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slash Japan to claim your offer. This week I'm going to recommend a history of Russia from

Peter the Great to Gorbachev by Mark Steinberg.

I don't know as much Russian history as I'd like, and while this series has been a chance for me to bone up,

I'm still woefully unaware of large swaths of the past of one of the world's great powers.

Now is my chance to fix it, and yours too.

Go to audiblechild.com slash Japan to claim your copy. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 170, The Maelstrom, Part 8.

Today we're going to discuss the final land battle of any real significance in the Russo-Japanese War, the Battle of Mukden.

First, a quick overview of the tactical situation.

Once Port Arthur was surrounded and any hope that the Russians might be able to rescue the garrison there was dashed,

Mukden became the forwardmost base of the Russian

army. The city, which had once been the capital of the Qing dynasty of China before the fall of

Beijing in 1644, was now home to a Russian railway hub that connected all the way back to European

Russia.

As long as the commander of Russian forces in Manchuria, Alexei Kuropatkin, could hang on to Mukden,

he could bring in fresh reinforcements and stood a better chance of holding out against the Japanese advance.

Of course, his opposition, field-martial Oyama Iwo,

...