 The 3rd Brigade comprised serving soldiers plus reserve units formed in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk under the command of Fyodor Fyodorovich Palitzin; it left for France in August 1916.General Aleksei Brusilov, commander of the Russian Southwest Front from March 1916 was responsible for the four Special Brigades, which contributed a total of 44,319 men to the Entente effort in western and southern Europe.The 6th, 7th and 8th Brigades were never formed due to the outbreak of the Russian Revolution.