Winter 1917. Surprisingly dramatic footage sometimes, as here, when an Orthodox priest walks along the rim of the trenches blessing Russian soldiers cowering in the snow. I don't know where they unearth this kind of stuff but it must have been a job.
Nowadays at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania, they teach that "victory = means times will." The "times" (rather than, say, "plus") is critical because as the term "will" approaches zero, the "means" becomes increasingly irrelevant. You can command a military colossus but if "will" reaches zero, you lose.
That's more or less what happens to Russia in this episode. Unlike their German enemy, Russian troops were massive but ill fed and restive. In the Carpathian Mountains they were able to inflict casualties on the enemy, but the enemy bore its suffering. Russia had suffered too, losing as many men as Britain and France put together.
Russia had a new Tsar, a younger one who was a family man and loved pomp, a nice enough guy but a lousy administrator. He left much of the running of the country to his wife, a German-born but English educated niece of Queen Victoria. How's that for a marriage of convenience, and a complicating one? She, in turn, was under the spell of Rasputin, the mad monk, and there may have been some hanky panky going on. In any case the public resented it. Rasputin was as difficult to get rid of as Superman. He was poisoned, stabbed, and drowned before finally dying.
Finally the Tsar abdicated, his ministers arrested. Now, Redgrave's narration points out a recurring problem in Russian society and in today's America. The revolution was impelled by hatred of something. It had succeeded. Now the country had to decide what it was FOR.
It wasn't an easy choice. A provisional government was set up combining two competing factions -- the liberal democratic Kerensky, who wanted to continue the war, and the communist Lenin, who wanted peace except for a worldwide revolution against capitalism. The Bolsheviks won and Russia surrendered to Germany.
Sorry is this all sounds political, but so does the episode. There are few battles discussed and, in the more general sociopolitical context, they're less important than what went on in the capitals anyway.
Nowadays at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania, they teach that "victory = means times will." The "times" (rather than, say, "plus") is critical because as the term "will" approaches zero, the "means" becomes increasingly irrelevant. You can command a military colossus but if "will" reaches zero, you lose.
That's more or less what happens to Russia in this episode. Unlike their German enemy, Russian troops were massive but ill fed and restive. In the Carpathian Mountains they were able to inflict casualties on the enemy, but the enemy bore its suffering. Russia had suffered too, losing as many men as Britain and France put together.
Russia had a new Tsar, a younger one who was a family man and loved pomp, a nice enough guy but a lousy administrator. He left much of the running of the country to his wife, a German-born but English educated niece of Queen Victoria. How's that for a marriage of convenience, and a complicating one? She, in turn, was under the spell of Rasputin, the mad monk, and there may have been some hanky panky going on. In any case the public resented it. Rasputin was as difficult to get rid of as Superman. He was poisoned, stabbed, and drowned before finally dying.
Finally the Tsar abdicated, his ministers arrested. Now, Redgrave's narration points out a recurring problem in Russian society and in today's America. The revolution was impelled by hatred of something. It had succeeded. Now the country had to decide what it was FOR.
It wasn't an easy choice. A provisional government was set up combining two competing factions -- the liberal democratic Kerensky, who wanted to continue the war, and the communist Lenin, who wanted peace except for a worldwide revolution against capitalism. The Bolsheviks won and Russia surrendered to Germany.
Sorry is this all sounds political, but so does the episode. There are few battles discussed and, in the more general sociopolitical context, they're less important than what went on in the capitals anyway.