
This book is one of a two-part collection of original essays on the cultural history of Russia from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 to the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922. The chapters in both parts of Russian Culture in War and Revolution represent the work of an international group of scholars. They explore the relationship between the crises of that period and the multifaceted dimensions of culture. The result is a diverse and stimulating array of essays on subjects that range from the experience of cultural institutions and the arts, to aspects of identity and the production of meaning in popular culture. Many of the topics covered in the two books have rarely, if ever, been explored across the 1914–22 period as a whole. Through close analysis of the institutional and symbolic contexts of Russian cultural life, and incorporating substantial new research, the chapters in the two books collectively advance our understanding of Russia’s experience of the First World War, its relationship to the early Soviet period, and the complex memory of war and revolution. An additional important theme addressed by the collections is the extent to which the 1917 revolutions were a turning point in Russian culture. The findings of Russian Culture in War and Revolution demonstrate that cultural life was not only tightly intertwined with its social and political contexts, but that the wider history of Russia’s Great War and Revolution cannot be fully comprehended without due attention to culture in its broadest sense. The books are part of a broader centennial series on “Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–22.”
Book reviews
Review by Michael C. Hickey in "Revolutionary Russia," vol. 29, 2016

This volume brings together a group of prominent scholars from Russia, Europe, and the United States to examine how the cataclysmic clash of the Russian Empire with its three imperial neighbors and its aftermath changed the empire and spurred the rapid radicalization of nationalism. Many of the essays take a conceptual approach, looking for new ways to think about the problems of empire and nationalism on the macro scale, while placing the issues in broader theoretical and comparative contexts. Others delve more deeply into case studies that illustrate how complex these issues are when one delves into the specifics. The result is a stimulating set of essays that provide fresh perspectives on the relationships between total war, empire, and nationalism. The books are part of a broader centennial series on “Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–22.”
Book Reviews
Review by Halit Dundar AKARCA in "Ab Imperio," vol. 2, 2015

This book presents a series of essays from leading international scholars that expand our understanding of the Russian Revolution through the detailed study of specific localities. Answering the important question of how locality affected the revolutionary experience, these essays provide regional snapshots from across Russia that highlight important themes of the revolution. Drawing on new empirical research from local archives, the authors contribute to the larger historiographic debates on the social and political meaning of the Russian Revolution as well as the nature of the Russian state. Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective highlights several important themes of the period that are reflected in this volume: a multitudinal state, the fluidity of party politics, the importance of violence as a historical agent, individual experiences, and the importance of economics and social forces. We reconceptualize developments in Russia between 1914 and 1922 as a kaleidoscopic process whose dynamic was not solely determined in the capitals. Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective is the first of four books comprising the volume Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–22, which studies Russia’s Home Front from the First World War through the Civil War. They are part of a broader centennial series on “Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–22.”

This book presents original research by an international group of scholars on the social history of Russia across the period of World War I, the 1917 revolutions, and the Civil War. The essays document how the inhabitants of Russia’s multinational empire mobilized in 1914 in response to the myriad demands of what many called the “Second Patriotic War.” They created ambitious new projects as well as adapting existing institutions to meet the military and social needs of total war, and increasingly cited their contributions to support claims for a greater political voice. As the authors demonstrate, the war offered unprecedented opportunities for engagement to groups previously on the margins of civil society, such as women and national minorities. The fall of the tsarist government in early 1917 reinvigorated the movement for social mobilization and renewal, now focused on advancing not only the war effort but also Russia’s new democratic order. The sweeping changes of this period inspired patriotism, hope, and idealism in many on Russia’s home front. But as this collection also shows, the violence, social disruption, and institutional breakdown produced by war and revolution damaged existing social networks and sowed anxiety, disillusionment, and despair. As revolution degenerated into civil war, Russians turned increasingly to devising strategies for survival. The editors of The Experience of War and Revolution hope that these innovative essays will encourage other scholars to study the social impact of total war and revolution, the grassroots mobilization of Russian society during this period, and the methods of adaptation and self-reinvention adopted by ordinary men and women in response to prolonged crisis.
