Brusilov breakthrough: briefly about the offensive. Brusilov breakthrough during the First World War (1916) The significance of the Brusilov breakthrough briefly

Illustration copyright RIA News Image caption Russian troops enter Buchach, destroyed by artillery fire, in the Ternopil region

On September 7, 1916, the Brusilov breakthrough of the Russian army ended with partial success - unique in the course of the positional First World War, overcoming a fortified enemy front to a significant depth.

It is also the only battle of that war that bears the name of a commander, and not a location.

• World War I: what did Russia achieve?

True, contemporaries talked mainly about the Lutsk breakthrough. The term “Brusilov breakthrough,” according to a number of researchers, was consolidated by Soviet historians, since General Alexei Brusilov subsequently served as a Red.

Not according to plan and science

According to the Entente's strategic plan for the summer-autumn of 1916, approved in March at the conference in Chantilly, the actions of Brusilov's Southwestern Front in Galicia were assigned a distracting role. The main blow in the direction of Vilna and further to East Prussia was to be delivered by the Western Front of General Alexei Evert.

The Western and Northern fronts accumulated almost double superiority over the Germans opposing them (1.22 million versus 620 thousand bayonets and sabers).

Brusilov had a smaller advantage: 512 thousand against 441 thousand, although mostly not Germans, but Austrians.

But the ambitious Brusilov was eager to fight, and Evert was afraid. Newspapers hinted, and people openly mentioned his non-Russian surname in this regard, although it was only a matter of character traits.

In order to confuse the enemy, the commander of the Southwestern Front, Brusilov, proposed launching an offensive in four sectors at once: on Lutsk and Kovel, on Brody, on Galich and on Chernivtsi and Kolomyia.

This was contrary to the classical canons of military leadership, which, since the time of Sun Tzu (Chinese strategist and thinker of the 3rd century BC), had prescribed the concentration of forces. But in this case, Brusilov's approach worked, becoming a pioneering contribution to military theory.

A few hours before the start of the artillery barrage, the Chief of the General Staff, General Alekseev, called from Headquarters in Mogilev and said that Nicholas II wanted to postpone the attack in order to once again consider the dubious, in his opinion, idea of ​​dispersing resources.

Brusilov stated that if his plan was rejected, he would resign, and demanded a conversation with the emperor. Alekseev said that the king went to bed and did not order to wake him up. Brusilov, at his own peril and risk, began to act as he had planned.

During the successful offensive, Nikolai sent telegrams to Brusilov with the following content: “Tell My beloved troops of the front entrusted to you that I am following their brave actions with a sense of pride and satisfaction, I appreciate their impulse and express my most heartfelt gratitude to them.”

But subsequently he repaid the general for his self-will, refusing to approve the proposal of the Duma of St. George Knights to award him the Order of St. George, 2nd degree, and limiting himself to a less significant distinction: the St. George weapon.

Progress of the operation

The Austrians hoped for the triple line of defense they had created, up to 15 km deep, with continuous lines of trenches, reinforced concrete pillboxes, barbed wire and minefields.

The Germans and Austrians obtained information about the plans of the Entente and waited for the main events in the Baltic states. The massive strike in Ukraine came as a surprise to them.

The earth was moving. Three-inch shells flew with a howl and whistle, and with a dull groan, heavy explosions merged into one terrible symphony. The first stunning success was achieved thanks to the close interaction of infantry and artillery Sergei Semanov, historian

The Russian artillery barrage turned out to be extremely effective, lasting in different areas from 6 to 45 hours.

“Thousands of shells turned habitable, heavily fortified positions into hell. That morning something unheard of and unprecedented in the annals of a dull, bloody, positional war happened. Almost along the entire length of the Southwestern Front, the attack was a success,” says historian Nikolai Yakovlev.

By noon on May 24, over 40 thousand Austrians were captured, by May 27, 73 thousand, including 1210 officers, 147 guns and mortars and 179 machine guns were captured.

General Kaledin's 8th Army was especially successful (a year and a half later he would shoot himself in Novocherkassk, besieged by the Reds, when 147 people, mostly cadets and high school students, came to defend the city at his call).

• Ice March: Curtain of Tragedy

On June 7, troops of the 8th Army took Lutsk, penetrating into enemy territory 80 km in depth and 65 km along the front. The Austrian counterattack, which began on June 16, was unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, Evert, citing unpreparedness, achieved a postponement of the start of operations on the Western Front until June 17, then until the beginning of July. The offensive on Baranovichi and Brest on July 3-8 floundered.

“The attack on Baranovichi took place, but, as was not difficult to foresee, the troops suffered enormous losses and were a complete failure, and this ended the military activities of the Western Front to facilitate my offensive,” Brusilov wrote in his memoirs.

Only 35 days after the start of the breakthrough, the Headquarters officially revised the plan for the summer campaign, assigning the main role to the Southwestern Front, and a supporting role to the Western Front.

Brusilov's front received the 3rd and Special armies (the latter was formed from two guards corps, it was the 13th in a row, and out of superstition it was called Special), turned to the northwest and on July 4 began an attack on the strategic transport hub Kovel, this time against the Germans.

The defense line was broken here too, but it was not possible to take Kovel.

Stubborn, protracted battles began. “The Eastern Front is going through difficult days,” Chief of the German General Staff Erich Ludendorff wrote in his diary on August 1.

Results

The main goal that Brusilov strived for - to cross the Carpathians and knock Austria-Hungary out of the war - was not achieved.

The Brusilov breakthrough is the forerunner of the remarkable breakthroughs carried out by the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War Mikhail Galaktionov, Soviet general, military historian

However, Russian troops advanced 80-120 kilometers, occupied almost all of Volyn and Bukovina and part of Galicia - a total of about 25 thousand square kilometers of territory.

Austria-Hungary lost 289 thousand people killed, wounded and missing and 327 thousand prisoners, Germany, 128 and 20 thousand, respectively, Russia - 482 and 312 thousand.

The Quadruple Alliance had to transfer 31 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions with a total number of more than 400 thousand people from the Western, Italian and Thessaloniki fronts, including even two Turkish divisions. This eased the position of the French and British in the Battle of the Somme, saved the Italian army, which was defeated by the Austrians, and prompted Romania to enter the war on the side of the Entente on August 28.

This operation did not produce any strategic results, because the Western Front never delivered the main blow, and the Northern Front had as its motto “patience, patience, patience,” familiar to us from the Japanese war. The headquarters, in my opinion, did not fulfill its purpose of controlling the entire Russian armed force. A grandiose victorious operation, which could have been carried out with the proper course of action of our Supreme High Command in 1916, was unforgivably missed by Alexey Brusilov, commander of the Southwestern Front

In stopping the offensive, the main role was played not by military considerations, but by politics.

