cover image Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 18611914

Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 18611914

Bruce W. Menning. Indiana University Press, $45 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-253-33745-0

In his outstanding institutional and doctrinal history of the Russian army from the military reforms following the Crimean War to the outbreak of war in 1914, Menning, a U.S. Army analyst, discusses how the army prepared itself to fight in an era of dramatic technological, social and political change. He convincingly argues that the Russian army's ultimate failure involved linkages: its parts never meshed into a coherent whole. To illustrate his case, he analyzes the Russo-Turkish (1878-1879) and Russo-Japanese (1904-1905) wars. Masterpieces of conception and execution, these studies highlight the structural weaknesses of the late Tsarist empire, as well as the army's continued reliance on Napoleonic models. The accelerating pace and widening scale of modern military operations, he maintains, created insoluble dilemmas for soldiers trained to trust willpower and cold steel as the keys to victory. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.)