How the Russian army mastered chemical weapons and sought salvation from them
The widespread use of poisonous gases by Germany on the fronts of the Great War forced the Russian command to also enter the chemical arms race. At the same time, it was necessary to urgently solve two problems: firstly, to find a way to protect against new weapons, and secondly, "not to remain in the Germans' debt", and to answer them in kind. The Russian army and industry coped with both of them more than successfully. Thanks to the outstanding Russian chemist Nikolai Zelinsky, the world's first universal effective gas mask was created in 1915. And in the spring of 1916, the Russian army carried out its first successful gas attack. At the same time, by the way, no one in Russia was particularly worried about the "inhuman" nature of this type of weapon, and the command, noting its high efficiency, directly called upon the troops "to use the release of suffocating gases more often and more intensively." (Read about the history of the appearance and the first experiments in the use of chemical weapons on the fronts of the First World War in the previous material of the heading.)
The empire needs poison
Before responding to the German gas attacks with the same weapon, the Russian army had to establish its production practically from scratch. Initially, the production of liquid chlorine was established, which before the war was completely imported from abroad.
This gas began to be supplied by the pre-war and converted production facilities - four plants in Samara, several enterprises in Saratov, one plant each - near Vyatka and in the Donbass in Slavyansk. In August 1915, the army received the first 2 tons of chlorine, a year later, by the fall of 1916, the release of this gas reached 9 tons per day.
An illustrative story happened with the plant in Slavyansk. It was created at the very beginning of the 20th century for the electrolytic production of bleach from rock salt mined in local salt mines. That is why the plant was called "Russian Electron", although 90% of its shares belonged to French citizens.
In 1915, it was the only facility located relatively close to the front and theoretically capable of rapidly producing chlorine on an industrial scale. Having received subsidies from the Russian government, the plant did not give the front a single ton of chlorine over the summer of 1915, and at the end of August the management of the plant was transferred to the hands of the military authorities.
Diplomats and newspapers of the seemingly allied France immediately raised a fuss about the violation of the interests of French property owners in Russia. The tsarist authorities were afraid of quarreling with the allies in the Entente, and in January 1916, the management of the plant was returned to the previous administration and even provided new loans. But until the end of the war, the plant in Slavyansk had not reached the production of chlorine in the quantities stipulated by military contracts.
An attempt to obtain phosgene in Russia from private industry also failed - Russian capitalists, despite all their patriotism, overstated prices and, due to the lack of sufficient industrial capacities, could not guarantee the timely execution of orders. For these needs, it was necessary to create new state-owned enterprises from scratch.
Already in July 1915, construction began on a "military chemical plant" in the village of Globino on the territory of what is now the Poltava region of Ukraine. Initially, it was planned to establish chlorine production there, but in the fall it was reoriented to new, more deadly gases - phosgene and chloropicrin. The ready-made infrastructure of the local sugar factory, one of the largest in the Russian Empire, was used for the chemical plant. Technical backwardness led to the fact that the enterprise was being built for more than a year, and the Globinsky Military Chemical Plant began producing phosgene and chloropicrin only on the eve of the February 1917 revolution.
The situation was similar with the construction of the second large state enterprise for the production of chemical weapons, which began to be built in March 1916 in Kazan. The first phosgene was produced by the Kazan Military Chemical Plant in 1917.
Initially, the War Ministry intended to organize large chemical plants in Finland, where there was an industrial base for such production. But the bureaucratic correspondence on this issue with the Finnish Senate dragged on for many months, and by 1917 the "military chemical plants" in Varkaus and Kajaan were still not ready.
While state-owned factories were just being built, the War Ministry had to buy gases wherever possible. For example, on November 21, 1915, 60 thousand poods of liquid chlorine were ordered from the Saratov City Council.
Chemical Committee
In October 1915, the first "special chemical teams" began to form in the Russian army to carry out gas attacks. But due to the initial weakness of Russian industry, it was not possible to attack the Germans with a new "poisonous" weapon in 1915.
In order to better coordinate all efforts to develop and produce war gases, in the spring of 1916, a Chemical Committee was created under the Main Artillery Directorate of the General Staff, often simply referred to as the “Chemical Committee”. All existing and created chemical weapons plants and all other works in this area were subordinated to him.
Major General Vladimir Nikolayevich Ipatiev, 48, became the Chairman of the Chemical Committee. A prominent scientist, he had not only a military, but also a professorial rank, before the war he taught a course in chemistry at St. Petersburg University.
