|
2025-03-11 China-Japan-Koreas
|
|
'The Failure of the Insignificant': How Lenin and the British Credited Japan with Victory in 1905
|
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Stanislav Smirnov
[REGNUM] Exactly 120 years ago, on March 10, 1905, the largest battle of the Russo-Japanese War ended - the Battle of Mukden. It is generally accepted that the three-week heavy fighting ended with a victory for the Japanese, which provoked a crisis of autocracy, and ultimately its collapse. After all, Port Arthur fell shortly before Mukden, which means the fate of the campaign was predetermined. With a calm and thoughtful analysis, such a dogma turns out to be untenable, conditioned by political considerations.
In essence, this is the point of view of Russia's opponents, which found its most concentrated expression in the interpretations of Vladimir Lenin, and those in turn were declared by Soviet historiography to be the ultimate truth. If the facts contradicted them, so much the worse for the facts.
But before assessing the nature and significance of the key episode of the Russo-Japanese War, let us recall where and how the battle unfolded.
Arrangement of the "figures" and plans of the parties
The Battle of Mukden took place in a space divided by the South Manchurian Railway into two parts: the western plain and the eastern mountainous part. An additional external factor was the weather - in early March there was a severe frost in this part of Manchuria.
By that time, the three Russian armies had 330,000 combat personnel with 1,266 guns and 56 machine guns. Nicholas II entrusted the overall command to General Alexei Kuropatkin, commander-in-chief of "all land and sea forces operating against Japan." The military leader had previously proven himself in the conquest and development of Turkestan and was considered well acquainted with military operations in steppe and desert conditions - in addition to our campaigns in Central Asia, he had a French military expedition to the Sahara to his credit. In 1898-1904, he held the post of Minister of War.
Kuropatkin's troops stood on a front about 150 km long. On the right flank were the positions of the 2nd Army of General Alexei Kaulbars, consisting of the 1st Siberian and the 8th and 10th Army Corps. The left flank was occupied by the 1st Army of Nikolai Linevich - the 2nd, 3rd, 4th Siberian and 1st Army Corps. The defense of the center was entrusted to the 3rd Army of General Alexander Bilderling, made up of the 5th and 6th Siberian and 17th Army Corps. The flanks were covered by the cavalry of General Pavel Mishchenko and a detachment of Colonel Maslov.
The enemy forces numbered 270,000 men, 1,062 guns and 200 machine guns. Emperor Meiji entrusted the command to Marshal Prince Iwao Oyama, one of the creators of the modern Japanese army. Oyama advanced the troops, dividing them into three groups.
Opposing Kaulbars's positions were the 2nd Army of Hakushaku (Count) General Yasukata Oku and the 3rd Army of General Maresuki Nogi. Linevich's troops were also threatened by two large formations - the 1st Army of General Tamemotu Kuroki and the 5th Army of Kageki Kawamura. The center was occupied by the 4th Army of Marshal Michitsura Nozu.
Let us add that Marshal Oyama kept a reserve force in reserve - a division and three brigades with a total strength of 30 thousand bayonets with 170 guns.
Both sides planned to play "on the offensive".
Our command intended to strike a decisive blow at the Japanese left flank. The enemy also expected to strike at the flanks, mainly the right. In general, Oyama, who as a young officer in 1870 personally witnessed the total defeat of the French by the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan, wanted to repeat the same scheme: divide the troops into three parts and encircle the enemy.
But the battle made adjustments to the participants’ plans.
THE COURSE OF THE BATTLE
At first, the Russian command planned an offensive, but intelligence data on the redeployment of enemy forces forced them to change the plan and go on the defensive. The approaches to Mukden were well equipped in engineering terms and included four lines of fortifications - forts, redoubts, lunettes.
On February 6, the advance units of General Kawamura's 5th Japanese Army launched an offensive, attacking the positions of our 11th Infantry Division on the Tsinghechen Heights. Then Kuroki's 1st Army went on the offensive. The actions on our left flank against the troops of Linevich's 1st Army were more of a demonstration, while the main attack was carried out on the right, with the intention of making a deep envelopment and reaching the rear of the defenders of Mukden.
The maneuver was carried out by Nogi's 3rd Army, secretly concentrated on the Taizihe River line and beginning the operation on February 13. The Japanese offensive encountered staunch resistance from Russian troops. Nevertheless, on February 22, at the cost of enormous losses, the enemy managed to approach Mukden to within 12 km from the west with the intention of striking our communications and rear. The 5th Army continued its offensive from the southeast, which created the possibility of encircling the main forces of the Manchurian armies.
