Russia's Great War & Revolution Series

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—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 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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”