Vladimir Ipatiev. Photo: wikipedia.org
The first meeting of the Chemical Committee was held on May 19, 1916. Its composition was motley - one lieutenant general, six major generals, four colonels, three full state councilors and one titular one, two process engineers, two professors, one academician and one ensign. The rank of ensign included the scientist Nestor Samsonovich Puzhai, who was called up for military service, a specialist in explosives and chemistry, appointed "the ruler of the office of the Chemical Committee." It is curious that all decisions of the committee were made by voting, in case of equality, the vote of the chairman became decisive. Unlike other organs of the General Staff, the "Chemical Committee" had the maximum independence and autonomy that can only be found in a belligerent army.
On the ground, the chemical industry and all work in this area were managed by eight regional "sulfuric acid bureaus" (as they were called in documents of those years) - the entire territory of the European part of Russia was divided into eight districts subordinate to these bureaus: Petrogradsky, Moskovsky, Verkhnevolzhsky, Srednevolzhsky, Yuzhny, Ural, Caucasian and Donetsk. It is significant that the Moscow Bureau was headed by the engineer of the French military mission Frossard.
The Chemistry Committee paid well. The chairman, in addition to all military payments for the rank of general, received another 450 rubles a month, heads of departments - 300 rubles each. Other members of the committee were not entitled to additional remuneration, but for each meeting they were paid a special payment in the amount of 15 rubles each. For comparison, an ordinary Russian imperial army then received 75 kopecks a month.
In general, the "Chemical Committee" managed to cope with the initial weakness of the Russian industry and by the fall of 1916 had established the production of gas weapons. By November, 3180 tons of toxic substances were produced, and the program for the next year 1917 planned to increase the monthly productivity of toxic substances to 600 tons in January and to 1,300 tons in May.
You should not remain in debt to the Germans
For the first time, Russian chemical weapons were used on March 21, 1916, during an offensive near Lake Naroch (on the territory of the modern Minsk region). During the artillery preparation, Russian guns fired 10 thousand shells with asphyxiant and poisonous gases at the enemy. This number of shells was not enough to create a sufficient concentration of toxic substances, and the losses of the Germans were insignificant. But, nevertheless, Russian chemistry scared them and forced them to stop counterattacking.
In the same offensive, it was planned to carry out the first Russian "gas cylinder" attack. However, it was canceled due to rain and fog - the effectiveness of the chlorine cloud critically depended not only on the wind, but also on the temperature and humidity of the air. Therefore, the first Russian gas attack using chlorine cylinders was carried out in the same sector of the front later. Two thousand cylinders began to release gas on the afternoon of July 19, 1916. However, when two Russian companies tried to attack the German trenches, through which a gas cloud had already passed, they were met by rifle and machine-gun fire - as it turned out, the enemy did not suffer serious losses. Chemical weapons, like any other, required experience and skill for their successful use.
In total, in 1916, the "chemical teams" of the Russian army carried out nine large gas attacks, using 202 tons of chlorine. The first successful gas attack by Russian troops took place in early September 1916. This was a response to the summer gas attacks of the Germans, when, in particular, near the Belarusian city of Smorgon on the night of July 20, 3,846 soldiers and officers of the Grenadier Caucasian Division were poisoned with gas.
General Alexey Evert. Photo: Central State Archive of Film and Photo Documents of St. Petersburg
In August 1916, the commander-in-chief of the Western Front, General Alexei Evert (by the way, from the Russified Germans) issued an order: losses. Having the means necessary for the production of gas attacks, one should not remain in debt to the Germans, which is why I order more extensive use of the vigorous activity of chemical teams, more often and more intensively using the release of suffocating gases at the location of the enemy."
Fulfilling this order, on the night of September 6, 1916, at 3:30 a.m., a gas attack from the Russian troops began in the same place near Smorgon on a front of about a kilometer. There were used 500 large and 1700 small cylinders filled with 33 tons of chlorine.
However, 12 minutes later, an unexpected gust of wind carried part of the gas cloud into the Russian trenches. At the same time, the Germans also managed to quickly respond, noticing a chlorine cloud moving in the dark within 3 minutes after the start of the release of gases. The return fire of German mortars in the Russian trenches broke 6 gas cylinders. The concentration of the escaped gas in the trench was so great that the rubber on the gas masks of the Russian soldiers who were nearby burst. As a result, the gas attack was terminated within 15 minutes after the start.
However, the result of the first massive use of gases was highly appreciated by the Russian command, since the German soldiers in the forward trenches suffered significant losses. The chemical shells used by the Russian artillery that night, which quickly silenced the German batteries, were even more appreciated.
