Did Russian defeats and shortages in World War I precipitate the revolutions of 1917?

Viewpoint: Yes. Without the traumas of World War I, the revolutions of 1917 would not have happened.

Viewpoint: No. Economic and social changes associated with attempts at modernization made revolution against the inflexible Russian autocracy inevitable, regardless of Russia's fate in the war.

_________________

Whether Russia could have avoided revolutionary upheaval by staying out of World War I remains one of the most tantalizing questions of twentieth-century history. As Russia suffered one defeat after another in the field and severe shortages of food and crucial supplies, its soldiers and civilians became disaffected. The capital and institutions of state fell from the control of the tsarist system, and the Provisional Government that replaced it lasted less than a year. Many problems associated with the revolutionary upheaval of 1917--including massive inflation, dwindling food supplies, strained infrastructure, distracted government, and long-term commitment to unpopular foreign interests--were intimately related to the war. Many historians believe that, in their absence, the total collapse of state and society seems to have been unlikely.
Nevertheless, many other historians contend that the war only exacerbated long-term problems in Russian society that could have had no solution other than massive upheaval. In their view, although the war coincided with--or, as some suggest, hastened--the boiling point of these problems in 1917, the war did not make a crucial difference in creating revolution.



Viewpoint: Yes. Without the traumas of World War I, the revolutions of 1917 would not have happened.

Arthur Mendel set the parameters in 1969 for the historiographical debate about the effects of World War I on the Russian revolutions of 1917 when he divided historians into two camps: the "optimists," who believed that tsarist Russia was moving toward a Western-style liberal democracy when it was derailed by the pressures of World War I (1914-1918); and the "pessimists," who argued that Russia was on the brink of socialist revolution when the war broke out in August 1914 and that the momentary surge of national unity just postponed the inevitable. Although the debate today eschews such terminology--which is freighted with Cold War-era value judgments about what would have been best for Russia--it is clear from contemporary discussions of the political direction of post-Soviet Russia that these sentiments still persist.

It is necessary to recognize that, unlike Russian involvement in a war with Japan in 1904-1905, Russian participation in 1914 was all but unavoidable. Russian foreign policy throughout the nineteenth century had kept it at war with the Ottoman Empire because Russia wanted to expand its interests in the Near East and protect the Orthodox Christian Slavs from the Muslim Turks. The Russian domestic policy of rapid industrialization had enmeshed the Russian and French economies to such an extent that the two countries shared one another's national interests. Despite a well-known memorandum from State Councillor Petr Durnovo to Tsar Nicholas II, in which Durnovo presciently predicted a military defeat resulting in social revolution, it would have been wholly unexpected for the tsar not to have gone to war against Germany and its allies. The fact that a wide swath of political opinion--from the moderate socialists to the conservatives in the State Duma--supported the war underscores the argument that participation in it cannot be dismissed as autocratic folly. Nor can the initial public support be interpreted as sunshine patriotism, vulnerable to the disaffection that accompanies military defeat. It was the unforeseen nature of World War I--its stalemate along the trenches and the subsequent problems that each of the belligerent powers had in articulating the aims of a war that cost each of them a generation of young men--that shaped the Russian revolutions of 1917.

The initial burst of enthusiasm among Russians for taking on their historical nemesis, the hated "Hun," came from all elements of society, which is not the same as saying that it was universal. The largely peasant population of Russia had more at stake in the harvest than in fighting the Germans, for example, and not all workers were ready to end a strike movement that had been gaining intensity throughout the summer of 1914. The initial burst of patriotism masked the reality that the tsar and most of his subjects held substantively different objectives in fighting this war. The prolongation of the war not only exposed the differences, but also exacerbated them, forcing the tsar to abdicate in March 1917, after the success of the first of the two 1917 revolutions; this revolution would have transpired more peaceably had Russian politics been allowed to mature on their own without the strains of war. The second revolution, launched by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks in October 1917, resulted directly from the inability of the successive, hastily cobbled together, provisional governments to prosecute the war effectively or to respond to public opinion about it.

