The Woodrow Wilson Center Press
All the Tsar's Men: Russia's General Staff and the Fate of the Empire, 1898–1914
Related Topics: Russia and Eurasia
All the Tsar's Men examines how institutional reforms designed to prepare the Imperial Russian Army for the modern battlefield failed to prevent devastating defeats in both the 1905 Russo-Japanese War and World War I. John W. Steinberg argues that the General Staff officers who devised new educational and doctrinal reforms had the experience, dedication, and leadership skills to defend the empire in the new age of warfare but were continually impeded by institutionalized inefficiency and rigid control from their superiors. These officers, he explains, were operating within a command structure unwilling to grant them the autonomy necessary to effect significant reform, which proved disastrous for the army and—ultimately— the empire.
What People are Saying
"With its deft handling of the army's campaigns in the Far East, as well as its larger focus on the General Staff, All the Tsar's Men offers a highly original and well-substantiated answer to a series of questions too often overlooked in the English-language historiography of the Russian empire. Steinberg has made use of an impressive array of primary sources and succeeds admirably in illustrating the tension that eventually undermined the entire imperial order."—-David McDonald, University of Wisconsin–Madison
"This is the first book in any language to move beyond anecdote-based assertions about the social and service composition of the General Staff Corps. Steinberg makes a significant contribution to the literature on late Imperial Russian military history, adding considerably to our understanding of the evolution of the General Staff during its last decades."—David Alan Rich, author of The Tsar's Colonels: Professionalism, Strategy, and Subversion in Late Imperial Russia
Chapter List
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgments
A Note on Dates and Transliterations
Introduction
1 Military Professionals and Professionalism in Russia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century
2 The Education of the Russian General Staff, 1898–1904
3 The Training of the Imperial Russian Army, 1898–1904
4 The Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905
5 Reform Plans and the Politics of Reforming the Imperial Army, 1905–1914
6 The Drive toward a Unified Military Doctrine
7 Maneuvers, War Games, and Staff Rides, 1905–1914
Conclusion
Appendix: Russian General Staff Officers in 1914—A Prosopographic Study
A Note on Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Index