“The troops were exhausted, but there is no doubt that the stop was premature and due to orders from Headquarters,” General Vladimir Gurko wrote in exile.

Starting from July 25, the Empress, who remained “on the farm” in Petrograd, bombarded her husband with telegrams, almost every one of which contained references to the opinion of “Friend” - Grigory Rasputin: “Our Friend finds that it would not be worthwhile to advance so persistently, since the losses are too great.” ; “Our Friend hopes that we will not cross the Carpathians, he keeps repeating that the losses will be excessive”; “Give the order to Brusilov to stop this useless massacre, our generals do not hesitate in the face of terrible bloodshed, this is sinful”; “Don’t listen to Alekseev, because you are the commander-in-chief.”

Finally, Nicholas II surrendered: “Dear, Brusilov, having received my instructions, gave the order to stop the offensive.”

“Losses, and they can be significant, are inevitable. An offensive without casualties is only possible during maneuvers,” Brusilov retorted in his memoirs.

From the standpoint of waging war, the actions of Alexandra Feodorovna and Rasputin seem bordering on treason. However, everything begins to look different if you allow yourself to ask the question: was this war necessary in principle?

Alexandra Fedorovna

With the Tsarina, everything was clear to Russian society: “German”!

For those who knew her, the empress's patriotism did not raise any doubts. Her devotion to Russia was sincere and genuine. The war was personally painful for her also because her brother, Duke Ernest of Hesse, served in the German army Robert Massey, American historian

An anecdote gained incredible popularity: Brusilov walks through the Tsarskoye Selo Palace and sees the sobbing heir Alexei. “What are you sad about, Your Highness? - The Germans are beating ours, dad is upset, ours are beating the Germans, mom is crying!”

Meanwhile, the Empress, being the granddaughter of Queen Victoria on her mother’s side and spending a significant part of her childhood with her grandmother, was, for that matter, more English than German by upbringing.

In Hesse, where her father ruled, Prussia was always disliked. The Principality was one of the last to join the German Empire, and without great desire.

“Prussia is the cause of the death of Germany,” Alexandra Fedorovna repeated, and when the famous library in Louvain burned down as a result of the invasion of the German army into neutral Belgium, she exclaimed: “I am ashamed to be German!”

“Russia is the country of my husband and son. I was happy in Russia. My heart is given to this country,” she told her close friend Anna Vyrubova.

A woman sometimes sees and feels more clearly than her indecisive lover Alexandra Fedorovna, from a letter to her husband

Alexandra Fedorovna’s anti-war sentiments were explained, rather, by the fact that she generally had relatively little interest in foreign policy. All her thoughts revolved around the preservation of autocracy, and especially the interests of her son, as she understood them.

In addition, Nicholas saw the war from Headquarters, where they thought in terms of abstract human losses, and the Empress and her daughters worked in the hospital, witnessing suffering and death with their own eyes.

"Holy Damn"

Rasputin's influence rested on two pillars. The monarchs saw in him a healer of their son and at the same time an exponent of the people's deepest aspirations, a kind of God-given messenger of ordinary people.

According to the historian Andrei Burovsky, the split and misunderstanding between “Russian Europeans” and “Russian Asians” were nowhere more evident than in relation to the First World War.

Give the State 20 years of peace, internal and external, and you will not recognize Russia. Petr Stolypin, Russian Prime Minister

Among the educated classes, with rare exceptions, the need for war to a victorious end was not in doubt.

The servant of the throne, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Izvolsky, triumphed on August 1, 1914: “This is my war! Mine!” The revolutionary-minded poet Alexander Blok said on the same day to Zinaida Gippius: “War is fun!”

The attitude towards war united such different people as Admiral Kolchak and the Marxist Plekhanov.

During interrogations in Irkutsk, investigators repeatedly, coming from different angles, asked Kolchak: did he at some stage have the thought of the futility of continuing the war? No, he answered categorically, it simply never occurred to me or anyone in my circle.

In April 1917, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet met with politicians in Petrograd. According to Kolchak’s memoirs, Plekhanov suddenly spoke, as if in a trance: “Russia cannot be without Constantinople! It’s like living with someone else’s hands on your throat!”

This war is madness. Why should Russia fight? Out of pious duty to help your blood brothers? This is a romantic, old-fashioned chimera. What do we hope to get? Expansion of territory? Great God! Isn't His Majesty's empire big enough? Sergei Witte, Russian Prime Minister

The peasantry, according to Lyudmila Novikova, deputy director of the Center for the History and Sociology of World Wars at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, perceived the war for geopolitical greatness and prestige as just another lordly undertaking, a “tax in blood” that they agreed to pay until the rate became too high.

By 1916, the number of deserters and “deviators” amounted to up to 15% of those called up, while in France it was 3%, in Germany 2%.

Rasputin, according to the memoirs of Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, the future manager of Lenin’s Council of People’s Commissars, did not know the name of Karl Marx, and only had a strong opinion on one political issue: being a peasant by origin and psychology, he treated war as a completely unnecessary and harmful matter.

“I always have great pity for a person,” he explained.

If Rasputin had succeeded in ending the war, Russian history would have taken a completely different path, and Rasputin himself would have become our national hero of the 20th century Nikolai Svanidze, journalist, historian

“National dignity must be respected, but it is not proper to rattle weapons. I always say this,” the “elder” said in an interview with the newspaper “Novoe Vremya” in May 1914.

He had no sympathy specifically for Germany, and would have been equally opposed to any war.

“Rasputin, with his peasant mind, advocated good neighborly relations between Russia and all major powers,” notes modern researcher Alexei Varlamov.

Opponents of external expansionism and wars were two outstanding Russian politicians of the early 20th century - Sergei Witte and Pyotr Stolypin.

• Minister and king

But by 1916, both were dead.

On the issue of war, the only like-minded people were the Empress and Rasputin and the Bolsheviks. But both of them did not need peace for reforms and development. The “dark forces” sought to preserve what was, the Leninists - “to turn the imperialist war into a civil war.”

"Dark forces" could save the empire. But neither the large Romanov family, nor the court, nor the aristocracy, nor the bourgeoisie, nor the Duma leaders understood them. The Bolsheviks will win because they will realize the idea of ​​the “dark forces” - to make peace. “At any cost,” writes historian Edward Radzinsky.

