At the outbreak of the war, Czar Nicholas II appointed his cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas as commander in chief. Although not without ability, the Grand Duke had no part in formulating the war plans which led to disaster. The war in the East began with the Russian invasion of East Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. The first effort quickly turned to a disaster following the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914. However, the second incursion was completely successful, with the Russians controlling almost all of Galicia by the end of 1914. Under the command of Nikolay Ivanov and Aleksey Brusilov, the Russians won the Battle of Galicia in September and began the Siege of Przemysl, the next fortress on the road towards Kraków and the Austro-Hungarian border. This early Russian success in 1914 on the Austro-Russian border was a reason for concern to the Central Powers and caused considerable German forces to be transferred to the East to take pressure off the Austrians, leading to the creation of the new German Ninth Army. At the end of 1914 the main focus of the fighting shifted to central part of Russian Poland, west of the river Vistula. The October Battle of the Vistula River and the November Battle of Lódz brought little advancement for the Germans, but at least kept the Russians at a safe distance. The Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies continued to clash in and near the Carpathian Mountains throughout the winter of 1914–1915. Przemysl fortress managed to hold out deep behind enemy lines throughout this period, with the Russians bypassing it in order to attack the Austro-Hungarian troops further to the west. They made some progress, crossing the Carpathians in February and March 1915, but then the Germans sent relief and stopped further Russian advance. In the meantime, Przemysl was almost entirely destroyed and the Siege of Przemysl ended in a defeat for the Austrians. In 1915 the German command decided to make its main effort on the Eastern Front, and accordingly transferred considerable forces there. To eliminate the Russian threat the Central Powers began the campaign season of 1915 with a successful Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive in Galicia in May 1915. After the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes, the German and Austro-Hungarian troops in the Eastern Front functioned under a unified command. The offensive soon turned into a general advance and then a strategic retreat by the Russian army. By mid-1915, the Russians had been expelled from Russian Poland and hence pushed hundreds of kilometers away from the borders of the Central Powers, removing any threat of Russian invasion of Germany or Austria-Hungary. At the end of 1915 the main part of the front reached a line which in general outline did not change until the Russian collapse in 1917. In 1916 the Russians attempted a large counteroffensive under the leadership of General Aleksey Brusilov (the Brusilov Offensive). The attack, aimed against the part of the front held by Austro-Hungarians, was initially a spectacular success largely because of its use of storm troopers. However, a successful counterattack by German units halted the Russian assault. By 1917, the Russian economy finally neared collapse under the strain of the war effort. While the equipment of the Russian armies actually improved due to the expansion of the war industry, the food shortages in the major urban centres brought about civil unrest which led to the abdication of the Tsar and the February Revolution. The large war casualties also created disaffection and mutinous attitudes in the army, which was fueled by Bolshevik agitators and the Russian Provisional Government’s new liberalization policies towards the army (stripping officers of their mandate by giving wide sweeping powers to “soldier committees”, the abolition of the death penalty). The very last offensive undertaken by the Russian Army in the war was the brief and unsuccessful Kerensky Offensive in July 1917. On November 29, 1917, the Communist Bolsheviks took power under their leader Vladimir Lenin. Lenin’s new Bolshevik government tried to end the war but the Germans demanded enormous concessions. Finally, in March, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed and the Eastern Front ceased to be a war zone. The Germans were able to transfer some of their divisions to the West, in order to mount an offensive in France in 1918. However, by then the arrival of American units in Europe was sufficient to offset the German advantage. Even after the Russian collapse, about a million German soldiers remained tied up in the East until the end of the war, attempting to run a short-lived addition to the German Empire in Europe. In the end, Germany and Austria would lose all their captured lands, and more, under various treaties (such as the Treaty of Versailles) signed after the armistice in 1918. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Eastern_Front_(World_War_I)
Tsar Nicholas II, 1918 The mounting pressures of World War I, combined with years of injustice, toppled the rule of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917. Forced to abdicate, he was replaced by a Provisional Government committed to continuing the war. Increasing losses at the front and the fear of a German advance on Moscow eroded what little support remained for the war and undermined the Provisional Government's authority. Capitalizing on this situation, the Germans secretly transported the exiled Vladimir Lenin in a sealed train from Switzerland to Russia in the hope he would enflame the turmoil. German expectations were realized on the night of November 6-7 when Lenin led the Bolsheviks in a successful attempt to grab the reigns of power in St. Petersburg. Anti-Bolshevik forces (the White Russians) immediately took up arms to oust the Communist regime and Russia was plunged into a brutal civil war. The following March the Communist regime signed a treaty with the Germans ending Russia's participation in World War I. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/nicholas.htm#
