9 March 1915: Yesenin arrived in Petrograd for the first time.
24 April 1915: mass arrests and the deportation of Istanbul Armenians began. The Russian Empire managed to shelter and save from certain death several hundred thousand refugees.
6 August 1915: during World War I, in the defense of the Osovets Fortress on the Eastern Front, after a German gas attack, about fifty Russian soldiers of the 13th company of the 226th Zemlyansky Regiment, in a desperate counterattack, managed to throw back the advancing German battalions.
Waiting for a favorable wind, the Germans used their “super-weapon”: at dawn, at 4 a.m., a dark-green fog began to pour over the Russian positions. That day became a black one for the defenders of Osovets. As a result, the gas penetrated to an overall depth of up to 20 km, retaining its lethal effect to a depth of up to 12 km and up to 12 meters in height.
With no effective means of protection available to the fortress defenders, the result of the gas attack was devastating: the 9th, 10th, and 11th companies of the Zemlyansky Regiment were put completely out of action; of the 12th company at the central redoubt, only about 40 men remained in the ranks; of the three companies at Białogronde, about 60 men remained.
Practically the entire first and second lines of defense of the Sosnenskaya position were left without defenders. The fortress artillery also suffered heavy losses. In the fortress, more than 1,600 men were put out of action; overall, the entire garrison suffered poisoning of varying severity.
After the gas attack, German artillery opened heavy fire on the fortress, including shells filled with chloropicrin, and then 14 German battalions moved in to occupy the scorched positions.
Suppressing isolated resistance, they quickly overcame the first and second lines of barbed wire, captured the tactically important fortified point known as “Leonov’s courtyard,” and moved on. By German commanders’ calculations, few Russians could have remained alive after such an attack. No one expected any resistance after such preparation.
However, the Germans advanced too quickly—their forward units ran into their own gas. Taking advantage of the delay, the remnants of the Russian artillery—the 12th company at the central redoubt—managed to open fire on the enemy.
At that moment, the fortress commandant, Lieutenant General Nikolai Brzhozovsky, ordered a bayonet counterattack “with whatever we have.” Carrying out the order, dying Russian infantrymen rose to meet the advancing Germans.
As publicist Vladimir Voronov later wrote, they looked like they had risen from the grave, “with faces wrapped in rags, shaking from a dreadful cough, literally spitting out pieces of their lungs onto their bloodstained tunics.”
These were the remnants of the 8th and 13th companies of the 226th Zemlyansky Infantry Regiment—just over 60 men; their counterattack was led by Second Lieutenant Vladimir Kotlinsky. According to surviving testimonies from participants in those events, the sight of the counterattacking Russian soldiers was so horrific that it plunged the enemy into indescribable terror.
Seeing the “living dead” approaching along the railway, German infantrymen of the 18th Regiment, without accepting battle, rushed back, trampling one another and getting caught on the wire entanglements. Kotlinsky himself was killed during the attack.
At the same time, arriving reinforcements unblocked the central redoubt and drove the enemy back to their starting positions. By 8 a.m., all the consequences of the German breakthrough had been eliminated. By 11 a.m., the shelling of the fortress ceased, marking the formal end of the failed assault.