Belgische Panzerdivision als Teil der russischen Armee. Dokumentensammlung 1915-1917

This collection of documents from 1915-1917 reveals the history of political, economic and military-technical relations between Russia and Belgium during the First World War, using the example of a 'gift' from King Albert I of Belgium to Emperor Nicholas II of Russia in the form of a Belgian armoured division. This division was manned by volunteers equipped with the latest equipment and weapons and was the first Allied military unit to fight valiantly as part of the Russian army against the Central Powers in Eastern Galicia.

The materials published here for the first time are daily orders for the Belgian armoured division from October 1915 to August 1917. They were captured by the Germans in 1940 together with other documents from the Belgian Ministry of Defence and were located in Germany, where they were discovered by Red Army troops in 1945. The archives of the Belgian division were kept in Russia until 2002. Before the documents were returned to Belgium, they were copied by the Belgians and handed over to the Russian side. These copies are now stored in the RGVA in the form of microfilms. The documents contained in the collection have been translated into Russian and provided with commentaries and a detailed preface, which gives a brief history of the Belgian armoured unit from the time of its creation at the end of 1914 until the autumn of 1917. In addition, the collection contains a large number of photographs from various museums, archives and other sources, published for the first time.