[[quoteright:240:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/240px-Kutuzov_by_Volkov_6019.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:240:Mikhail Kutuzov, the field marshal who defeated Napoleon]]

-> ''"For the faith, the Tsar and the fatherland!"''
-->--Russian Imperial Army motto

'''The Beginning'''

The regular Russian military was created by PeterTheGreat. Before him, the Muscovite army was a patchwork of feudal levies, uncontrollable, wild [[{{Cossacks}} Cossack]] allies and a semi-regular, but quite small military organization of Streltsy (Musketmen) - the Moscow city guard. Peter decided to ditch this ragtag army and started to build a modern (by his times) regular army with a chain of command.

He started it when he [[AChildShallLeadThem was a boy]] by creating himself some "Entertainment Regiments" of teenage boys armed with real muskets and setting up battles [[TrainingFromHell with live ammunition]]. Those of the boys who survived to adulthood formed the core of the new Russian army: the Guards regiments.

Using techniques and discipline tested on the "entertainment regiments", Peter created a large, modern army and immediately began to field-test it, first on the Turks than on then-powerful Swedish kingdom, starting a campaign to put an end to the landlocking of Russia and conquer some seaside land to build at least one decent sea port. St.Petersburg was founded, and the Russian Empire began.

'''The Napoleonic Wars'''

The first major international military victory that made Russia a great power was against Napoleon. Field Marshal Kutuzov (portrait on the page picture) used what some military historians call "strategical aikido": he lured Napoleon's army deep into Russia, waited for the supply lines to stretch thin, and counterattacked when winter was closing in. Europe's greatest army was reduced to freezing, hungry crowds of deserters fleeing Russia as fast as they could. [[hottip:*:It wasn't the last time they made use of that strategy. There is a witticism that goes round in military/historical circles, naming Russia's best military asset as "General Winter".]]

The next two years Russians were pursuing Napoleon over all Europe, securing help of allies such as Prussia and Britain. In 1814 the Napoleonic wars were over and Russia earned itself a place among the great European powers.

'''From Glory to Ruin: Crimean War'''

The nineteenth century was the time of rapid technological development, but Russia failed to catch up to the other Great Powers and entered the middle of the century with pretty much the same army that fought Napoleon. Because of that, when the next major conflict started, Russians began to lose. That conflict was the Crimean War (against Turkey, France, Britain, and the tiny Kingdom of Sardinia), of Thin Red Line and Charge of the Light Brigade fame.
Well, initially this looked like everything was beginning well -- Russia took on its traditional whipping boy, Turkey, looking for a quick little skirmish and freeing Turkey's Slavic subjects. But the Turks managed to enlist the help from the other European powers not wanting the increase in Russia's influence. Losses in the war demonstrated that progress is essential for an army to stay war-worthy. The military reforms of Alexander II were motivated by Russian inferiority demonstrated in this war.

'''Some More Victories: Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878'''

After Alexander II's military reforms were mostly complete, Russia started reasserting its power in Europe. A series of Slavic uprisings on the Balkans, cruelly quelled by Turks, provided a casus belli for the biggest Slavic country to intervene.
Turks, by that time, also had an underequipped army, and, despite any military supplies by the British, they failed to reped Russian intervention. A new series of Russian victories resulted in Romania and Bulgaria regaining independence and Serbia increasing its territory.

'''Once Again Into the Breach: RussoJapaneseWar '''

The RussoJapaneseWar was forced upon Russia when Japan attacked, seemingly out of the blue but really for reasons of geopolitical security. Russia's minister of police, [[GermanRussians von Plehve]], stated that "Russia needs a small victorious war to stave off the threat of revolution". This was the time when ImperialRussia seemed to truly become a VestigialEmpire, losing international reputation, getting mired in civil unrest and not knowing what to do with their own future, and the [[RomanovsAndRevolutions revolution]] lurked somewhere very close. So, as many people today see the matter, ImperialRussia tried to choose the weakest possible enemy to fight, and chose Japan: it was just a feudal Asian state that only recently got out of MedievalStasis, [[SchmuckBait what could possibly go wrong]]?

