William C. Fuller - Strategy and Power in Russia 1600-1914

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Copyright 1992 by William C. Fuller, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fuller, William C.

Strategy and power in Russia, 16001914 / William C. Fuller, Jr.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-68-486382-0

ISBN 978-1-4391-0577-1

1. Soviet UnionHistory, MilitaryTo 1801. 2. Soviet UnionHistory, Military18011917. I. Title.

DK51.F85 1992

947dc20

9135871

CIP

To Sarah

I have incurred a substantial debt to all of the institutions and individuals who have helped me in the writing of this book. Most of the research was accomplished in the following libraries and archives: Widener Library, Harvard University; the Lenin Library, Moscow; the Naval War College Library, Newport, Rhode Island; the Central State Archive of Military History (TsGVIA), Moscow; the Central State Archive of the October Revolution (TsGAOR), Moscow; and the Archive of the Foreign Policy of Russia (AVPR), Moscow. I would like to thank the librarians and staffs of all of them for the courteous assistance extended to me.

I am also grateful to those organizations, colleges, and universities that contributed to the support of my research. They include Harvard Universitys Russian Research Center, the International Research and Exchanges Board, The Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Naval War College Foundation. I must express most particular gratitude to the United States Naval War College. Although I began work on the manuscript long before I started to teach in Newport, in a very real sense this book has been shaped by my experience at that distinguished center for learning. The stimulation provided by students and colleagues, in addition to the encouragement given me by the leadership of the college, was simply indispensable to the writing of this work. The former Chairman of the Department of Strategy, Alvin Bernstein, was an unfailing source of advice and support. Valuable comments and penetrating questions came from Eliot Cohen, Stephen Rosen, George Baer, David Kaiser, Bradford Lee, Douglas Porch, Steven Ross, and Brian Sullivan. I would like to thank the three Naval War College presidents under whom I have servedAdmiral John Baldwin, Admiral Ronald J. Kurth, and Admiral Joseph C. Strasserfor fostering and sustaining an intellectual environment so conducive to scholarship.

Colleagues at other universities were also most helpful. Steven Schuker of Brandeis, William Wagner of Williams, Paul Kennedy of Yale, and Arthur Waldron of Princeton were kind enough to invite me to try out some of my ideas in lectures and seminars at their own institutions; I profited much from each of those opportunities. Other scholars took the time to provide critiques of all or part of the manuscript. Here I must express appreciation to Richard Pipes, Marc Raeff, David Jones, Mark von Hagen, and Jacob Kipp. Professors Daniel T. Orlovsky and Gregory Freeze provided me with particularly insightful readings of my text. I also would like to thank Professor Bruce Menning, who generously shared with me a copy of his book Bayonets Before Bullets prior to its publication. Finally, I must express my appreciation to Adam Bellow, my editor at the Free Press.

Until the October Revolution Russia adhered to the Julian calendar. This lagged eleven days behind Europes Gregorian calendar in the eighteenth century, twelve in the nineteenth, and thirteen in the twentieth. For this reason, in discussing Russias military and diplomatic relations with Europe I cite dates in both Old and New Styles. I have generally followed the transliteration system of the Library of Congress but for the omission of the hard sign (). Names of famous Russians are spelled in the manner by which they are most familiar to readers of English. Hence Nicholas I, not Nikolai I. I have also used the standard Soviet archival abbreviations: f. for fond or collection; op. for opis or catalogue; and d. for delo or file. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this book are my own.

I t is perhaps best to begin by explaining what this book is not. It is not a comprehensive military history of Russia or an investigation of abstract Russian military theory, nor is it a study of what has been described as Russian strategic culture. An exhaustive treatment of Russias military past would have required not one volume, but an entire shelf. Russian military thought, while an important subject in its own right, is not my focus, concerned as I am with the realm of the practical. And the relationship between military theory and military practice, in tsarist Russia as in many other countries, was roughly similar to the relationship between political theory and politics. All too often a vast chasm intervened between them.

I make no claims for this book as an exposition of Russian strategic culture, either. Although this concept has acquired a certain vogue of late owing to the work of such people as Colin Grey and Jack Snyder, I do not find it appealing. To argue that there is (or was) one unitary Russian strategic culture is perforce to ignore or overlook exceptions, inconsistencies, competing traditions, and human agencythe very fabric of history. While some social scientists might find the concept of strategic culture congenial, because it can serve them as an analytic meatgrinder for reducing coarse and uneven historical reality to a smooth and homogeneous paste, historians have a duty to be wary of any technique that substitutes theoretical elegance for complex truth. The function of strategic culture analysis is also at odds with the Assuming past strategic culture as a constant, social scientists can invoke it to prophesy what current Soviet leaders are likely to do in the years ahead. Although one can correctly speak of a Russian military tradition, there is not now, nor was there ever, a uniform and immutable Russian strategic culturea fact that by itself ought to raise doubts about the value of such forecasts. Still further, while history can be properly used to illuminate the present and the possible course of the future, history is abused when invoked to justify sibylline pronouncements.

This book is an interpretative study of the ways in which tsarist statesmen and governments tried to employ force or the threat of force to achieve their political objectives over the roughly three hundred years from the founding of the Romanov dynasty in the early seventeenth century to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It is therefore a study of high strategy as the great Prussian theorist Clausewitz defined itthat is, as the connection between military means and political ends. As such, it limns the Russian strategic tradition, discussing the ways in which that tradition adapted (and failed to adapt) to the challenges of geography, demographics, poverty, and technological change.