Tsarist Russia at War: the View from Above, 1914-February 1917
- ️https://manchester.academia.edu/PeterGatrell
Related papers
Russia in War and Revolution, 1914-1922: A Documentary History (2009)
Drawing on newly available Russian sources—many of which appear in English for the first time here—this volume covers a broad array of topics, including the Bolshevik rise to power and World War I as the catalyst and cradle, respectively, of the Revolution. The authors convey the boldness and diversity of the revolutionaries' aspirations as well as the ways in which the Revolution affected the lives of ordinary people, from the workers of Petrograd to Siberian peasants and Ukrainian Jews.
Jonathan D. Smele’s comprehensive account fits well into the prolonged centenary of the Russian imperial crisis marked by the Great War, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the protracted conflict that the author calls the “‘Russian’ Civil Wars.” The book is a valuable addition to the new body of literature that will, hopefully, bring about a better understanding of one of the bloodiest civil wars in human history, provide convincing answers to some of the many remaining questions about its causes and consequences, and uncover new blind zones in the plethora of events that unfolded in Northern Eurasia between 1916 and 1926.
1917–2017: The Geopolitical Legacy of the Russian Revolution
Geopolitics
Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.
In Russian studies a link between World War I and the Revolution of 1917 has always been very clear. However, for a long period of time the war had only secondary importance in this bond, viewed as a catalyst for the revolutionary process. War was overshadowed by the creation of the Soviet State, largely losing its scope and historical specificity. Historians have argued that the aspiration to end the Great War largely determined the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution. An integral feature of this discourse was also the interpretation of the Brest Peace as a worthy and timely exit from the war, not military defeat. The basis for the interpretation of the war as a " servant of the revolution " were assertions of Vladimir Lenin, who saw the events of World War I only through the prism of aggravating imperialist contradictions, giving the revolutionary proletariat a possibility of deploying a weapon of war against their national bourgeoisies. The new trend of returning World War I it’s fitting scale and peculiarity, was established in 1990-2000 during the confrontation between the supporters of "totalitarian paradigm" in Russian studies, on the one hand, and renewed social history, on the other. Last ones are trying to integrate the history of the revolutionary events of 1917-1921 in a longer duration of not only Russian, but also European and world history. They note an undeniable succession of Russian political events of 1914-1921, where the public mood, political and economical policies of a military time applied by the government, had formed an institutional framework that will be used by Bolsheviks afterwards.