And Russia was lucky with the Japanese war
Sometimes life hits you in the face
First of all, you need to ask one simple question: how should you feel about defeats?
Just purely from practice - no army / navy can win endless victories. Usually. And now the defeat. Obvious.
How to be here and what to do about it?
Good question, because in the domestic militaryhistorical tradition has developed some kind of ridiculous tendency to wind emotional circles around the defeat, to look for the guilty, to be hysterical, to blame someone ...
Or to prove that all this was an absurd accident, that everything should have turned out completely differently. Well, quite differently. What if events would have unfolded “a little” differently, then we would certainly have won. But evil fate "stole the victory."
Or try to invent something, prove something ...
This is not to say that defeat should be taken for granted or rejoice at it (there are amateurs), but in general, excessive emotionality when presenting the history of the military is somehow slightly annoying, because you want to hear not patriotic propaganda, but a sensible exposition of military events.
So it was with the Japanese war that Russia was very lucky.
With the Finnish 1939-1940 - not very, but with the Japanese war - yes, lucky. Strange as it may sound. So to speak, God guarded Russia, gave her a chance.
After all, life is not exactly a computer game, where you go from victory to victory and, in the end, bring down the "boss". Life is a little more complicated.
Russia faced a military threat from not the strongest (let's be honest) adversary. Yes, the logistics were not in our favor, but Japan in 1905 was just yesterday (1868 - Meiji revolution) a purely feudal society.
In any case, despite all the successes of the modernization policy, Japan remained a poor, backward country. This is not a superpredator.
You can cheat yourself for a long time, but Japan was not a great power. Something like that.
And Russia was just there. It seems to be official.
But the one-on-one war for the Russian Empire ended in defeat. Unexpected for many, jokes about "macaques and some" come to mind at once. It turned out sadly, of course. And the fleet was lost. And Port Arthur.
And after that, and in parallel with this, the first Russian revolution flared up. Which served as one of the reasons for the conclusion of the peace. It somehow turned out awkwardly.
And here, as in life: if your face is heavily stuffed, there are several options. You can finally get to know the barbell and punching bag and completely revise your lifestyle. You can write a thousand angry posts on the Internet that everyone is scoundrels and corrupt officials, and an honest person (for example, me!) Cannot even leave the house for a beer, so as not to get it on his honest face. You can go into a long binge. You can shout: "People, I believed in you, and you disappointed me!" - leap ... There are many options.
But everything that doesn't kill us makes us stronger. In theory. Purely theoretically.
Signs of trouble
Nikolai Alexandrovich, angry with the samurai, decided to build powerful ocean ships. In revenge, so to speak. Well, the navy is a good thing, you can't argue here, revenge is even better, but there was a big European war on the nose. Great War. And these are not battles on the hills of Manchuria ... This is much more serious.
But it was on the hills of Manchuria that the Russian army could not win, so to speak. And that was a "bad sign." Very bad if you can read these same signs. But who else could read them ...
They say that Russia "could have won." Let's consider this "winning" option.
And here, you see, what a snag is revealed - the war went on for a long time, large forces were involved, and there were many battles (at sea and on land). That is, talking about the "evil theory of probability" (Korean random, as cybersportsmen say today) is somewhat strange.
The Russian army and fleet there were plenty of opportunities to express myself. But somehow it "did not appear." In the sense: "victorious superiority." It did not appear at all. And so the talk about the fact that here's a little more ... Well, it would be nice to listen to, but hard to believe. And so - yes, the samurai had few resources for the war, but they fought great.
Well, Russia did not succeed in winning this war. Something was missing.
But with all due respect, the Japanese army and navy in 1904 is very far from the level of Germany or France. The Japanese tried, but history gave them too little time. Having jumped out of feudalism, they had to fight already in a purely industrial war, where battleships and artillery rule.
But based on the Japanese experience, I didn't even want to think about the upcoming clash with Germany. There, in any case, everything was much more serious. For some reason, it is customary to consider wars as something separate. That is, they lived, lived, did not grieve ... and bang - war!
Yes, not a simple war - world war!
Why would it suddenly?
That is, the war with the Japanese did not seriously threaten Russia in any case. But with Germany, she threatened. In any case. And there was already a positive experience of the land war with the backward Japan.
I would say an invaluable experience. If you evaluate it correctly, of course. If you do not take offense and do not bother with "terrible revenge", but make the right conclusions.
Japanese experience of "reforms from above"
Actually, in Japan, feudalism was done away with immediately. With one blow. So harsh, samurai. The process of "rassamuraivaniya" took place as harshly and quickly as possible ... And no one cried over the "cut down cherry orchards". They chopped with a backhand.
And Japan immediately, without bothering, stepped into a bright tomorrow.
But in Russia, even after the defeat in the war of 1904–1905, no one was ready for such rapid social reforms. The nobility retained their privileges. The peasants remained half-personal. No matter how offensive it sounds, in Japan, 10-15 years after the Meiji revolution, much more was done to solve the land / peasant problem than in Russia from Nicholas to Nicholas. By 1917, the Japanese were quite poor. The Japanese peasants are very poor.
But the problems of the legal and property status of Russian peasants were no longer entirely relevant for them. While we, generation after generation, were philosophizing and drafting the ideal social order, the Japanese were "chopping down" the old social order with katanas. Everything, immediately and finally.
I never said that in the land of the Rising Sun after that a complete paradise set in, but without the extremely harsh measures of the Meiji revolution, victory in the Russo-Japanese War would have been theoretically impossible.
