAUCASIAN WARS; COSSACKS; CRIMEAN WAR; DECEMBRIST MOVEMENT AND REBELLION; GREAT REFORMS; NAPOLEON I; NORTHERN FLEET; PACIFIC FLEET; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS; SEVEN YEARS’ WAR; STRELTSY; WORLD WAR I
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baumann, Robert F. (1993). Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan. Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute. Curtiss, John S. (1965). The Russian Army of Nicholas I, 1825-1855. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Duffy, Christopher. (1981). Russia’s Military Way to the West: Origins and Nature of Russian Military Power 1700-1800. London: Routledge amp; Kegan Paul.
MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
The Russian military industrial complex (voenno-promyshlennyi kompleks, or VPK), recently renamed the defense industrial complex (oboronno-promysh-lennyi kompleks, or OPK), encompasses the panoply of activities overseen by the Genshtab (General Staff), including the Ministry of Defense, uniformed military personnel, FSB (Federal Security Bureau) troops, border and paramilitary troops, the space program, defense research and regulatory agencies, infrastructural support affiliates, defense industrial organizations and production facilities, strategic material reserves, and an array of troop reserve, civil defense, espionage, and paramilitary activities. The complex is not a loose coalition
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
of vested interests like the American military-industrial complex; it has a formal legal status, a well-developed administrative mechanism, and its own Web site. The Genshtab and the VPK have far more power than the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretary of defense, or the patchwork of other defense-related organizations.
The OPK consists of seventeen hundred enterprises and organizations located in seventy-two regions, officially employing more than 2 million workers (more nearly 3.5 million), producing 27 percent of the nation’s machinery, and absorbing 25 percent of its imports. Nineteen of these entities are “city building enterprises,” defense industrial towns where the OPK is the sole employer. The total number of OPK enterprises and organizations has been constant for a decade, but some liberalization has been achieved in ownership and managerial autonomy. At the start of the post-communist epoch, the VPK was wholly state-owned. As of 2003, 43 percent of its holdings remains government-owned, 29 percent comprises mixed state-private stock companies, and 29 percent is fully privately owned. All serve the market in varying degrees, but retain a collective interest in promoting government patronage and can be quickly commandeered if state procurement orders revive.
Boris Yeltsin’s government tried repeatedly to reform the VPK, as has Vladimir Putin’s. The most recent proposal, vetted and signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov in October 2001, calls for civilianizing some twelve hundred enterprises and institutions, stripping them of their military assets, including intellectual property, and transferring this capital to five hundred amalgamated entities called “system-building integrated structures.” This rearrangement will increase the military focus of the OPK by divesting its civilian activities, beneficially reducing structural militarization, but will strengthen the defense lobby and augment state ownership. The program calls for the government to have controlling stock of the lead companies (design bureaus) of the “system-building integrated structures.” This will be accomplished by arbitrarily valuing the state’s intellectual property at 100 percent of the lead company’s stock, a tactic that will terminate the traditional Soviet separation of design from production and create integrated entities capable of designing, producing, marketing (exporting), and servicing OPK products. State shares in non-lead companies will be put in trust with the design bureaus. The Kremlin intends to use ownership as its primary control instrument, keeping its requisitioning powers in the background, and minimizing budgetary subsidies at a time when state weapons-procurement programs are but a small fraction what they were in the Soviet past. Ilya Klebanov, former deputy prime minister, and now minister for industry, science, and technology, the architect of the OPK reform program, hopes in this way to reestablish state administrative governance over domestic military industrial activities, while creating new entities that can seize a larger share of the global arms market. It is premature to judge the outcome of this initiative, but history suggests that even if the VPK modernizes, it does not intend to fade away. See also: KASYANOV, MIKHAIL MIKHAILOVICH; MILITARY-ECONOMIC PLANNING; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Epstein, David. (1990). “The Economic Cost of Soviet Security and Empire.” In The Impoverished Superpower: Perestroika and the Soviet Military, ed. Henry Rowen and Charles Wolf, Jr. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies. Gaddy, Clifford. (1966). The Price of the Past: Russia’s Struggle with the Legacy of a Militarized Economy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Hill, Christopher. (2003). “Russia’s Defense Spending.” In Russia’s Uncertain Future. Washington, DC: Joint Economic Committee. Izyumov, Alexei; Kosals, Leonid; and Ryvkina, Rosalina. (2001). “Privatization of the Russian Defense Industry: Ownership and Control Issues.” Post-Communist Economies 12:485-496. Rosefielde, Steven. (2004). Progidal Superpower: Russia’s Re-emerging Future. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shlykov, Vitaly. (2002). “Russian Defense Industrial Complex After 9-11.” Paper presented at the conference on “Russian Security Policy and the War on Terrorism,” U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, June 4-5, 2002.
