It was then [close of the winter of 1914-1915] that the Russians began first to experience shortages in military matériel. As early as the end of 1914, one-half of the replacements reaching the front had no rifles. In a major engagement fought near the Polish town of Przasnysz in February 1915, Russian troops charged the Germans virtually with bare hands:
The battle was fought under conditions which are scarcely to be paralleled from the history of modern war. Russia, hard put to it for munitions and arms, was unable to equip masses of the trained men that she had ready, and it was the custom to have unarmed troops in the rear of any action, who could be used to fill gaps and take up the weapons of the dead. At Przasnysz men were flung into the firing line without rifles, armed only with a sword-bayonet in one hand and a bomb in the other. That meant fighting, desperate fighting, at the closest quarters. The Russians had to get at all costs within range to throw their bombs, and then they charged with cold steel.
This was berserker warfare, a defiance of all modern rules, a return to conditions of primitive combat.
Source:
Pipes, Richard. "Russia at War." The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1990. 215-16. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Emets, Ocherki, 95.
J. Buchan, A History of the Great War, I (Boston, 1922), 526-27.
Further Reading:
Восточный фронт (The Eastern Front of World War I) / The Second Fatherland War
That's hardcore. Holy crap.