Military Press in Struggle for Reforms: Newspaper “Voennyi Golos” and Its Personnel (1906)

Abstract

Tremendous defeat in a war against Japan, that shortly before was not considered as “civilized nation”, questioned capability of tsarist autocracy to maintain Russia’s credibility as a great power. Failure of the Russian army, which was more or less as strong as the Japanese one in terms of numbers and weapons, to deliver victory in any major battle became a subject of scrupulous reflection among military professionals. Shocking combat experience inspired military thought. The decade after the Russo-Japanese war has passed under the sign of “military renaissance”. If some people preferred to explain poor performance of the Russian army mostly by incompetence of particular commanders, others saw deeper reasons - the whole ineffective and malicious Russian government system couldn’t provide a war victory. Crucial changes in political environment during the First Russian revolution of 1905-1907 provided the second group with a possibility to advocate their views in a public sphere. The article deals with the history of the first Russian private, independent military newspaper “Voennyi Golos” founded at the end of 1905. Political ideas and sympathies, reviews of current political situation, speculations about how legislative and administrative changes would or could affect the army expressed on the pages of the newspaper are subjects of particular interest for the author. The article provides prosopographic study of a group of young military intellectuals, which formed around “Voennyi Golos”, based on the evidence collected about this newspaper’s authors and employees.