The Diary of General Kuropatkin

This edition publishes excerpts from the diaries of General from Infantry, General Adjutant A. N. Kuropatkin (1848–1925)—a former War Minister of Nicholas II and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in Manchuria in 1904–1905. The diary was published in the journal “Red Archive” from 1922 to 1935 from a copy that contains only part of the diary entries—from November 17, 1902 to February 7, 1904. This reissue includes publications from “Red Archive,” including two prefaces to the diary written by M. Pokrovsky.

The published materials mostly relate to the time of A. N. Kuropatkin’s highest rise in state and military career—which ended ignominiously for him on the hills of Manchuria in 1905. These are fascinating details from an eyewitness and participant in one of the tragic events of Russian history. To this day, A. N. Kuropatkin’s handwritten legacy has not been analyzed and mostly has not been published in full. The materials mentioned from “Red Archive” were not reissued either. After the publication in the journal of a diary fragment (from November 17, 1902 to March 6, 1903), it was released as a separate edition in 1923. Some parts of the diary were later published for the first time in the “Military-Historical Journal” in 1991, No. 12 (from May 27 to June 2, 1903), and in 1992, No. 1 (from May 20 to October 23, 1917). A. N. Kuropatkin’s notes about a trip to the Japanese islands in the summer of 1903 (from May 27 to June 16), previously unpublished and kept in the RGVIА, were published in the edition: Russian Archive: History of the Fatherland in Evidence and Documents of the 18th–20th centuries. Vol. 6. Moscow, 1995. Pp. 393–444.

The new edition of the diary contains an introductory article about A. N. Kuropatkin’s role in the events described in this historical source, and is equipped with a detailed index of names.