As we said, though, that's not how it happened at all. While it was true that the Japanese took their modernization very seriously, the fact was that the war was an ''enormous'' gamble. By the war's end, 84% of the total paid-up (cash) capital held in Japan's banks had been given to the government as war-loans, and the Japanese government was entirely reliant upon foreign loans to fund the war[[hottip:*: to the tune of 80% of the war's up-front costs being funded through Anglo-American loans]], despite having doubled taxation without printing money. The result was exponentially increasing prices, which had risen by some 10-30% on pre-war levels even for basic goods like rice. Russia had lost battle after battle, but the strategic situation was looking rosy as Japan was just months - if not ''weeks'' - away from at least a morale collapse, with all Japan's strategic reserves depleted and the country teetering on the verge of a price-increase spiral. Russia didn't know all this, however, so the peace-loving Tsar Nicholas II sued for peace on the grounds that too many people had died already and it wasn't worth the effort for Russia to continue (and win) the war. The long series of tactical setbacks and defeats looked very bad, however, and many people took it as a sign that Nicholas II was incompetent and should step down. Which he was, of course, but many other parties also took the opportunity to kick the government while it was down and there were numerous strikes as peasant campaigned for the abolition of the village-commune system and workers at government firms went on strike to get higher wages.

'''The Final Clusterfuck: WWI'''

Concerning the last Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II, opinions differ. Communists think he was a bloody tyrant. Monarchists think he was a saint. But two things can be stated about him as hard facts: he was weak-willed and indecisive, and most of the Russian government's problems at this time stemmed from the government not having the loyalty of any one demographic, but the enmity of many if not all of them. Russian involvement in WorldWarOne was almost inevitable, unfortunately, and although the regime seemed to whether the first two years of war well enough the economic situation became critical in the winter of 1916; instead of taxing the population harder or using the war as an excuse to institute land-reform, Nicholas had instead 'abolished' the state liquor monopoly (which provided 1/4 of all 1913 government revenue) - to 'ensure' that the grain thus used would be used for bread instead - and tried to fund the war through inflationary policies. Regular income (after the abolition of the liquor monopoly) was only enough to cover some 1/3 of expenses, the other 2/3 coming from the government creating money to pay/loan to itself[[hottip:*: i.e. the budget was always, ''always'' written off as if it was balanced, even though throughout the war it ran at a massive deficit. The 'theoretical' money used to pay all those expenses didn't just 'go away' after the budget was presented, it became actual money as it trickled down the various accountancy chains until it made its way into the economy as a whole - and some of which ends up as wages paid into bank accounts and physically handed to people as cash.]] and printing money with which to pay its personnel. The inflation was made worse by the fact that before the war, the Russian government had insisted on a ridiculously low proportion of cash-in-the-economy-as-a-whole to precious-metals-in-Russian-banks-held-as-reserves ratio: 1:1. That is to say, the value of all the Russian money in the entire 1913 Russian economy was exactly equal to that of all the precious metals in Russia's banks.[[hottip:*: This kind of tight-fisted-ness was just stupid, given that it would be physically impossible for anyone or anything, not even the Russian government itself, to panic and exchange ''all the money in the entire economy'' for ''all the gold and silver in the entire economy'' (save that held by private individuals). By comparison, the contemporary USA had a ratio of more than 2:1.]]

The results were predictable; by mid-1916 the country was experiencing high inflation, and the poor-peasant farmers which Russia's big cities relied upon for their grain decided to stop selling or even bartering their surplus grain because they weren't getting good prices, and there wasn't much to buy or barter for anyway - all sorts of goods were in short supply because the expansion of war-industry had come at the expense of consumer-goods-production. This occurred, funnily enough, because the government 'insisted' on over-production of military goods to cover for its past embarrassments. Numerous foreign observers and figures in the Russian Army had tried to cover for the individual pride and incompetence of the Army's leadership by making highly critical comments to the public about weapon and equipment shortages. This was actually all their own damned fault; the army as a whole used 'shell shortage' as an excuse for the logistical nightmare caused by their generals' utter refusal to trust the (relatively powerless) General Staff to send them reinforcements, food, and ammunition. Worse still, this individual pride got in the way of them actually coordinating on overall strategy.

