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Aleksei Alekseevich Brusilov (Russian:
Алексей
Алексее&
#1074;ич
Брусило&
#1074;) (August 19, 1853 - March 17, 1926) was a
Russian cavalry general most noted for the
development of a military offensive tactic used in
the Brusilov offensive of 1916. The Brusilov
offensive was probably the most successful
campaign during World War I.

Brusilov was born in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia
(country)|Georgia). He was educated at the
Imperial Corps of Pages, and after entering the
Russian Army served in the Russo-Turkish War,
1877-78. He was promoted to general in 1906. A
firm monarchic at heart, but a patriot in
practice, Brusilov served during World War I as a
commander of the 8th Army, then later as a
commander of the South-West Front, earning a
reputation as Russia's most successful general.
With the onset of revolution in Russia, Brusilov
argued for the Tsar's abdication, witnessing the
vast amount of burocratic inefficiency that
stunted Russia's campaign in the First World War,
especially during the Summer Offensive of 1916,
which proved to be crucial to turning many tsarist
generals against him, and also sparking off many
desertions throughout the peasant conscripts who
dashed off back home, having no sentiment as
Russians, and feeling no duty to protect a Tsar
that had torn them out of their primitive rural
societies. 
When Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in February
Revolution|February 1917, the Russian Provisional
Government, 1917|Provisional Government appointed
Brusilov as Commander-in-Chief. In August that
year he was dismissed, after finding himself
isolated in a circle of political rivals that saw
him as a traitor to the revolution.
Following the 1917 October Revolution and for the
duration of the Russian Civil War Brusilov
remained inactive. In 1920 he entered the Red Army
service. Brusilov was a patriot, and he despised
the presence of the Bolsheviks in power, but he
saw in them a path for the Russian nation to rise
as a Greater Russia, nuited and indivisible. The
victorious Bolsheviks did after all, after and
during the civil war, bring together with more or
less coercion, the Russian borderlands under the
centralised command of Moscow. This seemed to
console Brusilov with the idea of joining the Red
Army, as he always had postulated that sooner or
later the Bolsheviks would be removed from power
in favour of a stronger command with more favour
from the people. Brusilov indeed, although
simpathising with the White cause, did not support
it because it was attacking Russia while the Red
Army was opening a front against Polish invaders.
He participated in the campaign against Poland,
but did not occupy positions of significance,
primarily serving as a military consultant and
inspector of cavalry for the next four year.
Afterbeing finally allowed to retire at the age of
seventy, he lived in his shared apartment with his
sicly wife and another couple. Brusilov had
personally saved the life of the man, who had
served under him in Hungary, but after finding
their horrific manner of living, typical of the
nouveau -riche of the Soviet Bolsheviks. He died
in Moscow from heart paralysis, and was given an
honorable state funeral, buried in a Christian
monastery, by representatives from the 'new
Russia' (the Bolsheviks), and the 'old Russia'
(the clergy, the remaining bourgoisie).
Brusilovs's wife thought the funeral had a
symbolic meaning, that the 'old Russia' was being
buried by the 'new'. In any case, it was a funeral
with emblems from both worlds, which succesfully
rounded up the feelings of this curiously mixed up
man who rose as possibly the only great Russian
First World War hero.

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