Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2019 number

The article aims to analyze command and control methods employed by the general of infantry N.N. Myraviov, Viceroy of the Caucasus and Commander of Separate Corps of the Caucasus in the course of the Köprüköy operation, which was an important episode of 1855 Caucasian campaign of the Crimean War. Historiography offers limited coverage of the operation with no attempts to analyze it in the context of the evolution if military art in the 19th century. This paper uses comparative approach to study the Köprüköy operation of the Crimean War of 1853-1856 through the lens of the Königgrätz operation of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. It pays specific attention to N.N Muraviov’s and Helmuth von Moltke’s command and control methods. Analysis of the Köprüköy operation reveals that the plan of a concentric advance against the Turkish forces defending the approach to Erzurum demanded establishing effective cooperation between the two groups of advancing Russian forces: Alexandropol force under personal command of Muraviov and Erivan force led by major-general A.A. Suslov. The Viceroy’s propensity toward detailed command, overcentralized control, and suppression of initiative among subordinate officers prevented the establishment of such cooperation. This allowed the Turkish forces to retreat unhindered from their threatened position at Köprüköy to Deve-boyunu mountain ridge. On the contrary, Helmuth von Moltke in 1866 succeeded in establishing decentralized mission command, thus ensuring a victorious end for the Königgrätz operation. Thus, despite Russian generals in the Caucasus being fully capable of operating successfully under mission command, as demonstrated by the 1854 campaign, the Viceroy of the Caucasus failed to fully grasp the demands of his operational situation and contemporary military art. In addition to limiting the eventual success of Russian forces in Eastern Anatolia, this failure also illustrates the limited degree of susceptibility that Russian high command demonstrated toward new trends in operational art.