All the Tsar's Men

A welcome addition to the study of the Russian Imperial Army in the twilight of the Romanov epoch.

Steinberg's book is informative and detailed, makes good use of archival material and contemporary publications, and provides the best analysis available in English of the education and training of this important group of officers before the war.

This is a well thought out, well structured and well written work, one which does credit both to the author and publisher and is well worth reading.

With its deft handling of the army’s campaigns in the Far East, as well as its larger focus on the General Staff, All the Tsar’s Men offers a highly original and well-substantiated answer to a series of questions too often overlooked in the English-language historiography of the Russian empire. Steinberg has made use of an impressive array of primary sources and succeeds admirably in illustrating the tension that eventually undermined the entire imperial order.

This is the first book in any language to move beyond anecdote-based assertions about the social and service composition of the General Staff Corps. Steinberg makes a significant contribution to the literature on late Imperial Russian military history, adding considerably to our understanding of the evolution of the General Staff during its last decades.