61 – Episode 61 Collapse of the Russian Empire (4)
“I present a crown to the Holy Tsar.”
Kirill, who was inaugurated as the new Tsar, received the Tsar’s crown from the Moscow Patriarch. The nobles and royal family, who saw Kirill hanging out with the soldiers and were worried that he would become a ‘red-flavored tsar’, also breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the tsar following tradition.
The coronation ceremony was held in an abbreviated form with many parts omitted for exhibition reasons, but the splendid and solemn format did not change.
The revolutionaries who watched this scene snorted.
‘Tens of millions of rubles are being poured into the ground for a throne that will soon be kicked out. ‘Where in the world can you find such idiotic behavior?’
After watching the Tsar’s coronation ceremony with joy, the revolutionaries went into the soldiers’ soviets and spread stories about the ‘heartwarming’ coronation ceremony.
They brought up the story of the French Revolution, which was ‘betrayed’ by the bourgeoisie, and preached that ‘this revolution’ was also likely to be betrayed by ‘someone’.
“Why was the French Revolution betrayed? It’s because of people like apples who joined the ranks using only the red skin, pretending to have the taste of red in the first place. “The biggest apple of that era was the ‘Archduke of Orleans.'”
“The Grand Duke of Orléans failed to succeed to the throne, but a certain Grand Duke of Petrograd even took the throne. “The old forces who failed to succeed to the throne were also able to trample on the revolution, but what about those who took over the throne?”
“The revolution ends the moment you let your guard down. The moment the old powers are given a chance to counterattack, an ambitious person like ‘Bonaparte’ appears, takes the throne, and wields despotic power. “Tolerating such people will only repeat the painful mistake that left 1.2 Million young people dead on a larger scale.”
The stories of the revolutionaries were easy to understand because there were examples that were easy for the soldier public to understand.
Even so, the soldiers had considerable doubts about Cyril’s succession to the throne.
Are you saying that you are one of the equal soldiers?
Then why is the emperor sitting?
The soldiers began to become dissatisfied again.
The fact that nothing has improved since Kirill came to power also contributed to this.
In fact, as soon as Kirill came to power, he paid attention to stabilizing the people’s livelihood in his own way. He tried to lower the price of bread and tried to persuade and persuade those who were hoarding wheat to supply wheat.
Even so, it was impossible to overcome people’s desires.
The invisible hand, the power of profit, was absolute.
When one side worked hard to harvest wheat, those seeking profit bought the wheat at a low price on the other side. Wheat was moved from one pocket to another, but no wheat was supplied to the market.
Kirill was only wasting his political power.
On the contrary, it only caused dissatisfaction from supporters.
Only the nobles and traders who pledged to cooperate with Cyril’s reign suffered losses, and only those who took the opposite position profited.
This made it meaningless to support Kirill.
Even as Kirill’s popularity declined, the German army continued to advance diligently.
When the German army finally occupied Pskov, about 200 kilometers away from Petrograd, people complained again.
“What on earth does an incompetent tsar do? “If you can’t stop the German army, at least negotiate peace!”
It was an unfair experience for Kiril.
No matter how many times peace negotiations were attempted, there was no way to proceed unless the State Duma agreed. The State Duma maintained that it could never approve it unless it was under ‘acceptable conditions.’
Would the greedy Germans accept such conditions?
However, we could not expect anything from the negotiating powers.
The Negotiation Army, which was ‘coming’ to save Russia, was trapped on the Gallipoli Peninsula and engaged in a bloody battle with the Allied forces.
I don’t know if there was any hope of breakthrough, but there wasn’t.
Kirill almost fainted when he heard that even though the number of casualties exceeded 100,000, it was still stagnant.
It was dark before my eyes as I didn’t know what to do.
Meanwhile, there were hardliners in the State Duma who insisted that we should fight Germany to the end and achieve victory.
In Kirill’s opinion, those guys were crazy people with no sense of reality.
Kerensky was the representative of those lunatics.
“What an offensive in this situation.”
But it was also true that there was no choice.
Reinforcement was not possible, waiting for the negotiating force was not possible, and the public was on the verge of exploding if we were to delay the situation. No matter what, you had to show visible results to buy time to come up with ‘measures’.
“Are you really confident?”
The tsar summoned Kerensky and asked him about the odds of victory.
“Yes. You can.”
In any case, Kirill’s own power was only half. It was not easy for him to negotiate peace without the consent of Kerensky’s cabinet, which controlled the State Duma.
Here, the tsar decided to agree to the calculation that once Kerensky felt the reality, he would turn to peace negotiations.
‘I’m just greedy about the scarecrow theme.’
Kerensky laughed at the Tsar, but acknowledged that he was an irreplaceable focal point.
