Background
Aleksei Polivanov was bom into an old Russian noble family on March 16, 1855.
Aleksei Polivanov was bom into an old Russian noble family on March 16, 1855.
He graduated from the Nikolaevsky Military Engineering Academy in Petersburg, present-day Saint Petersburg Military Engineering-Technical University (Nikolaevsky), from which he graduated in 1880.
He was an exemplary Genshtabist ("General Staff officer"), finishing the academy first in his class. Polivanov began his career as a staff officer in Kiev. In 1899 he reported to General Staff headquarters in St. Petersburg, where he spent the remainder of his military career. He was chief editor of the army's scholarly publications, served as chief of the General Staff in 1905/1906, and, in the latter year, was named assistant minister of war. Polivanov played a major role in the reform movement that preceded World War I. Under General Sukhomlinov, the minister of war, the crack staff officer worked side by side with leaders in the Duma to obtain funds needed for such necessities as the modernization of the army's artillery. The secretive Sukhomlinov eschewed such contacts; thus, Polivanov soon had a host of friends and supporters in the Duma, notably Aleksandr Guchkov, the leader of the Octobrists. Polivanov also acquired a reputation for political liberalism. This, plus differences with Sukhomlinov over such shifts in military policy as abandoning the line of antiquated Polish fortresses (which Polivanov opposed), led Sukhomlinov to fire his assistant in 1912. Still popular and ambitious, Polivanov awaited new opportunities while holding the sinecure of a seat on the State Council.
The onset of World War I brought Polivanov his opening. Sukhomlinov found himself the target of heated criticism over the army's lack of preparation for a long war; his critics pointed repeatedly at Russia's shell shortage. No slouch as a political intriguer, Polivanov cleared the way for Sukhomli- nov's departure by arranging the trial and execution of Colonel Miasoedov, a friend and protégé of the war minister, as a German spy. In June 1915, Tsar Nicholas II reluctantly fired Sukhomlinov and replaced him with Polivanov, now promoted general of infantry.
Along with Duma leaders like Mikhail Rodzianko, Polivanov favored wide public participation in the war effort. This was accomplished by bringing Duma leaders and captains of industry together in Special Councils to assist the War Ministry. Such measures, which Sukhomlinov had resolutely opposed, aroused the ire of powerful conservatives like Empress Alexandra. Polivanov rubbed the tsar the wrong way by opposing the monarch's decision to take direct command of the field armies; although, as a serving officer, Polivanov could not sign the Cabinet ministers' petition asking the tsar to reconsider. Nor did it help his cause when Minister of Agriculture Krivoshein, on the liberal wing of the Cabinet, called in the summer of 1915 for the establishment of a wartime dictatorship. Polivanov was to take over the direction of military operations while Krivoshein himself led the civil government.
By the close of 1915 the tsar had purged Krivoshein and most of the other independent minds in the council of ministers. Polivanov's lone supporter was Foreign Minister Sazonov, and both of them did not remain in office for long. A serious strike in the Putilov works in Petrograd broke out in early 1916. Polivanov moved to counter it by sequestering the factory and drafting its workers into the military. This energetic response distressed some of his Duma supporters. More important, it brought him into direct conflict with Boris Sturmer, whom the empress had recently contrived to put in office as prime minister. A petty squabble over the use of military vehicles by Rasputin, the empress confidant, brought matters to a head. Alexandr, Sturmer, and Rasputin persuaded the tsar to oust the effective but troublesome war minister in March 1916.
In an interview with British General Alfred Knox in April, Polivanov took pride in having improved the training and the supply of weapons and ammunition to the army. Historians have judged his departure as a calamity: "a triumph of the Empress over rational government" (Thomson) and an irreparable loss to the war effort" (Pearson).
Polivanov remained a part of the political scene. During the climactic days of the March Revolution, just before the provisional government took power, one Kadet (liberal) leader raised the former minister's name as someone who should be named as "responsible dictator" to restore order. Polivanov never got that call to supreme power. He rallied to the revolution, however, taking over a commission to review military regulations; Guchkov, then war minister, apparently hoped his old friend Polivanov could slow the pace of military democratization. In 1920 the former tsarist general joined the Red Army and urged others to do the same. Like another aristocrat turned revolutionary warrior, Aleksei Brusilov, Polivanov never took a combat command. He was serving as military adviser to the Russian delegation at the peace talks with Poland when he died of typhus at Riga on September 25, 1920.
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