Snake Featherston
Banned
Norman Stone suggests an array of things wrong with the Army and the State in Tsarist Russia, many to do with a developing economy. At the top there was all sorts of wrangling between the Tsar, the Duma and factions within the Army, so while the Stavka was dodgy Russia appears to have been the first country with an Army Group level of command. These arguments led to decisions such as keeping fortresses well stocked with heavy artillery and shells at the expense of the field army, among other things.
As for changing these, no panacea appears visible to me. Perhaps with the vagaries of luck some of the supporters of the wrong factions die of the flu etc so these factions are weakened and better trends are followed.
Norman Stone's thesis tended to underestimate the shock effect of 1904-5. It was the First Russian Revolution that was the really fatal aspect for WWI Russia. Perfectly ordinary military defeats assume roles out of proportion, as does Shell Shortage, in a context where the Tsar isn't on a firm footing in terms of prestige.
The problems with WWI Russia in this regard as as insuperable in a WWI context as changing WWII Germany to a war-winning system. Russia's fatal weaknesses had nothing to do with the battlefield, though the damage was relatively shallower than it seemed, insofar as a sufficiently evil and cruel Tsar might have handled the problems of growth more efficiently than some of his predecessors did.
Changes that far back would be acted out on a pre-modern army, and a society which didn`t abolish serfs until 1864.
By this logic the USA of the World Wars would be disqualified given the USA abolished slavery only after a prolonged civil war where Tsar Alexander II said "No more serfs" and the decree was the end of that.
Really? The Russian army of the 1860-1900s had a professional, homegrown officer corps not at all restricted to the nobles, and performed very efficiently against most opponents it encountered despite weapon procurement sometimes lagging that of their rivals.
They completely reformed in the 1870s precisely to be more professional and make the expenses smaller. Yes, it occasionally broke down logistically mostly under its own weight and the sheer distances it had to negotiate. It still suffered defeats. Who didn't? At the same time it was by no means pre-modern. Its very modernity is what made it vulnerable to social tensions and why it broke down in WW1.
Pre-modern would be contemporary Persia, for example. I am basically protesting the use of this word as it means nothing.
And there's the more obvious weakness of 1904-5 in terms of the overall Russian state. The First Russian Revolution limited the degrees to which Russia had the flexiiblity to adjust to the casualties and logistical upheaval of a prolonged general war in Europe, while ensuring that the more the war dragged on, regardless of its actual shape, the more the problems of the Romanov dynasty became a ticking time bomb at the heart of the system.
No amount of military changes can alter this factor.
True...he was as bad at Foreign policy, international relations, and PR as Tsar Nicholas was at governance.
He certainly didn't help matters in that he, like Hitler later, ensured an improbable alliance came together and then held as solidly as it did. OTOH a Germany focused more on actual German interests would have sided with Russia, not Austria-Hungary, to start with.....