In the history of the First World War, two strategic operations were named not by the place where they took place, but by the names of their commanders. The first of them is the “Brusilovsky breakthrough”, and the second, organized in April-May 1917 by the Anglo-French command, the “Nivelle meat grinder”. In the east there is a “breakthrough”, in the west there is a “meat grinder”.

Already from these epithets it is clear which of the Entente allies fought with greater skill and took more care of soldiers’ lives.

Alexey Alekseevich Brusilov remained the hero of one, but grandiose battle, during which military techniques were developed that are relevant right up to our time.

A representative of an old noble family was born in Tiflis, where his father, Lieutenant General Alexei Nikolaevich Brusilov, headed the military judicial authorities of the Caucasian Corps.

The boy was six years old when first his father and then his mother, born Maria-Louise Nestoemskaya (Polish by birth), died. Three orphaned brothers were taken in by their uncle and aunt, the Gagemeister spouses, and then were sent to military schools. Alexey and the next oldest brother, Boris, entered the privileged Corps of Pages. The youngest of the brothers, Lev, followed the naval line and rose to the rank of vice admiral. But even more famous than Lev Alekseevich is his son and nephew of the commander, Georgy, who died during an expedition to the North Pole and became one of the prototypes of the polar explorer Tatarinov from Kaverin’s famous novel “Two Captains”.

Manege career

Brusilov's service began at the age of 19 in a dragoon regiment, where he soon took the position of regimental adjutant, that is, the person who determined the daily life of the unit's headquarters.

In 1877, the war with Turkey broke out, and for his participation in the capture of the fortresses of Ardahan and Kars, he received three orders from among those that usually go to staff officers.

But his brother Boris in 1881-1882 participated in Skobelev’s expedition against the Tekins and was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree, prestigious among army men. However, then Boris retired, settling on the family estate Glebovo-Brusilovo. Alexey continued his service and, having completed the courses for squadron and hundred commanders with excellent marks, was sent to the Officer Cavalry School.

As a teacher, he taught representatives of aristocratic families, but at the same time he made useful connections among them. Most importantly, Brusilov gained the favor of the commander of the capital's military district, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Jr., who ensured his transfer from the post of head of the school to the vacancy of the head of the 2nd Guards Cavalry Division. It turns out that Brusilov had modest experience in commanding combat units, did not study at the Nikolaev Military Academy and did not take part in the Russo-Japanese War, but rose to the highest levels of the military hierarchy.

His career looked so unusual that some historians connected it with the Freemasons, who allegedly promoted Brusilov “to the top” so that at the right moment he would help them overthrow the Tsar-Father. Although everything was explained much more simply: this career was made in riding arenas, on parade grounds and in salons. And Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich was worth a dozen other patrons, especially since at the beginning of the First World War it was he who was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

Brusilov immediately found himself at the head of the 8th Army, which was crushing the Austrians in Galicia.

At the end of August 1914, when the situation was hanging by a thread, he gave his subordinate General Kaledin the famous order: “The 12th Cavalry Division is to die. Die not immediately, but before evening.” The division survived.

Then there were successful battles on the San River and near the city of Stryi, where Brusilov’s units captured about 15 thousand prisoners. When the Austro-Germans broke through the Russian front at Gorlitsa in May-June 1915, Aleksey Alekseevich again rose to the occasion, successfully leading his army out of the trap, and already in September launched a counterattack, capturing Lutsk and Czartorysk.

Nikolai Nikolaevich had been removed from his post by that time, but Brusilov's reputation was so high that Nicholas II appointed him commander of the Southwestern Front.

Victory score

Based on the demands of the allies, who wanted the Germans to weaken the onslaught on Verdun, the tsar decided to deliver the main blow with the forces of the Western (General Evert) and Northern (General Kuropatkin) fronts.

The Southwestern Front fighting against Austria-Hungary should have launched an auxiliary strike with the sole purpose of preventing the Austrians from helping the Germans.

Both Evert and Kuropatkin did not believe in the success of the matter, but Brusilov expressed his readiness to attack ahead of schedule, without requiring reinforcements. Meanwhile, the enemy defense was so strong that, ignoring considerations of secrecy, an exhibition was even organized in Vienna, where models and photographs of Austrian fortifications were demonstrated. It must be understood that Russian agents also visited it, since, coupled with aerial reconnaissance data, Brusilov had enough information.

In fact, he managed to create a new breakthrough methodology. He decided to attack not in one place, but on 13 sections of the 450-kilometer front; in another 20 sections it was necessary to limit himself to a demonstration.

We prepared carefully. The photographs taken by the pilots were enlarged, and each officer received a detailed map of his area. Observers spotted enemy firing points, marked landmarks, after which careful shooting was carried out. Instead of firing over areas, targets were determined in advance for each battery.

The attack technique was being developed. In each company, assault groups were created from the most skilled soldiers. It was supposed to move in “waves of chains.” Each regiment formed four lines with a distance between them of 150-200 steps. The first and second waves, armed with grenades, smoke bombs and wire-cutting shears, had to, without stopping, roll through the first trench and gain a foothold in the second, after which they would begin to clear out the remaining enemy behind the lines. At the same time, the third and fourth lines with fresh forces attacked the third line of enemy trenches.

Brusilov did not neglect what is called in our time the information war. The personnel were brought to the attention of the facts of the enemy’s torture of prisoners of war, atrocities in the occupied territory, as well as episodes like the case when the Germans captured a group of Russian soldiers who visited them during a calm period to “christen” on the occasion of Easter.

Weapons covered in diamonds

The offensive began on June 4, 1916, the birthday of the commander of the 4th Austrian Army, Archduke Joseph Ferdinand. On the main direction near Lutsk, only Russian cannons were active that day: the artillery preparation lasted 29 hours here. Further south, the artillery preparation took only six hours, but the 11th Army managed to occupy three lines of trenches and a number of important heights. Even further south, at the location of the 7th Army, matters were also limited to artillery preparation. And finally, on the extreme southern flank - in the 9th Army - everything played out like clockwork. Artillery preparation took 8 hours, ending with a gas attack, then two shock corps broke through the first line of enemy defense.

The next morning began with an attack on the main sector of the 8th Army. On June 7, Denikin’s Iron Division, moving in the vanguard, captured Lutsk, which had been surrendered to the enemy six months earlier. After this success, Russian newspapers wrote about the offensive as the Lutsk breakthrough, but the people called it Brusilovsky. If Evert and Kuropatkin failed their attacks, then Alexei Alekseevich achieved complete success. However, instead of the Order of St. George, 2nd or even 1st degree, which was due to him, he was awarded the less prestigious Arms of St. George, albeit with diamonds.