In general, since 1916, all participants in the First World War began to gradually abandon the "gas balloon" attacks and move on to the massive use of artillery shells with deadly chemistry. The release of gas from the cylinders was completely dependent on the favorable wind, while the shelling with chemical projectiles made it possible to unexpectedly attack the enemy with poisonous gases, regardless of weather conditions and at greater depths.
Since 1916, Russian artillery began to receive 76-millimeter shells with gas, or, as they were then officially called, "chemical grenades." Some of these shells were loaded with chloropicrin, a very powerful tear gas, and some with deadly phosgene and hydrocyanic acid. By the fall of 1916, 15,000 of these shells were delivered to the front every month.
On the eve of the February Revolution of 1917, chemical shells for heavy 152-mm howitzers began to arrive at the front for the first time, and chemical ammunition for mortars began in spring. In the spring of 1917, the infantry of the Russian army received the first 100,000 hand chemical grenades. In addition, they began the first experiments on the creation of rocket-propelled rockets. Then they did not give an acceptable result, but it is from them that the famous "Katyusha" will be born already in Soviet times.
Due to the weakness of the industrial base, the army of the Russian Empire was never able to match either the enemy or the allies in the "Entente" in the number and "range" of chemical shells. Russian artillery received a total of less than 2 million chemical shells, while, for example, France during the war years produced over 10 million such shells. When the United States entered the war, its most powerful industry by November 1918 produced almost 1.5 million chemical projectiles monthly - that is, in two months it produced more than all of Tsarist Russia could in two years of war.
Gas mask with ducal monograms
The first gas attacks immediately required not only the creation of chemical weapons, but also means of protection against them. In April 1915, in preparation for the first use of chlorine at Ypres, the German command supplied its soldiers with cotton pads soaked in sodium hyposulfite solution. They had to cover the nose and mouth during the launch of gases.
By the summer of that year, all the soldiers of the German, French and British armies were equipped with cotton-gauze bandages soaked in various chlorine neutralizers. However, such primitive "gas masks" proved to be uncomfortable and unreliable, besides mitigating the chlorine damage, they did not provide protection against the more toxic phosgene.
In Russia, in the summer of 1915, such bandages were called “stigma masks”. They were made for the front by various organizations and individuals. But as the German gas attacks showed, they almost did not save from the massive and prolonged use of toxic substances, and were extremely inconvenient in handling - they quickly dried out, finally losing their protective properties.
In August 1915, a professor at Moscow University Nikolai Dmitrievich Zelinsky suggested using activated charcoal as a means for absorbing poisonous gases. Already in November, Zelinsky's first coal gas mask was tested for the first time, complete with a rubber helmet with glass "eyes", which was made by an engineer from St. Petersburg Mikhail Kummant.
Zelinsky-Kummant gas mask. Photo: Imperial War Museums
Unlike previous designs, this one turned out to be reliable, easy to use and ready for immediate use for many months. The resulting protective device successfully passed all the tests and was named "Zelinsky-Kummant gas mask". However, here the obstacles to the successful arming of the Russian army with them were not even the shortcomings of Russian industry, but the departmental interests and ambitions of officials.
At that time, all work on protection against chemical weapons was entrusted to the Russian general and the German prince Friedrich (Alexander Petrovich) of Oldenburg, a relative of the ruling Romanov dynasty, who served as the Supreme Chief of the medical and evacuation unit of the imperial army. By that time, the prince was almost 70 years old and Russian society remembered him as the founder of the resort in Gagra and a fighter against homosexuality in the guard.
The prince actively lobbied for the adoption and production of a gas mask, which was designed by teachers of the Petrograd Mining Institute using experience in mines. This gas mask, called the "gas mask of the Mining Institute," as shown by the tests carried out, was less protective against asphyxiant gases and it was more difficult to breathe in it than in the gas mask of Zelinsky-Kummant. Despite this, the Prince of Oldenburg ordered to begin production of 6 million "gas masks of the Mining Institute", decorated with his personal monogram. As a result, Russian industry spent several months producing a less perfect design.
On March 19, 1916, at a meeting of the Special Conference on Defense - the main body of the Russian Empire for managing the military industry - an alarming report was made about the situation at the front with "masks" (as gas masks were then called): protect against other gases. The Mining Institute masks are unusable. The production of Zelinsky's masks, which have long been recognized as the best, has not been established, which should be considered criminal negligence."
As a result, only the joint opinion of the military made it possible to start mass production of Zelinsky's gas masks. On March 25, the first state order for 3 million appeared and the next day for another 800 thousand gas masks of this type. By April 5, the first batch of 17 thousand had already been made.
