Excerpt From The Russian Revolution

“Russia mobilized fifteen and a half million men during the War, in a vain effort to compensate for its lack of cannon and shells with sheer manpower.  As a result of this enormous mobilization and of the heavy losses at the front the whole character of the Russian army was greatly changed.  The old officers’ corps, largely recruited from the upper classes, had to be filled out with new members, draw from the masses of the people.  And it is difficult to exaggerate for the revolutionizing effect on the hosts of peasant recruits of being suddenly thrown into contact with unimagined death-dealing implements of modern warfare and sustaining a series of overwhelming defeats, often accompanied by cases of clear incompetence and neglect on the part of the commanding officers. The peacetime Russian army was a fairly reliable bulwark of the government.  The wartime army was a huge swollen mass, far less reliable, from the standpoint of the existing regime” (Chamberlin, 65-66).