Meanwhile, the Austrians curtailed their offensive against Italy, and the Germans began to transfer troops from France. Even the Turks sent a division to help the allies, which, however, somehow disappeared imperceptibly in the whirlwind of battles. By the end of August, the offensive, which had become the swan song of the imperial army, gradually died out.

Russian losses according to official figures amounted to 477,967 people; of which 62,155 were killed and died from wounds, missing (mostly captured) - 38,902. The total enemy losses amounted to 1.4-1.6 million soldiers and officers. The share of Germans is about 20%. As for the armed forces of Austria-Hungary, they by and large never recovered from this blow.

In January 1917, Alexei Alekseevich was asked when the war would be won, and he replied: “The war has essentially already been won.”

Through his lips...

Under the red banner

Brusilov considered his beliefs to be “purely Russian, Orthodox,” but at the same time he moved in liberal circles and was interested in far from Orthodox things like the occult.

He was not an ardent monarchist either, which was confirmed by the events of February 1917, when Brusilov, together with other commanders of armies and fronts, advocated the abdication of Nicholas II.

Seeing the genie out of the bottle, he honestly tried to salvage what he could by accepting the position of Supreme Commander and trying to instill morale in the decaying units. His most famous initiative was the creation of the so-called volunteers. shock battalions, which, “positioned in the most important combat areas, with their impulse could carry away the hesitant.” But the army was not interested in such examples.

An excellent tactician and strategist turned out to be helpless where an iron hand, demagoguery and the skills of a political intriguer were required. After the failure of the June offensive, he was replaced by Lavr Kornilov and went to Moscow, where he received the only wound of his life. In October, during street battles between Red Guards and cadets, he was wounded in the thigh by a shell fragment in his own house. He had to undergo treatment for a long time, but there was a reason not to interfere in the civil strife that was tearing the country apart, although Brusilov’s sympathies were on the side of the whites: his brother Boris died in the KGB dungeons in 1918.

But in 1920, when the war with Poland broke out, the general’s mood changed. In general, the fight against a long-standing historical enemy put many former officers in a conciliatory mood, who dreamed of restoring the empire, even if in Bolshevik packaging.

Alexey Alekseevich signed an appeal to white officers, which contained a call for an end to the Civil War and a promise of amnesty. Nearby were the signatures of Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev and Kalinin. The appearance of the Brusilov name in such a company really made a strong impression, and many officers believed in the appeal.

Assessing the effect produced, the Bolsheviks decided to tie the popular military leader even more tightly to themselves, appointing him to honorary, but unimportant positions.

Brusilov held posts, but felt that he was only being used, and in 1924 he retired. He was given a salary as an expert of the Revolutionary Military Council, published memoirs about the First World War, and even provided treatment in Karlovy Vary.

While in Czechoslovakia, he dictated the second volume of memoirs to his wife Nadezhda Vladimirovna Brusilova-Zhelikhovskaya (1864-1938), expressing everything he thought about the Bolsheviks, but ordered the memoirs to be published only after his death. Returning to his homeland, Alexey Alekseevich died and was buried in the Novodevichy Convent with full military honors.

Marshal Maker

In 1902-1904, when Brusilov headed the Officer Cavalry School, cavalry guard Baron Mannerheim was among his subordinates. The future Marshal of Finland recalled about his boss: “He was an attentive, strict, demanding leader of his subordinates and gave very good knowledge. His military games and exercises on the ground were exemplary and extremely interesting in their development and execution.”

In 1907, the future Soviet Marshal Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny was sent to the Officer Cavalry School as the best rider of the 2b Don Cossack Regiment. He completed the courses with honors, and after the Civil War he worked with Brusilov as an assistant to the commander-in-chief of the Red Army for cavalry.

Brusilov also played a decisive role in the fate of another red cavalryman - Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky. In 1916, as the leader of a bandit gang, he was sentenced to death, but Alexey Alekseevich insisted on saving his life.

What is the Brusilov breakthrough? This is the offensive of the Southwestern Front of the Russian army during the First World War. The offensive operation was carried out against the Austro-German troops from May 22 to September 7, 1916 (all dates are given in the old style). As a result of the offensive, significant defeats were inflicted on Austria-Hungary and Germany. Russian troops occupied Volyn, Bukovina and the eastern regions of Galicia (Volyn, Bukovina and Galicia are historical regions in Eastern Europe). These hostilities are characterized by very high human losses.

This major offensive operation was commanded by the commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Front, cavalry general Alexey Alekseevich Brusilov. At that time, he also had the retinue rank of adjutant general. The breakthrough was extremely successful, so it was named after the chief strategist. Soviet historians retained this name, since Brusilov went to serve in the Red Army.

It must be said that in 1915 Germany achieved significant successes on the Eastern Front. She won a number of military victories and captured large enemy territories. At the same time, she was unable to completely and irrevocably defeat Russia. And the latter, although it had large losses in manpower and territories, retained the ability to continue military operations. At the same time, the Russian army lost its offensive spirit. To raise it, Russian Emperor Nicholas II assumed the duties of Supreme Commander on August 10, 1915.

Having not achieved a complete victory over Russia, the German command decided in 1916 to deliver the main blows on the Western Front and defeat France. At the end of February 1916, the offensive of German troops began on the flanks of the Verdun ledge. Historians called this operation the “Verdun Meat Grinder.” As a result of stubborn fighting and huge losses, the Germans advanced 6-8 km. This massacre continued until December 1916.

The French command, repelling German attacks, requested help from Russia. And she began the Naroch operation in March 1916. Russian troops went on the offensive in the most difficult conditions of early spring: the soldiers went on the attack knee-deep in snow and melt water. The offensive continued for 2 weeks, and although it was not possible to break through the German defenses, the German offensive in the Verdun area noticeably weakened.

In 1915, another theater of military operations appeared in Europe - the Italian. Italy entered the war on the side of the Entente, and Austria-Hungary turned out to be its enemy. In confrontation with the Austrians, the Italians showed themselves to be weak warriors and also asked for help from Russia. As a result of this, General Brusilov received a telegram on May 11, 1916 from the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander. He asked to launch an offensive in order to pull back part of the enemy forces from the Italian front.

Brusilov replied that his Southwestern Front would be ready to launch an offensive on May 19. He also said that an offensive by the Western Front, commanded by Alexey Ermolaevich Evert, was necessary. This offensive was necessary to prevent the transfer of German forces to the south. But the chief of staff said that Evert would only be able to advance on June 1st. In the end, they agreed on the date of Brusilov’s offensive, setting it for May 22.

