Background
Yakov Zhilinskiy was born in the city of Mikhailov, Riazan Province, on March 27,1853.
Yakov Zhilinskiy was born in the city of Mikhailov, Riazan Province, on March 27,1853.
He was commissioned upon completion of the Nikolaevsky Cavalry School in 1876. Zhilinsky graduated from the General Staff Academy in 1883 and served in a series of increasingly responsible staff positions over the next two decades.
In 1898, in the rank of colonel, he was dispatched to Cuba as a military observer with the Spanish army during the Spanish-American War. The following year he became a member of the Russian delegation to the Hague Peace Conference.
Zhilinsky was promoted to the rank of major general in 1900, and he served as chief of the field staff in the Far East during the first half of the Russo-Japanese War. He rose rapidly in the years following: commander of a cavalry division 1906/1907; commander of the Tenth Army 1907-1910; promotion to the rank of general of cavalry in 1910. He held the post of chief of staff of the Russian army in the years 1911-1913. In this capacity, he represented Russia in a three-year series of conferences with the French High Command to work out the specifics of Franco-Russian military cooperation against Germany in the event of war. Zhilinsky committed Russia to deploy 800,000 troops along the German frontier; the Russian forces would undertake offensive operations by the fifteenth day of mobilization. The French, who anticipated a German invasion of their country to follow on the heels of a declaration of hostility, was then assured Germany would face an early invasion as well. Zhilinsky pledged that Russian armies would invade East Prussia or strike across the Vistula near Thorn.
The outbreak of war made Zhilinsky executor of his own pledges. As commander of the Warsaw Military District in 1914, he assumed, according to the Russian war plan, command of the northwestern front. His mission in August 1914 was to coordinate the invasion of East Prussia. The Russian First Army attacked from the east under the command of General Rennenkampf. The Second Army under General Samsonov advanced from the south. The two armies were separated by several days' hard marching and by the geographical barrier of the Masurian Lakes. In effect, Zhilinsky served as the main link between the Russian government, pressed by the French for a rapid offensive at any cost, and the scattered armies in the field against Germany.
Zhilinsky's leadership, a model of ineptitude, has received universal and well-deserved condemnation. He misinterpreted Rennenkampf's victory at Gumbinnen on August 20 to mean that the German Eighth Army was in full flight westward toward the Vistula. He bombarded Samsonov to advance northward at maximum speed to cut off the supposedly routed Germans. Zhilinsky completed Samsonov's perilous isolation by permitting Rennenkampf to conduct a leisurely advance and to divert much of the First Army northwestward toward the fortress of Königsberg. The result was a Russian disaster: the Germans concentrated against Samsonov, smashed his Second Army, then turned on Rennenkampf.
Zhilinsky was relieved of his command in September 1914. Only in late 1915 did he receive a new position: senior Russian representative to the French High Command. The unsuccessful field commander became an unsuccessful military diplomat. His year in France was a stormy one, marked by poor relations with the French commander in chief. General Joffre. Joffre accused Zhilinsky, who did not visit the front, of distorting the reports of more serious Russian observers with the French army. The French also criticized Zhilinsky for misrepresenting his personal views as official Russian policy. He was replaced at Joffre's request and returned to Russia at the close of 1916. Zhilinsky retired following the March 1917 Revolution. He joined the Whites in the aftermath of the November Revolution and died in southern Russia sometime in 1918.