From late in the seventeenth century, when Peter the Great (ruled 1682-1725) had committed his empire to westernization, Russia had continually looked out through the "window on the West" that Peter had opened in Saint Petersburg for developmental models. Peter brought to Russia the technology necessary for industrialization, and by the end of the eighteenth century Catherine the Great (ruled 1729-1796) had imported principles from the Enlightenment. Defeat in the Crimean War (1853-1856) had forced Alexander II (ruled 1855-1881) to inaugurate a wholesale reform of society and the economy, and he turned westward for examples. Although one could argue that none of these rulers was willing to concede his autocratic prerogatives, one must also recognize that the autocratic principle was eroded with each step. When Nicholas II was forced by the Revolution of 1905 to grant the Russian people a constitution, even though he maintained the privilege of superseding it, he nonetheless took that next step forward by allowing electoral representation. A wiser man than he would have conceded more and resigned himself to reigning as a constitutional monarch, but Nicholas never lost his faith that autocracy was the best form of government for Russia. Even most of the conservative parties in the Duma, however, after having experienced the power of legislating firsthand, had turned against the tsar before the outbreak of the war. Russians were preparing to govern themselves.

Self-government in the form adopted by representative, electoral democracies has depended on the presence of several infrastructural factors. Foremost, it requires that a society be pluralist, with political parties developing as institutions that represent different interest groups. As a result of the policies of rapid industrialization, Russia had diversified, and its urban areas were legitimately pluralistic. A second important factor is the ability to organize into political parties that represent the conflicting interests of the various groups. Following the Revolution of 1905, a plethora of political parties sprouted, as one pundit put it, "like mushrooms after a rain." It took two years and two failed Dumas for the Russians to work through some of the problems inherent in organizing a party from scratch. The Western-oriented Kadets, for example, had to learn that compromise is integral to representative politics. Although the Third Duma--the first truly successful one--was weighted heavily in favor of property owners and therefore cannot be considered democratically representative, Russia was imitating patterns established by the development of parliamentary institutions in the West. The third factor is that political parties must have a philosophical understanding that, though they represent specific interests, those interests must nonetheless have a sense of working for the greater good of the public, broadly defined to include all groups. Russia had a firmly developed tradition of public consciousness, best exemplified at one extreme by Catherine the Great's enlightened despotism, and at the other by the intelligentsia, which was intent on integrating the Russian masses into a cultural whole. It can be argued that the Third Duma was more mature than the electorate, as the Octobrist Party, the conservatives that held the majority, were fighting for constitutional guarantees to safeguard their right to legislative authority.

The outbreak of the war, however, prevented the electorate from maturing properly. Those who have presented the case for the pessimists have also stressed problems in the basic infrastructure of Russia, especially its economic backwardness and the failure of social groups dissatisfied with autocracy to find any other common political cause. The strains of war, however, exacerbated the negative consequences of backwardness. For example, investment capital was diverted from agriculture to war materials, and the cottage industries that had kept many peasant families solvent were closed. In those areas where the economy adjusted quickly and moved forward, such as banking and heavy industry, profiteering from the war became a hot political issue. The lowest strata of the population, peasants and workers, were the hardest hit by the inflation that resulted from the government decision to increase the supply of currency almost exponentially in order to pay the staggering costs of the war. The millions of refugees forced out of the battle zones strained to the breaking point the local governments forced to accommodate them. The spark that lit the February Revolution, women rioting in breadlines in Petrograd, had been ignited by economic backwardness and further complicated by the war and the inability of local officials to supply the home front. Within a week, what began as a bread riot brought down the autocracy, leaving two institutions competing for political power: the Provisional Government, or representatives of the constitutionally minded liberal elites, and the soviets, elected representatives of the historically disenfranchised lower classes. Moreover, with the collapse of the central government many of the ethnic groups in the Russian Empire launched separatist movements. The war had accelerated the politicization of the masses.

At this point the Provisional Government displayed what turned out to be its fatal immaturity. The majority of the population demanded "peace, land, and bread." In order to meet the second and third of these demands, it was necessary first to achieve peace. By insisting on prosecuting the war, the Provisional Government lost whatever credibility it had enjoyed in the beginning, and with that credibility the authority to govern. While the Provisional Government dithered over issues that would have made sense during peacetime, such as the convocation of a Constituent Assembly after the war, most Russians were absorbed with bread-and-butter issues, such as the alarming increase in crime that accompanied the collapse of authority. When a rudderless government could not respond to worker demands for rights in the workplace or to peasant demands for more arable land, those groups took what they understood to be political rights for themselves. Lenin and his Bolshevik Party stepped into a political vacuum that had been created by the circumstances of war. They needed a second, civil war to establish themselves, and they then rescinded many of the rights for which Russian workers and peasants had fought.