In general, it should be noted that in the summer of 1916, Russia was planning an offensive, but the Supreme Commander’s headquarters placed its main hopes on the Western Front, and the South-Eastern Front was considered as auxiliary, drawing part of the enemy’s forces onto itself. However, the situation developed in such a way that it was General Brusilov who became the main player on the battlefield, and the rest of the forces took on the role of auxiliary.

The Brusilov breakthrough began in the early morning of May 22 with artillery preparation. The shelling of enemy defensive structures continued for 2 days, and only on May 24, 4 Russian armies went on the offensive. A total of 600 thousand people took part in it. The Austro-Hungarian front was broken through in 13 sectors, and Russian troops moved deep into enemy territory.

The most successful was the offensive of the 8th Army under the command of Alexei Maksimovich Kaledin. After 2 weeks of fighting, he occupied Lutsk, and by mid-June he completely defeated the 4th Austro-Hungarian Army. Kaledin's army advanced 80 km in front and advanced 65 km deep into enemy defenses. Also notable successes were achieved by the 9th Army under the command of Lechitsky Platon Alekseevich. By mid-June, it advanced 50 km and took the city of Chernivtsi. By the end of June, the 9th Army entered the operational space and captured the city of Kolomyia, thereby ensuring access to the Carpathians.

And at this time the 8th Army was rushing to Kovel. 2 German divisions removed from the French front were thrown towards her, and 2 Austrian divisions from the Italian front also arrived. But it did not help. The Russian army pushed the enemy back across the Styr River. Only there did the Austro-German units dig in and begin to repel Russian attacks.

Russian successes inspired the Anglo-French army to launch an offensive on the Somme River. The Allies went on the offensive on July 1. This military operation is notable for the fact that tanks were used for the first time. The bloodbath continued until November 1916. At the same time, the Allies advanced 10 km into the depths of the German defense. The Germans were pushed back from well-fortified positions, and they began to prepare the Hindenburg Line, a system of defensive structures in northeastern France.

At the beginning of July (a month later than planned), the offensive of the Western Front of the Russian army began on Baranovichi and Brest. But the fierce resistance of the Germans could not be broken. Having a triple superiority in manpower, the Russian army was unable to break through the German fortifications. The offensive floundered and did not divert enemy forces from the Southwestern Front. Huge losses and lack of results undermined the morale of the soldiers and officers of the Western Front. In 1917, it was these units that became most susceptible to revolutionary propaganda.

At the end of June, the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander of the Russian Army revised its plans and assigned the main attack to the Southwestern Front under the command of Brusilov. Additional forces were transferred to the south, and the task was set to take Kovel, Brody, Lviv, Monastyriska, Ivano-Frankivsk. To strengthen the Brusilov breakthrough, a Special Army was created under the command of Vladimir Mikhailovich Bezobrazov.

At the end of July, the second stage of the offensive of the Southwestern Front began. As a result of stubborn battles on the right flank, the 3rd, 8th and Special Armies advanced 10 km in 3 days and reached the Stokhod River in its upper reaches. But further attacks ended unsuccessfully. Russian troops failed to break through the German defenses and take Kovel.

The 7th, 11th and 9th armies attacked in the center. They broke through the Austro-German front, but new forces were transferred from other directions to meet them. However, at first this did not save the situation. The Russians took Brody and moved towards Lvov. During the offensive, Monastyriska and Galich were taken. On the left flank, the 9th Army also developed an offensive. She occupied Bukovina and took Ivano-Frankivsk.

Brusilovsky breakthrough on the map

Brusilov focused on the Kovel direction. Throughout August there were stubborn battles there. But the offensive impulse had already faded due to fatigue of personnel and heavy losses. In addition, the resistance of the Austro-German troops intensified every day. The attacks became pointless, and General Brusilov began to be advised to transfer the offensive to the southern flank. But the commander of the Southwestern Front did not heed this advice. As a result, by the beginning of September the Brusilov breakthrough came to naught. The Russian army stopped attacking and went on the defensive.

Summing up the results of the large-scale offensive of the Southwestern Front in the summer of 1916, it can be argued that it was successful. The Russian army pushed the enemy back 80-120 km. Occupied Volyn, Bukovina and part of Galicia. At the same time, the losses of the Southwestern Front amounted to 800 thousand people. But the losses of Germany and Austria-Hungary amounted to 1.2 million people. The breakthrough significantly eased the position of the British and French on the Somme and saved the Italian army from defeat.

Thanks to the successful Russian offensive, Romania entered into an alliance with the Entente in August 1916 and declared war on Austria-Hungary. But by the end of the year the Romanian army was defeated and the country was occupied. But in any case, 1916 demonstrated the superiority of the Entente over Germany and its allies. The latter proposed to make peace at the end of the year, but this proposal was rejected.

And how did Alexey Alekseevich Brusilov himself evaluate his Brusilov breakthrough? He stated that this military operation did not provide any strategic advantage. The Western Front failed the offensive, and the Northern Front did not conduct active combat operations at all. In this situation, the headquarters showed its complete inability to control the Russian armed forces. It did not take advantage of the first successes of the breakthrough and was unable to coordinate the actions of other fronts. They acted at their own discretion, and the result was zero.

But Emperor Nicholas II considered this offensive successful. He awarded General Brusilov with the St. George's weapon with diamonds. However, the St. George's Duma at the Supreme Commander's Headquarters advocated for awarding the general the Order of St. George, 2nd degree. But the sovereign did not agree with such a reward, deciding that it was too high. Therefore, everything was limited to a golden or St. George weapon for bravery.

The offensive of the Russian army, which began on June 4, 1916, was first declared its greatest success, then - its greatest failure. What was the Brusilov breakthrough really?

On May 22, 1916 (hereinafter all dates are in the old style) the Southwestern Front of the Russian army went on an offensive, which was recognized as brilliant for another 80 years. And since the 1990s, it began to be called an “attack on self-destruction.” However, a detailed acquaintance with the latest version shows that it is just as far from the truth as the first.

The history of the Brusilov breakthrough, as well as Russia as a whole, was constantly “mutating”. The press and popular prints of 1916 described the offensive as a great achievement of the imperial army, and painted its opponents as klutzes. After the revolution, Brusilov’s memoirs were published, slightly diluting the former official optimism.

According to Brusilov, the offensive showed that the war could not be won this way. After all, Headquarters was unable to take advantage of his successes, which made the breakthrough, although significant, but without strategic consequences. Under Stalin (according to the fashion of that time), failure to use the Brusilov breakthrough was seen as “treason.”