The Experience of War and Revolution is the second of four books in the volume Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–22 . All four books constitute volume 3 of the broader centennial series on “Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–22.”

For soldiers on the Great War’s Western Front the term home front suggested a degree of coziness, a place of retreat from the horrors of battle visualized by the poet Rupert Brooke in idyllic terms shortly before the war, a place where the “lilac is in bloom” and “is there honey still for tea?” Russia was not overendowed with coziness even before the war, but the early defeats, extensive conscription, deepening economic crisis, and growing political instability meant the elimination of any traces and the replacement of coziness with food shortages, strikes, disturbances, and, in 1917, full-blown revolution. Then the situation became even worse. Catastrophe piled on catastrophe. Food shortages became famine. Economic crisis became collapse and, in 1918–20, flight from hellish cities like starving Petrograd. Political struggles became civil war. Terrible antisemitic pogroms occurred. The multiple crises engendered cholera, typhus, and influenza which ravaged malnourished bodies. On top of the war dead some ten million died in the Civil War, mainly from illnesses. The 34 contributions to the RGWR Home Front Books 3 and 4 shine a piercing light on these events. From broad accounts of the demographic consequences to detailed studies of particular aspects, the chapters in these two books take us to the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship on these issues. Book 3 focuses on the descent into chaos, while Book 4 centers on its consequences and the first steps by the new authorities to establish a new form of order in Soviet Russia.
National Disintegration is the third of four books in the volume Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–22 . All four books constitute volume 3 of the broader centennial series on “Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–22.”

For soldiers on the Great War’s Western Front the term home front suggested a degree of coziness, a place of retreat from the horrors of battle visualized by the poet Rupert Brooke in idyllic terms shortly before the war, a place where the “lilac is in bloom” and “is there honey still for tea?” Russia was not overendowed with coziness even before the war, but the early defeats, extensive conscription, deepening economic crisis, and growing political instability meant the elimination of any traces and the replacement of coziness with food shortages, strikes, disturbances, and, in 1917, full-blown revolution. Then the situation became even worse. Catastrophe piled on catastrophe. Food shortages became famine. Economic crisis became collapse and, in 1918–20, flight from hellish cities like starving Petrograd. Political struggles became civil war. Terrible antisemitic pogroms occurred. The multiple crises engendered cholera, typhus, and influenza which ravaged malnourished bodies. On top of the war dead some ten million died in the Civil War, mainly from illnesses. The 34 contributions to the RGWR Home Front Books 3 and 4 shine a piercing light on these events. From broad accounts of the demographic consequences to detailed studies of particular aspects, the chapters in these two books take us to the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship on these issues. Book 3 focuses on the descent into chaos, while Book 4 centers on its consequences and the first steps by the new authorities to establish a new form of order in Soviet Russia.

This volume features new research on the critical effects of World War I and the Russian Revolution and Civil War in Northeast Asia, a broad region that has historically included the Russian Far East, Mongolia, China, Korea, and Japan. Drawing together noted international specialists, the chapters break new
ground, bringing unused or understudied sources into the historical record and posing new questions about the causes, consequences, and dynamics of the war and revolutionary upheavals in the region. More than anything, the volume makes clear that our familiar habit of approaching Russia's Great War and Revolution from
a predominantly European angle needs to be reconsidered. These titanic events convulsed the entire empire, including Russia's faraway world on the Pacific, reshaping Northeast Asia towards its central involvement in the twentieth century’s bloodiest wars. The Northeast Asian theater was not peripheral to the developments of the era but rather an integral part of an unavoidably international and transnational history of conflict, destruction, and transformation. The essays in Russia’s Great War and Revolution in the Far East help us appreciate a number of the lesser-
known complexities of this story, offering scholars valuable new perspectives in the process.
Russia’s Great War and Revolution in the Far East: Re-imagining the Northeast Asian Theater, 1914–22 is part of the broader centennial series on “Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–22.”

