History

“The present volume is a conscious effort to look at and grasp the meaning of the tumultuous one hundred years of Russian and Soviet  history (1872–1981) by taking an ordinary family perspective as a vantage point and reconstructing it based on the materials of a well-preserved family archive. The result is a deeply entertaining and engaging collage of personal recollections, authentic voices, intimate details, through which events of great magnitude—including multiple revolutions and wars—get illuminated in a distinctly personalized way. For sure, the ultimate result is partisan and partial, imbued with the partiality of love to one’s own kin, the Gudziuk-Gruzdev family. It is difficult to resist the feeling of compassion while reading entries of the personal diaries, the intimate correspondence of family members or listening to the collector’s own voice recounting the family’s itinerary through the century of troubles. Ultimately, by foregrounding love as a key motive, the book provides a story about the perseverance of human love and about the persistence of family ties as opposed to the heaviness of History.” — From the Introduction by Vladimir Ryzhkovski

Aleksei Evstaf´ev’s 1852 book, The Great Republic Tested by the Touch of Truth, is an early work in English by a native of Ukraine who identified as a Russian. Drawing from his years of Russian diplomatic service in the United States, Evstaf´ev presented a critique of American democracy as well as Russian despotism, preferring British constitutional monarchy instead. Writing from a conservative point of view, Evstaf´ev questioned whether people can govern themselves and argued that the fault lines of American politics would lead to a collapse.

The work presents an early example of a Russian critique of America. Particularly strong sections deal with the history of New York City before the Civil War and the problems of the American judicial system.

This annotated version provides the necessary context to understand the discussion of American and European politics and culture during the 1840s and 1850s. The Great Republic Tested by the Touch of Truth is a contribution to the history of Russian-American relations, Russian political thought, and New York City and American history.

Born in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1783, Evstaf´ev studied at the Kharkiv Ecclesiastical Seminary and then joined the Russian embassy in Britain as a churchman for services. His fluency in English and ability to write polemical booklets defending Russia advanced his career, and in 1808 he was named the Russian consul to Boston. There he spent his best-known years as a friend of the Federalist Party and an author of plays and books. With the  collapse of the Federalist

Party, he declined into obscurity. He later served as a diplomat in New York City and died in 1857. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.

Long overlooked in the established literature, historical investigations of Russian Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine (STEM) have recently benefitted from newfound interest among academic specialists. Informed by a broad range of innovative methodological and theoretical approaches, historians from the US, Europe, and Russian Federation have turned their attention to exploring the myriad political, cultural, social, and economic factors that shaped (and were shaped by) developments in these fields. This installment of the series Russia's Great War and Revolution aims to promote further understanding of Russia's unique contributions to STEM-related fields by documenting and analyzing the complex transformations occasioned by the country's “continuum of crisis” during the years c. 1914–24. In addition to introducing English-speaking audiences to important but otherwise little-known figures and events from the Russian past, this volume's 16 chapters shed new light on longstanding debates regarding the country’s path to modernization; the contributions of its technical and scientific experts; and the extent to which the institutions and methods adopted by Soviet leaders were built upon foundations established by their imperial predecessors. The collection makes significant contributions to multiple fields of inquiry; its authors’ findings and perspectives can be expected to influence scholarly agendas and public understanding for years to come.

The nineteenth century in Serbia began with two uprisings against an Ottoman overlordship that had oppressed not only the Serbs, but all of Southeastern Europe for almost four hundred years. Fired by memories of their medieval empire and determined to restore Serbia as a Christian state with European-style institutions, Serbia’s two princely families, the Karadordevices and the Obrenovices, vied with one another to modernize the country and eventually, in 1878, to achieve its full independence from the Ottoman Empire. Kata Nesiba: The Authentic and Illustrated History of a Belgrade Whore and Her Struggles for Her Constitutional Rights, 1830–1851, by retired Belgrade attorney Ivan Janković and illustrator Veljko Mihajlović, tells in vivid and authentic detail a major portion of the story of Serbia’s emancipation and modernization. Based on extensive research in Serbian archives, the author and illustrator uncover the tumultuous life of Kata, a Belgrade sex worker, as she lives and works in mid-century Serbia. They adduce numerous side stories, as well, to depict the sexual mores of the country at that time, not just of the “whores and harlots of Belgrade,” but also of the cross-dressing tavern entertainers, the LGBT population, political figures both small and great—Vuk Stefanović Karadzić, the “Father of Serbian Literacy” among them—and the ever-diminishing power of the Turks in Serbia’s political, economic, and social life. From dusty archives Kata Nesiba brings to life the authentic stories of the men and women who experienced some of the most tumultuous times in Serbia’s long and fraught history. And, as the author and illustrator delight in pointing out, so much of what happened then is happening again, in a Serbia once again independent.

Eli Gumener’s 1921 Yiddish memoir, A Ukrainian Chapter, is a rare historical source about relief work spanning the two most devastating years of the pogroms in the Russian Civil War. He concentrates on the collapse of Jewish communities in Podolia, a region in southwest Ukraine. Gumener worked for the major Russian and American organizations that were active in providing aid to Jewish victims during both World War I and the Russian Civil War. Thus, he presents a unique perspective on leaders, parties, and institutions struggling to respond to the suffering and dislocation that came with wild episodes of violence. This annotated translation serves as a roadmap for the reader by clarifying the social and political contexts in which the events took place. A Ukrainian Chapter is a contribution to the history of pogroms, relief work, and Jewish party politics, through the day-to-day experience of a witness “in the trenches.” Born in Marijampole (near Vilnius) in 1886 and trained for the law in St. Petersburg, Eli (Illia) Gumener (1886–1941?) was a representative and investigator for the Committee to Aid Jewish Pogrom Victims (EKOPO) and the Russian Red Cross. After the Civil War, he worked on behalf of Jewish war orphans for the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJC) in the Białystok region. A Ukrainian Chapter was published in Vilnius in 1921. In 1925 Gumener moved to Novogrudok, Poland (now in Belarus) where he continued to be engaged in communal affairs, including as a city councilman from 1929 to 1934. He and his wife and daughter were murdered during the Holocaust in late 1941 or early 1942.