In view of this threat, Commander-in-Chief Kuropatkin gave the order to withdraw troops to Telin, where new fortifications were created.
Our Manchurian armies successfully emerged from the emerging "bag". Only the rearguards and supply trains covering the retreat were cut off, which led to the partial capture of personnel from a number of batteries and infantry regiments, in particular, the 55th Podolsk and 241st Orsk.
In the twenty-day Mukden battle, the Japanese command made a desperate and, as it turned out later, last attempt to utterly defeat the Russian army in order to end the war under the dictation of their conditions. However, this did not happen, the "Manchu Sedan" planned by Marshal Oyama failed.
THE AFTERMATH OF MUKDEN. WHO IS DEFEATED?
The enemy's partially successful envelopment of Russian positions had one undoubted consequence - another, albeit not perfectly executed, retreat of the Manchurian armies to previously prepared lines in the area of the city of Sipingai.
At Mukden, the Russian army lost about 90,000 killed and wounded, with another 30,000 missing or captured. The Japanese lost at least 70,000 men, with several hundred captured.
Assessing the outcome of the Battle of Mukden, the modern historian Konstantin Zalessky writes:
“In the Battle of Mukden, neither side achieved a decisive victory, but the Japanese losses were higher; at the same time, the withdrawal of Russian troops and the occupation of Mukden by the Japanese gave Tokyo the opportunity to declare its victory.”
The news of this imaginary victory was carried by the British agency Reuters (London formally occupied a neutral position in the Russo-Japanese War) across the globe and was picked up by numerous enemies of Russia, and then, with their light hand, it firmly entered school textbooks as a historical fact.
A THWARTED BLITZKRIEG OR “CRIMINAL NEGLECT”?
In reality, everything was the other way around.
The "draw" at Mukden was fatal for Japan, because after this battle Tokyo had no forces left to continue the war. Since February 1905, the Japanese army was unable to carry out a single major offensive operation.
At the same time, Russia easily closed the gap that had formed in the personnel of its armies and continued to systematically increase its combat power. It was this circumstance that put the Japanese leadership in front of the threat of an imminent, inevitable defeat and led to the activation of Japanese diplomacy and intelligence - in establishing contacts and making deals with the revolutionary underground with the aim of undermining the Russian rear.
The leader of the left-radical faction in the RSDLP, Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), “predicted” Russia’s defeat back in November 1904, when the war was just beginning. “ The government will inevitably become entangled in that shameful and criminal Manchurian adventure, which brings with it a political crisis both in the event of a decisive military defeat and in the event of a protracted war that is hopeless for Russia,” wrote the Bolshevik leader from the Geneva exile.
Commenting on the capture of Port Arthur by the Japanese in January 1905, Lenin wrote in an article that became a textbook example in Soviet times:
"The generals and commanders turned out to be incompetents and nonentities. The entire history of the 1904 campaign was, according to the authoritative testimony of one English military observer (in the Times), "a criminal disregard for the elementary principles of naval and land strategy." References to British experts were intended to confirm the general conclusion: defeat in war creates favorable ground for public indignation, and therefore revolution.
But let us ask ourselves: how did things really stand and, in particular, was the military art of the Japanese really so great?
PLAYING WITH NUMBERS
As the Soviet military historian Alexander Sorokin noted in his fundamental 1956 work on the Russo-Japanese War: "The Japanese generals were no higher in military terms than the Russians. This was confirmed at Mukden. Even in a favorable situation, with the passivity of the Russian command, the Japanese generals were unable to accomplish the task set - to encircle and destroy the Russian troops."
Of great importance for the analysis and evaluation of the results of battles and the war as a whole are data on the balance of power between the opposing sides and the extent of their losses.
Most works on the history of the Russo-Japanese War, domestic and foreign, usually cite the same figures. They migrate from one book to another, without being questioned or critically analyzed.
However, there are grounds for such doubts, if only because the data used by the authors on the number of troops and the size of the losses of the Japanese army are based primarily on the data of its own command. As the researchers note, the Japanese military initially sought to hide information on the number of their armed forces and losses, while at the same time publicizing deliberately distorted statistics that were advantageous to them.
Such data were published or transferred to the allies in a confidential manner and immediately became public knowledge, being carried around the world by wire agencies and influential British media such as the London Times or the Reuters agency. They were also disseminated by the Russian press.
In reality, the picture was quite different, as indicated by the fact that official Japanese figures often look contradictory and unconvincing. This circumstance was noted by members of the military-historical commission of the Russian General Staff, the authors of a nine-volume work on the history of the war, published in 1910.
