Russian Army and Fleet in the 19th Century Preface

Preface

The original edition of this work by Liubomir Grigorievich Beskrovny appeared in Russian in 1973 under the title The Russian Army and Fleet in the XIX Century. The Military-Economic Potential of Russia (Russkaia armiia i flot v XIX v. Voenno-ekonomicheski potentsial Rossii). It was published in 616 pages by Nauka (Science) Publishers in Moscow in 7,000 copies under sponsorship of the Institute of History of the USSR. In style and format it is representative of official Soviet policies at the time of publication. In content it represents a major contribution to the study of Russian history.

The subtitle of the present edition has been chosen to reflect more clearly the contents and nature of the work. The translation is complete save for omission of Chapter 5, The Social-Political Movement in the Army and Fleet. This material essentially repeats that found in a number of other Soviet-era works, including those of the author, and is extraneous to the fundamentally quantitative nature of this work. It also is tendentious.

The book stands as a thorough combing of official archival sources. These are cited in hundreds of footnotes to support the original text. This scholarly apparatus also is excluded from this edition except for notes thought valuable to the intended English-language readership by amplifying the text rather than simply citing, say, a ministerial directive by archival numbers and nothing else. Specialists wishing to assess the archival foundations of the book in any case will prefer to consult the Russian original in conjunction with the present edition. Readers may rest assured that the data presented is drawn from official records and represents reliable, authoritative primary source material heretofore not available publicly or in any one book. Naturally any author's citation of sources can be subjective.

The Russian edition is written in a bureaucratic style that glazes the eye. An effort is made to overcome infelicities for the non-Soviet reader by omitting or rephrasing obligatory references to Marx, Engels and Lenin, and some conventional Soviet-style jargon. This applies as well to various passages irrelevant to the subject, or needlessly complex and unclear. Many of the extremely brief paragraphs and simple sentences have been combined, or moved slightly, or deleted, where this seems appropriate, chiefly around tables. Even so, the flavor of the original remains pronounced. The awkward organization and titling within the work has been simplified for the reader by renaming, shortening, dividing, or consolidating chapters and sub-sections. Nonetheless some remain quite long or quite short. Several new sub-heads have been added. The positioning of the text itself has not been disturbed. Charts have been repositioned slightly to conform better to the text.

Quite a few non-Russian family names appear and are given in original spellings where this seems desirable or practiced in the nineteenth century and in historical literature-Scharnhorst not Sharnhorts. Academies named for members of the ruling family are given in their English forms-Nicholas rather than Nik-olaevskaia, etc. Because of translation and verification puzzles, undoubtedly some personal, geographic, technical, industrial and business names and terms are in error or incomplete, for which apology is made. The author frequently neglects to supply full names or initials for individuals, quotation sources, identifications of some statistics and events, clear citations and the like. These have been supplied in brackets where resources allow without further editorial interjection, but many stand as the author left them.

In some instances explanatory footnotes have been added and these are signed "GS." Thus the retained author's and the added editor's notes appear in one sequence and vary entirely from the annotation system of the Russian edition. Parenthetical insertions into the text signed "LB" are those of the author whereas bracketed, unsigned materials-to repeat-are supplied by the editor.

The work is rich with invaluable titled and untitled, numbered and unnumbered tables. For simplification, convenience, and listing purposes, all tabular materials have been combined into one numerical sequence. Some have received more descriptive or succinct titles. Several related tabulars close to each other are joined. The organization, content, and placement in the text of tables is untouched except as required in several instances to obtain full-page tables. Arithmetic errors appear in some tables, as given in the Russian text. The editor has corrected simple extension mistakes where found, without notice. Where there is doubt, a note or bracketed insertion is added. It has to be kept in mind that the titles and numbers of tables do not match the original.

The system of weights and measures (pood, verst, sazhen, etc.) of the original Russian edition has been retained rather than converted to metrics and/or avoirdupois systems. This is because Russian measures varied in values and lacked complete standardization during the nineteenth century. To attempt to convert to Western measures would be to risk introduction of error and avoidable added complexity into a system already sufficiently inexact. Those requiring conversions may consult specialists on the periods involved. The weights and measures found on page xv of the present work are offered as a convenience; their application to all conversions is not set in stone.

Further information on matters and personalities encountered in the text, apart from Russian-language sources, frequently may be found in David R. Jones, ed., Military Encyclopedia of Russia and Eurasia (formerly Military-Naval Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union), Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1962, especially Jones' "Administrative System and Policy-Making Process, Central Military (Before 1917)," Vol. 2, pp. 35-169, and George N. Rhyne and Joseph Wieczynski, eds., The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet, and Eurasian History (formerly The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History), Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1973-, 58 vols., supplements, in progress.

From 1699 until 1918 Russia used the Julian calendar which was thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar used in the West. In some cases both dates are given here.

For transliteration from the Cyrillic script used in Russian the Library of Congress system with some modifications has been used. Soft and hard signs have been dropped, as have ligatures and diacritical marks. The vowels "ia", "iu" and "e" are rendered "ya', "yu", "ye" when initial, and "ia", "iu", "ie" or "e" elsewhere. The suffixes "ii", "skii", "skaia" and "skoe" are rendered as "i", "sky", "skaia" and "skoe".

This edition is not a word-for-word, feature for feature, but an edited translation. Changes in chapter organization, titling, scholarly apparatus, and tabular material lend a different outward appearance to a text that retains its integrity, apart from exclusion of Chapter 5 and dropping archival citations. Whereas there may be objection to these departures, simplification of the ponderous original edition seems suited to the needs of the English-reading public wishing access to the massive and significant historical data here presented.

Thanks are due David R. Jones and Jacob W. Kipp for examining the text and supplying explanations and identifications for a number of vexing questions. Sara Martin helped unstintingly and expertly with the final proofreading, for which I am grateful indeed.

Gordon Smith
Campbellsville, Kentucky

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