To Arms

by Hew Strachan

  Copper was exceptional in showing no improvement in 1916 (output fell again to 1.3 million puds). Most other commodities displayed a marked improvement. Coal recovered to 2,092.4 million puds for the year, and pig iron to 232 million. Regionally, some areas exceeded their pre-war levels, particularly in the coal industry. But the combined effect was mitigated by the persistence of the transport problem as much as by the consequences of actual hostilities. Thus, copper production in the Caucasus was halved between 1914 and 1916, and this was blamed on the operations in the area. But the same explanation could not explain the decline of copper output by four-fifths in Siberia (where there was no fighting), nor the consistent and improving levels of naphtha production in Baku (where the war impinged somewhat more).348

  Nonetheless, the dismal picture in relation to raw materials did not result in a comparable fall in munitions production. If Russia’s entry into the war had resulted in no more then a continuation of the same trajectory of industrialization as that marked out immediately before the war, then falling armaments output might have been the consequence. The fact that this was not the case highlights the point that Russia underwent two experiences between 1914 and 1916—one being a continuity, that is, the acceleration of industrialization broadly defined; and the other a change, the conversion of industry to wartime purposes. Ultimately, coal shortages meant the withdrawal of supplies for civil consumption: heat and light suffered more than munitions. Lack of iron resulted in a cutback in agricultural machinery, not in guns. To this extent, as elsewhere, political and managerial decisions played their part.

  One reason for the underestimation of the achievements of Russia’s war production is the bureaucratic confusion which attended its implementation. The main artillery administration (Glavnoe Artilleriiskoie Upravlieniie or GAU) of the War Ministry was responsible for the supervision of production as well as for the state arsenals. It had coped with the rearmament programmes of the pre-war years, and had ensured that in most cases the army’s stocks of munitions in 1914 were close to the norms established by the general staff in 1912: in the case of rifles and 3-inch (or 76 mm) shell they exceeded them.349 In September 1914 its structure was reformed and revitalized.

  But the GAU was sandwiched between Stavka and the military council of the War Ministry. It reckoned that the former inflated its orders for shell and was profligate in its use of artillery. Its relationship with the latter was bedevilled by a rivalry between GAU’s head, the Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, and the war minister, Sukhomlinov. Stavka’s requests, already reduced by GAU, were cut yet further by the ministry. In September 1914 GAU approved orders for 2 million shells; the military council pared them down to 800,000.350

  Parallel with the friction between Stavka and the War Ministry was the tension between the state and the private arms sector. Their mutual distrust had been modified between 1910 and 1914, but not removed. In September the existing contractors could produce only 500,000 shells per month, when the army wanted 1.5 million. Sukhomlinov’s solution was to advance sufficient capital to the existing munitions firms to enable them to expand their plant and hence their output to 1 million shells per month by the autumn of 1915. Rather than draw in other firms to war production, Sukhomlinov preferred to limit the orders he placed with Russian industry, and instead to direct the additional demand abroad. No further orders were placed after October.

  The scepticism towards the government entertained by most industrialists, briefly stilled by the nationalist enthusiasms of the opening weeks of the war, therefore resurfaced as 1914 drew to a close. Hopes that industry might become the partner of government in the prosecution of the war effort had been dashed. The Association of Trade and Industry tried to build bridges in January. It suggested that orders should be channelled direct from Stavka to the arms firms, thus removing the War Ministry from the chain. The big firms should be allowed to contract to smaller concerns, so facilitating the conversion of industry to war production. Skilled labour should be returned from the front.351

  Both the demands of Stavka and the proposals of the Association were meat and drink to the progressives within the Duma. In April Rodzianko, the president of the Duma, visited the front and reported on the shortage of shells and on the tensions between Stavka and the War Ministry; not Grand Duke Nicholas but Sukhomlinov was responsible for Russia’s lack of success. Thus, the attack on the War Ministry’s management of industrial mobilization became fused with an attack on the Tsar’s prerogatives. The net effect was to deepen the divide between Russia’s government and Russia’s industrialists. The former blamed the falling coal yields of the Donetz Basin on the latter’s harsh exploitation of its labour force; the latter attributed the crisis to the railways, the responsibility of the government’s minister of transport.

  The politicization of the Association of Trade and Industry became evident at its 9th Congress, in June 1915. The agenda for the meeting did not reflect the frustration now felt by many industrialists, particularly in Moscow. The latter argued that the flow of government orders had favoured the traditional arms suppliers in Petrograd, and that in consequence Petrograd had also received the lion’s share of raw materials. On the second day of the congress the vice-chairman of the Moscow exchange committee, Riabushinski, who had just returned from the front, called for full industrial mobilization. The congress scrapped its agenda, set up a special commission, and then adopted a series of resolutions. It declared that its intention was to harness all the unutilized power of Russia’s industry for the purposes of state defence. To achieve this it planned a series of regional committees to co-ordinate production in accordance with local capacities. A central War Industries Committee would be established in Petrograd, not only to oversee the regional bodies but also to liaise with other interested parties, including the Union of Zemstvos, the Union of Towns, the Duma, the railways, and the scientific community.