Anyway, now that the Tsar’s approval has been obtained, it is time for the Russian army to go on the offensive. The large-scale conscription in the early spring of this year had sufficiently increased the number of troops, and the conditions for an offensive were ripe as the enemy’s offensive had reached its end point.
‘If I win here, I will be Russia’s savior.’
With such ambition, Kerensky ordered the military to launch an all-out offensive.
It was the beginning of the ‘Kerensky Offensive,’ which put the fate of the Russian Empire at stake.
From Noble mtl dot com
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The new commander of the Southwestern Front, General Alexei Alexeivich Brusilov, was astonished upon receiving the offensive order from the high command.
“Push the allies out of Ukraine?”
It was an impossible story.
It is true that the Romanian army, which was the target, was significantly weaker than the German army, but the situation was not so good for the Russian army.
There was no ammunition for the battle right now.
I didn’t even want shells to put into the cannon in the first place.
There was a shortage of 200 million rounds of small arms ammunition for the soldiers to fire.
Not 20,000 rounds or 2 million rounds, but 200 million rounds!
It was a startling number, but that wasn’t everything.
Even so, there weren’t enough guns.
As soldiers were being poured into the Southwestern Front with a strong determination, there was a huge shortage of guns to be issued. Although it is meaningless to provide statistics, the Southwestern Front alone lacked more than 500,000 rifles.
There were not enough military boots and uniforms.
What was more serious was the freight car.
In order to feed the massively expanded army, more trains had to be mobilized, and many freight cars were lost during the long retreat. For this reason, the Southwestern Front was demanding at least 5,000 additional freight cars.
Due to the lack of freight cars, food supply was also insufficient.
Despite operating in fertile Ukraine, the daily calorie supply was less than 2,000 calories.
Unfortunately, there was another problem.
After hearing the news from Petrograd, many of the soldiers who began organizing the ‘Soldier Soviet’ were refusing ‘orders.’
Is the military a group where top-down cooperation is not possible?
Brusilov thought it was a miracle that the current Russian army was able to maintain its current position.
But what about an offensive?
I was out of my mind.
However, the upper part was immovable.
“If the general does not move, the country will fall.”
They insisted that since the answer had been decided, it was up to you to create the process.
The thought made me want to turn my gun and run to Petrograd.
But Brusilov was a soldier.
To an old soldier who believed that he had to follow whatever his country wanted, the ‘orders of his country’ were like a mission that could not be disobeyed.
“I can’t help it.”
Brusilov prepared for an offensive.
Although it was an offensive prepared with determination, preparations were thorough.
He carefully selected and moved reliable troops, and concentrated as much equipment as possible.
In addition, preliminary work was done to intentionally retreat from several areas and consolidate the front line to make it easier to surround the enemy.
Brusilov prepared and prepared again to the point where he could not have been more thorough.
Still, because his basic condition was so bad, he could not guarantee victory.
On June 1, 1915, Brusilov ordered an offensive with a feeling close to despair.
“What? “They’re retreating, right?”
But it broke through.
The sight of the Romanian army running away as soon as the gunfire sounded was enough to put the Russian army off guard.
Within two days of the offensive, the Russian army took 10,000 Romanian prisoners and advanced 40 kilometers.
It was a huge victory never before experienced in this war.
Brusilov was also embarrassed by his army’s victory.
“What is this? “Does this make sense?”
He wondered several times whether his subordinates had posted false reports.
However, the success of the offensive was true.
The Russian army was on a roll, breaking the spine of the Romanian 3rd and 1st armies. The Austrian 4th Army, which had rushed in, was also unable to withstand the blow of the Russian army, whose morale had risen for a long time, and began to retreat.
There was a hole in the 100-kilometer-long wire.
Brusilov could not understand this situation, but he did not hesitate to take advantage of the achievement.
The 1.5 Million Southwestern Front troops went on the offensive all at once. At the last blow of the dying brown bear, the allies retreated again and again.
As the Russian army approached the shores of the Dniester River, Brusilov halted his troops. He had already advanced hundreds of kilometers and had exhausted all his supplies.
We did not have the ability to advance further than this and could not handle the supply.
In the midst of this, Kerensky urged an offensive.
“You just have to win a little more, General. What the public wants is to see us win. “Please exert yourself a little more.”
Kerensky argued that the Russian army needed to be stationed on the Austro-Hungarian border in order to sell bonds.
It wasn’t wrong, but it was too reckless.
The next day, when the German army arrived at the front, the Russian army began to be defeated like a lie.
“General, how did this happen?”
Anyway, the Russian army was not capable of handling the German army. It would be a miracle if the Russian army, exhausted and depleted of supplies, wins as it reaches the end point of the offensive.
Brusilov’s Southwestern Front suffered repeated defeats, putting the victory of the Western Front to shame.
In this way, Russia’s last hope collapsed.