Ultimately, the budget decision rested with Nicholas, so it's him that needs to be persuaded. Or rather, not persuaded, as it was Guchkov and the Octobrists that originally drew Nicholas's attention to the naval issue in an attempt to gain more Duma oversight for the military budget, even if his reaction was not what they'd wanted.
That’s too but don’t underestimate other considerations some of which had been quite valid. Russian Far East was exposed and defenseless and in Japan there was a wide spread public unhappiness with Peace of Portsmouth: there was an expectation of big contributions which would allow Japan to pay off some of its debts and lower the taxes. An idea of the new war was popular in Japan across the board with an estimated 5-6 years period to put finances into a better shape, replenish the weapons’ stores, etc. The proposed goal was squeezing Russia out of the Pacific coast (rather Southern part pf it because the Northern was neither sustainable nor important).
The Russian General Staff (army) and Naval General Staff studied the situation and consensus was that the main theater of war will be on the sea: the Russian forces available on the Far East were grossly inferior in the numbers to what Japanese could bring into Manchuria with the first few critical months (getting troops from European Russia would take a longer time and the Far East was going to be lost) but Japan could do it only if it still controls the sea. Proposal of the NGS was an ambitious naval program that by 1918 (IIRC) had to produce 16 big battleships, the same number of the armored cruisers, etc. Duma had nothing to do with the
idea but when it eventually came to the funds the opposition was mostly about a
form rather than
subject: Minister of the Navy, Admiral Biryulev, sent to the Duma two different proposals, one from the NGS and another from Main Naval Staff (old institution), without preliminary discussion in the Naval Ministry, causing understandable indignation and his own removal.
Later, around 1909-10, Russian-Japanese relations improved (mostly thanks to the US attempts to screw both of them in Manchuria) but an idea of a big navy was firmly planted in the brains of “establishment” both civilian and military. Guchkov, as described in this context by general Krylov (famous naval architect) was a posturing clown with a lot of ambition and no relevant knowledge.
Then, don’t forget that the navy was a prestige toy which a Great Power must have at a risk of losing its reputation. Without it, Nicholas would be openly inferior to his cousin Willy. The army was getting new things slowly but nobody expected the war so soon. Oops!
As a result, due to a gross incompetence across the board, the initially meaningful developments evolved into something completely different, both expensive and meaningless.
That was the offensive plan in a nutshell: shorten the front in Prussia, hold Poland, and use that to anchor the offensive into Hungary, which is where most of the actual divisions will be. The Masurian Lakes region would be difficult to fight in, so the front needed to be extended forward to the Vistula as fast as possible before German reinforcements could arrive to shore up the weak local defenses. With the north secured, they could then dive into Hungary, which would put the onus on the Germans to move troops there to prop up the Austrians, which will dilute any German offensives into Poland. Unfortunately, Poland was overrun before that could be set up to support the offensive, which meant that the offensive itself fizzled out because of German forces on its northern flank.
The problem with this
seemingly reasonable course of action was that even on paper it had serious problems: armies of Samsonov and Rennenkamph had been out of synch with no reserves to patch a gap between them. Then, when it came to the implementation, NN seemingly lost operation control leaving two commanders on their own instead of explicitly ordering Renenkamph to advance as far as possible no matter what.
Which happens to be one of those things that was cut back for the army budget to work after the navy got its cut.
Yep.
The sensible strategic plans, as proposed by Mikhail Alexeyev, pointed to defending in Poland after shortening the front by taking Prussia, and holding that position so it can anchor an attack into Austria to the south. Austria was, after all, the weaker enemy and the Russians had obtained their time tables for mobilization, so they would be easier to deal with.
But even with this information available, Russian high command was slow to act fast, before its own mobilization was completed.
The defensive plan, as proposed by Yuri Danilov, proposed attacking on neither.
Not a very good idea because establishing an impenetrable defensive perimeter from the Baltic to almost the Black Sea was unrealistic.
