Russia - TheHistoryFiles.com

Kutuzov takes Command Part I

General Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov at Borodino In the nineteen days between the evacuation of Smolensk and the battle of Borodino Barclay’s popularity reached its lowest point among the troops. The soldiers had been told they would bury Napoleon on the river Dvina and then that they would fight to the death first for Vitebsk and […]

Battle, Prussia, Russia

Battle of Kay

The Battle of Kay (German: Schlacht bei Kay), also referred to as the Battle of Sulechów or Battle of Paltzig, was a battle fought on 23 July 1759 during the Seven Years’ War. It occurred near Kay (Kije) in the Neumark, now part of Poland. The Battle of Paltzig signified Russia’s emergence as a legitimate […]

Armies, Russia

“Policeman of Europe” (1796-1853)

Suvarov’s disciples, notably Pyotr Bagration and Mikhail Kutuzov, strove to maintain the reforms he had brought, but the short, reactionary reign of Paul I (1796- 1801) undermined the foundations of the army. The son of Catherine II, Paul was raised largely by his grandmother, Elizabeth I, and her trusted minister, Nikolai Panin. Upon his ascent, […]

Russia, Wars

First Northern War, (1558–1583)

Siege of Narva by the Russians in 1558 by Boris Chorikov, 1836. Map of campaigns in Livonia, 1558–1560. Also known as the ‘‘Livonian War.’’ In 1558, Ivan IV invaded Estonia. His army massacred 10,000 at the sack of Dorpat (1558), went on to sack 20 more towns, and captured Narva. The Livonian Order brought in […]

Russia, Warship

Modern Russia Submarine Force

B-585 Sankt-Peterburg project 677 Lada class diesel-electric submarine. Post-Soviet Russia kept a viable submarine capability throughout the lean and stretched twin decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its SSBNs, guarded by a full panoply of air, surface and underwater protectors in their cold bastions, remained the ultimate, last-resort defence of the Russian homeland, […]

AFV, Russia

ARMORED TRAINS-Russian Civil war

Armored trains were first used in battle during the American Civil War (1861–1865) and were subsequently deployed in the Boer War and in the Russo–Japanese War, among other conflicts, but are more associated with the “Russian” Civil Wars than any other. The fact that, together with the tachanka, armored trains played such a significant part […]

Navies, Russia

Czar Nicholas and his Navy

Imperial Russian battleship Borodino at Kronshtadt, Augst 1904. Borodino was the lead ship of her class of pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy although she was the second ship of her class to be completed. Named after the 1812 Battle of Borodino, the ship was completed after the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War […]

Biography, Russia

Czar Paul’s Reign

Paul I in the early 1790s Military Parade of Emperor Paul in front of Mikhailovsky Castle painting by Alexandre Benois The French Revolution had given new impetus to the demand for liberal reforms in Russia, but, more importantly, it rallied the strong reactionary elements around the empress. Talk of reform became treasonable and all hope […]

AFV, Russia

Early Russian Armoured Cars

At the beginning of WWI Russia had virtually no motor industry but its one car company, the Russo-Baltic Russko-Baltiisky Vagon Zaved (R-BVZ, or Russo-Baltic Wagon Factory) located in Riga, Latvia, built an armoured car soon after the war started, and subsequently produced a few more so that a unit could be formed that was sent […]

Armies, Russia

18th Century Russian Campaigning in Eastern Europe I

Russian Grenadier Officer and Infantry Officer. The cost of campaigning in Eastern Europe had to be counted not in currency alone, but in terms of human lives, horses, and matériel as well. We have already had occasion to disparage the popular caricature of eighteenth-century warfare as a tepid, bloodless sequence of maneuvers. Misleading enough with respect […]