Ninety-two years ago, on November 11, 1918, at five o'clock in the morning local time, a truce was concluded between the Entente countries and Germany in the Compiegne forest. Germany's allies - Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary - surrendered even earlier. The First World War is over.
A Russian tourist who first came to France, Great Britain, Italy, Belgium or Holland is surprised by the abundance of monuments to the events and heroes of that war. Avenue Foch in Paris, Rue de l'Armistice (Armistice Street) in Brussels, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and on Whitehall Street in London. Public Holidays - Armistice Day in France and Belgium, Memorial Day in Great Britain, Veterans Day (originally also Armistice Day) in the USA. And hundreds of monuments on the battlefield, as well as in cities and villages, usually with lists of the fallen who left here for the front.
This is a novelty for us. Under Soviet rule, as far as the author knows, not a single monument to those who died in that war appeared on the territory of our country (and those that were erected earlier were destroyed in the 1920s). Something has changed recently: now there are Brusilov streets in Moscow and Voronezh, a commemorative stele on the territory of the Bratsk cemetery in the city of Pushkin, memorial signs in Moscow in the Sokol district on the site of the city Bratsk cemetery that was once there. But still there is not a single museum of that war (there are, however, separate expositions in military museums), in school textbooks - a paragraph, at most. In a word, almost oblivion, another "unknown" war …
But the combat losses of the Russian Empire amounted to 2.25 million soldiers and officers - 40% of the losses of the Entente and almost a quarter of all combat losses of that war. And most importantly, this war changed the course of our history to a much greater extent than the incomparably more memorable Second World War.
1913 was a successful year for the Russian Empire in all respects. The industrial growth, which began in 1908, continued in the country, the rates of economic growth were among the highest in the world. Agrarian reforms were carried out, slowly but surely increasing the number of independent wealthy peasants (again, they were lucky: several fruitful years in a row, a very favorable conjuncture of world grain prices). Workers' wages were gradually increasing, and labor legislation was being improved. The number of literate people grew rapidly. After the 1905 revolution, the situation with civil liberties improved markedly. The revolutionary parties were going through an organizational and largely ideological crisis and did not have a significant impact on the situation in the country. On the third attempt, the State Duma - not yet a full-fledged parliament, but already its obvious harbinger - was able to establish a kind of dialogue with the authorities.
Of course, it's not worth idealizing pre-war Russia, there were a lot of problems - both social, political and economic. But on the whole, the situation was far from critical.
The war began in an atmosphere of unprecedented patriotic enthusiasm. The liberal opposition entirely took the position of defencism, deciding to postpone attacks on the authorities "after the war." Mobilization took place in an orderly manner, without serious disruptions, a large number of volunteers rushed to the front. Despite the setbacks against the Germans in East Prussia and Poland, the general course of action on the Eastern Front, given the great success against the Austrians in Galicia, could be considered quite satisfactory. Everything seemed to be going well and, it seemed, did not at all portend a catastrophe in less than three years.
What happened?
First, the patriotic enthusiasm was quickly replaced by growing disillusionment with the authorities' ability to effectively lead the country in the context of a protracted war. The famous "ministerial leapfrog", when 4 chairmen of the Council of Ministers, 6 ministers of the interior and 3 military ministers were replaced in two and a half years of war, was an excellent illustration of this inability. The emperor's categorical reluctance to agree to the formation of a "government of popular confidence" quickly brought to naught the alliance between the executive branch and the State Duma that had been outlined, and now not only the Cadets, but also moderate nationalists were in opposition. An extremely unsuccessful personnel reshuffle, which had far-reaching consequences, was the decision of Nicholas II to replace the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (a competent and experienced military man, popular in the army) after the failures of 1915 by himself. As a result of order and managerial efficiency, there was no increase either in St. Petersburg, from where the emperor left, or at the headquarters in Mogilev, where he arrived. Another evidence of the incompetence of the leaders was in the eyes of society the figure of Rasputin and the influence he acquired at court; both in the Duma and among the people openly started talking about treason.
Secondly, already in 1915, significant economic difficulties appeared. The crisis in railway communications caused by the growth of military traffic led to difficulties in the food supply of cities, expressed in the introduction of cards for some essential goods. The mobilization of several million able-bodied men and hundreds of thousands of horses undermined the pre-war agricultural well-being; things were not much better in industry, where enterprises not connected with military orders were forced to close or cut production. The supply of the front was also carried out with great difficulty.
Thirdly, the war has led to the marginalization of a large part of society. These are refugees from the western regions of the empire, lost during the retreat of the spring and summer of 1915 (this unsuccessful campaign cost Russia 1.5% of its territory, 10% of railways, 30% of its industry; the number of refugees reached ten million). These are the peasants who went to the cities to replace the workers who went to the front. These are university graduates who became wartime officers to compensate for the colossal losses of cadre command personnel. All this will lead to significant shifts in the consciousness of these people who find themselves in completely unusual circumstances for them, the result of which will often be ideological and moral disorientation. Peasants and workers, dressed in soldier's greatcoats, the farther, the less sought to get to the front (it is no coincidence that one of the main driving forces of the October events of 1917 will be soldiers of spare and training units, who categorically refuse to go to the trenches).
As a result of these and other processes, which the format of the article does not allow mentioning, in February 1917 the three-hundred-year dynasty left the historical arena, and few people in Russia were worried about this. However, she did it too late, and the democratic Provisional Government, which inherited all the problems of both previous years and previous decades, could not keep the situation under control.
What was all this for? What were the sacrifices of millions of lives, stability and progressive development of society? For control over the Black Sea straits? For the chimera of "Slavic unity"? For the sake of the very "small victorious war" that strengthens the mystical connection between the monarch and his subjects?
The monarchy has not learned any lessons from the very recent disaster in the Far East. For which she paid. And God would be with her, but we, today, continue to pay for her self-confident narrow-mindedness, for her direct generation was October 1917.
What kind of monuments are there …
