The Eastern Front 1914-1917 by Norman Stone

Author:Norman Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141938851
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

Note on the Tsar’s Stavka33

The Tsar’s command was a largely formal affair: as Langlois said, ‘c’est à Alexéieff qu’on obéit, ou plutôt à qui on désobéit’. The Tsar was usually too busy with home matters, and in any case knew little of army affairs. If I guess right, his decision was a way of trumping the Duma politicians’ military ace, as a climax to the summer crisis, at home and at the front. The question of an effective commander—chief of staff to the Tsar—was more difficult. Evert was considered, but ruled out because he had a German name, or perhaps because even the Tsar quailed at the nomination of a general so unmistakably valetudinarian. Alexeyev was perhaps chosen because he would show more sympathy for the needs of the Riga front than he had done as commander of the north-western front, if he were given full responsibility at Stavka—a calculation which, if consciously made, proved correct. But if the Tsar wanted an a-political Stavka, he unquestionably got one in Alexeyev and his aides (as similarly in the war ministry, where the Duma politicians’ friend, Polivanov was replaced by the a-political supply-expert, Shuvayev). Alexeyev was a very simple man of humble origins. He knew little of any foreign language, was sometimes embarrassed when he was saluted in the streets, found Stavka dinners an effort (not knowing, for instance, that coffee was usually drunk after dinner) and tended to join the officers only once a week. It was typical of him also that he paid his own mess-charges, instead of living at army expense in the Yanushkevitch manner: even now, mess-charges were thirty-three roubles per week, the cost-price being up to fifty roubles more. He was assisted by Pustovoytenko, Quarter-Master-General—also a man of very simple background—where the Tsar would have preferred the General Staff professor, Shcherbachev, commander of VII Army. Alexeyev’s closest confidant was V. Borisov, dismissed by Grand Duke Andrey Vladimirovitch as ‘a prole’. He had assisted Alexeyev throughout the war, and did good service at the time of the Sventsiany break-through, admiring Alexeyev’s iron nerves. Alexeyev, Pustovoytenko and Borisov were the kernel of Stavka. The rest, in Lemke’s words, ‘are either clerks or furniture’. But Alexeyev’s great defect was inability to de-centralise. He worked himself into a continual migraine, and left himself no time to think things out—his response to the great Brusilov victories of 1916 being extremely unimaginative. It is difficult not to regard his Stavka, never the less, as a great improvement on its predecessor. The aristocratic furniture was removed—only survivor being a Count Kapnist, skilled at devising pompous missives. The various parasites knew that they would get nowhere with Alexeyev—Prince Yengalychev, redundant Governor of Warsaw, or Count Bobrinsky, redundant Governor of Galicia, both given their salaries and demanding military appointments, were shown the door. Rasputin was not allowed in Stavka. The staff functioned rather better than before—partly because it now had a stronger complement, of seven Generals, thirty senior officers, thirty-three oberofitsers—in all, eighty-six persons, with Kondzerovski’s department taking fourteen.

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