This book—the first part of an entire volume about military affairs in Russia’s Great War and Revolution—is based on the premise that the military history of World War I in the Russian theater and the subsequent Civil War cannot be sufficiently understood by focusing exclusively on descriptions of war plans, strategy, and operations and that precisely because war is a human activity it is crucial to establish the place of humans in this military story. Moreover, this book interprets the notion of the military “front” very broadly, extending far beyond the lines of trenches and even beyond the army-controlled front zones. It was in all the vastly different circumstances where soldiers lived, fought, and died; it was where medical staffs worked around the clock to administer aid to the wounded; it was even in the POW camps. The common theme here is the military character of the experiences. Importantly, while Russia’s Great War did share many of the characteristics of the campaigns in Western Europe, it was also characterized by a host of important factors that were significantly different from the war experiences in Western Europe. Aside from the greater mobility and fluidity of the front, these other factors included time and space, nationality, religion, gender, the vast numbers of casualties, status, and politics. And that means that while this book seeks to add to the growing literature about Russia’s Great War and to a much lesser extent the Civil War by examining these types of theme through the prism of “human experiences,” it does not aim simply to mimic the existing studies of war experiences on the Western Front.
Steinberg, John W. et al., Introduction
https://doi.org/10.52500/WTIK8045
Alexandre Sumpf, The Russian Perception of “No Man’s Land” during the First World War
https://doi.org/10.52500/KSOY4864
Liisi Esse, Estonian Soldiers in World War I: A Distinctive Experience of a Small Nation in the Russian Army
https://doi.org/10.52500/FVIB2160
Oleg Budnitskii, Jews in the Russian Army during the First World War
https://doi.org/10.52500/AAYQ1093
Franziska Davies, Muslim Soldiers from the Volga-Ural Region in the Russian Army, 1914–February 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/DLYH1695
Laurie S. Stoff, Russia’s Women Soldiers of the Great War
https://doi.org/10.52500/IMWF5172
Denis A. Bazhanov, Disciplining Baltic Fleet Sailors (1914–February 1917)
https://doi.org/10.52500/OSRT5647
Evgenii O. Naumov, Adaptation to Extreme Conditions: The Everyday Life of 1st Army Soldiers on the Red Army’s Eastern Front, 1918
https://doi.org/10.52500/MCKQ7879
Karen Petrone, “I Have Become a Stranger to Myself”: The Wartime Memoirs of Lev Naumovich Voitolovskii
https://doi.org/10.52500/EXCO1006
Paul Robinson, Coping with Command: Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich at the Front
https://doi.org/10.52500/HPKY1776
Aleksandr B. Astashov, Russian Military Censorship during the First World War: The Experience of Control over Mood
https://doi.org/10.52500/SGAR6141
Laurie S. Stoff, Russia’s Sisters of Mercy of World War I: The Wartime Nursing Experience
https://doi.org/10.52500/DKVB4438
Dietrich Beyrau, Sermons, Rituals, and Miracles: The Russian Orthodox Clergy in WWI and Piety in the Trenches
https://doi.org/10.52500/CLRM8538
Anthony J. Heywood, The Militarization of Civilians in Tsarist Russia’s First World War: Railway Staff in the Army Front Zones
https://doi.org/10.52500/FVMP9692
Aleksandr B. Astashov, The “Other War” on the Eastern Front during the First World War: Fraternization and Making Peace with the Enemy
https://doi.org/10.52500/LOWT3802
Paul Simmons, Desertion in the Russian Army, 1914–17
https://doi.org/10.52500/WPQZ3406
Alexandre Sumpf, An Amputated Experience of War: Russian Disabled Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/EJWI1714
Oksana Nagornaia, Russian Prisoners of War in the First World War: The Camp Experience and Attempted Integration into Revolutionary Society (1914–22)
https://doi.org/10.52500/BZIQ5421
Julia Walleczek-Fritz, The Habsburg Empire’s Russian Prisoners of War and Their Experiences as Forced Laborers on the Austro-Hungarian Southwestern Front, 1915–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/OZAV7674
Matthias Egger and Christian Steppan, Captured and Forgotten? A Comparison of Russian and Austro-Hungarian Welfare Provision for Prisoners of War, 1914–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/SFRD2810
Boris I. Kolonitskii, Understanding the Kerenskii Offensive: Russian Revolutionary Military Propaganda and the Soldiers’ Motivation to Fight, April–June 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/RSMO7625
Alexandre Sumpf, “Velikaia Boinia”: Death and Burials in the Front Zone, 1914–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/YOHP1891
William G. Rosenberg, Conclusion: Assessing the Frontline Experience and Its Implications
https://doi.org/10.52500/JYDE6096

This book--one of two covering the Russian Civil War in a volume on military affairs during Russia’s Great War and Revolution--explores the military history of the Russian Civil War. Drawing heavily on research from Russian historians but including an international slate of authors, it traces the fighting on the Civil War’s eastern, southern, northern, and northwestern fronts, examining both the Bolshevik Reds and their White opponents. In addition, thematic chapters explore the role of aviation and naval forces in the Russian Civil War. Employing a host of new Russian archival sources, the authors bring fresh insights on the war’s campaigns and operations to an English-speaking audience. They show how the Reds and the Whites alike struggled to assemble forces and fight effectively across Russia’s immense spaces amid the economic and political chaos that followed the Russian Revolution. The deep analysis of the epic armed struggles that determined the fate of the revolution expands our picture of this continent-spanning conflict.
