The military history of Tsarist Russia encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Russian Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great, until the Russian Revolution (1917), which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union. Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army, Imperial Russian Navy, and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service.
Tsardom of Russia The military of Tsarist Russia evolved from the armies of the Rus' principalities that gradually emerged with the disintegration of the Kyivan Rus and the Mongol conquest. As the Rus principalities gained independence, the united armed forces of the Kyivan Rus gave way to personal forces of the various princes. Until the Mongol conquest, Rus princes carried with them a retinue of druzhina, or heavy cavalry that would typically fight dismounted. In the 14th century, the druzhina were gradually replaced by feudal, boyar or prince-headed heavy cavalry units that consisted of landed gentry and were accompanied by kholops. Under Ivan III in the late 15th century, an entirely aristocratic army, known as the Landed Army, was formed for the Grand Principality of Moscow in 1482. Typically equipped as mounted archers, it mostly consisted of nobility and service class people, who were accompanied by armed kholops. At the end of the 16th century, the Landed Army consisted of no more than 50 thousand men in the Tsardom of Russia.
The creation of the Landed Army was part of a broader process of centralization of the military that accompanied the wider centralization of Russia during this era. Prior to Ivan III, the Muscovite military primarily consisted of disorganized peasant levies, and the Grand Prince was unable to compel the subordinate princes to directly place their armies under him, only the ability to call them to arms. The shift began under Ivan III's predecessor, Vasily II, during the Muscovite War of Succession in the early 15th century, and was largely finalized by Ivan III by the end of the century. Vasily III continued this in 1522 when he turned the city of Kolomna, just outside Moscow, into his summer and autumn base of operations for campaigns along the Oka River. Under the Tsardom era, the army consisted of various polks, or regiments, commanded by a voivode.
The 16th century saw the Military Revolution sweep Europe, making gunpowder and portable firearms integral parts of European armies. These changes came to Russia, where under Ivan the Terrible, it would become one of the gunpowder empires. Gunpowder warfare had already been introduced to Russia in the form of cannons, which had seen used as far back as 1393, and had seen large scale use after the Italian engineer Aristotele Fioravanti created a large cannon foundry in Moscow. Ivan the Terrible established the streltsy, or units equipped with firearms, sometime by 1550. Initially equipped with arquebuses, they first saw combat at the 1552 siege of Kazan, and would go on to see frequent use as Russia was embroiled in a state of near permanent war for the rest of his reign. The streltsy were initially recruited from free tradesmen and the rural population. They were overseen primarily by the Streltsy Department and consisted of a Muscovite branch that defended Moscow and the Kremlin, as well as a "municipal" branch that defended everywhere else. Despite being an elite force, the streltsy were poorly paid and treated, and they would often engage in rebellions against the government.
At the end of the 16th century, the Russian army consisted of up to 110 thousand men. However, the coming 17th century would expose many weaknesses of the Tsarist army. The Time of Troubles did major damage to it, as the Landed Army proved to militarily ineffective at combating domestic revolts and foreign invasions from the Swedes, Crimeo-Tatars, and Polish–Lithuanians, while the poorly treated streltsy often joined and abated serf rebellions. Following the failed Smolensk War against Poland–Lithuania in the 1630s, a process of westernization began under Tsar Alexis, starting with the general replacement of the Landed Army with professional army units such as Reiters, Dragoons, Pikemen and Musketeers; these became known as the New Order Regiments.
Imperial Russia
Historians have long marked the importance of Peter the Great's reign in Russian history. Peter came of age in a vast but technologically and socially backward country. Upon taking control of Russia in 1682, the tsar energetically redressed every aspect of Russian government, society, and military to more closely match its western neighbors. He fought expansive wars against his neighbors, squeezing every resource at his disposal to power his war machine, and send large numbers of young men west, to learn the trades and skills that Russia would need in the future. Peter founded a new Russia by shattering the old.
