Background
Nikolai Ruzsky was born into a Russian noble family, March 18, 1854.
Nikolai Ruzsky was born into a Russian noble family, March 18, 1854.
He graduated from the Konstantinovsky Military College in 1872 and was posted as an infantry officer to an elite guards regiment. The young officer saw his first combat in the Russo-Turkish War, 1877/1878. In 1881 he graduated from the General Staff Academy, a crucial rung on the ladder of advancement for rising members of the officer corps.
During the Russo-Japanese War, Ruzsky served as chief of staff in the Second Manchurian Army. The postwar period brought him command of a corps, 1906-1909; a new round of staff duties followed, and in 1912 Ruzsky was named deputy chief of staff for the Kiev Military District.
Both the military and political facets of Ruzsky's career in World War I have been a source of heated dispute. Stone has accused him of "psychotic prudence" in the Galician campaign during the first weeks of the conflict; and, in general, he dismisses him as a "boneless wonder," resurrected from time to time because of his political connections. Mayzel finds him, in contrast, one of the most respected of the army's elite: along with General Alekseev, the chief of staff, the natural spokesman for the army in time of crisis. Authorities are equally at odds over the reasons behind his up and down wartime career: poor health (Knox), general ineptitude (Stone), or personal conflicts with Alekseev (Mayzel). Out of this tangle, several points are clear enough. Ruzsky was a poor subordinate. He continually took advantage of the slack lines of authority that characterized the Russian High Command. He was, moreover, an erratic field commander, sometimes imperceptive and slow, sometimes quick and energetic. In high politics during the crucial March Revolution, he was much like the other ranking generals in putting the interests of the army (and the war effort) over those of the monarchy.
Ruzsky was first noted during the free-for-all Galician campaign, August/September 1914. As the main weight of the Austrian offensive struck northward toward Lublin and Cholm, Ruzsky led one of the two field armies capable of striking the Austrians' eastern flank. In this situation, Ruzsky proved a timid and self-centered leader. Despite his numerical advantage, he advanced only with great caution; and he ignored the urgings of the front commander, General Ivanov, to swing to the north to relieve the imperiled Russian forces taking the brunt of the Austrian offensive. Ruzsky's desire to be the general who captured the Austrian stronghold at Lemberg doubtless played a part in his decision.
Ruzsky marched upward. In mid-September he replaced the luckless Zhilinsky as commander of the northwest front. He refused to support Ivanov's efforts in central Poland and, until reined in by the High Command, even considered a deep withdrawal to the east, which would have made Ivanov's front untenable. Nonetheless, he showed his mettle at the battle of Lodz in mid-November. When a German offensive struck southeastward from Thorn, threatening to isolate and annihilate his Second Army, Ruzsky responded with elan, aided by such able subordinates as General Pleve. He wheeled his front to face northward, hastened Pleve to the aid of the endangered Second, and tried, with less success, to move General Rennenkampf and the First Army westward to cut off the German line of retreat.
Ruzsky gave up the northwestern front in March 1915, served briefly in the lesser role of Sixth Army commander in the summer of 1915, and by the winter of 1916 found himself in charge of the northern front, stretching from the Gulf of Riga to Lake Narocz. This set the stage for his final moment in the limelight in March 1917.
As disorders in Petrograd seemed to get out of hand, Tsar Nicholas II made his way northward from Supreme Headquarters at Mogilev. With Russia's railroads crippled by the war and controlled by workers sympathetic to the revolution, the monarch found himself stranded in Ruzsky's headquarters at Pskov. The field armies stood as the tsar's last hope of restoring imperial authority. Representing the nation's senior generals, Alekseev and Ruzsky pressured the vacillating monarch to abdicate. To Mayzel, Ruzsky acted as spokesman for the entire army and thus as the arbiter of these crucial events. One must add, however, that Alekseev, back at Mogilev, orchestrated the process by which the army's senior leaders abandoned Tsar Nicholas and rallied behind the new provisional government.
Events soon passed Ruzsky by. He was ousted from his position as commander of the northern front soon after the March Revolution, possibly for cooperating too readily for Alekseev's tastes with the revolutionary innovations of elected army committees and political commissars. The old general made his way to the north Caucasus, only to find himself a victim of the rapidly escalating Russian Civil War. Bolshevik forces took him into custody in an indiscriminate purge of potential enemies in the fall of 1918, and Ruzsky was executed at Piatogorsk, October 19, 1918.
As long as the public believes in religion, they will not attempt to make any genuine effort to understand and overcome the real source of their suffering.
Communist party could initiate policies in the name of the society because it knows what the best is for its progress and development.