Contents
David R. Stone, Introduction
https://doi.org/10.52500/AHYY5643
Ruslan G. Gagkuev, The White Campaign on the Southern Front, 1918
https://doi.org/10.52500/NGUQ7507
Leontii V. Lannik, Germany and the White Movement in the South, 1918
https://doi.org/10.52500/MZQO5908
Vladislav I. Goldin, The Northern Front
https://doi.org/10.52500/XAER1892
Andrei V. Ganin, The Advance and Defeat of Kolchak
https://doi.org/10.52500/JLBA9166
Ruslan G. Gagkuev, The White Campaign on the Southern Front, 1919
https://doi.org/10.52500/GLSF3594
Vasilii Zh. Tsvetkov, The White Northwestern Front, 1918–19
https://doi.org/10.52500/IURR4801
Geoffrey Hosking, Last Battles: Vladivostok and the Far Eastern Republic, 1920–22
https://doi.org/10.52500/SSIS3270
Anthony Kröner, Vrangel´’s Last Stand
https://doi.org/10.52500/QNDA8561
Nikita A. Kuznetsov, Naval Forces in the Russian Civil War
https://doi.org/10.52500/GXKW1006
Marat A. Khairulin, Aviation in the Russian Civil War: Three Case Studies
https://doi.org/10.52500/MEIV3601

This book--one of two covering the Russian Civil War in a volume on military affairs during Russia’s Great War and Revolution--explores institutions, social groups, and social conflict amid the chaos of the war that followed the Russian Revolution. Drawing on an international cohort of authors and wide range of newly available sources, the book provides insights into the experience of civil war for those living in the ruins of the Russian Empire. In addition to studies of intelligence and the officer corps of the Red and White armies, it also traces the complicated history of Russia’s Cossacks through the war. Explorations of the role of ideology and propaganda along with the problem of desertion from the fighting armies give insight into the motivations of the war’s soldiers. A series of chapters on peasant insurgency and the anarchic conflicts in Ukraine provide a clearer understanding of often-neglected aspects of the Civil War.