Although this essay assumes a classically optimistic position, it does not presume that, if Russia had avoided involvement in the war, it would have become a liberal democracy. The historical experience of a strong central state and a weakly developed notion of private property suggests that Social Democracy would have played a role in postautocratic Russian politics, perhaps similar to Scandinavian models. Yet, Russians surely would have enjoyed an increased direct participation in government, sending legislators to represent their interests in a deliberative body, and Russia could have avoided the terror that put the Stalinist system in place.

-- Louise McReynolds, University of Hawai'i, Manoa


Viewpoint: No. Economic and social changes associated with attempts at modernization made revolution against the inflexible Russian autocracy inevitable, regardless of Russia's fate in the war.

Of course World War I increased the pressures on tsarist Russia. Millions of Russian soldiers were killed and wounded; the economy of the empire was placed under tremendous strain; and the prestige of the government was fatally undermined by the poor performance of tsarist troops in the war. Yet, the tsar's empire was already terminally ill when World War I broke out in 1914. It would have collapsed even without the war.

Imperial Russia was essentially a large army supported by a mediocre state. It was economically less developed than any other European power. In 1904-1905 Russia was unable to defeat Japan, a country with few raw materials of its own and a third of Russia's population and its number of men under arms. Diplomatically, Russia was dependent on France, which had no interest in Russia save as a source of soldiers to distract the Germans, who had defeated France before and were almost certain to do so again without separate challenges elsewhere. The Russian bureaucracy was unprofessional and incompetent. Its social structures were mostly premodern: roughly 80 percent of the population were peasants, most of whom practiced subsistence farming. Industry and transportation were growing but still lagged distantly behind those of its competitors.

There was little hope for progress in Russia. The Russian autocracy is a good example of why hereditary regimes do not endure. Tsar Nicholas II was a charming man with good intentions, but he was inept in government. When he chose to take personal command of the army in August 1915, the political system had no mechanism to prevent this exercise in folly, nor did it have a way to prevent him from handing the reigns of power to his equally inept wife and her mostly incompetent favorites while he was off at the front.

These problems had deep roots in Russian history. Once Peter the Great (ruled 1682-1725) chose to connect his realm to the European system, Russia was drawn into a dynamic and competitive network of strategic requirements, commitments, and relationships. Since the Early Modern Period, European states had found themselves caught up in a contest in which they either dominated their neighbors or were dominated by them. Smaller nations could hope to be left alone or protected, but they always faced the danger of being absorbed. Russia might have hoped to stay out of that system, as it had in earlier centuries, but it did not.

It is questionable, of course, whether the Russian ruling classes could have conceived of such an option. Once it entered this state system, Russia was able to compete favorably in an era that moved by horseback and fought with single-shot firearms. Its advantages of vast territories and large numbers of soldiers helped Russia prevail in the determined efforts of two major powers, Sweden in 1700-1721 and France in 1797-1807 and 1812-1814. The machine age, however, took away Russia's ability to compete. As European states industrialized, a few men--supported by hundreds back home who manufactured machine guns, millions of bullets, barbed wire, and all the other accoutrements of modern war--could kill hundreds, if not thousands, of men without similar advantages. Technology sharply reduced Russia's advantage in manpower. The invention of reliable trucks and tracked vehicles and their deployment by armies in the 1920s would have eliminated Russia's second advantage, its vast territory, even if the war had not already destroyed the tsar's regime in 1917.