The epoch of Russian history that Peter created has been variously known as the Imperial Age, because of the new connection between the ruler and land; the St. Petersburg Era, as the capital was moved to the newly built Saint Petersburg during his reign; and the All-Russian Period, which stresses the greater hegemony founded in the previously xenophobic country. The period from the time of his rule to the October Revolution (and dissolution of the Russian Empire) in 1917 is also sometimes called the Petrine era, in tribute to his importance. However, the Russian Empire proper was not founded until Peter took the title of imperator (emperor), at the end of the Great Northern War.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 211–212Clarkson, pp. 187–188
Peter the Great
Early years and accession to the throne
Peter the Great was born on June 9, 1672, to Tsar Alexis I and his second wife Natalia Naryshkina. The tsar had more than 14 children between the two marriages, but only three of the males, Feodor and Ivan by his first marriage and Peter by his second, survived into adulthood. Peter was considerably more healthy than his half-brothers, both of which had serious physical disabilities. Peter's father died in 1676, and Feodor, the late ruler's oldest son, was proclaimed tsar. When Feodor, in turn, died in 1682, he left no heir to the throne. With no clear path for succession, the two most prominent boyar families, the Naryshkins and the Miloslavsky, backed different heirs in a competition for the throne. The Naryshkins, backing Peter, won an early victory, and Peter was proclaimed tsar in April 1682, with his mother as the acting regent. However, in May, Peter's able-bodied half-sister Sophia, leading a Miloslavsky-backed rebellion by the streltsy, overtook the throne and killed many of the leading members of the Naryshkin family, the murders of whom Peter witnessed. In the aftermath, Ivan was proclaimed the senior tsar, and Peter the junior tsar, and Sophia the regent. In reality, Sophia took absolute power as an autocrat, shoving her half-brothers away from power.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 212–215Hughes, pp. 9–17
As a child, Peter, though intelligent, was neither an intellectual nor particularly refined. Physically able and possessing manic levels of energy, he turned his attention towards working with his hands. In particular, Peter found interest in seamanship and in military manners. He formed mock troops with his friends, the sons of nobles and servitors, and staged mock battles. As he grew older, these battles became more and more elaborate, including organized units, formations, and even live ammunition. Once they became adults, the boys with whom Peter staged the fights would become his commanders and closest military advisers, eventually forming the core of Russia's first two elite guard units, the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments. These two regiments contained the core of the Russian nobility, and became training grounds for young nobles, who served as rank-and-file soldiers to learn military life before becoming officers elsewhere.Stone, pp. 44–46Hughes, pp. 22–23
As Peter grew older, Sophia realized the insecurity of her throne in the face of a fledging male heir. In 1689, she incited her supporters in the streltsy to rebel again and put her firmly in power again. Frightened by rumors of a plot, Peter fled Moscow. In the critical days that followed, the patriarch and many of the boyars and gentry rallied behind him. Most of the streltsy wavered and took no action, and Sophia was forced, peacefully, off the throne. Thus, in August 1689, he was acknowledged as the effective ruler of Russia. However, at the age of 17, he still had little interest in military manners, and passed on his rule to his mother, Natalya Naryshkina. It was not until her death in 1694 that Peter finally assumed control of the state.Hughes, pp. 24–26
Early rule and military reforms
Peter personally studied soldiers and sailors from the bottom up, serving in the rank and file before promoting himself into the officer corps. Thus, Peter did not become a full general until after his victory at Poltava in 1709, and did not become full admiral until the conclusion of the Great Northern War more than a decade later. As early as 1694, he established a dockyard in Archangel and built an entire ship by himself. Russia suffered from an acute lack of expertise, a problem Peter mitigated by going to the foreign quarters in Moscow; there, in a relaxed environment far removed from the throne, he learned the particulars of such things as shipbuilding, navigation, military formation, and the erection of fortifications. Peter wanted to be everywhere at once, and see everything for himself. Not taking his role as tsar very seriously, he and his noble friends often staged elaborate drinking rituals and other forms of horseplay, displays of personal excess that helped unite his circle of friends through talk and drink. However, at the same time, he could be cruel, not flinching from the application of force to put down rebellions and sometimes beating his own friends if he thought it necessary.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 215–217
Once he took over the governmental machinery, Peter found a distinct lack of skilled specialists with which to run his government. Never placing much importance in rank or origin, Peter began recruiting skilled specialists out of every corner of the Russian empire, including serfs, foreigners, clergymen, and foreign specialists along with the usual boyars. Thus his administration consisted of men from across the social gamut. Most prominent among them was a one Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, a childhood friend from Peter's days with the mock troops. Menshikov was a former stableboy of the lowest rank, and would later rise up and become Peter's most able administrator. As corrupt as he was energetic, Menshikov could be found in every part of the Russian governmental machinery, was under constant surveillance by the Russian court, and often met Peter's cudgel, all the while somehow maintaining his prominent position.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 217–218Hughes, pp. 34–37
With the head of the Russian governance now firmly in place, Peter began a sweeping modernization of his army. Peter inherited a partially Westernized military, and he sought to consolidate the reforms of his predecessors. The army dissolved annually during harvest seasons, and the only regular forces in the Russian army were the streltsy, a formally elite unit that had, by Peter's time, become a hereditary, ill-trained, ill-equipped force that garrisoned in Moscow and played more of a role in politics then in actual fighting.Riasanovsky and Steinberg, pp. 226–227