Contents
Andrei V. Ganin, The Russian Officer Corps in the Civil War: The Reds and the National Armies
https://doi.org/10.52500/XUQB3662
Ruslan G. Gagkuev, Russian Officers of the White Movement
https://doi.org/10.52500/DXTQ7293
Andrei V. Ganin, Russian Cossacks in the Civil War
https://doi.org/10.52500/BCUO9253
Stephen Brown, Ideology, Agitation, and Propaganda: The Red and White Armies during the Civil War
https://doi.org/10.52500/JSZO7601
Evgenii O. Naumov, The Struggle Against Desertion on the Red Army’s Eastern Front, 1918
https://doi.org/10.52500/KBBN5032
Andrei V. Ganin, Intelligence and Counterintelligence during the Russian Civil War, 1917–22
https://doi.org/10.52500/KUZN6329
Erik C. Landis, Situating Peasant War, 1918–21
https://doi.org/10.52500/DFJQ1802
Alexander V. Prusin, Otamanshchyna: Insurgency Warfare in Ukraine, 1918–22
https://doi.org/10.52500/XDAD6711
Christopher Gilley, Warlordism in Ukraine: The Otamany during the Russian Civil War
https://doi.org/10.52500/YODV1157
Mykhailo A. Koval´chuk, Ukrainian National Armies in the Russian Civil War, 1917–20
https://doi.org/10.52500/NCCV4353
Andrei V. Ganin, Conclusion: Red Victory
https://doi.org/10.52500/SQUQ7715
Geoffrey Swain, Afterword
https://doi.org/10.52500/UQDW7784

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was quickly perceived by both contemporaries and subsequent scholars as not merely a domestic event within the Russian Empire, but as a systemic crisis that fundamentally challenged the assumptions underpinning the existing international system. The revolution posed striking challenges not merely to conventional diplomacy, with the Bolsheviks openly seeking to end the war, spark international revolutionary class war, and vocally backing national self-determination for formerly subject peoples, but to existing social, economic, and ethnic orders. From nomadic peoples in Mongolia and the Central Asian steppe suddenly juggling new dilemmas of greater autonomy or full independence, to German workers, soldiers, and sailors challenging their traditional rulers, or Turkish politicians seeking to build a viable new nation state from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire, there were few political developments anywhere in the world in 1917–24 not directly or indirectly influenced by the Russian Revolution. The Arc of Revolution, which is Book 1 in the RGWR volume The Global Impacts of Russia's Great War and Revolution, examines the reverberations of the Russian Revolution in the geographically contiguous imperial borderlands traditionally contested between Imperial Russia and its geopolitical rivals—the terrain stretching from Finland, through Central Europe to the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Books 2 and 3 in the volume examine the wider global impact of the revolution in regions of the world noncontiguous with Russia itself, from North and South America to Asia, Africa, Australia, and various parts of Europe. The emphasis in Books 2 and 3, The Wider Arc of Revolution, is on the complex emotional appeal and ideological legacies of Russian communism, including anticommunism, evidenced well into the 20th century.
Alex Marshall, Introduction: Into the Abyss: The Arc of Revolution and the “World Crisis”
https://doi.org/10.52500/PXRV3892
Alex Marshall, Lenin and World Revolution, 1917–24
https://doi.org/10.52500/OCLW5934
Norman Saul, The Helsingfors (Helsinki) Sailors’ Assembly in 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/ZICN2608
Marko Tikka, Finland’s Civil War of 1918
https://doi.org/10.52500/XVON5309
Karsten Brüggemann, Learning from Estonia Means Learning to Be Victorious? Estonia between the Legacy of the February Revolution and Nikolai Iudenich’s Northwestern Army
https://doi.org/10.52500/ESRT8537
Geoffrey Swain, Starting the World Revolution: Latvia’s Soviet Republic of 1919
https://doi.org/10.52500/XUIA7848
Mark Jones, Scripting the Revolution: “Russian Conditions” and the German Political Imagination in 1918 and 1919
https://doi.org/10.52500/XUIA7848
Thomas Weber, Bavaria’s Seminal Catastrophe: The Revolution of 1918–19
https://doi.org/10.52500/OACH7393
Harald Jentsch, The Hamburg Uprising as Part of the “German October,” 1923
Ignác Romsics, Hungary in 1918–19
https://doi.org/10.52500/IEDH7834
Ignác Romsics, Hungary in 1918–19
https://doi.org/10.52500/SOVW2171
Matthew R. Schwonek, Strategy for an Emerging State: Poland and the War with the Bolsheviks, 1919–21
https://doi.org/10.52500/JERL2106
Jacek Lubecki, Poland and the Russian Revolutions of 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/PXTS7167