Competing in the European system meant that Russia had to modernize and industrialize. In other countries, industrialization and modernization had required the abandonment of hierarchies based on heredity and the replacement of favoritism with meritocracy. Meritocracy is fundamentally threatening to an agrarian society. The Russian state was dominated by an aristocracy that served the tsar while standing economically on the shoulders of the peasants. If Russia were to industrialize and create a managerial middle class to run its new factories, the old social structure would have collapsed quickly, as peasants learned how the comforts of urban life far surpassed those of the rural peasant life. Without peasants to farm the estates, the political, social, and economic structures of the tsarist regime would have been critically weakened. To a degree, this old social structure was already weakened after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. The landowning nobility not only lost the subordinate class of unpaid agrarian laborers that had sustained it for centuries but was also forced to surrender two-thirds of its land to peasant communes. Over the next fifty years, economically unviable estates were sold off, seriously diminishing the nobility's economic power, attachment to the land, cohesion as a social estate, and general self-confidence. At the same time, however, they continued to enjoy social and political privileges to which many other Russians felt they were no longer entitled. The accelerating migration of peasants to the cities, which caused the urban population of Russia to double between 1861 and 1914, strained urban resources and created an important--though small, relative to the rest of the population--class of disgruntled proletarians.

Economic and social change has always been a harbinger of trouble for inflexible political regimes. The inability of France to develop a modern political and social system led to revolution in 1789. The tsar's regime in 1914 was in many ways as inflexible as Louis XVI's. The pressures of international competition drove Russia to attempt top-down industrialization, but it met with only limited success, in no small part because of persisting barriers at home. If Russia were to remain politically and militarily competitive with Europe, resisting political change was a serious threat to the regime. Its willingness to implement change, however, was quashed by the Revolution of 1905. The results, the establishment of a quasi-parliamentary Duma and the promise of greater civil rights, were half-measures that were in many ways limited by the regime as soon as possible after the fact. Nine years later, in 1914, Russia was still directly ruled from the court. When the pressures of World War I indicated that there was need for political change, the tsar did not call for it. Agencies and organizations outside the control of the central government took on, or were forced by circumstances to accept, greater responsibilities, usually in the face of government suspicion and opposition. Ministers who advocated reform could expect to be dismissed, even though they were chosen by, and responsible to, the tsar alone. There was, in short, little hope for any meaningful political solution.

Social and political inequity can be managed within authoritarian regimes, but doing so requires a cynical and clever strategy. The so-called bread-and-circuses strategy can be used to keep urban centers pacified by ensuring physical comfort and distraction. The Russian ruling class, however, did not show much indication of systematically doing so. Conditions among the urban proletariat before and during the war revealed that the ruling classes held a crass disinterest in the well-being of workers; as a result Russia's small proletariat was more radical than elsewhere. Russia before 1914 found itself in a position where it had to promote the growth of the most insidious threat to the regime; in order to industrialize, it needed to create an urban working class, but it could not risk the danger of having one. Furthermore, once the tsar abdicated in March 1917, the grievances of the peasantry were such that a wave of peasant land seizures swept the countryside.

Another social danger that modernization posed for the tsar was the development of a managerial middle class. In 1914 this class in Russia was small and underdeveloped but also increasingly radicalized as its attempts to play a greater role in government and society were thwarted by the outmoded autocracy. The early-twentieth-century middle class of Europe was particularly aware of its own identity and was a vehicle for the removal of the last limitations on suffrage in some countries and the development of mass politics in others. Industrialization and modernization in Russia was causing exactly the same development. The war accelerated trends that had already caused serious confrontations with the government, including the unrest that had existed since the Revolution of 1905, in which many middle-class elements had actively participated.

Russia's involvement in the competitive European state system required modernization, and its early steps in this direction had produced only mixed results. The social changes already underway in the last half century before World War I were filled with political challenges to the regime. The tsarist autocracy, however, did not show any signs of the ability to solve these problems. The expectations of the working and middle classes were not managed in such a way as to promote either loyalty to the regime or complacency--if, as many doubt, such acceptance were even possible given the autocracy's mutually exclusive goals of preserving itself on the one hand and modernizing and democratizing Russia on the other. The tsarist regime was inflexible and largely incompetent, based on outmoded notions of autocratic government and aristocratic society. Even if Russia had managed to stay out of World War I, the tsarist regime was an incubator for discord, and it was only a matter of time before the strains of modernization would have created some kind of revolution. It might not have been a Bolshevik revolution, but some sort of social and political upheaval was bound to happen.