STEVEN ROSEFIELDE
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
Although the means have grown more sophisticated, the basic function of military intelligence (voyennaya razvedka) has remained unchanged: collecting, analyzing and disseminating information about the enMILITARY INTELLIGENCE emy’s intentions and its ability to carry them out. Since the Soviet era, military intelligence has been classified according to three categories: strategic, operational, and tactical. Strategic intelligence entails an understanding of actual and potential foes at the broadest level, including the organization and capabilities of their armed forces as well as the economy, population, and geography of the national base. Operational intelligence refers to knowledge of military value more directly tied to the theater, an
d is typically conducted by the staffs of front and army formations, while tactical intelligence is carried out by commanders at all levels to gather battlefield data directly relevant to their current mission.
Before the Great Reforms (1860s-1870s), Russian generals had three basic means of learning about their foes: spies, prisoners of war, and reconnaissance. Thus, at the Battle of Kulikovo (1381) Prince Dmitry Donskoy dispatched a reliable diplomat to the enemy’s camp to study the latter’s intentions, questioned captives, and personally assessed the terrain, all of which played a role in his famous victory over the Mongols. While capable commanders had always understood the need for good intelligence, until the early eighteenth century the Russian army had neither systematic procedures nor personnel designated to carry them out. Peter I’s introduction of a quartermaster service (kvartirmeisterskaya chast) in 1711 (renamed the general staff, or generalny shtab, by Catherine II in 1763) laid the institutional groundwork. The interception of diplomatic correspondence, a vital element of strategic intelligence, was carried out by the foreign office’s Cabinet Noir (Black Chamber, also known as the shifrovalny otdel), beginning under Empress Elizabeth I (r. 1741-1762). Inter-ministerial rivalry often hampered effective dissemination of such data to the War Ministry.
It would take another century for military intelligence properly to be systematized with the creation of a Main Staff (glavny shtab) by the reformist War Minister Dmitry Milyutin in 1865. Roughly analogous to the Prussian Great General Staff, the Main Staff’s responsibilities included central administration, training, and intelligence. Two departments of the Main Staff were responsible for strategic intelligence: the Military Scientific Department (Voyenny ucheny komitet, which dealt with European powers) and the Asian Department (Azi-atskaya chast). Milyutin also regularized procedures for operational and combat intelligence in 1868 with new regulations to establish an intelligence section (razvedivatelnoye otdelenie) attached to field commanders’ staffs, and he formalized the training and functions of military attach?s (voen-nye agenty). The Admiralty’s Main Staff established analogous procedural organizations for naval intelligence.
In 1903, the Army’s Military Scientific Department was renamed Section Seven of the First Military Statistical Department in the Main Staff. Dismal performance during the Russo-Japanese War inevitably led to another series of reforms, which saw the creation in June 1905 of an independent Main Directorate of the General Staff (Glavnoye Upravlenie Generalnago Shtaba, or GUGSh), whose first over quartermaster general was now tasked with intelligence, among other duties. Resubordinated to the war minister in 1909, GUGSh would retain its responsibility for intelligence through World War I.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, Vladimir Lenin established a Registration Directorate (Registupravle-nie, RU) in October 1918 to coordinate intelligence for his nascent Red Army. At the conclusion of the Civil War, in 1921, the RU was refashioned into the Second Directorate of the Red Army Staff (also known as the Intelligence Directorate, Razvedupr, or RU). A reorganization of the Red Army in 1925 saw the entity transformed into the Red Army Staff’s Fourth Directorate, and after World War II it would be the Main Intelligence Directorate (Glavnoye Razvedivatelnoye Upravlenie, GRU).
Because of the presence of many former Imperial Army officers in the Bolshevik military, the RU bore more than a passing resemblance to its tsarist predecessor. However, it would soon branch out into much more comprehensive collection, especially through human intelligence (i.e., military attach?s and illegal spies) and intercepting communications. Despite often intense rivalry with the state security services, beginning with Felix Dz-erzhinsky’s Cheka, the RU and its successors also became much more active in rooting out political threats, whether real or imagined.
