The military reforms of Nicholas I

the long version

In the 1830s, Russia was facing a crisis: The army was poorly organized, the administration was underdeveloped, inefficient, and corrupt, and the state was too poor to bear the strain. His senior military and financial advisors alerted Nicholas I to the crisis, and he then deliberately tried to conceal it. This situation, which escaped observers at the time, as well as most historians since, was the principal driving force behind Russia's reforms of the 1830s. Within this context, Frederick Kagan's The Military Reforms of Nicholas I examines Nicholas' reorganization of the Russian military administration from 1832 to 1836.