-- Phil Giltner, Albany Academy


DURNOVO'S WARNING

In February 1914 State Councillor Petr Durnovo sent Tsar Nicholas II a memorandum outlining what he saw as the consequences of Russian involvement in a war against Germany. It included the following points:

The central factor of the period of world history through which we are now passing is the rivalry between England and Germany. . . . The interests of these two powers are far too incompatible, and their simultaneous existence as world powers will sooner or later prove impossible. . . .

The armed conflict impending as a result of this rivalry cannot be confined to a duel between England and Germany alone. . . . the future Anglo-German war will undoubtedly be transformed into an armed conflict between two groups of powers, one with a German, the other with an English orientation.

Until the Russo-Japanese War, Russian policy had neither orientation. From the time of the reign of Emperor Alexander Ill, Russia had a defensive alliance with France, so firm as to assure common action by both powers in the event of attack upon either, but, at the same time, not so close as to obligate either to support unfailingly, with armed force, all political actions and claims of the ally. At the same time, the Russian Court maintained the traditional friendly relations, based upon ties of blood, with the Court of Berlin. Owing precisely to this conjuncture, peace among the great powers was not disturbed in the course of a great many years, in spite of the presence of abundant combustible material in Europe. . . . Lastly, England, isolated and held in check by her rivalry with Russia in Persia, by her diplomats' traditional fear of our advance on India, and by strained relations with France, . . . viewed with alarm the increase of Germany's naval power, without, however, risking an active step.

The Russo-Japanese War radically changed the relations among the great powers and brought England out of her isolation. . . . after the war, our diplomacy faced abruptly about and definitely entered upon the road toward rapprochement with England. France was drawn into the orbit of British policy; there was formed a group of powers of the Triple Entente, with England playing the dominant part; and a clash, sooner or later, with the powers grouping themselves around Germany became inevitable. . . .

Now, what advantages did the renunciation of our traditional policy of distrust of England and the rupture of neighborly if not friendly, relations with Germany promise us then and at present? Considering with any degree of care the events which have taken place since the Treaty of Portsmouth, we find it difficult to perceive any practical advantages gained by us in rapprochement with England. . . .

To sum up, the Anglo-Russian accord has brought us nothing of practical value up to this time, while for the future, it threatens us with an inevitable armed clash with Germany. . . .

The main burden of the war will undoubtedly fall on us, since England is hardly capable of taking a considerable part in a continental war, while France, poor in man power, will probably adhere to strictly defensive tactics, in view of the enormous losses by which war will be attended under present conditions of military technique. The part of a battering ram, making a breach in the very thick of the German defense, will be ours, with many factors against us to which we shall have to devote great effort and attention. . . .

Furthermore, the war, regardless of its issue, will weaken Russia and divert her attention to the West, a fact which, of course, serves both Japanese and American interests. Thus, our rear will be sufficiently secure in the Far East, and the most that can happen there will be the extortion from us of some concessions of an economic nature in return for benevolent neutrality. Indeed, it is possible that America or Japan may join the anti-German side, but, of course, merely as usurpers of one or the other of the unprotected German colonies.

Are we prepared for so stubborn a war as the future war of the European nations will undoubtedly become? This question we must answer, without evasion, in the negative. . . .

Another circumstance unfavorable to our defense is its far too great dependence, generally speaking, upon foreign industry, a fact which, in connection with the above noted interruption of more or less convenient communications with abroad, will create a series of obstacles difficult to overcome. The quantity of our heavy artillery, the importance of which was demonstrated in the Japanese War, is far too inadequate, and there are few machine guns. . . .

The network of strategic railways is inadequate. . . . Lastly, it should not be forgotten that the impending war will be fought among the most civilized and technically most advanced nations. Every previous war has invariably been followed by something new in the realm of military technique, but the technical backwardness of our industries does not create favorable conditions for our adoption of the new inventions. . . .

The vital interests of Russia and Germany do not conflict. There are fundamental grounds for a peaceable existence of these two States. Germany's future lies on the sea, that is, in a realm where Russia, essentially the most continental of the great powers, has no interests whatever. We have no overseas colonies, and shall probably never have them, and communication between the various parts of our empire is easier overland than by water. No surplus population demanding territorial expansion is visible, but, even from the viewpoint of new conquests, what can we gain from a victory over Germany, Posen, or East Prussia? But why do we need these regions, densely populated as they are by Poles, when we find it difficult enough to manage our own Russian Poles? Why encourage centripetal tendencies, that have not ceased even to this day in the Vistula territory, by incorporating in the Russian State the restless Posnanian and East Prussian Poles, whose national demands even the German Government, which is more firm than the Russian, cannot stifle? . . .