Both tsarist and Soviet military intelligence were respected if not feared by other powers. Like all military intelligence services, its record was nevertheless marred by some serious blunders, including fatally underestimating the capabilities of the Japanese armed forces in 1904 and miscalculating the size of German deployments in East Prussia in 1914. Yet even the best intelligence could not compensate for the shortcomings of the supreme commander, most famously when Josef Stalin refused to heed repeated and often accurate assessments of
MILITARY REFORMS
Nazi intentions to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941. See also: ADMINISTRATION, MILITARY; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; MILITARY, SPECIAL PURPOSE FORCES; SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET; STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fuller, William C. (1984). “The Russian Empire.” In Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars, ed. Ernest R. May. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Garthoff, Raymond L. (1956). “The Soviet Intelligence Services.” In The Soviet Army, ed. Basil Liddell Hart. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Leonard, Raymond W. (1999). Secret Soldiers of the Revolution: Soviet Military Intelligence, 1918-1933. West-port, CT: Greenwood Press. Pozniakov, Vladimir. (2000). “The Enemy at the Gates: Soviet Military Intelligence in the Inter-war Period and its Forecasts of Future War.” In Russia at the Age of Wars, ed. Silvio Pons and Romano Giangia-como. Milan: Fetrinellli. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David. (2003). “Reforming Russian Military Intelligence.” In Reforming the Tsar’s Army, ed. David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce Menning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David. (1996). “Russian Military Intelligence on the Manchurian Front.” Intelligence and National Security 11(1):22-31.
DAVID SCHIMMELPENNINCK VAN DER OYE
MILITARY REFORMS
Military reform has been one of the central aspects of Russia’s drive to modernize and become a leading European military, political, and economic power. Ivan IV (d. 1584) gave away pomestie lands to create a permanent military service class, and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (d. 1676) enserfed Russia’s peasants to guarantee the political support of these military servitors. In the same period, Alexei, seeking to modernize his realm, invited Westerners to Russia to introduce advanced technical capabilities. But as the eighteenth century dawned, Russia found itself surrounded and outmatched by hostile enemies to its north, south, west, and, to a lessor extent, to its east. At the same time, perhaps Russia’s most energetic tsar, Peter the Great (d. 1725), adopted a grand strategy based on the goal of conquering adversaries in all directions. Such ambitions required the complete overhaul of the Russian nation. As a result, the reforms of Peter the Great represent the beginning of the modern era of Russian history.
Military reform, designed to create a powerful permanently standing army and navy, was the central goal of all of Peter the Great’s monumental reforms. His most notable military reforms included the creation of a navy that he used to great effect against the Ottomans in the sea of Azov and the Swedes in the Baltic during the Great Northern War; the creation of the Guard’s Officer Corps that became the basis of the standing professional officer corps until they became superannuated and replaced by officers with General Staff training during the nineteenth century; a twenty-five year service requirement for peasants selected by lot to be soldiers; and his codifying military’s existence by personally writing a set of instructions in 1716 for the army and 1720 for the navy. While these reforms transformed the operational capabilities of the Russian military, Peter the Great also sought to create the social and administrative basis for maintaining this newly generated power. In 1720 he created administrative colleges specifically to furnish the army and navy with a higher administrative apparatus to oversee the acquisition of equipment, supplies, and recruits. Peter’s final seminal reform, however, was the 1722 creation of the Table of Ranks, which linked social and political mobility to the idea of merit, not only in the military but throughout Russia.
The irony of Peter’s culminating reform was that the nobility did not accept the Table of Ranks because it forced them to work to maintain what they viewed as their inherited birthright to power, privilege, and status. While no major military reforms occurred until after the 18
53-1856 Crimean War, the work of Catherine II’s (d. 1796) “Great Captains,” Peter Rumyanstev, Grigory Potemkin, and Alexander Suvorov, combined with the reforming efforts of Paul I (d. 1801), created a system for educating and training officers and defined everything from uniforms to operational doctrine. None of these efforts amounted in scope to the reforms that preceded or followed, but together they provided Russia with a military establishment powerful enough to defeat adversaries ranging from the powerful French to the declining Ottomans. Realizing that the army was too large and too wasteful, Nicholas I (d. 1855) spent the balance of the 1830s and 1840s introducing administrative reforms to
MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET
streamline and enhance performance but, as events in the Crimea demonstrated, without success.
Alexander II’s (d. 1881) 1861 peasant emancipation launched his Great Reforms and set the stage for the enlightened War Minister Dmitry Milyutin to reorganize Russia’s military establishment in every aspect imaginable. His most enduring reform was the 1862-1864 establishment of the fifteen military districts that imposed a centralized and manageable administrative and command system over the entire army. Then, to reintroduce the concept of meritocracy into the officer training system, he reorganized the Cadet Corps Academies into Junker schools in 1864 to provide an education to all qualified candidates regardless of social status. In addition, in 1868 he oversaw the recasting of the army’s standing wartime orders. The result of these three reforms centralized all power within the army into the war minister’s hands. But Milyutin’s most important reform was the Universal Conscription Act of 1874 that required all Russian men to serve first in the active army and then in the reserves. Modeled after the system recently implemented by the Prussians in their stunningly successful unification, Russia now had the basis for a modern conscript army that utilized the Empire’s superiority in manpower without maintaining a costly standing army.