In the 1990s, the process of restructuring the past began with increasing acceleration. An employee of the Russian State Military Historical Archive, Sergei Nelipovich, is the first analysis of the losses of Brusilov’s South-Western Front based on archival data. He discovered that the military leader's memoirs underestimated them several times. A search in foreign archives showed that the enemy’s losses were several times less than Brusilov stated.

The logical conclusion of the historian of the new formation was: the Brusilov impulse is a “war of self-destruction.” The historian believed that the military leader should have been removed from office for such “success”. Nelipovich noted that after the first success, Brusilov was given guards transferred from the capital. She suffered huge losses, so in St. Petersburg itself she was replaced by wartime conscripts. They were extremely unwilling to go to the front and therefore played a decisive role in the tragic events of February 1917 for Russia. Nelipovich’s logic is simple: without Brusilov’s breakthrough there would have been no February, and therefore no decomposition and subsequent fall of the state.

As often happens, the “conversion” of Brusilov from a hero to a villain led to a strong decrease in the interest of the masses in this topic. This is how it should be: when historians change the signs of the heroes of their stories, the credibility of these stories cannot help but fall.

Let's try to present a picture of what happened taking into account archival data, but, unlike S.G. Nelipovich, before evaluating them, let us compare them with similar events of the first half of the 20th century. Then it will become crystal clear to us why, given the correct archival data, he came to completely wrong conclusions.

The breakthrough itself

So, the facts: the Southwestern Front a hundred years ago, in May 1916, received the task of a distracting demonstrative attack on Lutsk. Goal: to pin down enemy forces and distract them from the main offensive of 1916 on the stronger Western Front (north of Brusilov). Brusilov had to take diversionary actions first. Headquarters urged him on, because the Austro-Hungarians had just begun to vigorously smash Italy.

There were 666 thousand people in the combat formations of the Southwestern Front, 223 thousand in the armed reserve (outside combat formations) and 115 thousand in the unarmed reserve. The Austro-German forces had 622 thousand in combat formations and 56 thousand in reserve.

The ratio of manpower in favor of the Russians was only 1.07, as in Brusilov’s memoirs, where he talks about almost equal forces. However, with substitutes, the figure increased to 1.48 - the same as Nelipovich.

But the enemy had an advantage in artillery - 3,488 guns and mortars versus 2,017 for the Russians. Nelipovich, without citing specific sources, points to the Austrians' lack of shells. However, this point of view is rather doubtful. To stop the enemy's growing chains, the defenders need fewer shells than the attackers. After all, during the First World War they had to conduct artillery bombardment for many hours on defenders hidden in trenches.

The close to equal balance of forces meant that Brusilov’s offensive, according to the standards of the First World War, could not be successful. At that time it was possible to advance without an advantage only in the colonies where there was no continuous front line. The fact is that since the end of 1914, for the first time in world history, a single multi-layered trench defense system arose in the European theaters of war. In dugouts protected by meter-long ramparts, the soldiers waited out the enemy’s artillery barrage. When it subsided (so as not to hit their advancing chains), the defenders came out of cover and occupied the trench. Taking advantage of the many-hour warning in the form of a cannonade, reserves were brought up from the rear.

An attacker in an open field came under heavy rifle and machine gun fire and died. Or he captured the first trench with huge losses, after which he fought out of there with counterattacks. And the cycle repeated. Verdun in the West and the Naroch massacre in the East in the same 1916 once again showed that there are no exceptions to this pattern.

How to achieve surprise where it is impossible?

Brusilov did not like this scenario: not everyone wants to be a whipping boy. He planned a small revolution in military affairs. In order to prevent the enemy from finding out the offensive area in advance and pulling reserves there, the Russian military leader decided to deliver the main blow in several places at once - one or two in the zone of each army. The General Staff, to put it mildly, was not delighted and talked tediously about the dispersal of forces. Brusilov pointed out that the enemy would either scatter his forces too, or - if he didn’t scatter them - would allow his defenses to be broken through at least somewhere.

Before the offensive, Russian units opened trenches closer to the enemy (standard procedure at that time), but in many areas at once. The Austrians had never encountered anything like this before, so they believed that we were talking about distracting actions that should not be responded to by deploying reserves.

To prevent the Russian artillery barrage from telling the enemy when they would be hit, gunfire continued for 30 hours on the morning of May 22. Therefore, on the morning of May 23, the enemy was taken by surprise. The soldiers did not have time to return from the dugouts along the trenches and “were to put down their weapons and surrender, because as soon as one grenadier with a bomb in his hands stood at the exit, there was no longer any salvation... It is extremely difficult to get out of the shelters in a timely manner and guess the time impossible".

By noon on May 24, the attacks of the Southwestern Front brought 41,000 prisoners - in half a day. The next time prisoners surrendered to the Russian army at such a pace was in 1943 in Stalingrad. And then after the surrender of Paulus.

Without capitulation, just like in 1916 in Galicia, such successes came to us only in 1944. There was no miracle in Brusilov’s actions: the Austro-German troops were ready for freestyle fighting in the style of the First World War, but were faced with boxing, which they saw for the first time in their lives. Just like Brusilov - in different places, with a well-thought-out system of disinformation to achieve surprise - the Soviet infantry of World War II went to break through the front.

Horse stuck in a swamp

The enemy front was broken through in several areas at once. At first glance, this promised enormous success. Russian troops had tens of thousands of quality cavalrymen. It was not for nothing that the then non-commissioned cavalrymen of the Southwestern Front - Zhukov, Budyonny and Gorbatov - assessed it as excellent. Brusilov's plan involved the use of cavalry to develop a breakthrough. However, this did not happen, which is why the major tactical success never turned into a strategic one.

The main reason for this was, of course, errors in cavalry management. Five divisions of the 4th Cavalry Corps were concentrated on the right flank of the front opposite Kovel. But here the front was held by German units, which were sharply superior in quality to the Austrian ones. In addition, the outskirts of Kovel, already wooded, at the end of May of that year had not yet dried out from the muddy roads and were rather wooded and swampy. A breakthrough here was never achieved, the enemy was only driven back.

To the south, near Lutsk, the area was more open, and the Austrians who were there were not equal opponents to the Russians. They were subjected to a devastating blow. By May 25, 40,000 prisoners had been taken here alone. According to various sources, the 10th Austrian Corps lost, due to a disruption in the work of its headquarters, 60–80 percent of its strength. This was an absolute breakthrough.

