[Mad Reloader]

I'd say that the end result of Brusilov was more on the order of both Austria-Hungary AND Russia taking themselves out of the war.

Brusilov was Russia's last offensive of any consequence. Remember that by the end of the winter of 1916-17 the Tsar was deposed, and after that brief "Kerensky Summer", only a few months remained before the October Revolution and Brest-Litovsk, permanently shutting down Russia in the 1st World War. Austria-Hungary outlived Tsarist Russia by about a year, not folding up like a house of cards until November 8th 1918.

But: from that point onwards, the Konig-und-Kaiser's army pretty much went on life-support. (German remarks about "We are fighting handcuffed to a corpse" started from that date). The Eastfront of WW1 was now pretty much handled at the command level by Germans, as although the Austro-Hungarian Army was still posessed of regiments and battalions capable of combat effectiveness, (12th Sturmbattalion & Infantry Regiment 100 as an example) their field-grade and senior officers had proven themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt to be completely lacking. Reports starting with Hans von Seeckt and finally from Army Group South underscored this point.

For the last 15 or so months of the war, the only theatre in which Austria-Hungary was managing to perform adequately pretty much on their own was the Italo-Alpine front. But what the Brusilov offensive was to Russia, the Vittorio-Veneto campaign was to Austria-Hungary. (Though the complete collapse took days to weeks rather than months to go into effect)

Which led to the very unsusual situation of Austria-Hungary losing The War at their --approximate-- greatest extent of expansion (As of November 1918, NO A-Hungarian territory as of the July 1914 borders was held by Allied troops, they in fact had almost reached Venice in their equally ill-fated Final Offensive. Galician Ukraine was a separate political entity, granted full independence by Vienna, though the Polonia Restitutia issue had not been adequately resolved and for fiscal 1917-18 it ended up being run as a puppet regime from Berlin, to the dismay of Josef Pilsudski & crew who had prior to Aleksandr Kerensky's tenure in Russia enjoyed the support--albeit somewhat conditional--of the Vienna government.)

This is what, IMHO a combination of attrition and dangerously incompetent leadership (which was incapable of fully learning the lessons of modern warfare) can lead to.

It just happened to "kill" Tsarist Russia 15-18 months sooner.