In my recent preview of coming attractions for my centennial seties on the First World War in the Middle East, I noted that the front between the Ottoman and Russian Empires in the Caucasus was little known in the West. Yet some of the hardest fighting the Ottoman Army endured in that war was against the Russian Army in the Transcaucasus. If this Turkish Eastern Front has any resonance among Western readers it is almost exclusively due to the fate of the Armenians (which I have no intention of avoiding as we discuss the centennial of the Great War). But this part of Turkey's war lasted longer than the others, due to the upheavals in the Transcaucasus after the Russian Revolution. Now, as it happens, I read neither Turkish nor Russian. And while the British Official Histories often provide extensive translation of Turkish.. Before Turkey's entry into the war, Russia had been stripping the Caucasus front of troops to reinforce the Eastern Front with Germany, where things had gone badly since the Battle of Tannenberg in August.
As a result, Russian forces in the theater were outnumbered by their Ottoman counterparts. This did not dissuade Russia from taking the offensive since, like Turkey's enemies (and even its ally Germany) they had a low esteem for Turkey's military abilities. They would learn, as the British would at Kut and Gallipoli, that whatever the weaknesses of Ottoman leadership, the soldiers were another matter.
Russia did not even wait for its own November 2 declaration of war, but crossed the border on November 1, 1914.
Let me note that the borders were not those of today. Russia had taken the Armenian areas around Yerevan (now part of Armenia) from Persia in the early 19th century and the area around Kars (now part of Turkey) after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78.
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