Though it was indirectly Nicolas's fault, for not standing up to the army's individual generals and bullying them out of ''arguing with the General Staff, and repeatedly winning'', he quite definitely got the blame for the problems with his out-of-control Generals were causing for the Russian war effort. The shell-shortage was a complete fiction - numerous Russian fortresses were captured with great numbers of the kind of heavy artillery pieces that the army as a whole apparently lacked, and combat''-months'' of ammunition hoarded away inside them[[hottip:*: Russia's artillery Generals, with the exception of a reformist clique under Sukhomlinov, seemed to all believe that fortresses and fortress artillery should be the cornerstone of Russia's war effort... even though in this age of mobile and highly destructive warfare, each and every one of the fortresses they championed and ''filled'' with (heavy) artillery and ammunition could be destroyed in a day]]. While it was true that the army was a little short of ammunition, this was nothing like the problem the army portrayed it is as being. All armies always operate with a limited supply of ammunition; what was ''really'' affecting the Russian army's ability to fight the war was not material shortages or morale problems but a ''godawful'' eighteenth/nineteenth-century command structure that prevented the war-effort from being coordinated in any meaningful kind of way at any level.

Thus, to avoid looking bad, the Russian government set out to solve a problem that didn't actually exist. Up until 1915-16, Russia's state-owned armouries produced all the weapons and ammunition for the army's needs, with some of both being ordered from abroad as the government did not trust Russian businesses one bit. Then, under pressure to 'solve' the 'shell shortage', Russia's government was forced to award numerous lucrative armaments-production contracts to domestic producers. Russia's corporations collectively trampled all over each other to leap, or attempt to leap, on the armaments-contract gravy train. What resulted was a ''dramatic'' shortage of consumer goods as all sorts of industries stopped producing mundane goods and produced - or 'tried' to produce, or [[SarcasmMode "tried"]] to produce - the more-profitable military supplies. This doubled the reluctance of farmers to sell their grain, as the country was quickly running out of things they wanted to buy with their money. The end result of all this was that agricultural output dropped as a result of hoarding (for when consumer goods became available) and the labour shortages caused by mass-migration to the cities to get work in the war-industries... and thus urban famine in a formerly food-exporting country which still had a healthy food-surplus.

Funnily enough the morale of Russia's troops had been alright up 'til 1916, and her equipment was - though slightly dated - pretty good actually, because it was standardised and thus all the ammunition and equipment was compatible (unlike, say, in Austria-Hungary). Though 1914 and 1915 had seen shortages of weapons and a critical shortage of ammunition, this problem was entirely solved by 1916 and the economy was booming, having grown by a full 'fifth' during the course of the war (by Alexander Keresnky's own reckoning).

It was a 'false' economic boom, however, because it was almost all related to war-industries. What's more, by 1916 the inflation and its effects began to bite and by March 1917 there were actually food shortages in Petrograd and Moscow, even though the country was producing a healthy surplus of grain; the dire economic situation, combined with all the tactical defeats and military setbacks, caused members of the Imperial Government and Duma/Parliament to effectively declare a coup in March 1917. The Provisional Government of the Republic under Alexander Kerensky wasn't much better than that the old regime, however, as the problems caused by inflation continued unabated. Several months of ''hyper''-inflation later, [[RedOctober the Communists executed a coup...]]

'''TheRemnant: White Guards'''

The White Movement, founded by General Kornilov in 1918, was an anti-communist resistance consisting mainly of former Tsarist army officers. Most of them were made officers during WorldWarOne, with the pre-war, hardline Tsarist career military almost completely wiped. Most of them weren't monarchists, but rather democrats or social-democrats. But they adopted most of the Tsarist army structure, ranks, weapons and regulations and thus are usually viewed as a continuation of the Imperial army rather than a new structure.

