Aleksei Brusilov
An officer who served with distinction in the Russo-Turkish War (1877 – 78); an aristocratic commander who survived the political storm of the Bolshevik Revolution; an innovative and uniquely successful general on the Eastern Front: many are the historical accolades that can be given to Aleksei Brusilov. Born in 1853, Brusilov was already in his senior years when Russia entered the Great War. He was, at the time, enjoying a holiday (in Germany of all places) and scarcely made it back to assume command of the 8th Army. That he did, though, was to prove a blessing to the Russians. For without him, they would likely have drowned beneath the waves of Austro-Hungarian men long before they could have their revolution.
Like all other generals of the First World War, Brusilov suffered enormous causalities among his ranks. But the difference was that, in an attritional and largely static war, time and again Brusilov was able to penetrate fortified lines. He did this to great effect during the Brusilov Offensive of 1916, making considerable inroads into Austro-Hungarian lines, practically shattering them between Kovel and Lutsk in Ukraine. And he did this by departing from conventional military strategies, which, as time went on, were proving inflexible, ineffective and deplorably wasteful.
Brusilov saw little point in notifying the enemy about the time and place of an imminent charge by launching prolonged artillery bombardments along that line. He preferred instead to concentrate fire on key areas: targeting logistics, transportation and communication lines. At the start of the Brusilov Offensive, he was the first to deploy shock troops, sending them at vulnerable points along the Austro-Hungarian line and briefing them to hold it before waiting for the main Russian army to arrive in support and exploit the weak point.
Aleksei Brusilov may well have broken the stalemate on the Eastern Front if he’d been granted full control over the Russian Army during his eponymous offensive. As it was, however, his fellow commanders poured scorn over his innovations, preferring instead to stick to what they knew. They abandoned Brusilov’s signature speed and precision-based style of attack and returned to conventional tactics of prolonged artillery bombardments and dragged-out consolidations. As their men became locked into attritional fighting, soldiers were reassigned from Brusilov’s front. And this, in all likelihood, threw away Russia’s best opportunity to break through on the Eastern Front.
The Romanians capitalized on Brusilov’s gains along the Austro-Hungarian front, joining the war against the Central Powers on August 27 1916. The Germans too capitalized, but on the innovations that led to such gains. Coming to the rescue of their collapsing Austro-Hungarian allies, they quickly came to learn about his shock tactics, incorporating them into their own campaigns on the Western Front: particularly in the Ludendorff Offensive. The Bolsheviks also recognized his value, despite his conflicting loyalties. When he offered his services to lead the Red Army to success in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, they accepted. And after his death in 1926—two years after his retirement—they granted him an honorable state funeral.