  The most important task of the War Industries Committee was to win the co-operation, rather than the hostility, of the government. Its progressive credentials, its call for the convening of the Duma, and in due course its appointment of a politician, Alexander Guchkov, as its chairman—these were manifestations likely to deepen the rift between state and industry rather than to rally the two to serve the common cause. Mindful of this, Riabushinski himself used conciliatory language, emphasizing co-operation rather than confrontation.

  On 2 May the Central Powers had delivered a stunning blow at Gorlice Tarnow. The subsequent ‘great retreat’ helped achieve—albeit briefly—the fusion the War Industries Committee sought.

  Rodzianko returned from the front and reported his findings to a private meeting of members of the Duma. On 1 June 1915 the government tried to preempt the mounting opposition to its running of the war by appointing a special commission to supervise the supply of the army. On 20 June, coincident with the formation of the War Industries Committee, this was replaced by a ‘special council for the co-ordination of measures directed to the regular supply to the army of munitions’. Answerable to the Tsar, its powers were comparable with those vested in the minister of war at the outbreak of hostilities: it could requisition businesses and it could direct private industry to accept government orders. However, it did not attempt to regulate the market nor did it intervene in the internal workings of industry. Its real novelty, therefore, was not economic but political. Its membership embraced the appropriate government ministers, the president of the Duma, four members of the Duma chosen by the Tsar, and four representatives of commerce and industry.352

  Needless to say, Sukhomlinov was not happy with this dilution of his ministerial authority. He persuaded himself that shell shortage was more the fantasy of the Petrograd press than the reality of the front.353 He continued to resist any wider distribution of arms orders. But evidence of his unwisdom was mounting.

  In January 1915 a French technical mission visited Russia to relay the benefits of its experience. It argued that 3-inch shell production could be simplifie
d and expedited if high explosive was given preference over shrapnel. Fuses could then be made in one piece and inspection standards lowered, so that orders could be spread to firms new to war production. GAU was sceptical: the French concluded that Russia’s artillery administration had learned nothing from the war. But General Vankov, head of the Bryansk arsenal, was impressed by the advice of the French. He offered contracts for 3-inch shell to firms not already employed by GAU: by the end of the war his organization had distributed orders for 12 million rounds, and was responsible for 44 per cent of total Russian output. Vankov demonstrated not only that production in quantity was possible but also that a balance could be found between industry’s need for sufficient profit to cover its conversion costs and the government’s need to control expenditure. Vankov guaranteed a gross profit of 47 per cent. But Sukhomlinov persevered in his preference for traditional contractors: on 19 June 1915 he placed an order with the Putilov works for 3 million 3-inch shells at a price 20 per cent above that paid by Vankov.354

  Sukhomlinov’s refusal to change his practices and his obstruction of the new special council smacked of the bloody-mindedness of a doomed man. His credibility had already been shattered by the exposure—possibly through a Stavka conspiracy355—of one of his protégés as a spy. On 26 June 1915 he was dismissed. A year later he was arrested and imprisoned.

  His replacement was A. A. Polivanov. Polivanov possessed impeccable anti-Sukhomlinov credentials. He set about making the ministry a conduit rather than an obstruction. He reversed previous policy, settling demand before supply. He diligently attended Stavka briefings, however unhelpful he found them, arguing that plans at home had to be shaped by events on the front.356 Having been an assistant minister of war for six years, between 1906 and 1912, he had got to know members of the arms industry, and showed himself much more adroit in his relations with them than had his predecessor. The weighting of the special council in favour of Petrograd firms was modified: the representation of the War Industries Committee was increased. Polivanov’s policy was justified by a report to the special council on the state of the Putilov works: racked by debts, which had been contracted in the bid to expand their shipyards as orders flooded in before the war, it was postponing old orders and allowing real wages to fall. Under Polivanov’s guidance the special council advanced 43.3 million roubles—principally for plant—to co-operatives outside the traditional arms firms: the War Industries Committee received almost half, but the Union of Towns and the Union of Zemstvos were also major beneficiaries. By the end of August the central committee of the War Industries Committee was handling orders for 5 million hand grenades and 1.7 million shells.357

  Nonetheless, Polivanov was unable to surmount the underlying political tensions. The council of ministers took fright at the prospect of a state organization, the special council, becoming subservient to a private one, the War Industries Committee. The progressives wanted to go further: a fusion of all the interested parties in a Ministry of Munitions. Not even the majority of the Duma was happy with such a close identification of industry and government. Instead, the industrialists found themselves marginalized. On 30 August three further special councils were added to the existing council on defence. The new ones embraced fuel, food, and transport. But, whereas the War Industries Committee retained its representation on the special council for defence, it was not included in the other three.