There were actually several White armies, two "main" ones and several smaller ones, running the gamut from true remnants of the Imperial army to petty warlords' gangs. The two big ones were the Eastern White army, started by the Siberian Directory in 1918 and reorganized by Admiral Kolchak (the formal head of state of White Russia from 1918 to 1920), and the Southern White Army, originally known as the Volunteer Army, founded by General Kornilov and later headed by generals Denikin and Wrangel. Kolchak ended up with a RedshirtArmy consisting mostly of fresh recruits and stomach companies headquartered in Siberia far away from the WWI front, with very few capable officers. Kornilov and Denikin had most of the crack troops and veteran officers but kinda short of manpower; if these two armies managed to join their ranks and mingle freely, they could produce a quite capable fighting force and overwhelm the Reds, but this junction never happened: Denikin [[WeAreStrugglingTogether launched a march to Moscow instead of coming to save Kolchak's army]].

Two of the lesser White armies, led by generals Yudenich and Miller, were similar in spirit, but some others, mostly Cossack armies of Semyonov, Annenkov and Ungern, were typical warlordships not answering to anyone and not willing to help Kolchak or Denikin, busy mostly with robbing and terrorizing civilians.

All this eventually led to the White armies' demise; Kornilov died in battle, Kolchak was arrested and shot, other White leaders eventually fled Russia and founded White Emigre military unions that existed for a long time after the revolution; many tens of thousands of Whites ended up working as mercenaries [[NoMoreEmperors for various factions of China's Warlord Era]], such as the Shandong-province Warlord Zhang Zongchang of the 'Three Don't Knows'[[hottip:*: It was said that he didn't know how many concubines/mistresses he had, how much money he had, or how many men he had in his armies]] - he hired enough of them (c.5000) to form a cavalry regiment and an armoured-train corps.

Some still persist to this day.

'''The Table of Ranks'''

Imperial Russia had a united rank system that included military, court and civil service ranks divided in categories, called the Table of Ranks. Its main purpose was a legal mechanism for ennoblement of commoners: upon reaching a certain rank, nobility was granted personally to an officer, and upon reaching a certain other higher rank, it was made hereditary.

The military part of the Table, containing the officer ranks, is listed here in comparison to the modern Common Ranks. Note that certain ranks have different terms than ones used today: for example, the rank of Lieutenant only was referred to as "leytenant" in the navy; in the other branches the Polish term ''poruchik'' was used instead. The rank ''praporschik'' (currently a Warrant Officer rank) was used for the EnsignNewbie, similar to the German rank Fahnrich.

* OverNineThousand (above the entire table)
** All branches: Generalissimus
** Equivalent CommonRanks: Supreme (General of the Armies, Marshal of the Soviet Union (but not the [[JosephStalin Soviet Generalissimus]], who was [[SerialEscalation even higher]])
** Address: Lord High Almighty

* Class I
** Ground: Field Marshal
** Navy: General Admiral
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-10 (five star general: US General of the Army, UK Field Marshal, Soviet General of the Army)
** Address: Your High Excellency
** Notes: This rank and the previous one were used in the late XVIII - early XIX century, the most famous holders were Alexander Suvorov (generalissimus) and Mikhail Kutuzov (field marshal). During the later years (late XIX - early XX century) only the tsars could have these ranks.

* Class II
** Ground: General of... (Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery), Engineer-General, General en Chef
** Navy: Admiral
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-9 (four star general: US and UK Generals, Soviet General-Colonel)
** Address: Your High Excellency

* Class III
** Ground: General-Lieutenant
** Navy: Vice Admiral
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-8 (three star general: US, UK and Soviet Lieutenant Generals)
** Address: Your Excellency

* Class IV
** Ground: General-Major
** Navy: Counter Admiral
** Guards: Lt.Colonel (until 1798)
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-7 (two star generals: US, UK and Soviet Major Generals)
** Address: Your Excellency

* Class V (abolished in 1796!)
** Ground: Brigadier
** Navy: Captain-Commodore
** Guards: Premier Major (until 1798)
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-6 (one star generals: US Brigadier General, UK Brigadier, 1930s Soviet Kombrig)
** Address: Your Highborn

* Class VI
** Ground: Colonel
** Navy: Captain, 1st Rank
** Guards: Second Major (until 1798), Colonel (since 1798)
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-5 (colonels)
** Address: Your High Wellborn

* Class VII
** Ground: Lt. Colonel
** Cossack: Host Starshina
** Navy: Captain, 2nd Rank
** Guards: Rottmister (cavalry), Captain (others)
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-4 (Lt.Colonels)
** Address: Your High Wellborn

