August 1914, Solzhenitsyn - A*

            When the war began, Russia's 2nd Army was headquartered in Ostrolenka about 75 miles northeast of Warsaw. The commander was fifty-five year old General-of-the Cavalry Alexander Samsonov. The woefully unprepared, untrained, and ill-supplied army had entered East Prussia on August 6th.* Constantly conflicting orders from above, and a total lack of knowledge about the whereabouts of the Germans complicated the army's readiness. Raw troops were given equipment and sent off to the front with no training. No unit knew where it was or who was on its flanks. Notwithstanding the size of the army, all of its regulations, and the fact that there had been major reforms after its defeat by the Japanese a decade earlier, it remained a 19th century antiquity with extremely limited rail support, and a de minimis amount of artillery. Russian men marched continuously while Germans were shuttled to and from the front by an extensive railway system.  Indeed, by the time of first contact with the Germans, the Russians  had already lost a quarter of their effectives. Samsonov was under pressure from the Northwestern Army Group commander, Yakov Zhilinsky, to stay close to the 1st Army on his right, while he sensed that the Germans were grouping on his left and he should alter his advance accordingly.

          Because the commander of the German forces had failed at Gumbinnen in his attack on the 1st Army, Berlin relieved him, placed Hindenburg in charge and reinforced the army in the east. When the new commander arrived, he was handed reports about the disposition and intentions of both Russian armies. Communications between Group HQ and both armies were in the open, uncoded, and easy to intercept. The Germans positioned their forces to attack Samsonov from the north and the south, a classic pincer movement. On the morning of the 14th, the German artillery opened up. When the infantry attacked, the Russians held firm and did not waver. Nonetheless, the order came to withdraw.  The Germans pursued and attacked along the entire front of the 2nd Army. On the 15th Samsonov, once the Attaman of the Don Cossacks, rode to the front to ascertain the status of the battle, and spent the day turning around fleeing troops. After five days of fighting, the commander was overwhelmed by an impending sense of doom. "On the morning of August 16, the Second Army was a unified formation, by that evening it was a disorganized, uncontrollable rabble." They were fleeing the impending encirclement. For Samsonov "the knowledge that he had served his sovereign  and country so lamentably was a terrible, painful burden for him to bear." On the night of the 17th, Samsonov walked into the woods, sat down, and committed suicide. The Germans found his body and repatriated it through the Red Cross.

         On the evening of the 19th, the commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, advised the Tsar of an "unfortunate reverse." The duke, arguably, held little responsibility for the outcome as he was brand new to the position, and had no input on the war plans. In an immediate post-mortem, Zhilinsky blamed everything on Samsonov, but the duke silently concluded that Zhilinsky was equally, if not more so, to blame. He then asked a young colonel who he had sent on a week long tour of the front to offer an assessment. Col. Vorotyntsev pointed out that Samsonov had sent Zhilinsky a report insisting that the offensive plans he was tasked with were geographically impossible to implement and that his army, only one month into mobilization, required another month of ecpeerience. As they bickered, the Grand Duke received a telegram and proudly announced the defeat of the Austrians at Lvov.

          "Who can undertake to name the decisive battle in a war that lasted four years and strained the nation's morale to the breaking point? It can be claimed that it was the first defeat which set the tone for the whole course of the war for Russia: having begun the first battle with incomplete forces, the Russians never subsequently managed to muster enough men in time for an engagement. Unable to discard bad habits acquired at the start, they went on throwing untrained troops into action, thrusting them into the line in a series of convulsive attempts to regain lost ground. From the very first, our spirits were damped and our self assurance never regained."

             This novel is a blistering damnation of the command structure of the entire Tsarist army. It is also considered one of the finest of the 20th century. Fifty years after my first reading, I concur. I am almost speechless about the very smooth flow of page after page^, and overwhelmed by the author's insights into life, politics, war, bravery, and incompetence. Pure genius. Perhaps his greatest skill is his ability to totally immerse the reader in the first month of the war in East Prussia. You literally are in and around the Masurian Lakes, and fully feel the deperation of the Russian soldiers.

                Since this is a novel, one of the areas the author explores is the inner thoughts of Samsonov, which he obviously imagines. But it is barely fiction as it is filled with first class history. Half a century ago, I read One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, FirstCircle, the three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago, and this. I have always deeply admired Solzhenitsyn for his skills and his courage. I do not see myself tackling the two successor books in the trilogy as both are over 1,000 pages.

*Solzhenitsyn uses the pre-revolutionary calendar in use at that time in Russia. It was thirteen days in arrears.

^The translation is exceptional.