Mark R. Baker, The Russian Revolution in Ukraine and the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/UZJS5369
Vadim Mukhanov, From the Mountains to the Plains: Establishing Soviet Rule in Armenia and Azerbaijan (1920)
https://doi.org/10.52500/IMKM8423
Vadim Mukhanov, The Final Act of the Civil War in the Caucasus: The Sovietization of Georgia in 1921
https://doi.org/10.52500/MDDG4333
Georgia Eglezou, The Asia Minor War (1919–22)
https://doi.org/10.52500/VRKG9700
Vasil Paraskevov, The Impact of the October Revolution on Bulgarian Politics, 1917–19
https://doi.org/10.52500/ZYZW6263
Steven Sabol, Revolution and Civil War in the Steppe: Alash Orda and the Struggle for Kazakh Independence
https://doi.org/10.52500/ABCI8177
David M. Crowe, Mongolia: Battleground of Eurasian Imperialism, 1911–24
https://doi.org/10.52500/CZUA4883
John W. Steinberg, The Forgotten Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: The Bread Treaty and Peacemaking in 1918
https://doi.org/10.52500/WWEF1438
Steven Sabol, Epilogue
https://doi.org/10.52500/SCYR9728

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was quickly perceived by both contemporaries and subsequent scholars as not merely a domestic event within the Russian Empire, but as a systemic crisis that fundamentally challenged the assumptions underpinning the existing international system. The revolution posed striking challenges not merely to conventional diplomacy, with the Bolsheviks openly seeking to end the war, spark international revolutionary class war, and vocally backing national self-determination for formerly subject peoples, but to existing social, economic, and ethnic orders. From nomadic peoples in Mongolia and the Central Asian steppe suddenly juggling new dilemmas of greater autonomy or full independence, to German workers, soldiers, and sailors challenging their traditional rulers, or Turkish politicians seeking to build a viable new nation state from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire, there were few political developments anywhere in the world in 1917–24 not directly or indirectly influenced by the Russian Revolution. The Arc of Revolution, which is Book 1 in the RGWR volume The Global Impacts of Russia's Great War and Revolution, examines the reverberations of the Russian Revolution in the geographically contiguous imperial borderlands traditionally contested between Imperial Russia and its geopolitical rivals—the terrain stretching from Finland, through Central Europe to the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Books 2 and 3 in the volume examine the wider global impact of the revolution in regions of the world noncontiguous with Russia itself, from North and South America to Asia, Africa, Australia, and various parts of Europe. The emphasis in Books 2 and 3, The Wider Arc of Revolution, is on the complex emotional appeal and ideological legacies of Russian communism, including anticommunism, evidenced well into the 20th century.
Choi Chatterjee, Introduction: The Global Impact of 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/RMTM6091
David MacLaren McDonald, Dreams of Dukhoboriia: The Russian Revolution and Canada’s Dukhobors
https://doi.org/10.52500/RMTM6091
Mary Neuburger, Hungry for Revolution: Women, Food, and the Bulgarian Left, 1917–23
https://doi.org/10.52500/DSAW9571
Erik van Ree, A Dream Come True: Western Eyewitnesses of the October Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/NQWU7244
Robert Weinberg, The Bolshevik Revolution and Jews
https://doi.org/10.52500/NKHF4857
Jürgen Buchenau, A “Bourgeois Revolution” Contemplates a “Worker’s Revolution:” Mexico, 1917–34
https://doi.org/10.52500/DWAH3382
A. James Gregor, The Bolshevik Revolution and the Rise of Italian Fascism
https://doi.org/10.52500/SIHO5230
Sabine Hake, Communists into Nazis: The Conversion of the German Worker
https://doi.org/10.52500/TUMA3009
Steven G. Marks, “Workers of the World Fight and Unite for a White South Africa”: The Rand Revolt, the Red Scare, and the Roots of Apartheid
https://doi.org/10.52500/AGOE7356
Steven Sabol, An Uncivil War: The Red Scare in the United States
https://doi.org/10.52500/YSOJ4715
Choi Chatterjee, Lady in Red: Russian Revolutionary Languages in the American Imagination, 1917–39
https://doi.org/10.52500/ENMP9632
Ali İğmen, Between Empire and the Nation-State, between Humanism and Communism: Nâzım Hikmet’s Noble Struggle with Modernity
https://doi.org/10.52500/SLRP5372
Masha Kirasirova, An Egyptian Communist Family Romance: Revolution and Gender in the Transnational Life of Charlotte Rosenthal