They used Japanese data on numbers and losses (for lack of other data), but with serious reservations and often refutations.
Thus, analyzing the official data of the enemy on the number of killed and wounded in the Battle of Mukden (41 thousand people), the commission came to the conclusion that they were underestimated by more than half, while the real amount of bloody losses of the Japanese army at Mukden was no less than 67,500 people.
The table provides data on losses in the main battles of the Russo-Japanese War, taken from the publication of the military-historical commission of the Russian General Staff, supplemented by figures from the Great Russian Encyclopedia (Liaoyang, Port Arthur, “for the entire war”).
Let us emphasize that the figure for the loss of our armies at Mukden (89,423 people) includes 29,330 people taken prisoner, while the bloody losses in this battle were, as stated above, less than the Japanese: 60,093 people against more than 70,000, and it is significant that the Japanese command reported losses of only 41,000 people.
It should also be noted that, while the total losses of both sides were equal throughout the war (270,000 people), as reported by the Great Russian Encyclopedia, the number of those killed in the Japanese army was significantly greater than in the Russian: 86 thousand people versus 50 thousand.
Soviet historian and professor at the General Staff Academy Nikolai Levitsky provided more detailed figures for total losses. According to his data, the total number of Japanese army officers killed and hospitalized wounded and sick amounted to 689,000 people, while "Russia's total losses in people for the combat front, including those killed, wounded, missing, and evacuated due to illness," did not exceed 400,000 people.
If we add to the above that during the war the population of Japan and Russia was 45 million and 140 million people, respectively, then it becomes clear why already in the spring of 1905 the Land of the Rising Sun persistently asked for peace.
In light of all this, both the Japanese victory in the war and our supposedly “crushing” and “shameful” defeat are nothing more than political speculation, a malicious myth.
NOT AN INCH OF LAND, NOT A RUBLE OF REPARATIONS
The Battle of Mukden and the naval battle in the Tsushima Strait are entrenched in the public consciousness as the main events of the "lost" war with Japan. However, Mukden was not a rout, and Tsushima did not play a major role, since the fate of the campaign was decided on land.
All the retreats of the Russian army have a simple explanation: the numerical superiority of the Japanese, not only in the initial phase of the war, when their army had a huge strategic advantage and a threefold superiority in forces, but also in the subsequent period (Liaoyang, Mukden), when this superiority was maintained despite the arrival of reinforcements from the European part of Russia throughout 1904.
The very fact that offensive operations require a significant superiority in forces (and all the Japanese battles were offensive in nature) proves that they had such an advantage up until Mukden. Under these conditions, the strategy of retreating and avoiding a decisive battle until the Russian forces had gained an undoubted advantage was completely justified.
The build-up of these forces proceeded at a rapid pace from the beginning of 1905.
Our combat power grew rapidly, while Japan's steadily declined. Our defeats were conditional, if not imaginary: the Russian Manchurian armies were never surrounded and destroyed. While "losing" individual battles, Russia won the war as a whole.
This explains why Tokyo eventually asked for peace, and its Western patrons (England, the USA) did everything to ensure that peace was achieved as quickly as possible. In Portsmouth, Russia essentially spoke to its enemy from a position of strength. Nicholas II's concessions were minimal: not an inch of Russian land (except for half of the already lost Sakhalin), not a ruble of reparations.
It is not without reason that in Japan the results of the war were perceived as a defeat. It would have been even more crushing (in view of the changed balance of forces) if internal and external enemies had not managed to ignite revolutionary unrest in the rear of warring Russia. But this is a separate topic.
|
Posted by badanov 2025-03-11 00:00||
||
Front Page|| [10327 views ]
Top
|
|
Posted by Ebbeting Jones8196 2025-03-11 10:31||
2025-03-11 10:31||
Front Page
Top
|
|
11:39 Frank G
11:06 Grom the Affective
10:30 Lord Garth
09:45 Rat Spit
09:39 Warthog
09:29 DarthVader
09:18 NN2N1
09:11 NN2N1
09:07 Mullah Richard
09:05 NN2N1
09:04 DarthVader
09:00 ed in texas
08:54 SteveS
08:51 MikeKozlowski
08:51 Procopius2k
08:47 SteveS
08:42 SteveS
08:34 SteveS
08:27 Skidmark
08:26 Skidmark
08:16 Skidmark
08:12 Skidmark
08:04 Skidmark
07:39 Gluson
|
