Milyutin was also concerned by the low level of literacy among recruits – a mere 7 per cent in the 1860s – and set up educational schemes within the army that resulted in a swift increase in the literacy rate among soldiers, half of whom were able to read by 1870 and a quarter of whom could write as well. Thus Russia entered the second half of the 1870s far better prepared for war than it had been two decades before. The blow dealt to Russia’s position in Europe by defeat in 1856 was only temporary, though it lasted for a crucial period of almost two decades.