https://doi.org/10.52500/ZIZG5461
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Michael Gruzenberg/Mikhail Borodin: The Making of an International Communist
https://doi.org/10.52500/WORP5695
Julia L. Mickenberg, An American Flapper in Russia? Work, Desire, and Dissent in 1920s Moscow
https://doi.org/10.52500/LQDX5438
Sandra Pujals, Becoming Jaime Nevares: Imagination and Identity Reinvention in the Communist International’s Latin American Network, 1919–43
https://doi.org/10.52500/WROA8136
Ludmila Stern, A Woman with a Camera: Soviet Espionage in Interwar France
https://doi.org/10.52500/ZZUC2200

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was quickly perceived by both contemporaries and subsequent scholars as not merely a domestic event within the Russian Empire, but as a systemic crisis that fundamentally challenged the assumptions underpinning the existing international system. The revolution posed striking challenges not merely to conventional diplomacy, with the Bolsheviks openly seeking to end the war, spark international revolutionary class war, and vocally backing national self-determination for formerly subject peoples, but to existing social, economic, and ethnic orders. From nomadic peoples in Mongolia and the Central Asian steppe suddenly juggling new dilemmas of greater autonomy or full independence, to German workers, soldiers, and sailors challenging their traditional rulers, or Turkish politicians seeking to build a viable new nation state from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire, there were few political developments anywhere in the world in 1917–24 not directly or indirectly influenced by the Russian Revolution. The Arc of Revolution, which is Book 1 in the RGWR volume The Global Impacts of Russia's Great War and Revolution, examines the reverberations of the Russian Revolution in the geographically contiguous imperial borderlands traditionally contested between Imperial Russia and its geopolitical rivals—the terrain stretching from Finland, through Central Europe to the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Books 2 and 3 in the volume examine the wider global impact of the revolution in regions of the world noncontiguous with Russia itself, from North and South America to Asia, Africa, Australia, and various parts of Europe. The emphasis in Books 2 and 3, The Wider Arc of Revolution, is on the complex emotional appeal and ideological legacies of Russian communism, including anticommunism, evidenced well into the 20th century.
Erik Ching and José Alfredo Ramírez, El Salvador and the Russian Revolution, 1917–32
https://doi.org/10.52500/MLJF2325
Ben Curtis, Incorrigible Rebels: The Significance and Influence of the Communist Party in the South Wales Coalfield, 1917–36
https://doi.org/10.52500/XCZX1691
Sandra McGee Deutsch, “A Labor Filled with Love”: Communists, Women, and Solidarity in Argentina, 1930–47
https://doi.org/10.52500/NDSW8412
William Kenefick and Paul Dukes, The Scottish Radical Left in Aberdeen and Dundee: The Impact of the Great War and Russian Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/KGIE9090
Daniel Kowalsky, Looking Back on Operation X: Stalin and the Spanish Republic, 1936–39
https://doi.org/10.52500/LJRE9285
Stuart Macintyre, Revolution from Afar: Communism in Australia
https://doi.org/10.52500/LXZB9582
Jie-Hyun Lim, Nationalizing the Bolshevik Revolution Transnationally: Non-Western Modernization among “Proletarian” Nations
https://doi.org/10.52500/CVRN6908
Afshin Matin-asgari, The Bolshevik Revolution’s Impact on Iranian Modernity
https://doi.org/10.52500/IFWL7462
Kristin Mulready-Stone, The Impact of the Russian Revolution on the Chinese Youth Movement
https://doi.org/10.52500/YAWB8130
Michael Silvestri, “Those Dead Heroes Did Not Regret the Sacrifices They Made”: Responses to the Russian Revolution in Revolutionary Ireland, 1917–23
https://doi.org/10.52500/HMLT6020
Rianne Subijanto, Communist Openbare Vergaderingen and an Indonesian Revolutionary Public Sphere
https://doi.org/10.52500/QTAC6021
Hari Vasudevan, India and the October Revolution: Nationalist Revolutionaries, Bolshevik Power, and “Lord Curzon’s Nightmare”
https://doi.org/10.52500/JVDY6410
Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Yidi Wu, The Russian Revolution through Chinese Eyes, 1917–2017
https://doi.org/10.52500/ILES1665
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Reframing Slavic Studies and the Global Impacts of 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/HUEY3917
Glennys Young, Conclusion: Wider Arcs of the Russian Revolution as Impact, Networks, or ...?