However, until the summer of 1916, the production of gas masks remained extremely inadequate - in June, no more than 10 thousand pieces a day arrived at the front, while millions were required to reliably protect the army. Only the efforts of the "Chemical Commission" of the General Staff made it possible to radically improve the situation by the fall - by the beginning of October 1916, over 4 million different gas masks were sent to the front, including 2, 7 million "Zelinsky-Kummant gas masks."
In addition to gas masks for people during the First World War, it was necessary to attend to special gas masks for horses, which then remained the main draft force of the army, not to mention the numerous cavalry. Until the end of 1916, 410 thousand horse gas masks of various designs were received at the front.
German equestrian artillery train in gas masks. The horses are also wearing gas masks. Photo: Imperial War Museums
In total, over the years of the First World War, the Russian army received over 28 million gas masks of various types, of which over 11 million were of the Zelinsky-Kummant system. Since the spring of 1917, only they were used in the combat units of the active army, thanks to which the Germans refused to use chlorine gas attacks on the Russian front due to their complete ineffectiveness against troops in such gas masks.
The war has crossed the last line
According to historians, during the First World War, about 1.3 million people suffered from chemical weapons. The most famous of them, perhaps, was Adolf Hitler - on October 15, 1918, he was poisoned and temporarily lost his sight as a result of a close explosion of a chemical projectile.
It is known that in 1918, from January to the end of the fighting in November, the British lost 115,764 soldiers from chemical weapons. Of these, less than one tenth of a percent died - 993. Such a small percentage of fatal losses from gases is associated with the full equipping of troops with advanced types of gas masks. However, a large number of wounded, more precisely poisoned and lost their combat effectiveness, left chemical weapons a formidable force on the fields of the First World War.
The US Army entered the war only in 1918, when the Germans brought the use of a variety of chemical weapons to maximum and perfection. Therefore, among all the losses of the American army, over a quarter were accounted for by chemical weapons.
This weapon not only killed and wounded - with massive and prolonged use, it made entire divisions temporarily incapacitated. So, during the last offensive of the German army in March 1918, during an artillery preparation against the 3rd British army alone, 250 thousand mustard gas shells were fired. British soldiers on the frontline had to wear gas masks continuously for a week, making them almost incapacitated.
The losses of the Russian army from chemical weapons in the First World War are estimated with a wide range. During the war, for obvious reasons, these figures were not announced, and two revolutions and the collapse of the front by the end of 1917 led to significant gaps in statistics. The first official figures were published already in Soviet Russia in 1920 - 58 890 poisoned not fatally and 6268 died from gases. Hot on the heels in the 1920s and 1930s, studies in the West resulted in much larger numbers - over 56 thousand killed and about 420 thousand poisoned.
Although the use of chemical weapons did not lead to strategic consequences, its impact on the psyche of soldiers was significant. Sociologist and philosopher Fyodor Stepun (by the way, he is of German origin, his real name is Friedrich Steppuhn) served as a junior officer in the Russian artillery. Even during the war, in 1917, his book "From the letters of an ensign artilleryman" was published, where he described the horror of the people who survived the gas attack:
“Night, darkness, howling overhead, the splash of shells and the whistle of heavy fragments. Breathing is so difficult that it seems that you are about to suffocate. The masked voice is almost inaudible, and in order for the battery to accept the command, the officer needs to shout it right into the ear of each gunner. At the same time, the terrible unrecognizability of the people around you, the loneliness of the damned tragic masquerade: white rubber skulls, square glass eyes, long green trunks. And all in a fantastic red sparkle of explosions and shots. And above everything is the insane fear of a heavy, disgusting death: the Germans fired for five hours, and the masks were designed for six.
Soldiers of the Russian army in Zelinsky-Kummant gas masks. Photo: Library of Congress
You can't hide, you have to work. With each step, it pricks the lungs, overturns, and the feeling of suffocation increases. And one must not only walk, one must run. Perhaps the horror of gases is not characterized by anything as vividly as the fact that in the gas cloud no one paid any attention to the shelling, but the shelling was terrible - more than a thousand shells fell on one of our batteries …
In the morning, after the end of the shelling, the view of the battery was terrible. In the dawn fog, people are like shadows: pale, with bloodshot eyes, and with coal from gas masks that have settled on the eyelids and around the mouth; many are sick, many are fainting, the horses are all lying on a hitching post with dull eyes, with bloody foam at the mouth and nostrils, some are struggling in convulsions, some have already died."
Fyodor Stepun summarized these experiences and impressions of chemical weapons: "After the gas attack in the battery, everyone felt that the war had crossed the last line, that from now on everything was allowed and nothing was sacred."
