Russian Infantry with the Mosin-Nagant, WWI (XX0005)

Two Soldiers of the Tsar — Imperial Russian Infantry on the Move

Running forward under the soft peaked cap (furazhka) and rolled greatcoat that marked every soldier of the Tsar’s army, these two infantrymen carry the standard kit of the Imperial Russian Army between 1914 and 1917 — the largest army mobilised by any power in the First World War, and one of the least adequately supplied.

The rifle that never loses its bayonet

The Mosin-Nagant M1891 rifle carried here has its bayonet permanently fixed, a doctrine unique to the Russian army: the rifle’s sights were zeroed with the bayonet attached, so removing it actually threw off the weapon’s accuracy. Russian infantry doctrine of the period still leaned heavily on the bayonet charge even as machine guns and artillery made such attacks increasingly costly.

The skatka — a greatcoat as equipment

The rolled greatcoat worn diagonally across the chest, the skatka, was standard Russian and later Soviet field practice: it kept the coat accessible without weighing down the back, doubled as rudimentary protection against shrapnel and, in a pinch, as a makeshift stretcher. It remained part of Russian and Soviet infantry equipment for decades after this scene.

An army of extraordinary size, chronic shortage

Russia mobilised over 12 million men during the war, but its industrial base could not arm them at the same rate: in 1914 and 1915 entire units went into the line without enough rifles to equip every soldier, waiting for a comrade to fall so they could pick up his weapon. Officers, identifiable here by the Nagant M1895 revolver rather than a rifle, faced their own shortages of trained replacements as casualties mounted.

The Brusilov Offensive

In the summer of 1916, General Aleksei Brusilov achieved what no other Entente commander managed on any front that year: a genuine breakthrough, using short, precise artillery bombardments and simultaneous attacks along a broad sector instead of the single-point assaults that had failed everywhere else. It came at enormous cost and could not be fully exploited, but it remains the most effective Russian operation of the entire war.

Collapse

By early 1917 the army that had absorbed these losses for two and a half years was exhausted, undersupplied and increasingly politicised. The February Revolution reached the front within weeks, discipline broke down through the summer, and by the Bolshevik seizure of power in October the Imperial Russian Army — the world this print depicts — had effectively ceased to exist as a fighting force.