https://doi.org/10.52500/DJVI3568

World War I, followed by four more years of revolution and civil conflict, exerted its power to both liberate and destroy in Russia on a scale unsurpassed elsewhere in Europe. It accelerated improvements in women’s status and employment opportunities, culminating with the gain of full political rights after the overthrow of the monarchy in February 1917. The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 ushered in a new leadership and political system that proclaimed sweeping economic and social equality for women as its goal, not mere “bourgeois” rights. At the same time, war and revolution subjected women and men to extreme violence and insecurity and upended gender expectations. Individual historians have investigated various problems in the history of women and gender in Russia during this period, but the field still lags behind the extensive historiography of gender and war in Europe.
This volume brings together scholars from Russia, Great Britain, and North America to examine women’s experiences and changing gender norms during Russia’s crisis years. Looking beyond rhetoric about women’s wartime service and ideological proclamations of emancipation, the authors seek to understand how years of military combat, political upheaval, and social transformation affected lives and redefined concepts of citizenship, patriotism, and gender. Since no one volume can encompass the vast scope and depth of these topics, the contributors hope that their work will encourage others to undertake research on women and gender in Russia’s Great War and Revolution.
Adele Lindenmeyr and Melissa K. Stockdale, Introduction
https://doi.org/10.52500/YNQH7079
Anthony J. Heywood, Women Workers in Wartime Tsarist Russia, 1914–17: Hiring Policy in the Railroad Industry
https://doi.org/10.52500/SRPZ5718
Denis Davydov and Olga Kozlova, Emancipation “Soviet-style”: Changes in the Status of Rural Women, 1914–27 (Based on Materials from Kazan´ Province and the Tatar Republic)
https://doi.org/10.52500/KRLT2463
Aleksandr Borisovich Astashov, Women’s Labor on Russia’s Defense in the First World War: Work and Gender
https://doi.org/10.52500/UVOB9715
Christine D. Worobec, Lived Religion Gendered: Representations and Practices of Russian Orthodoxy
https://doi.org/10.52500/UFGQ4627
Katherine McElvanney, Women and the Early Soviet Press
https://doi.org/10.52500/PQGH5270
Ronald P. Bobroff, En Garde! The Influence of Elite Masculinity on Russia’s Decision for War in July 1914
https://doi.org/10.52500/MRZZ2203
Steven G. Jug, Reconnoitering Masculine Subjectivities among Soldiers and Officers on Russia’s Military Fronts, 1914–17
https://doi.org/10.52500/YAZA7059
Boris I. Kolonitskii, Kerenskii as a “Woman”: The Delegitimization of a Politician in the Conditions of Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/FDTI2554
Pavel Vasilyev, Gendered Bodies on Trial: Exploring Litigation Strategies in the Early Soviet People’s Court
https://doi.org/10.52500/GRLV3532
Galina Ulianova, The Dowager Empress Mother Mariia Fedorovna during Russia’s Great War and Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/UQTF4501
David Borgmeyer, The Art of Natal´ia Goncharova and the Great War: Modernism and Conflict in Russia
https://doi.org/10.52500/IXTA7019
Stuart Finkel, Philanthropy, Politics, and Public Action: Ekaterina Peshkova in Wartime and Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/TVUL9560
Katy Turton, Gender, Political Culture, and the February Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/MURL9941
Olga Volkova, Two Voices from Russian Harbin: Gender Fluidity and Heroic Rhetoric in the Poetry of Arsenii Nesmelov and Marianna Kolosova
https://doi.org/10.52500/THRA5286
Karen Petrone, Gender and Civil War (1918–21) in Contemporary Russian Memory
https://doi.org/10.52500/NJCQ9185
Susan R. Grayzel, Situating Russia’s Great War and Revolution in the History of First World War Women and Gender
https://doi.org/10.52500/DQUP2796