main index Narrative
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 Mikhail Kutuzov, the field marshal who defeated Napoleon
"For the faith, the Tsar and the fatherland!"
The Beginning
The regular Russian military was created by Peter The Great. Before him, the Muscovite army was a patchwork of feudal levies, uncontrollable, wild 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 was a boy by creating himself some "Entertainment Regiments" of teenage boys armed with real muskets and setting up battles 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.
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 the Turkey, France and Britain), 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 Bulgaria regaining independence and Serbia increasing its territory.
Once Again Into the Breach: Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was started for reasons of internal politics, not geopolitics or external security. Russia's minister of police, von Plehve, stated that "Russia needs a small victorious war to stave off the threat of revolution". This was the time when Imperial Russia became a truly Vestigial Empire, losing international reputation, getting mired in civil unrest and not knowing what to do with their own future, and the revolution lurked somewhere very close. So they 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 Medieval Stasis, what could possibly go wrong?
Unfortunately for the Russians, the Japanese took their modernization very seriously, and soon Russians faced a fairly modern (by that time) and fanatical army opposing them. The Russians lacked the Japanese fighting zeal, they hated their own government, their officers were mostly cowards and intendants mostly corrupt, and in the end, despite the enormous strategic superiority (the war, while tactically very successful, strethched the Japanese economy to the breaking point, so their government was contemplating suing for peace) the result was an embarrassing defeat that kick-started the revolution of 1905 instead of postponing it.
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 one thing can be stated about him as a hard fact: he was bloody fucking stupid. He didn't get the lesson of Russo-Japanese War and got his country stuck in another, even larger military adventure: the Great War itself. The problems that surfaced in the war with Japan, namely poor morale, obsolete equipment, lack of industry and corrupt suppliers, were turned Up to Eleven. By 1916, many units straight out refused to leave for the front, and in 1917, a revolution started, and a much larger and harsher one than the revolution of 1905.
The Remnant: 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 World War One, 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 Redshirt Army 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 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; 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 Ensign Newbie, similar to the German rank Fahnrich.
—Russian Imperial Army motto
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