Аннотация от автора: Among the most enduring images of the Russian effort in the Great War is a lack of the tools of modern war--not merely artillery pieces, shells, and aircraft but also basic requirements, such as small arms. Accounts are replete with stories of replacements being sent unarmed to the front and told to pick up the rifles of casualties, or of bayonets being used to do the work that more-sophisticated armies entrusted to shells and bullets...

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Аннотация от автора: Sergei Witte often expressed sympathy for the many non-Russians in his country. Jews, Poles, and other peoples who were not Russian or Orthodox Christian frequently faced discriminatory laws in the businesses, education, and government of the Russian Empire. But there were basic contradictions in Witte's political career. On the one hand, he held very progressive views and stood for abolishing laws that discriminated on the basis of ethnic origins. Such laws, he felt, hindered the growth of Russia's productivity. Yet this modern outlook contrasted with his admiration for the old traditions of the Russian monarchy, whose absolute powers were often the source of discriminatory laws in the first place. When the Russian emperor Alexander II was assassinated by terrorists in 1881, Witte briefly joined a secret society dedicated to seeking out and destroying terrorists...

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Аннотация от автора: First meeting of Russian representative assembly...

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Аннотация от автора: Three years after his party's successful coup d'état in 1917, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin referred to the Revolution of 1905 as a "dress rehearsal" for the events of 1917. In 1905, Russian society was torn asunder by the Bloody Sunday (22 January) shootings of unarmed workers demonstrating for a redress of their grievances and by a costly and unsuccessful war with Japan. In the midst of rising urban and rural lawlessness, strikes, and civil unrest came calls for a constitutional state with guaranteed civil rights and representative institutions...

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Аннотация от автора: The reasons for the collapse of the Provisional Government in November 1917 and its replacement by Bolshevik rule are the subject of a contentious debate among historians of revolutionary Russia. After the fall of the tsarist government in March of that year, the largely self-appointed Provisional Government took temporary charge of national affairs, expressing its commitment to the full democratization of Russia and implementing important reforms in justice and civil liberties. It also continued Russian involvement in World War I. Like its tsarist predecessor, however, the Provisional Government could not mobilize the troops, gather the resources, or marshal the people's resolve to prevail against Germany and its allies. By late 1917 the Provisional Government had lost much of its legitimacy in the eyes of the Russian people and was easily replaced by a communist regime that promised to end Russian participation in the conflict...

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Аннотация от автора: World War I officially ended in Paris and its palatial suburbs, in a series of treaties signed between 1919 and 1923. Formally ending hostilities fell against the backdrop of dramatic events in Russia, which experienced its continuing revolution and civil war in those years. This chapter assesses whether Russian developments had any meaningful impact on what was happening at the close of the "war to end all wars."
One argument maintains that this influence was profound. Allied policymakers plainly could not ignore the challenges of the Bolshevik Revolution. Its determination to export revolution to Europe, revisit the earlier peace settlement between Russia and Germany, and create other obstacles for European diplomacy demanded their attention, as did the appearance of representatives of anti-Bolshevik White forces, who successfully agitated for military, financial, and material support in their battle against the Reds. Forming a new world order demanded careful consideration of the nascent Soviet state and its emerging role in the new international order...

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Аннотация от автора: Last Russian tsar, whose failures as a leader combined with the deep problems of his country to bring on revolution in 1917...

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Аннотация от автора: Emperor of Russia known as the "tsar liberator," who emancipated the serfs in 1861 and instituted the first legal and political reforms in an effort to modernize Russia...

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Аннотация от автора: Promulgation of a decree creating a constitutional government in Russia...

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Аннотация от автора: Russia, officially called the Russian Federation, was by far the largest republic of the former USSR. Its estimated 2002 population of 145 million accounted for slightly more than half the Soviet total. Its 17 million square kilometers (6.6 million square miles) comprised 76% of the territory of the USSR, stretching across Eurasia to the Pacific across 11 time zones. Russia also inherited the lion's share of the natural resources, industrial base, and military assets of the former Soviet Union. Much of its territory in the north and Far East, however, is sparsely populated. Although Russia is nearly twice the size of the United States, its population is only a bit more than half the U.S. total...

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