ABSTRACT
In the years of the First World War the composition of the Russian officer corps changed fundamentally. Between April 1914 and January 1917 the army expanded from 1.2 million men to 6.6 million, and in this period the number of officers increased from 40,590 to 145,916. In the emergency created by the mobilization of 1914 the army took officers from all available sources. Over a thousand people were recalled from retirement, and hundreds of officers who had been working in other departments were commanded into the regular army. Citizens of Allied countries and any Slav who had officer's training were encouraged to enlist. The officer corps, which by 1917 included almost everybody in the army who had the slightest degree of education or ambition, came to be extremely heterogeneous. The difference in mentality between the senior leaders of the army, who had received their education in the Academy of the General Staff, and the newly promoted peasant officers was enormous.
