June offensive

The great strategic offensive of the Russian army was planned for late April - early May 1917 ^{[1] [2] [3]} . However, the chaos and disintegration of troops that arose as a result of the February Revolution made it impossible to carry out the offensive on schedule, and it was postponed to the end of June.

The main role in the operation was to be played by the troops of the Southwestern Front under the command of General A.E. Gutor (then General L.G. Kornilov ) with the forces of the XI and VII armies in the direction of Lviv , and the VIII army - in Kalush and Bolekhov . The rest of the Russian fronts - the Northern , Western and Romanian - were supposed to deliver auxiliary strikes ^[4] .

After a meeting with the front commanders, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General M.V. Alekseev, on March 30 (April 12) issued a directive on the preparation of the offensive. On May 22 (June 4), at the insistence of the Minister of War and Navy Kerensky , the Provisional Government removed General Alekseev from the post of Supreme Commander, replacing him with General Brusilov .

Russian offensive

On June 16 (29), the artillery of the Southwestern Front opened fire on the positions of the Austro - German troops. On June 18 (July 1), the 11th and 7th armies went on the offensive, delivering the main blow in the general direction to Lviv from the Zlochev and Brzezany districts . The first two days brought the offensive some tactical success. In some areas, 2-3 lines of enemy trenches were captured.
In a telegram by A.F. Kerensky to the Provisional Government on June 18, 1917, Kerensky proclaimed: "Today is the great triumph of the revolution, the Russian revolutionary army went on the offensive with great enthusiasm" ^[5] .

But then the offensive stopped. The selected strike units that launched the offensive were mostly knocked out by this time. Ordinary infantry units refused to advance. The troops began to discuss orders in the "committees" and rally, wasting time, or even refused to continue to fight under a variety of pretexts - to the point that "their own artillery worked so well that there was no place to spend the night in captured enemy positions." As a result, despite the significant superiority in manpower and equipment, the offensive stopped and June 20 (July 3) was stopped due to the impossibility of forcing the troops to go forward.

The offensive of the VIII Army of General L.G. Kornilov , which launched a strike on the Galich - Stanislav section in the direction of Kalush and Bolekhov , which began on June 23 ( July 6 ), was very successful, which was facilitated by the enormous superiority in forces and the weak combat effectiveness of the Austro-Hungarian (and not German) ) units opposed to the VIII army. Having broken through the enemy’s defenses, the army captured over 7 thousand prisoners and 48 guns; developing success, she occupied Stanislav , Galich and Kalush, and by June 30 ( July 13 ) reached the river. Lomnica . But even in this army the same problems started as those of the neighbors - the “shockmen" suffered huge losses in the first assault battles, and the rest of the soldiers refused to fight.

By July 1-2 (July 14-15), the offensive rush of the entire front had dried up, and the offensive had completely ceased. The losses of all three armies of the front by this moment amounted to 1222 officers and 37,500 soldiers. The losses were not large when compared with the losses in the pre-revolutionary campaigns of the Russian army in the First World War, but in this case they had disastrous consequences, since the bulk of them fell to perfect, “shock” units. With the departure of the entire “healthy” element from the armies, the remaining soldier mass finally lost its military appearance and turned into a completely uncontrollable armed crowd, ready to flee from the slightest pressure from the enemy ^[4] .

German counterattack

The Austrian-German command, aware of the impending Russian offensive ^[6] , strengthened the Austrian forces in advance by German forces and, in turn, prepared a counterattack on the right flank of the South-Western Front, forming a special strike group - the Zlochevsky detachment under the command of General Winkler . On July 6 (19), this group, supplemented by formations deployed from other fronts after the start of the Russian offensive (11 German divisions were deployed from the French front, three Austro-Hungarian divisions from Italy), launched a counterattack in seven corps (five at the front and two reserve, that is, 20 divisions) of the XI Army, from the Zlochev region in the direction of Tarnopol and broke through its front. By July 9 ( 22 ), the 11th army rolled back on the Seret River. ^{[ clarify ]}

