The sweeping successes attained by my armies
are not the product of chance, or of Austrian
weakness, but represent the application of all the
lessons which we have learnt in two years of bit-
ter warfare against the Germans. In every move-
ment, great or small, that we have made this
winter we have been studying the best methods
of handling the new problems which modern
warfare presents.... At the beginning of the war,
and especially last summer, we lacked the prepa-
rations which the Germans have been making for
the past 50 years. Personally I was not discour-
aged, for my faith in Russian troops and Russian
character is an enduring one. I was convinced
that, given the munitions, we should do exactly
as we have done in the past two weeks.Historians believe that General Evert’s delay in re-
inforcing Brusilov led to the stalemate in the East and,
ultimately, the Russian Revolution. When the revolu-
tion occurred, in February 1917, Brusilov supported the
czar’s abdication, and he was rewarded when Alexander
Kerensky, head of the provisional government now con-
trolling Russia, named him commander in chief of the
entire Russian army in July 1917. In this role, Brusilov
led the so-called Kerensky Offensive (July 1917), which,
like the Brusilov Offensive, was initially successful but
stalemated because of a lack of reinforcements and sup-
plies. As a result of his failure in the Kerensky Offensive,
Brusilov was replaced as commander in chief by General
Lavr Kornilov on 1 August 1917.
With the Bolsheviks’ assumption of power in 1918,
as well as the end of the First World War, Brusilov’s mili-
tary career appeared to be over. It was not until 1920,
when the Bolsheviks had destroyed all internal opposi-
tion, that he sided with them. In return for his support,
he was named as a commander in the new Red Army,
and, with the Russo-Polish War of 1920, sent to Warsaw.
However, he was not involved in fighting, serving as a
consultant to the army and as an inspector of the Rus-
sian cavalry until his retirement in 1924. Brusilov died
in Moscow on 17 March 1926. His memoirs were trans-
lated into English and published in the United States as
A Soldier’s Note-Book, 1914–1918 in 1930.
References: Brusilov, Aleksei Alekseevich, A Soldier’s
Note-Book, 1914–1918 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1971); Washburn, Stanley, “The Russian Victories:
Gen. Brusiloff on the Campaign,” The Times (London),
20 June 1916, 8.Budenny, Semyon Mikhailovich (Simeon
Mikhailevich Budenny) (1883–1973)
Soviet marshal
Born in Rostov-na-Donu (Rostov-on-Don) in south-
ern Russia on 12 April 1883 (or 25 April 1883 [N.S.];
some sources list his date of birth as 1876), Semyon
Mikhailovich Budenny was the son of a peasant fam-
ily. He entered the Russian army in 1903 when he was
20 and rose to become a sergeant major in the czarist
cavalry, serving in the First World War. However, he
was a staunch left-winger, and in 1917 he helped to
form, and was elected president of, a divisional soviet
(council) in the Caucusus, where he was stationed. In
1919, Budenny joined the Communist Party, and he
served in the Russian Civil War, utilizing his cavalry
skills to conduct a guerilla war against the anticommu-
nist or White forces. After the war’s end, he was asked to
form the Red Cavalry and became the first commander
of that force.
In 1935, Budenny became a marshal of the Soviet
Union, one of its leading military figures. Five years
later, when the USSR declared war on Finland, he com-
manded the Russian forces, and for his services he was
named deputy commissar for defense. When Germany
invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Budenny was given
command of the southwest wing of the Red Army and
put in charge of defending Kiev from the Nazi assault.
When he saw that Kiev was lost, he asked Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin for permission to withdraw his army, but
Stalin refused, telling him to remain in defense of the
city and fight to the death. However, the Nazi tanks
were moving on Kiev, and before he was finally forced
to withdraw, Budenny lost some 350,000 Soviet sol-
diers killed and an additional 600,000 taken prisoner
by the Germans. As one magazine of the time stated,
“Defeated in the Ukraine campaign of 1941, he resigned
active command, but as Inspector General of Cavalry
reshaped tactics and regained the cavalry a place in mod-
ern battle.”
Budenny’s career as a soldier was over. He spent the
remainder of the Second World War as a general with no
command, and in 1946 he was elected to the Presidium
of the Supreme Soviet. He became Inspector General of
Cavalry in 1953. buDenny, Semyon mikhAilovich