This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The development of Russian-Soviet operational art, 1904-1937, and the imperial legacy of Soviet military thought. Harrison, Richard W The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 08. Oct. 2021 KING'S COLLEGE LONDON THE DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIAN-SOVIET OPERATIONAL ART, 1904-1937, AND THE IMPERIAL LEGACY IN SOVIET MILITARY THOUGHT A Dissertation Submitted in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy DEPARTMENT OF WAR STUDIES by RICHARD W. HARRISON Arlington, Virginia, USA MAY, 1994 BIBL LONDON UNIV 3 THESIS ABSTRACT The goal of this dissertation is to determine the extent of the pre-revolutionary Russian army's influence on the creation and development of the body of Soviet military thought known as opera- tional art. This theory, which deals with the preparation and conduct of military operations at the army and front (army group) level, had its practical and theoretical origins in the pre-1917 army and was subsequently expanded upon by the successor Red Army. The conclusions reached are based upon an examination of the major military and military-theoretical developments which took place between 1904 and 1937. Pertinent political and economic events, relevant to the narrative, are highlighted as well. The dissertation is divided into four chapters, each corre- spending to an identifiable period in Russian-Soviet military histo- ry. These include the first chapter, covering the pre-revolutionary period from 1904 to 1917, which focuses on the military operations of the Russo-Japanese and First World wars, as well as interwar theoret- ical studies. The second chapter deals with military operations in the Russian Civil War, 1918-1920, and the war with Poland, as well as the role of the former tsarist officers in staffing the early Red Army. Chapter three covers the decade of the 1920s and examines the period's doctrinal and strategic controversies, including the initial formulation of the theory of operational art, and the theory of consecutive operations. The fourth chapter highlights the Red Army's technical transformation from 1930 to 1937, and its effect on strate- gy and tactics, and the development of the theory of the deep opera- tion. This is followed by a brief epilogue detailing the effects of the military purge on the Red Army's command and theoretical cadres, as well as a longer passage summarizing the conclusions reached. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Thesis Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 6 List of abbreviations 7 Introduction 8 CHAPTER I: OPERATIONS IN THE LATE-TSARIST PERIOD, 1904-1917 2]. Introduction 2]. The Russo-Japanese War 28 Reform and Recovery 41 Operations in the First World War 65 CHAPTER II: OPERATIONS DURING THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR AND THE WAR WITH POLAND, 1918-1920 88 Introduction 88 The Military Specialists 94 Civil War Operations, 1919-1920 108 Operations in the War Against Poland, 1920 128 CHAPTER III: THE BIRTH OF SOVIET OPERATIONAL ART, 192 1-192 9 141 Introduction 141 Doctrinal and Strategic Debates 147 The Shaping of Operational Art 171 5 The Theory of Consecutive Operations 195 CHAPTER IV: THE FLOWERING, 1930-1937 222 Introduction 222 The Red Army's Technical Reconstruction 228 Strategy and Tactics 240 The Deep Operation 265 EPILOGUE 303 CONCLUS IONS 308 BIBLIOGRAPHY 322 TABLES 1. Red Army Consecutive Offensive Operations, 1918-1920 202 2. Soviet Industrial Production, 1928-37 224 3. Soviet Weapons Production, 1930-37 228 4. The Red Army's Weapons Park, 1928-35 230 MAPS 1. The Sha-ho Operation, 4-17 October, 1904 315 2. The Mukden Operation, 19 February-lO March, 1905 315 3. The Battle of Galicia, 19 August-26 September, 1914 316 4. The Lutek Operation, Summer 1916 317 5. The Eastern Front, April-June, 1919 318 6. The Southern Front, October-November, 1919 318 7. The War with Poland, June-August, 1920 319 8. The Northern Tauride, October-November, 1920 320 9. Consecutive Operations 320 10. The Army Deep Operation 321 11. The Front Deep Operation 321 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the Madison Center for Educational Affairs, the United States Army Center of Military History, and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, all of Washington, DC, and the University of London's Central Research Fund, for their generous financial support of my work. I am also deeply indebted to Col. N.M. Ramanichev, Cal. F.D. Sverdlov, Col. R..A. Savushkin, and Gen.-Lt. V.T. Iminov for their comments and advice. I am also grateful to Alice J. Smith, for her constant moral support over the years. Finally, special thanks go to Professor Brian J. Bond, whose patience and guidance have proved invaluable throughout the course of my work. 7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Krasnaia Zvezda, (Red Star) V-IZh, Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal, (Military-Historical Journal) V&R, Voina i Revoliutsiia, (War and Revolution) Glavkom, G1avuokoianduiushchii, (Commander-in-Chief) RXRA, Raboche-Krest'ianskaia Krasnaia Armiia, (Worker's-Peasant's Red Army) RVSR, Revoliutsionnyi Voennyi Sovet Respubliki, (Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic) TiGASA, Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sovetskoi Arii, (Central State Archives of the Soviet Army) The transliteration of Russian words has been done according to the system used by the U.S. Library of Congress. 8 INTRODUCTION The goal of this dissertation to determine to what degree the Soviet theory of operational art up to 1937 owes its existence to the practical and intellectual inheritance of the pre-revolutionary Russian army and, conversely, to what extent may the Red Army's operational thought be ascribed to circumstances peculiar to the Soviet regime. In the course of describing the overall development of operational thought and practice during the pre-revolutionary (1904-17) and post-revolutionary (1918-37) eras, I plan to reach certain conclusions regarding the relative weight of the contribution made by the imperial army to the formulation of operational art as it stood by the latter half of the 1930s. The choice of the 1904-37 period as a subject of study is significant, and encompasses the time from the appearance of the first modern operations during the Russo-Japanese War to the begin- ning of Joseph Stalin's military purge. Such a broad scope of investigation will enable the reader to examine at length the imperi- al army's early attempts to understand the new operational level of war, both on the battlefield and in an academic setting, as well as similar efforts by the follow-on Red Army. The dissertation natural- ly concludes with the physical destruction of a large part of the tsarist-era and later military cadres and the emergence of a qualita- tively new Red Army. The dissertation's centrepiece, operational art, is the theory and practice of waging war at the operational level, which, unfortu- nately, has heretofore been almost completely unknown in the West, even among the professional military. Moreover, even those authors who have been aware of operational art's existence have often either dismissed it outright, failed to understand it, or concerned them- 9 selves only with individual aspects of the theory. 1 For the sake of clarity and consistency, I will be guided throughout by the defini- tion given in a 1958 Soviet work, which defines operational art (Russian, operativnoe iskusstvo) as a component part of military art, concerned with the elabo- ration of the theory and practice of preparing and conducting front and army operations of the different services of the armed forces. Operational art is the connecting link between strategy and tactics. Proceeding from the demands of strategy, operational art determines the methods of preparing and con- ducting operations for the achievement of strategic goals and serves as the point of departure for tactics, which organises the preparation and conduct of the combined arms battle in accordance with the operation's goals and tasks.2 Many of the theorists whose writings contributed to the devel- opment of operational art served in both the imperial and Red armies, thus making their role especially significant to the thesis. More to the point, any study of the role played by tsarist-era writers in this field must inevitably focus on the influence wielded by the so- called 'military specialists'. Thesse were the former imperial off i- cers who willingly or unwillingly joined the Red forces during the Russian Civil War and who continued to serve the Soviet regime in the postwar years as well. As the living embodiment of the imperial military-theoretical tradition, their role is critical to any attempt to determine the degree of theoretical continuity, or lack thereof, between the two regimes.