The army lost its combat effectiveness so much that the attack of three German companies overturned and fled two Russian rifle divisions: the 126th and 2nd Finnish. The enemy was tried to restrain more disciplined cavalry units, infantry officers and solitary privates. The rest of the infantry fled, crowding all the roads with their crowds, and, as General Golovin described it, “making ... the greatest atrocities” : shooting officers who came across them , robbing and killing local residents, without distinction of class and wealth, under the slogan inspired by the Bolsheviks “Cut the bourgeois!” , Forcing women and children ^[4] ( Pavel Skoropadsky, commander of the 34th corps, also recalled such crimes and atrocities of the demoralized army in the summer of 1917). The scale of desertion can be judged by the following fact: one strike battalion, sent to the rear of the XI Army as a detachment detachment , in the area of ​​the town of Volochisk , detained 12,000 deserters in one night ^[4] .

The commissars of the 11th army in their telegram to the command described the situation as follows:

The German offensive that began on July 6 at the front of the XI Army is growing into an immeasurable disaster, possibly threatening the death of revolutionary Russia. In the mood of the units recently moved forward by the heroic efforts of the minority, a sharp and fatal turn was defined. The offensive impulse was quickly exhausted. Most parts are in a state of increasing decomposition. There is no longer any talk about power and obedience, persuasion and beliefs have lost their force - they are answered with threats, and sometimes with execution ... Some units willfully leave their positions without even waiting for the enemy to approach. For hundreds of miles to the rear there have been rows of fugitives with and without guns - healthy, vigorous, feeling completely unpunished. Sometimes whole units depart this way ... The situation requires the most serious measures ... Today, the Commander-in-Chief, with the consent of the commissars and committees, gave the order to shoot at the fleeing. Let the whole country know the truth ... shudder and find within itself the resolve to fall upon all who, by cowardice, destroy and betray Russia and the revolution ^{[4] [5]} .

The retreat of the 11th army entailed the withdrawal of the 7th and 8th armies. The Austro-German troops, encountering little resistance, advanced through Galicia and Ukraine, and on July 15 (28), Russian troops stopped on the line of Brody , Zbarazh , p. Zbruch . The losses of the Southwestern Front killed, wounded and captured were 1968 officers and 56 361 soldiers.

On July 8-10 ( 21-23 ), the offensive of the Northern Front began. An attempt to force the troops of the front to advance ended in complete failure. The front headquarters reported to Headquarters: “Only two out of six divisions were capable of operation ... The 36th division, which took two lines of enemy trenches and went to the third, turned back under the influence of shouts from behind; The 182nd Division was driven into the bridgeheads by force of arms; when the enemy opened artillery fire in parts of the division, they opened indiscriminate fire on their own. Of the 120th division, only one battalion went on the attack. The Neyshlot regiment (22nd division) not only did not want to advance, but prevented others from arresting the marching kitchens of units of the battle line ” ^[4] .

In this offensive, shortly before, the Revel Shock Death Battalion formed from volunteer sailors of the Revel naval base became famous. Poorly trained in land combat techniques, percussion sailors suffered gigantic casualties, but honorably completed their combat mission. Here is how the newspapers of those days wrote about them ^[8] :

The All-Russian Central Committee for the Organization of the Volunteer Army reports on the actions of the Revel battalion. Having received the task of breaking through two lines of trenches, the battalion broke through four lines, wanting to consolidate the captured, the battalion asked for support, but instead of supporting the battalion was shot at by its own. Under double fire, the battalion began to retreat to its original position. The losses were enormous: of the 300 sailors who were part of the battalion, only 15 were not injured. Three officers: lieutenant Simakov, warrant officer Orlov, warrant officer Zubkov, not wanting to retreat, shot themselves. The battalion commander, Staff Captain Egorov, died of 13 wounds received by him.

- Newspaper "Exchange statements", July 18 (31), 1917

The advance of the Western Front was carried out by the forces of the 10th Army. For three days, artillery preparation was carried out at the front, which in places completely destroyed the enemy’s defense line, in places completely demoralized him. However, out of 14 divisions intended for the offensive, only 7 went on the attack, of which 4 turned out to be fully combat-ready. As a result, Russian troops who did not want to continue the operation returned to their positions by the end of the day. At a meeting at Headquarters on July 16 ( 29 ), the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front, General A. I. Denikin, reported ^[4] :

The units advanced, attacked in a ceremonial march two, three lines of enemy trenches and ... returned to their trenches. The operation was disrupted. I had 184 battalions and 900 guns on a 19- mile site; the enemy had 17 battalions in the first line and 12 in reserve with 300 guns. 138 battalions were introduced into the battle against 17, and 900 guns against 300.

