ESTIMATES OF THE MAIN ARTILLERIAN MANAGEMENT OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION ON THE PREPARATION OF THE RUSSIAN ARMY TO THE FIRST WORLD WAR

The beginning of the 21th century was a difficult historic period for Russia. It was the reorganization of the armed forces of the country that was the primary task after the defeat in the war with Japan. The problem of the military reform in the Russian Empire in the period between the Russian-Japanese War and World War I (1905-1914) was raised both in the Russian and foreign historiography. In spite of such a wide range of issues reviewed in historiography, there are practically no studies in which there was fully considered such a complex of financial documents like Estimates of the Ministry of War of the Russian Empire in 1909-1914. The estimates of the Ministry of War of the Russian Empire are an important historical source and they contain information on the funds which were at the disposal of the Main Departments of the Ministry. This information can be used in the process of studying of the issues related to the funding of transformations of the Russian army on the eve of the First World War. Especially informative in this regard could be the estimates of the Main Artillery Department, for they contain information on financial resources allocated for manufacturing of firearms, cold weapon and rearmament of artillery units. These are important parts of the process of reorganization of the military assets. The author draws the readers’ attention to the estimates of the Main Artillery Department of the Ministry of War: their analysis and structure (within the main paragraphs, presented in the document), a number of conclusions on the main directions of financing: artillery, machine guns, hand guns and cold weapon, production of gunpowder and ammunition, as well as the conclusions in relation to the issue of the reorganization of the armed forces of Russia on the eve of the First World War