Recruitment and Service in the Ranks 145
was the excessive scale and incidence of the operation; and this in turn was due
to Russian rulers' continuous preoccupation, despite the country's backward-
ness, with the maintenance of an overpoweringly large force-tht: largest on
the; Eu1up1:an cominent. Ostensibly designed to bolster Russia's foreign-policy
aims and to safeguard domestic security, it also satisfied a deeper psychological
need.
No less than 90 levies were raised during the period 1705-1825. Those
imposed up to 180 I yielded an estimated 2 \I.a million men, and almost 2 million
more were called to the colours in Alexander l's reign.^5 Actual intakes were
somewhat less than these figures suggest. During the last ten years of this
period, when Russia was at peace and four years passed without a levy, the
shortfall was IO per cent.^6 In the 1730s the norm varied from I recruit per 98 to
1 per 320 souls, the average 'take' being 1 per 179. Catherine ll's local govern-
ment reform of 1775 led to the establishment of a standard 500-soul recruiting
unit. During her reign in peacetime the usual call was for one man to be pro-
vided per unit, but the second Russo-Turkish war (1787-91) saw three levies of
5, and one of 4, men from each. The greatest drain occurred in 1812, during
Napoleon's invasion, when three levies were called, which took a total of 20
men per unit (not counting those enrolled in the militia).^7
The scale of each levy was determined after the army authorities submitted
an estimate of the gap between actual strength and the establishment figure. 8
This nekomplekt, as the gap was called, was filled partly by arrears of men
from earlier levies and by internal reassignments as well as by the new intake.
The establishment figure, once fixed, seems to have acquired something of
a sacramental character. On one occasion Alexander I did challenge his War
Minister's figure for the nekomplekt as too high, but there is little sign of any
sustained effort to adjust military requirements to the country's resources. At
the most units might be left deliberately below strength. This procedure was
the norm under Catherine JI, who doubtless found it a useful way of deluding
foreign opinion as to the size of her forces. At the conclusion of hostilities
military effectives would normally be reduced, but the end of the Napoleonic
Wars were a conspicuous exception in this regard. Only in 1726, when the
l Respectively 2, 271, 571and1,933,608: Shchepetil'nikov, in SVMiv(I, i, ii). 5, 129. Beskrovnyy,
who has examined the archives, also gives actual yields for most levies (Russkaya armiya, pp. 33-7,
294-7), but sometimes appears to substitute anticipated yields and omits figures for the additional
levies of 1731 and 1777-8. The chronological breakdown of his data is as follows: 1726-60:
795,000; 1767-99: 1,252,000; we may put the total for 1725-1801 at ca. 2,150,000. Cf. Aleksan-
drov, Set. obshchina, p. 245, where the percentage of registered 'souls' taken as recruits is said to
have risen from 3.6 per cent in Peter's reign to 7 per cent at the end of the eighteenth and to 8 per
cent in the early nineteenth century. For 1801-24 Beskrovnyy's figure (Potentsial, p. 72) accords
with Shchepetil' nikov's.
6 Calculated from Shchepetil'nikov (SVM iv) p. 132, app. 40.
(^7) Shchepetil" nikov (S VM iv) pp. 47-68, 132; cf. Keep, 'Russian Army's Response', p. 501.
s Shchepetil'nikov (SVM iv) p. 3 avers that this was done after the Imperial manifesto was
issued; but unless some preliminary calculation had been made the manifesto could not have con-
tained a figure for the ratio of recruits to souls, which was kept to when the measure was subse-
quently implemented.