In any case, even if we were to admit the necessity for eradicating German domination in the field of our economic life, even at the price of a total banishment of German capital from Russian industry, appropriate measures could be taken, it would seem, without war against Germany. Such a war will demand such enormous expenditures that they will many times exceed the more than doubtful advantages to us in the abolition of the German [economic] domination. More than that, the result of such a war will be an economic situation compared with which the yoke of German capital will seem easy.

For there can be no doubt that the war will necessitate expenditures which are beyond Russia's limited financial means. We shall have to obtain credit from allied and neutral countries, but this will not be granted gratuitously. As to what will happen if the war should end disastrously for us, I do not wish to discuss now. . . .

But even victory promises us extremely unfavorable financial prospects; a totally ruined Germany will not be in a position to compensate us for the cost involved. Dictated in the interest of England, the peace treaty will not afford Germany opportunity for sufficient economic recuperation to cover our war expenditures, even at a distant time. The little which we may perhaps succeed in extorting from her will have to be shared with our allies, and to our share there will fall but negligible crumbs, compared with the war cost. Meantime, we shall have to pay our war loans, not without pressure by the allies. For, after the destruction of German power, we shall no longer be necessary to them. . . . And so it is inevitable that, even after a victorious conclusion of the war, we shall fall into the same sort of financial and economic dependence upon our creditors, compared with which our present dependence upon German capital will seem ideal.

However, no matter how sad may be the economic prospects which face us as a result of union with England, and, by that token, of war with Germany, they are still of secondary importance when we think of the political consequences of this fundamentally unnatural alliance.

It should not be forgotten that Russia and Germany are the representatives of the conservative principle in the civilized world, as opposed to the democratic principle, incarnated in England and, to an infinitely lesser degree, in France. Strange as it may seem, England, monarchistic and conservative to the marrow at home, has in her foreign relations always acted as the protector of the most demagogical tendencies, invariably encouraging all popular movements aiming at the weakening of the monarchical principle.

From this point of view, a struggle between Germany and Russia, regardless of its issue, is profoundly undesirable to both sides, as undoubtedly involving the weakening of the conservative principle in the world of which the above-named two great powers are the only reliable bulwarks. More than that, one must realize that under the exceptional conditions which exist, a general European war is mortally dangerous both for Russia and Germany, no matter who wins. It is our firm conviction, based upon a long and careful study of all contemporary subversive tendencies, that there must inevitably break out in the defeated country a social revolution which, by the very nature of things, will spread to the country of the victor. . . .

War with Germany would create exceptionally favorable conditions for such agitation. As already stated, this war is pregnant with enormous difficulties for us, and cannot turn out to be a mere triumphal march to Berlin. Both military disasters--partial ones, let us hope--and all kinds of shortcomings in our supply are inevitable. In the excessive nervousness and spirit of opposition of our society, these events will be given an exaggerated importance, and all the blame will be laid on the Government. . . .

If the war ends in victory, the putting down of the Socialist movement will not offer any insurmountable obstacles. . . . But in the event of defeat, the possibility of which in a struggle with a foe like Germany cannot be overlooked, social revolution in its most extreme form is inevitable. . . .

Source: Sources for Russian History http://www.stetson.edu/departments/russian/sourcesrussianhistory.html

FURTHER READINGS


References


Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1932 (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).

Leopold Haimson, "The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917," Slavic Review, 23 (December 1964): 619-642; 24 (March 1965): 1-22.

Haimson, ed., The Politics of Rural Russia, 1905-1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979).

Roberta Thompson Manning, The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Gentry and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).

Robert H. McNeal, ed., Russia in Transition, 1905-1914: Evolution or Revolution? (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970).

Arthur Mendel, "On Interpreting the Fate of Imperial Russia," in Russia under the Last Tsar, edited by Theofanis George Stavrou (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), pp. 13-41.

Hans Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution, 1881-1917 (London & New York: Longman, 1983).

Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (London: Macmillan, 1975).

Elise K. Wirtschafter, Social Identity in Imperial Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997).