But General Kaledin, the commander of the Russian 8th Army, did not risk introducing his only 12th cavalry division into the breakthrough. Its commander, Mannerheim, who later became the head of the Finnish army in the war with the USSR, was a good commander, but too disciplined. Despite understanding Kaledin's mistake, he only sent him a series of requests. Having been refused nomination, he obeyed the order. Of course, without even using his only cavalry division, Kaledin did not demand the transfer of the cavalry that was inactive near Kovel.

"All Quiet on the Western Front"

At the end of May, the Brusilov breakthrough - for the first time in that positional war - provided a chance for major strategic success. But the mistakes of Brusilov (cavalry against Kovel) and Kaledin (failure to introduce cavalry into the breakthrough) nullified the chances of success, and then the meat grinder typical of the First World War began. In the first weeks of the battle, the Austrians lost a quarter of a million prisoners. Because of this, Germany reluctantly began to collect divisions from France and Germany itself. By the beginning of July, with difficulty, they managed to stop the Russians. It also helped the Germans that the “main blow” of Evert’s Western Front was in one sector - which is why the Germans easily foresaw it and thwarted it.

Headquarters, seeing Brusilov’s success and the impressive defeat in the direction of the “main attack” of the Western Front, transferred all reserves to the Southwestern Front. They arrived “on time”: the Germans brought up troops and, during a three-week pause, created a new line of defense. Despite this, the decision was made to “build on the success”, which, frankly speaking, was already in the past by that point.

To cope with the new methods of the Russian offensive, the Germans began to leave only machine gunners in fortified nests in the first trench, and placed the main forces in the second and sometimes third line of trenches. The first turned into a false firing position. Since the Russian artillerymen could not determine where the bulk of the enemy infantry was located, most of the shells fell into empty trenches. It was possible to fight against this, but such countermeasures were perfected only by the Second World War.

breakthrough,” although this word in the name of the operation traditionally applies to this period. Now the troops slowly gnawed through one trench after another, suffering more losses than the enemy.

The situation could have been changed by regrouping the forces so that they were not concentrated in the Lutsk and Kovel directions. The enemy was no fool, and after a month of fighting he clearly realized that the main “kulaks” of the Russians were located here. It was unwise to continue hitting the same point.

However, those of us who have encountered generals in life understand perfectly well that the decisions they make do not always come from reflection. Often they simply carry out the order “strike with all forces... concentrated in the N-th direction,” and most importantly - as soon as possible. A serious maneuver by force excludes “as soon as possible,” which is why no one undertook such a maneuver.

Perhaps, if the General Staff, headed by Alekseev, had not given specific instructions on where to strike, Brusilov would have had freedom of maneuver. But in real life, Alekseev did not give it to the front commander. The offensive became Verdun of the East. A battle where it is difficult to say who is exhausting whom and what all this is all about. By September, due to the shortage of shells among the attackers (they almost always spend more), the Brusilov breakthrough gradually died out.

Success or failure?

In Brusilov's memoirs, Russian losses are half a million, of which 100,000 were killed and captured. Enemy losses - 2 million people. Like the research of S.G. Nelipovich, who is conscientious in terms of working with archives, does not confirm these figures in his documents.

a war of self-destruction." He is not the first in this. Although the researcher does not indicate this fact in his works, the emigrant historian Kersnovsky was the first to speak about the meaninglessness of the late (later July) phase of the offensive.

In the 90s, Nelipovich made comments on the first edition of Kersnovsky in Russia, where he encountered the word “self-destruction” in relation to the Brusilov breakthrough. From there he gleaned information (later clarified by him in the archives) that the losses in Brusilov’s memoirs were false. It is not difficult for both researchers to notice the obvious similarities. To Nelipovich’s credit, he sometimes “blindly” still puts references to Kersnovsky in the bibliography. But, to his “disgrace,” he does not indicate that it was Kersnovsky who was the first to talk about “self-destruction” on the Southwestern Front since July 1916.

However, Nelipovich also adds something that his predecessor does not have. He believes that the Brusilov breakthrough is undeservedly called such. The idea of ​​more than one strike at the front was proposed to Brusilov by Alekseev. Moreover, Nelipovich considers the June transfer of reserves to Brusilov as the reason for the failure of the offensive of the neighboring Western Front in the summer of 1916.

Nelipovich is wrong here. Let's start with Alekseev's advice: he gave it to all Russian front commanders. It’s just that everyone else hit with one “fist”, which is why they weren’t able to break through anything at all. Brusilov's front in May-June was the weakest of the three Russian fronts - but he struck in several places and achieved several breakthroughs.

"Self-destruction" that never happened

What about "self-destruction"? Nelipovich’s figures easily refute this assessment: the enemy lost 460 thousand killed and captured after May 22. This is 30 percent more than the irretrievable losses of the Southwestern Front. For the First World War in Europe, the figure is phenomenal. At that time, the attackers always lost more, especially irrevocably. The best loss ratio.

We must be glad that sending reserves to Brusilov prevented his northern neighbors from attacking. To achieve its results of 0.46 million captured and killed by the enemy, front commanders Kuropatkin and Evert would have to lose more personnel than they had. The losses that the guard suffered at Brusilov would be a trifle compared to the carnage that Evert carried out on the Western Front or Kuropatkin on the North-Western.

In general, reasoning in the style of “war of self-destruction” in relation to Russia in the First World War is extremely doubtful. By the end of the war, the Empire had mobilized a much smaller part of the population than its Entente allies.

With regard to the Brusilov breakthrough, for all its mistakes, the word “self-destruction” is doubly dubious. Let us remind you: Brusilov took prisoners in less than five months than the USSR managed to take in 1941–1942. And several times more than, for example, what was taken at Stalingrad! This is despite the fact that at Stalingrad the Red Army irrevocably lost almost twice as much as Brusilov did in 1916.

If the Brusilov breakthrough is a war of self-destruction, then other contemporary offensives of the First World War are pure suicide. It is generally impossible to compare Brusilov’s “self-destruction” with the Great Patriotic War, in which the irretrievable losses of the Soviet army were several times higher than those of the enemy.

Let's summarize: everything is learned by comparison. Indeed, having achieved a breakthrough, Brusilov in May 1916 was unable to develop it into a strategic success. But who could do something like that in the First World War? He carried out the best Allied operation of 1916. And - in terms of losses - the best major operation that the Russian armed forces managed to carry out against a serious enemy. For the First World War, the result was more than positive.

Undoubtedly, the battle that began a hundred years ago, for all its meaninglessness after July 1916, was one of the best offensives of the First World War.

