Government and foreign policy in Russian empire from Cambridge history of Russia, volume 2

The prevailing view of tactics was to fight in line ahead or in surprise encounter battles. The squadron's commander was supposed to control move­ments by flag, semaphore and telegraph from his flagship. The 'two-flag' system was spreading slowly at the turn of the century. S. O. Makarov, N. L. Klado and N. N. Kholodovskii all published useful work on tactics but the point to stress is that the Russian navy had no single and official tac­tical doctrine which could have provided a common guide for senior offi­cers. The fighting instructions which did exist were either uselessly general (e.g. ship captains should obey the signals of the commanding admiral as much as possible), extremely narrow (e.g. where to keep tubs of sand) or absurdly pedantic (e.g. the requirement for officers to wear swords in com­bat). Not until the war with Japan had already begun was the first true battle manual for an armoured fleet issued. This was The Instructions for Campaigns and Battles written by the new commander of the Pacific fleet, Admiral Makarov.[203]

Peacetime training was organised in accordance with the Instructions for Preparing Ships for Combat and with the schedules of individual naval units. It was in general carried out in port and in training sessions devoted to individual, specific tasks. Mine-warfare training units existed in the Baltic and Black sea fleets: the former also trained radio experts. The first wireless stations were set up on ships in the autumn of 1900 and in the course of 1901-2 almost all major ships received them. As the Far Eastern fleet grew in size, the first training schools (for quartermasters - in 1898) and training ships were set up there too. The largest training unit in the Baltic fleet was devoted to gunnery. But the training concentrated on shooting at much shorter ranges than was to be the practice during the Japanese war and was therefore of limited benefit. In 1901 the Technical Commission of gunnery officers in Kronstadt embarked on drawing up new rules for combat. These were completed in 1903, too late to be influential in training gunnery officers and sailors for the Japanese war. On the other hand, the annual training cruises in the Atlantic were of real use in raising preparedness for combat.[204]

Sailors were conscripted on the same basis as soldiers though with longer terms of active service and shorter periods in the first-line reserve (five years in each category). As the fleet grew in the first years of the twentieth century, so did the number of conscripts: between 1900 and 1905 the number of conscripts in the fleet grew from 46,700 to 61,400. There were roughly 15,000 first-line reserves and 40,000 much less well-trained so-called 'naval militia'. In 1905-7 roughly 30 per cent of sailors were said to be of 'working class' background, a far higher proportion than in the army.[205] Given the complexities of warships in the age of steam it made excellent sense to conscript many skilled and literate men into the navy. But with the rapid growth of worker radicalism in the 1890s this carried obvious political dangers.

Men entering the fleet who were inclined to political radicalism were likely to be encouraged in that direction by conditions of service. The five-year term was one source of grievance, as was very low pay and the need to act as 'batmen' for officers. Food was often poor, the most recent Anglophone study of the Potemkin mutiny stating that this was yet one more area in which the navy's leadership had tried to cut costs in the early twentieth century.[206] Conditions aboard were very cramped. Moreover, partly for reasons of economy but above all because almost all ports were iced up in winter, crews spent the long winter months in barracks ashore. Often ships' crews were split up or diluted, under the command of barracks' commanders and officers whom they barely knew. Under these conditions no sense of solidarity or esprit de corps was possible and even supervision was difficult. Even the ships' own officers and priests, however, usually showed little awareness that the increasingly literate, skilled and independent men who were now often being conscripted needed to be trained, led and stimulated in different ways to old-time peasant recruits.[207]

All these factors fed into the wave of mutinies that devastated the navy in the early twentieth century. So too did the impact of defeat by Japan and the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Russian seamen. The first mass protests occurred in 1902. If the June 1905 Potemkin affair is the most famous event in this period, the mutinies in the Black Sea in autumn 1905 and in the Baltic in spring 1906 were larger in scale. In 1907 it was the turn for mass mutinies in the Pacific squadron. Although on the surface calm reigned in subsequent years, discontent and revolutionary propaganda was still very real. In 1912 the police pre-empted mass mutiny by large-scale and arbitrary arrests of revolutionary activists among the sailors.

Analysing the reasons for the dramatic conflicts between officers and sailors in 1905-7, one senior admiral saw their basic cause as the deep cultural and mental gulf between Russia's educated elites and the bulk of the population. In a short-service, conscript navy this chasm was bound to be transferred from society as a whole into the armed forces. Traditional suspicion and mutual incomprehension between the two groups had often recently been transformed into strong antagonism by the growth of class conflict and revo­lutionary agitation. Sailors often saw their officer as a 'lord' and an 'oppressor'. Of course such deep-rooted social and political problems could not be solved by the navy alone but a number of key weaknesses did exacerbate the fleet's difficulties in managing its sailors and winning their allegiance. Of these, the greatest was the failure to create a strong and numerous group of long-service petty officers, who would be drawn from the ranks and understand the sailors' mentality and needs, while being wholly loyal to the navy and inculcated into its values. Creating such a corps in Russian conditions was difficult, however. In the era before the introduction of short-service conscription there had been few difficulties. Sailors were bound to lifetime service in the fleet and had every incentive to become petty officers. The contemporary conscript in the steam navy, however, had often acquired very marketable skills by the time he finished his term of service in the fleet. Private industry offered pay, conditions and freedom to potential petty officers which the navy could not match.[208]

Naval officers were drawn from a totally different milieu from that of the sailors. The great majority of deck officers were graduates of the Naval Cadet Corps. All the cadets were from the nobility. Though few were aristocrats and very few owned sizeable estates, a great many of these men came from families with strong traditions of service in the fleet. To meet the needs of a rapidly growing fleet, the annual number of midshipmen graduating from the Naval Cadet Corps more than doubled between 1898 and 1911-13, from 52 to 119. Cadets spent one year ashore and then three years mostly at sea on training ships. Meanwhile the Naval Engineering School trained young men drawn from all social backgrounds to be ship engineers. It had two branches - engineering and shipbuilding - which together in 1900 graduated only twenty- eight young men into the navy, though again the numbers increased substan­tially in subsequent years.

As in many other navies of that time, tensions existed between the tradi­tional caste of deck officers and the new engineer officers, whom they often perceived as their social inferiors. This tension, together with the exclusively noble makeup of the Naval Cadet Corps made it even more difficult to find a sufficient number of young officers to fill the ranks ofthe growing fleet, though the more attractive pay and conditions often available in civilian employment were an even greater problem. Shortage of officers was an issue during the war with Japan. Even in the war's first month the battleships and cruisers of the Pacific squadron on average were short of four to five officers each. The squadron sent round the world in 1905 to reinforce the Pacific fleet left its Baltic ports with many insufficiently trained younger officers who were promoted to midshipmen without finishing their education, or were drawn from the reserve or in the case of engineers from civilian technical institutes.²²

The Japanese war revealed a number of defects in the officer corps. Above all, the Naval Cadet Corps had given them little understanding of naval tactics. Nor was this defect corrected even for the minority of officers who subsequently received a higher naval education at the Nicholas Naval Academy. The latter was geared to educating narrow technical specialists in its three core sections - hydrographic, shipbuilding and mechanical. After 1896, alongside these two- year courses, a one-year course in naval tactics was at last established. Only after the war and in the light ofits lessons was education in tactics and strategy put on a proper footing. Before 1904 the Naval Academy was unable to fulfil the role of training future staff officers. Similarly, though radio-telegraphy was taught in the officers' mine-warfare class from 1900, no attention was paid to its tactical applications. In fact, though six to seven officers were attached to the army's artillery academy every year, the officers' training even in gunnery was inadequate, in large part because the limited number of instructors were swamped by the sheer scale of gunnery training required by the growing navy.

The regulations introduced in 1885 to govern promotions and appointments had a vicious effect on the navy. They were designed to combat nepotism and to ensure that officers had adequate experience - above all at sea - before being promoted. However, by rigidly requiring specific terms of service at sea before promotion and linking promotion in rank to the availability of specific posts in ships the regulations totally backfired on the navy. To fulfil these requirements officers jumped from ship to ship, in the process weakening the efficient command structures and the sense of solidarity which ought to reign in a ship's crew. This sense of solidarity was already at risk because not just other ranks but also officers spent the long winter months when the ships were ice-bound ashore in barracks. The so-called 'naval regiments' (ekipazhi) which were the basic units for shore-time service did not even correspond to the individual ships' companies. Moreover months spent ashore often distracted officers from truly naval training and encouraged attention to drill and other extraneous concerns.²³

22 Russko-iaponskaiavoina: 1904-1905gg, 4 vols. (St Petersburg: 1912), vol. I, pp. 150-5.

23 V Iu. Griboevskii, 'Rossiiskii flot', Briz 6 (2001): 9-11. N. Kallistov, 'Petrovskaia, Men- shikovskaia i tsenzovaia ideia v voprose o proiskhozhdenii sluzhby ofitserov flota', Morskoi sbornik, 369, 3 (1912): 105-18. This issue is usefully seen within the context of the long debate that raged in the Delianov and Peretts special commissions in the 1880s and 1890s on promotions and appointments, the chin, and other aspects ofRussian civil and military service. The papers are in RGIA, Fond 1200, op. i6ii, ed. khr. 1 and 2. For a discussion of this debate and of the regulations in English, see D. Lieven, Russia's Rulers under the Old Regime (London: Yale University Press, 1989), chapter 4.

At the top of the naval hierarchy stood the emperor Nicholas II, who was far from being a mere figurehead where naval matters were concerned. Like his peers, King George V of Britain, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, the Russian monarch took a close per­sonal interest in the fleet. This was after all the era of Mahan, when navies were seen as crucial to the struggle for global influence and an essential mark of a great power able to survive in an era of Darwinian imperialist competition. Nicholas II's support was vital for the expansion of the fleet before 1904 and even more crucial in overriding opposition from the army and from civilian ministers to the re-creation of a large high-seas fleet after 1906.

The emperor bore a heavy personal responsibility for Russia's involvement in the war with Japan. Only he could weigh the risks, costs and benefits of Russia's Far Eastern policy in 1895-1904 against the empire's overall needs: this he failed to do. He also failed to co-ordinate Russia's military, naval, diplomatic and financial policy in East Asia, or indeed to ensure co-ordination between the Far Eastern viceroy and the government in Petersburg. Like many of his senior naval advisors, he also overestimated Russian naval power in the the­atre and underestimated Japanese strength and determination. Of course, all these failures are more easily revealed in retrospect than at the time. Nor was the emperor mostly responsible for the fleet's sometimes poor performance in the war. Where senior appointments and overall naval preparation for war were concerned, the emperor relied heavily on the advice of his uncle, Grand Duke Alexei, who bears great responsibility for the navy's inade­quate performance in 1904-5. So too to a lesser extent did the naval minis­ter until 1903, P. P. Tyrtov, who played the key role in deciding what ships were to be built and where Russian naval forces should be deployed. Though Admiral Alekseev, the Far Eastern viceroy, was subsequently widely blamed for Russia's defeat, he was at least a fine seaman and before the war had stressed the need to strike first rather than leave initiative and surprise to the Japanese.

As regards the actual fleet commanders during the war, many showed inad­equate enterprise and offensive spirit.[209] Among them the two outstanding personalities were Admiral S. O. Makarov and Admiral Z. P. Rozhestvenskii. The former commanded the Pacific fleet for only a few weeks from early February 1904 until his death in late March when his flagship hit a mine.

Makarov was Russia's most brilliant admiral, who had climbed the promo­tion ladder rapidly and solely on merit. As a young officer in the 1877-8 war with Turkey, he had organised and led torpedo attacks on Ottoman ships, showing great courage and skill. Subsequently he had acquired a worldwide reputation as an expert on strategy, tactics and oceanography. His arrival at Port Arthur to take over command of the Pacific squadron after the surprise Japanese attack galvanised his subordinates. Makarov's death at a moment when he was preparing the fleet for offensive action was a huge loss which possibly had a decisive influence on the outcome of the war. By contrast, Rozhestvenskii was a more equivocal figure. As commander of the Second Pacific Squadron he showed great organisational skill in bring­ing his ships round the world but at the Battle of Tsushima his passivity contributed to the destruction of his fleet. His rigidly authoritarian and cen­tralised system of command also discouraged his subordinates from showing initiative.

There are very few examples in naval history of defeat more total than that experienced by Russia in the war against Japan. Sixty-nine ships were lost, including almost the entire Pacific fleet and most of the Baltic fleet as well. In October 1908 the Naval General Staff reported to Nicholas II as regards the Baltic fleet that 'our battleships are not a serious force in terms of either their individual quality or their organisation'.[210]

The reasons for Russia's defeat were many. Most basically, having adopted an aggressive policy in the Far East which risked war with Japan, she proved unwilling and unable to deploy the necessary naval and military forces to secure victory. Russian resources were badly overstretched by her Far Eastern policy: this included not just financial resources but also the navy's ability to take on major new strategic commitments and manage the big increase in ships and personnel this required. In addition, never previously had Russia engaged in a war where naval rather than military power was the key to vic­tory. In building and then deploying its naval forces the Russian government failed fully to understand the implications of this fact. Moreover, ships were built in a number of construction programmes with contradictory roles and different enemies in mind. Slow construction times and delays in adopting the latest technology played a role too in an era when naval technology was devel­oping at bewildering and unprecedented speed. Lacking any recent wartime experience, the navy also often failed to appreciate the operational and tactical implications of this new technology.

Despite the shattering defeat by Japan and the mutinies which followed, the Russian navy was rebuilt after i906. Four years after Tsushima the first Russian Dreadnoughts were launched in St Petersburg. The naval minister, Admiral I. M. Dikov wrote that 'as a Great Power Russia needs a fleet and must be able to send her ships wherever state interests demand'.²⁶ The foreign minister, A. P. Izvol'skii, was equally committed to the re-creation of an imposing high-seas fleet, capable of operating across the globe and not tied to the role as a mere coastal defence force.

The need to regain international prestige and credibility was an impor­tant factor in the fleet's rebirth. This was by no means an illegitimate con­sideration in an era of Darwinian international competition when not just governments but also European public opinion attached huge significance to naval power and when any sign of weakness might well attract the attention of potential bullies and predators. There were also, however, clear strate­gic reasons to rebuild the fleet. For example, the Ottoman-Italian War of i9ii and the Balkan wars of i9i2-i3 seemed clear evidence that the long- predicted demise of the Ottoman Empire was nigh. Modernising the Black Sea fleet while sending Baltic fleet squadrons into the Mediterranean in order to deploy maximum Russian power at the Straits seemed vital in these circumstances.

The Naval Ministry achieved a great deal between i906 and i9i4. Many excellent and sometimes genuinely innovative new ships were built or planned. The Russian shipbuilding industry was transformed. A Naval General Staff was created and became the core of a large group of able, younger officers determined to expunge the humiliation of defeat by Japan. The Naval Ministry worked in intelligent co-operation with the Duma (Parliament) and public opinion by i9i4, showing political sensitivity and openness to new political currents. Nevertheless, many of the old doubts about Russian naval power remained relevant. The very ambitious plans of the navy's leadership were hugely expensive. The twenty-year construction plan devised by the Naval General Staff was to cost 2.2 billion roubles, more than total state revenue in that year.²⁷ In the last year of peace Russia spent more on the navy than Germany. Was this the best use of Russia's limited resources? Even these vast sums might not be able to compensate for the poor hand that geography had dealt Russia: for example, even if by some miracle Russia acquired the Straits would it not then simply graduate to the position of Italy, whose admirals

26 Cited by Beskrovnyi, Armii iflot, pp. 223-4.

27 On this plan and the covering memo sent to the Duma to justify it, see 'U nashikh protivnikov shirokie plany', Voenno-istoricheskii Zhurnal (1996), no. 4: 42-50.

complained that their navy and trade were confined to the Mediterranean and at the mercy of the British fleet, which dominated the Mediterranean Sea and controlled all exits from it to the open oceans? Moreover the arrests of revolutionary sailors in 1912 were a reminder that the Russian state was spending great sums on a weapon which might turn on its creator.