The offensive of the 1st and 2nd Romanian and IV and VI Russian armies of the Romanian front, which began on July 9 (22), was developing successfully. The example of the Romanian troops, not struck by Bolshevik agitation, had a positive effect on the Russian troops. In addition, on the Romanian front, unlike other fronts, the selected - “shock” - units were used primarily to end the riots and maintain discipline in their own units, and not for frontal attacks on enemy trenches. Thus, in the hands of the command there were constantly units loyal to the duty and oath on which it could rely. On July 7 - 11 (20 - 24), on the Fokshan line, units of the 4th Russian and 2nd Romanian armies broke through the enemy front. Prisoners and about 100 guns were captured. In view of the events in the north, the offensive was stopped on July 14 (27) at the order of the head of the Provisional Government A.F. Kerensky (at the request of General Kornilov, who had just been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army) ^[4] .

In turn, the Germans, freed on the Russian South-Western Front, launched, starting from August 6, strong attacks on the Fokshan and Oknensky directions, wanting to occupy a rich oil-bearing region here. The most stubborn battles were waged by them here, as well as in the valley of the river. Oytuz, against the Russian and Romanian troops until August 13 and ended up pushing the latter to a very insignificant distance in the Fokshan direction, after which the front stabilized again, and military operations here ceased until the end of the war.

The June offensive markedly heated the situation among the revolutionary units of the Petrograd garrison, who did not want to go to the front. One of the most unreliable units was the 1st machine-gun regiment, which was influenced by anarchist agitation and greatly inflated in wartime (the size of the regiment in 1917 actually corresponded to the division). The revolutionary soldiers of this regiment did not feel like going to the front as part of marching companies in connection with the June offensive. Like the Kronstadt sailors, they became fertile ground for the agitation of the anarchists and Bolsheviks.

The onset of the German-Austrian offensive at the front coincided in time with the Bolshevik attempt to carry out a coup d'etat using soldiers from the Petrograd garrison and sailors of the Baltic Fleet, and with the crisis in the Provisional Government , which resulted in A. F. Kerensky succeeding G. E on July 8 (21) Lvov as Minister-Chairman , retaining the post of Minister of War and Naval Affairs.

Thanks to the June offensive, General Kornilov had a sharp career take-off, who replaced Gutor on July 8 (21) as a front commander, and on July 18 (31) he was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the entire Russian army.

According to Headquarters, the casualties in the armies of the Southwestern Front over the period from June 18 to July 6, 1917 amounted to ^[9] :

Military theorist N. N. Golovin wrote that the offensive was exemplary prepared by the headquarters ^[4] . Professor Robert Feldman wrote that the strategy of the Russian General Staff played into the hands of the Germans, as it led to the extermination of the most combat-ready units of the Russian army ^[10] . According to Encyclopedia Britannica , the plans of the Provisional Government to prepare for this offensive showed his lack of understanding of the revolutionary expectations in the country and the army; at the same time, the failure of the offensive for a short time strengthened the positions of moderate and conservative political forces ^[11] .

• Impact units of the Russian army

• Golovin N. N. The military efforts of Russia in the world war . - 1st ed. - Paris: Partnership of United Publishers, 1939. - T. 2. - 242 p.
• Kersnovsky A.A. History of the Russian Army (in 4 volumes): 1881-1915. / Publ. V. Khlodovsky; comm S. Nelipovich. - M .: Voice, 1994 .-- T. 3 .-- 349 p. - ISBN 5-7117-0180-0 . 1915-1917 / Publ. V. Khlodovsky; comm S. Nelipovich. - M .: Voice, 1994 .-- T. 4 .-- 368 p. - ISBN 5-7117-0014-6 .
• Zayonchkovsky A.M. World War I. - SPb. : Polygon, 2000 .-- 878 p. - ISBN 5-89173-082-0 .

• Doroshevich V.M.