* Class VIII
** Ground: Premier Major and Second Major (until 1798), Captain (since 1884)
** Cossack: Yesaul
** Navy: Captain, 3rd Rank (until 1764)
** Guards: Staff Captain
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-3 (majors)
** Address: Your High Wellborn

* Class IX
** Ground: Captain (until 1884), Staff Captain (since 1884)
** Cossack: Podyesaul
** Navy: Captain-Lieutenant
** Guards: Lieutenant (''Poruchik'')
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-2 (captain)
** Address from this and below: Your Wellborn

* Class X
** Ground: Staff Captain (until 1884), Lieutenant (''Poruchik'', since 1884)
** Cossack: Sotnik
** Navy: Lieutenant (''Leytenant'')
** Guards: Sub-Lieutenant
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-1 Senior (1st lieutenants)

* Class XI
Was skipped since time immemorial.

* Class XII
** Ground: Lieutenant (until 1884), Sub-Lieutenant (since 1884)
** Cossack: Khorunzhiy (since 1884)
** Navy: Midshipman
** Guards: Praposchik
** Equivalent CommonRanks: OF-1 Junior (2nd lieutenants)

* Class XIII and XIV (usually lumped)
** Ground: Praposchik
** Cossack: Khorunzhiy (until 1884)
** Navy: Gardemarine
** Equivalent CommonRanks: equivalent to Soviet junior lieutenants, no Western equivalent

* Below the Table of Ranks ([=NCOs=] and Privates)
** Ground: Sub-Praporschik (Warrant officer), Feldwebel (Sergeant Major), Senior Unterofficier (Sergeant), Junior Unterofficier (Corporal), Soldier.
** Cossack: Sub-Khorunzhiy, Wachmister, Uryadnik, Prikazny, Cossack respectively.
** Navy: Conductor, Bosun, Busun Mate, Matrose.
** Equivalent Common Ranks: the entire spectrum of OR.
** Address: Hey, you!


'''The Rifles (and other weapons) of the Russians'''

* ''Licorne'' (The Unicorn Gun) was a Russian model of howitzer that was all the rage from the late XVIII century to the Crimean War but lingered on until replaced by rifled artillery (some of them were still in service during the RussoJapaneseWar!). It was called such because it was decorated with a cast iron figurine of an unicorn.
* ''M1870 Russian Berdan'' - a single-shot bolt-action rifle, one of the first standardized infantry weapons of the Russian army (before that, they used a mishmash of various muskets and muzzleloading rifles). Later many Berdans were converted into shotguns, and the word "berdanka" entered Russian in the sense of "old rusty shotgun of a night guard".
* ''Smith&Wesson Russian'' was a revolver [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin made by Smith&Wesson for the Russian army]].
* ''Mosin-Nagant'' was the five-shot bolt-action rifle that replaced the Berdan and became famous in both the [[RedOctober Russian Civil War]] and [[WorldWarTwo the Great Patriotic War]]. Now sold to private citizens as a hunting weapon. About the only things that connects it to the famous Belgian weaponsmith is basically a lawsuit, as the only detail that captain Mosin borrowed from Nagant's competing design was present only in the prototype, was completely redesigned in the trials and refinement stage and wasn't even all that important to begin with -- it simply prevented some possible malfunctions. But the Tsar's government decided to placate a famous foreigner and paid him the same amount as to Mosin. Nagant then felt that it was a proof of his copyright and ran with it, advertising himself as one of the rifle's co-designers — which is why the rifle is called as such in the West.
* ''Nagant'' revolver was the main reason why the government decided to pander to him. As S&W revolver was beginning to grow obsolete, Nagant offered his revolutionary design for a quite reasonable price. Quite slow and difficult to reload (it didn't have a break-out cylinder and has thus to be reloaded one-by-one), this revolver, however, used a special cartridge that eliminated the gas breakout from the cylinder front, and was thus very powerful for its time. Still a lot of them in storage.
* ''[[AwesomeButImpractical The Tsar Tank]]'' was a WWI Russian design for a super-tank that resembled a giant tricycle with enormous wheels. Didn't go past prototype stage, but hey, it looked cool.