Brusilov Offensive (1916): Russia's Greatest WWI Success

The Brusilov Offensive was the most successful Russian operation of the First World War. Launched on 4 June 1916 by General Aleksei Brusilov’s Southwestern Front, it smashed through Austro-Hungarian lines in Volhynia, Galicia and Bukovina, in what is now western Ukraine. It nearly knocked Austria-Hungary out of the war and forced Germany to divert troops from the west, but its enormous cost helped push Russia towards revolution.

Background

By 1916 the war in the east had settled into a pattern of Russian defeats. In 1914 Russia had lost heavily at Tannenberg, and the German-Austrian Gorlice-Tarnów offensive of 1915 drove Russian armies out of Poland and much of Galicia in the so-called Great Retreat.

At the Chantilly conference of December 1915 the Allies agreed to launch coordinated offensives in 1916 to stop Germany and Austria-Hungary shifting reserves between fronts. Events overtook the plan. Germany attacked the French at Verdun in February 1916, and in May Austria-Hungary struck Italy in the Trentino. France and Italy both appealed to Russia for help.

Russia’s main effort was meant to come further north, from the Western Front under General Alexei Evert. Brusilov, newly appointed to the Southwestern Front in March 1916, argued that his front should attack too, so that the enemy could not concentrate reserves against a single blow.

Brusilov’s new tactics

Most First World War offensives followed a similar formula: mass troops and guns on a narrow sector, fire a long bombardment, then try to push through. This gave defenders days of warning to bring up reserves.

Brusilov did things differently. His four armies, the 8th, 11th, 7th and 9th, each prepared their own attack sectors along a front of roughly 400 km, from the Pripet Marshes to the Romanian border. The enemy could not tell which attack was the main one.

Preparation was meticulous. Aerial photographs and patrols mapped Austro-Hungarian positions. Russian troops dug saps and assembly trenches to within about 100 metres of the enemy wire in some places, and built full-scale replicas of enemy trenches to rehearse. Artillery fired short, targeted bombardments against specific defences rather than days of general shelling, and reserves were kept close behind the line.

What happened

The bombardment opened early on 4 June 1916 (22 May in the Russian calendar of the time). The greatest success came on the right, where General Aleksei Kaledin’s 8th Army tore apart the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army under Archduke Joseph Ferdinand. Lutsk fell on 7 June, which is why Russian historians often call the operation the Lutsk breakthrough.

In the far south, General Platon Lechitsky’s 9th Army broke through in Bukovina and took Czernowitz (today Chernivtsi) around 17 to 18 June, then pushed towards the Carpathian passes. Within the first weeks Austro-Hungarian units surrendered in huge numbers, and the Russians took well over 200,000 prisoners.

The problem was exploitation. Evert’s long-delayed attack in the north, near Baranovichi in early July, failed with heavy losses. Germany rushed in reserves, many from the Western Front, and extended German command, under generals such as Alexander von Linsingen, over shaken Austro-Hungarian formations.

From July Russian headquarters shifted the main effort to Brusilov’s front and ordered repeated attacks towards the rail hub of Kovel. Along the marshy Stokhod river, the elite Guard Army and other formations suffered terrible casualties against German defences that had been reinforced and were now expecting them. By late September exhaustion, rain and losses brought the offensive to a halt around 20 September.

Why the breakthrough stalled

Several weaknesses limited what Brusilov could achieve. Russian railways in the region were sparse, so reinforcements and shells arrived slowly, while Germany could shift divisions quickly along its own dense rail network. Russian cavalry, held back for exploitation, proved of little use against machine guns and was often too far away when gaps opened.

Coordination at the top was poor. Tsar Nicholas II had taken personal command of the army in 1915, but real direction lay with his chief of staff, General Mikhail Alekseyev, who could persuade rather than order the cautious commanders of the northern fronts. Evert in particular delayed his attack several times, and when it came it was a conventional narrow-front assault of the kind Brusilov had rejected.

Finally, success changed the enemy’s behaviour. Once German officers took charge of the southern sector, they rebuilt defences in depth and held reserves ready. The surprise that had made June so effective could not be repeated, and later Russian attacks resembled the costly battles of attrition seen on the Western Front.

Key people

• Aleksei Brusilov (1853-1926), a cavalry general and former head of the Officers’ Cavalry School, who designed the offensive.
• Aleksei Kaledin, commander of the 8th Army, whose troops made the Lutsk breakthrough; he later led Don Cossack resistance to the Bolsheviks.
• Platon Lechitsky, commander of the 9th Army in Bukovina.
• Mikhail Alekseyev, chief of staff to Tsar Nicholas II at headquarters, who approved the plan but struggled to coordinate the fronts.
• Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, commander of the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army, relieved after its collapse.

By the numbers

Casualty figures are disputed, and different historians count sick, missing and prisoners in different ways.

Consequences

The offensive changed the course of the war in several ways. Austria-Hungary abandoned its attack on Italy, and its army never fully recovered its independence: from September 1916 a joint command of the Central Powers was placed under the German Kaiser, with Hindenburg and Ludendorff effectively in control.

Germany had to move divisions east at the same time as the Allies opened the Battle of the Somme, which eased the pressure on Verdun. The crisis contributed to the dismissal of the German chief of staff Erich von Falkenhayn in late August 1916.

Encouraged by Russian success, Romania entered the war on the Allied side on 27 August 1916. The decision proved disastrous: German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian and Ottoman forces overran most of Romania, including Bucharest, by December.

For Russia the victory was bittersweet. The territory gained was modest, the casualties were vast, and much of the experienced manpower of the army was lost. War-weariness, food shortages and distrust of the government grew through the winter, leading to the February Revolution of 1917.

Legacy

Military historians regard the Brusilov Offensive as one of the most skilful operations of the war. Its emphasis on surprise, broad-front attacks, close preparation and short bombardments anticipated methods used by several armies in 1917 and 1918.

Brusilov himself had an unusual career after 1917. He served briefly as commander-in-chief under the Provisional Government, then stayed in Russia after the Bolshevik takeover and joined the Red Army in an advisory role in 1920, during the war with Poland. His memoirs became an important, if self-justifying, source on the offensive.

Timeline

• 1915, December: Allied conference at Chantilly agrees on coordinated offensives for 1916.
• 1916, March: Aleksei Brusilov takes command of Russia’s Southwestern Front.
• 1916, 4 June: The Brusilov Offensive opens along a front of about 400 km.
• 1916, 7 June: Russian 8th Army captures Lutsk.
• 1916, around 17-18 June: Russian 9th Army takes Czernowitz in Bukovina.
• 1916, July: Evert’s northern attack near Baranovichi fails; costly attacks towards Kovel begin.
• 1916, 27 August: Romania declares war on Austria-Hungary.
• 1916, around 20 September: The offensive comes to a halt.

Why it matters

The Brusilov Offensive showed that the trench stalemate could be broken with careful planning, and it nearly destroyed Austria-Hungary as an independent military power. Yet its human cost undermined the Russian army and state, so Russia’s greatest victory of the war also helped set the stage for its collapse in 1917.