Product Overview
These two books (Volume 5, Books 4 and 5) address the operations of the Imperial
Russian army in the First World War from the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 until the
Bolsheviks’ Declaration of Peace shortly after their seizure of power in 1917. Based
largely on archival research by 17 military historians from the United States, Canada,
the United Kingdom, Russia, Romania, Austria, and the Republic of Ireland, the
chapters present a series of novel perceptions on Russia’s Great War. They encompass
issues of command, logistics, military learning, and specific campaigns, while also
presenting the war in its larger contexts, spread as it was across two fronts—on
Russia’s western border against the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires and
Bulgaria, and the often-neglected front in the Caucasus—as well as on the Black and
Baltic Seas. In new approaches to the topic, the books include contributions on the
war’s domestic military impacts, particularly with regard to significant revolts in Russia’s
Central Asian possessions. They also address the roles of naval and aerial warfare, and
offer detailed discussions of Russo-Romanian military cooperation and the Austro-
Hungarian war effort in Ukraine, which lasted into the civil war that broke out in reaction
to the Bolshevik Revolution. The books conclude with an extended reflection on the
war’s intellectual and political legacies, and how they shaped the Soviet Red Army.
Regardless of their interest in or prior knowledge of Russia’s Great War, readers will find
important and interesting new insights into this epochal conflict whose impact still
resonates in the present day.