  The effect was to break the alliance between the Duma and the War Industries Committee. Rodzianko, as the former’s president, was more anxious to preserve the unity of the assembly than to pursue wartime coalitions of interest: concessions to Duma conservatives therefore took precedence over the pressure of the progressives. The industrialists, for their part, began to fear that excessive progressive pressure on the regime could backfire and work against the interests of business.358

  Ostensibly, the War Industries Committee enjoyed a rapid success. Building on existing local organizations, it had attracted seventy-eight regional committees and seven affiliated bodies to its first all-Russia Congress in August 1915. But in reality fragmentation soon followed. The Association of Trade and Industry tried and failed to retain control. The Moscow War Industries Committee, dominated by textile and commercial firms rather than heavy industry, and originally closer to the progressives in the Duma, overshadowed the central committee in Petrograd. Petrograd firms first sought the creation of their own committee and then began to move away from the organization as a whole. The War Industries Committee was accused of showing little interest in regional development outside Russia’s two main cities, and of failing to protect and encourage small firms. The accusation was not really justified: of orders distributed up to March 1916, 33 per cent went to Petrograd but only 11.5 per cent to Moscow. What was much more significant was the fact that the fragmentation of the War Industries Committee made its services redundant to the large firms naturally favoured by the state. By 1916 the War Industries Committee had secured only 7.6 per cent of the orders placed within Russia since its inception. Its ambition—to become a Kriegsrohstoffsamt or a key component in a Ministry of Munitions—was shattered as much through its own fissiparous tendencies as through the backlash of a conservative government.359

  Therefore the successes of the War Industries Committee lay on the margins. As elsewhere, plant was adapted to new purposes more rapidly when the technology of the weapon was simple and some at least of the production processes familiar. The Fabergé workforce was doubled through its conversion from jewellery to grenades. The War Industries Committee was responsible for about half the grenades and half the gasmasks made during the war. It also sponsored the growth of the Russian chemical industry. In Baku toluene was manufactured for high explosive. The Kiev branch established a close relationship with the Kiev Polytechnical Institution, and manufactured optical instruments, pharmaceuticals, and iodine. In advertising its harnessing of science and technology, the War Industries Committee had one eye on the post-war position of Russian industry.360

  In spite of the obstacles to its trade and in spite of its loss of territory, Russia’s output of munitions had been transformed by 1916. The average monthly output of 3-inch shell had grown fifteenfold since 1914, from 103,000 rounds to 1,618,000; that of the guns to fire the shell tenfold, from fifty-seven pieces to 603.361 The increase in shell production was continuous over the two years 1915 and 1916, but was particularly dramatic between May and July 1915, when it doubled from 440,000 rounds to 852,000. It continued to rise, reaching 1,512,000 in November, and then levelled off, before leaping again from May 1916.362

  The role of the War Industries Committee in this transformation should not be exaggerated. The central committee was much better at accepting orders than at fulfilling them: indeed, its record in this respect was worse than that of the traditional contractors it sought to challenge. Some of the delays were not the fault of the War Industries Committee but the result of a slowness in delivering blueprints, of transport difficulties, or—most frequently—of a lack of working capital. However, the small firms operating within the War Industries Committee were also to blame. By accepting government orders they could secure a share of the labour and fuel that would otherwise be channelled to the big producers. Having got the resources necessary to maintain production, they then continued to fulfil contracts for the private sector as well as for the state.363

  The new weapons of trench warfare apart, like the mortar and the grenade, the bulk of Russia’s armaments during the war were produced by those same firms that had been in the business before the war. The state ordnance factories concentrated on heavy artillery and small arms, the large private concerns on machine tools and shells. Putilov moved away from shipbuilding to the manufacture of detonators and grenades. In June 1915 it received an order for 3 million 3-inch high-explosive shells and 700 field guns, and to meet this it established a consortium of nine firms, with the assistance of Schneider-Creusot. The combination of GAU advances, bank credits, new capital flotati
ons, and war profits enabled the expansion of plant. In a process of vertical integration the arms businesses acquired raw-material companies. Thus, the large firms got larger. They were able to work round the clock and to achieve economies of scale. In Petrograd the net profits of six major metalworking and electrical companies grew from 10.4 per cent of working capital in 1913 to 79.5 per cent in 1916.364 The metallurgical committee—established at the beginning of 1916 as a joint state-industry enterprise to manage unfulfilled orders, to allocate metals, and to set prices—was dominated not by the War Industries Committee but by Prodamet, a pre-war syndicate of iron and steel firms. The dismissal of Polivanov on 16 March 1916 completed the sidelining of the War Industries Committee. Its share of orders declined, and its activities seemed increasingly self-interested and political rather than nationalist and economic.365

  Thus, the vilification of the Ministry of War in the winter of 1914–15 had—as elsewhere—less economic substance than its popular impact suggested. For all its caution, the GAU remained the body most obviously responsible for the abundance of Russian shell by 1916. It expanded its network of firms from the spring of 1915, and output even began to rise from January 1915, well before the significant administrative changes in May. Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich stressed that his policy was to increase plant so as to boost domestic production, and both he and Sukhomlinov regularly forecast that the situation would not come right until the autumn.366 Nor were they as consistently conservative in regard to production methods as their numerous detractors suggested: GAU established a chemical committee, chaired by an academic, to work on explosives and designed to compensate for Russia’s pre-war dependence on Germany.367