The Brusilov breakthrough was an offensive operation by the troops of the Southwestern Front (SWF) of the Russian army on the territory of modern Western Ukraine during the First World War. Prepared and implemented, starting on June 4 (May 22, old style), 1916, under the leadership of the commander-in-chief of the armies of the Southwestern Front, cavalry general Alexei Brusilov. The only battle of the war, the name of which in the world military-historical literature includes the name of a specific commander.

By the end of 1915, the countries of the German bloc - the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) and the Entente alliance opposing them (England, France, Russia, etc.) found themselves in a positional impasse.

Both sides mobilized almost all available human and material resources. Their armies suffered colossal losses, but did not achieve any serious successes. A continuous front formed in both the western and eastern theaters of the war. Any offensive with decisive goals inevitably involved breaking through the enemy's defense in depth.

In March 1916, the Entente countries at a conference in Chantilly (France) set the goal of crushing the Central Powers with coordinated attacks before the end of the year.

For the sake of achieving it, the Headquarters of Emperor Nicholas II in Mogilev prepared a plan for the summer campaign, based on the possibility of attacking only north of Polesie (swamps on the border of Ukraine and Belarus). The main blow in the direction of Vilno (Vilnius) was to be delivered by the Western Front (WF) with the support of the Northern Front (SF). The Southwestern Front, weakened by the failures of 1915, was tasked with pinning down the enemy with defenses. However, at the military council in Mogilev in April, Brusilov obtained permission to also attack, but with specific tasks (from Rivne to Lutsk) and relying only on his own forces.

According to the plan, the Russian army set out on June 15 (June 2, old style), but due to increased pressure on the French near Verdun and the May defeat of the Italians in the Trentino region, the Allies asked Headquarters to start earlier.

The SWF united four armies: the 8th (cavalry general Alexei Kaledin), the 11th (cavalry general Vladimir Sakharov), the 7th (infantry general Dmitry Shcherbachev) and the 9th (infantry general Platon Lechitsky). In total - 40 infantry (573 thousand bayonets) and 15 cavalry (60 thousand sabers) divisions, 1770 light and 168 heavy guns. There were two armored trains, armored cars and two Ilya Muromets bombers. The front occupied a strip about 500 kilometers wide south of Polesie to the Romanian border, with the Dnieper serving as the rear border.

The opposing enemy group included the army groups of the German Colonel General Alexander von Linsingen, the Austrian Colonel Generals Eduard von Böhm-Ermoli and Karl von Planzer-Baltin, as well as the Austro-Hungarian Southern Army under the command of the German Lieutenant General Felix von Bothmer. In total - 39 infantry (448 thousand bayonets) and 10 cavalry (30 thousand sabers) divisions, 1300 light and 545 heavy guns. The infantry formations had more than 700 mortars and about a hundred “new products” - flamethrowers. Over the previous nine months, the enemy had equipped two (in some places three) defensive lines three to five kilometers from one another. Each strip consisted of two or three lines of trenches and resistance units with concrete dugouts and had a depth of up to two kilometers.

Brusilov's plan provided for the main attack by the forces of the right-flank 8th Army on Lutsk with simultaneous auxiliary attacks with independent targets in the zones of all other armies of the front. This ensured rapid camouflage of the main attack and prevented maneuver by enemy reserves and their concentrated use. In 11 breakthrough areas, a significant superiority in forces was ensured: in infantry - up to two and a half times, in artillery - one and a half times, and in heavy artillery - two and a half times. Compliance with camouflage measures ensured operational surprise.

Artillery preparation on different sectors of the front lasted from six to 45 hours. The infantry began the attack under cover of fire and moved in waves - three or four chains every 150-200 steps. The first wave, without stopping at the first line of enemy trenches, immediately attacked the second. The third line was attacked by the third and fourth waves, which rolled over the first two (this tactical technique was called the “roll attack” and was subsequently used by the Allies).

On the third day of the offensive, troops of the 8th Army occupied Lutsk and advanced to a depth of 75 kilometers, but later encountered stubborn enemy resistance. Units of the 11th and 7th armies broke through the front, but due to the lack of reserves they were unable to build on their success.

However, the Headquarters was unable to organize the interaction of the fronts. The offensive of the Polar Front (infantry general Alexei Evert), scheduled for early June, began a month late, was carried out hesitantly and ended in complete failure. The situation required shifting the main attack to the Southwestern Front, but the decision to do so was made only on July 9 (June 26, old style), when the enemy had already brought up large reserves from the western theater. Two attacks on Kovel in July (by the forces of the 8th and 3rd armies of the Polar Fleet and the strategic reserve of the Headquarters) resulted in protracted bloody battles on the Stokhod River. At the same time, the 11th Army occupied Brody, and the 9th Army cleared Bukovina and Southern Galicia from the enemy. By August, the front had stabilized along the Stokhod-Zolochev-Galich-Stanislav line.

Brusilov's frontal breakthrough played a big role in the overall course of the war, although operational successes did not lead to decisive strategic results. During the 70 days of the Russian offensive, the Austro-German troops lost up to one and a half million people killed, wounded and captured. The losses of the Russian armies amounted to about half a million.

The forces of Austria-Hungary were seriously undermined, Germany was forced to transfer more than 30 divisions from France, Italy and Greece, which eased the position of the French at Verdun and saved the Italian army from defeat. Romania decided to go over to the Entente side. Along with the Battle of the Somme, the SWF operation marked the beginning of a turning point in the war. From the point of view of military art, the offensive marked the emergence of a new form of breaking through the front (simultaneously in several sectors), put forward by Brusilov. The Allies used his experience, especially in the 1918 campaign in the Western theater.

For successful leadership of the troops in the summer of 1916, Brusilov was awarded the golden weapon of St. George with diamonds.

In May-June 1917, Alexey Brusilov acted as commander-in-chief of the Russian armies, was a military adviser to the Provisional Government, and later voluntarily joined the Red Army and was appointed chairman of the Military Historical Commission for the study and use of the experience of the First World War, from 1922 - chief cavalry inspector of the Red Army. He died in 1926 and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

In December 2014, sculptural compositions dedicated to the First World War and the Great Patriotic War were unveiled near the building of the Russian Ministry of Defense on Frunzenskaya Embankment in Moscow. (The author is sculptor of the M. B. Grekov Studio of Military Artists Mikhail Pereyaslavets). The composition, dedicated to the First World War, depicts the largest offensive operations of the Russian army - the Brusilov breakthrough, the siege of Przemysl and the assault on the Erzurum fortress.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources