As there was an older thread about this from 2 years ago, but this is to avoid randomly bumping up a thread. The question I pose here is why did the German Empire of World War I successfully defeat Russia in 1914-8 as opposed to the Soviet curbstomp of the Nazis in 1941-5, or the invasions of Napoleon and Charles XII?
My answer would be twofold, namely that it was more the failings of Russian military concepts and political leadership *and* successful opportunism on the part of the CP that led to the "victory". In this sense Germany's great advantage was that of logistics, which meant that even in occasions like the Battles of Bolimov and the Vistula where Russia won tactical victories they never had the ability to follow them up, while Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans were operating under disadvantages of strategy, logistics, and tactics.
I think analyzed from a purely military POV it's hard to call Russia's record one of a litany of unbroken strategic defeats. None of Hindenburg and Ludendorff's victories in the East provided any more decisive results than had happened in the West, while it was Falkenhayn that really broke through in Gorlice-Tarnow, which had the obvious military cause of large numbers of fresh, lavishly-equipped troops bashing into weak, overextended armies.
I think the reason Russia ultimately went down was not even the February Revolution, but rather that after the overthrow of the Tsar it had two governments that spent most of their time fighting each other, while the Germans had all the time in the world to further destabilize the situation by creating Bolshevik Russia and gaining further live-fire exercises to suit them. Germany did the best of all the CPs against Russia because its logistics and tactics were as a general rule superior, but the ultimate cause of defeat was Russia's poor leadership that led to it going through three governments and two wars before it went down. Your thoughts?