About the book: 2016 / Count Dmitry Alekseevich Milyutin (1816–1912) - Minister of War, member of the State Council, honorary member of the Academy of Sciences and various military academies; one of the most progressive and enlightened statesmen of his time. Count Milyutin went down in history as an associate of Alexander II, during whose reign he headed the War Ministry for twenty years and carried out reforms that radically changed the Russian army. Universal conscription for all classes was abolished, the total service life was reduced from 25 to 16 years, severe corporal punishment was abolished, cadet gymnasiums, the Military Law Academy, special training programs for military institutions, women's medical courses were created, military judicial reform was carried out and etc. For many years, Count Milutin kept a diary, which, according to his will, was transferred to the Imperial Academy of the General Staff. The diary covers the period from 1873 to 1900 and has been revised more than once by the author; at the same time, for reasons of diplomacy, and sometimes even insignificance, details (words, sentences, and sometimes entire paragraphs) were crossed out. In 1947, the Manuscripts Department of the State Library of the USSR published an academic edition of the Diary - from 1873 to 1882 - placing in footnotes everything that the author had crossed out. In this edition, footnotes (except for obvious repetitions) are placed in square brackets in the text itself for ease of reading. The words are printed in italics and are underlined twice by the author..