... And sent in 1871 to Western countries great embassy led by Minister Iwakura Tomomi. The mission consisted of 50 officials and 60 student trainees. To represent Japan in the West, a portrait of the emperor was required, and the tradition forbade depicting rulers; the ban had to be canceled by photographing the monarch in palace attire. When visiting St. Petersburg, Iwakura Tomomi acquired portraits of Peter I, whom he treated as his idol (wiki2.net).
Strange analogies arise, don't they?
Japan began to develop very late, but very rapidly. Lightning fast, I would say. Further - it is completely funny:
The adoption of the Constitution, which was the culmination of the Meiji Restoration, took place on February 11, 1889. In Japan, an independent court and suffrage appeared (diletant.media).
So what, someone might ask?
Well, they adopted a constitution, and what is it?
Yes, actually, nothing, only in Russia then there was still no constitution. And it was not planned. And it was not planned for a long time.
The first Russian constitution was adopted exactly after the sinking of the Russian fleet and the defeat of the Russian army in the Far East.
On the authentic ones by His Imperial Majesty's own hand it is written:
"SO BE IT".
In Tsarskoe Selo.
23 April 1906 of the year.
"SO BE IT".
In Tsarskoe Selo.
23 April 1906 of the year.
And caps in the air! And rejoice everyone! What happiness!
Yesterday it was still early, but today it’s already the same.
And yes, the drafting of the Japanese constitution did not begin in 1889.
The Constitution was drafted in a calm atmosphere - the commission met at the dacha of Ito Hirobumi on a secluded island, where, by the way, a German professor was also brought, who acted as a consultant. The work was carried out so painstakingly that the commission spent about five years on the creation of the first Japanese Constitution, which fits into several pages. In February 1888, its final version appeared under the title "The Constitution of the Great Japanese Empire" (diletant.media).
That is, just the Japanese could not imagine an empire without a constitution. Including the divine emperor, it is necessary - it means it is necessary. There were disagreements over who exactly should take it: the emperor or the constituent assembly.
And the first session of the Japanese parliament was held on November 29, 1890. In Russia, they decided "not to rush into this issue." Well, it was not clear to the Russian autocrats, well, why all these parliaments and constitutions are needed ...
The thunder of the guns of the Japanese battleships in the Yellow Sea and the gunfire of the first Russian revolution brought some clarity to these complex matters.
In our country, this very defeat is considered to be somehow accidental, wrong, erroneous. Say, we were supposed to drink tea in Nagasaki as a result of the war ... But somehow it didn’t burn out.
But…
"Still, there is justice in the world, and the one who is right will survive."
The victory of the Japanese, who were rapidly modernizing their country, over archaic Russia, which fundamentally did not want political reforms, looks quite logical, like the victory of Russia in the XNUMXth century over the obsolete, feudal Ottoman Empire.
Neither Orthodoxy, nor sovereignty, nor collegiality, nor nationality made any impression on the Japanese generals and admirals. Russia has lost. Historical fact.
Different solutions and different results
Compare.
The Japanese emperor approved the constitution himself, voluntarily, in peacetime. From the Russian - the consent literally had to gnaw out. After the defeat in the war from the same Japanese and the revolution. And all the same - Nicholas II was somehow "not completely sure."
Does Russia need a constitution?
Or is the absolute power of such a wonderful monarch as himself sufficient?
So, the victory of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War would be simply fatal for her in the light of the upcoming clash with industrial Germany. A quite obvious conclusion would have been drawn about the invincibility of the Russian army and navy. And the uselessness of any stupid liberal reforms. And ten years after 1905 no one would even scratch at all.
And then there would be the complete and final "guten Morgen".
After an offensive defeat from the "nasty Japanese", His Majesty the Russian Autocrat rushed to build the battle cruisers Izmail, as if in revenge, but the idea of the need for a complete modernization of Russian society (immediate!) Did not occur to him even after the Portsmouth Peace Treaty.
And yes, a little remark, to the question of "the inevitability of Russia's victory" and "morale" in that distant war.
Due to the fact that Nogi could not quickly take Port Arthur and the growing losses, they wanted to remove him from command ... After the end of the war, Nogi reported his actions to the emperor personally. Reading a report on the siege of Port Arthur, he suddenly stopped short, cried and began to ask permission to commit ritual suicide, seppuku, to atone for his guilt (wiki).
And yes, he did it. But after the death of the emperor.
But just Mr. Kuropatkin, unlike his Japanese counterpart, did not want to commit suicide, which many see as a great moral victory for Russia. Say, not everything was so great with the samurai ...
About moral victories.
You can also compare the fate of the Japanese emperor in 1945, when, after a lost war and nuclear bombings, almost all Japanese officers remained loyal to him, and the fate of the last Russian emperor, who in victorious 1917 was arrested along with his family by his own officers, after which the latter went to serve who Kerensky some to the Kaiser, some to the allies, some to Trotsky, and who immediately to "Pan Hetman" with the speaking surname Skoropadsky ... Then some of these officers sincerely welcomed Hitler's invasion of the USSR ...
Moral victories are so ambiguous ...
So yes, Russia was generally lucky with the Japanese war.
It was a kind of inoculation before the "German plague", that is, a clash with a military-industrial society, similar in spirit to the German one, but unable, unlike Kaiser Willy's Germany, to completely defeat Russia in a one-on-one war due to modest possibilities and geographical position (in the current version of history, even the "fully mobilized" Russian army of the 1914 model had no chances in a one-on-one war with Germany, from the word at all).
But even this vaccination did not save the empire. In case of victory, everything would be much worse.
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