This volume investigates how the revolutionary events of 1917–21 shaped biographies both in Russia and Western Europe and how people tried to make sense of the political developments during these years in self-testimonies like diaries and memoirs. What was the impact of individuals on the course of the revolution? What do we know about the personal experiences during 1917 of revolutionary activists, victims, and bystanders? What are the specific features of autobiographical texts and ego-documents from the time of Russia’s Great War and Revolution? The essays of this volume examine a plurality of stories, perceptions, and interpretations. They analyze the trajectories of men and women with very different origins and social backgrounds. Among them are members of the “old elite” who personally experienced the Russian Revolution of 1917 and were forced into exile after the victory of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution and the Civil War. Moreover, in this volume protagonists who actively supported the revolution and “ordinary people” who neither belonged to the old elite nor were politically committed stand in focus. Finally, the construction of revolutionary narratives and memories is addressed. The case studies presented here allow us to critically evaluate established master narratives about the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. They also enable us to point out the contrast between historical caesuras and the continuity of personal lives, to explore geographical mobility and developments beyond the political centers, to give a voice to historically marginal actors, and to juxtapose our concept of “history” with the many-voiced chorus of individual experiences.

Korine Amacher and Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, Introduction
https://doi.org/10.52500/GLLS9317

Adele Lindenmeyr, “Common Sense Vanishes in Revolutionary Times”: Sof´ia Panina and Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams Reflect on 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/PBKK9855

Henning Lautenschläger, Too Busy for Nostalgia? Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii’s Professional Life and Autobiographical Publications after the Revolution (1917–44)
https://doi.org/10.52500/FIYX3553

Fabian Baumann, Dragged into the Whirlwind: The Shul´gin Family, Kievlianin, and Kiev’s Russian Nationalist Movement in 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/JHDB7956

Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, “I Am Too Bewildered to Understand Anything These Days”: Members of the Old Elite Try to Make Sense of the Russian Revolutions
https://doi.org/10.52500/VEZJ7946

Christopher Read, The Kurbatikha Estate: Revolution in One Manor. Mature Reflections on Childhood Experience
https://doi.org/10.52500/RNVH5182

Sophie Cœuré, Two Women Gaining Power Through the October Revolution: Aleksandra Kollontai and Suzanne Girault
https://doi.org/10.52500/CORV6026

Korine Amacher, Experiences of War and Revolution: Vladimir Socoline’s Long Road to Damascus
https://doi.org/10.52500/CSIS9655

Anthony J. Heywood, Facing the Rubicon: Analyzing the Impact of the Russian Revolution on an Individual Life
https://doi.org/10.52500/OMAK1025

Marina Yu. Sorokina, Roman Iakobson and the Russian Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/JFEZ5207

Igor Narsky and Aleksandr Fokin, “We’re Growing Accustomed to Heaven on Earth”: Diaries as a Means of Self-Preservation, and a Testimony to Means of Survival, in Revolutionary Russia
https://doi.org/10.52500/VYTQ4719

Julia Herzberg, An Event without Importance? Peasant Autobiographical Writing as Media of the 1917 October Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/VYTQ4719

Alexis Pogorelskin, Kamenev in Conflict with Lenin and Trotskii: The Perils of Revolutionary Biography
https://doi.org/10.52500/CXUP1211

Éric Aunoble, Polish Leftists in the Russian Revolution in Ukraine: The Difficult Construction of a Soviet Memory
https://doi.org/10.52500/YYQH3511

Alexander V. Reznik, Lev Trotskii’s Experiences of Autobiography: My Life and Its Antecedents
https://doi.org/10.52500/CPLS7449

Pierre Boutonnet, Volin, a Revolutionary in Exile: The Function of His Personal Testimony
https://doi.org/10.52500/CBET4948

Historians devote a great deal of attention to the diplomacy that led Russia into the Great War, but have tended to neglect the course of this diplomacy once the fighting erupted. This volume addresses that lacuna with a broad range of essays examining the foreign relations of the empire, as well as its republican and early Soviet successors, from the July 1914 Crisis to the end of the Civil War in 1922. Written by distinguished and emerging scholars from North America, Europe, Russia, and Japan, the essays make abundant use of Russian archival collections, largely inaccessible until the 1990s, to reassess the conjectures and conclusions previously drawn from other sources. While some chapters focus on traditional “diplomatic” history, others adopt new “international history” by placing Russia’s relations with the world in their social, intellectual, economic, and cultural contexts. Arranged in roughly chronological order, the first volume covers the late imperial period, from 1914 through mid-1916, while the second proceeds through the revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War, up to the end of that conflict in 1922. Together, these books’ comments should foster a renewed appreciation for international relations as a central element of Russia’s Great War and Revolution.

Michael Hughes, From the February Revolution to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
https://doi.org/10.52500/PPBE3643

Norman E. Saul, The United States and Russia in the Turmoil of War and Revolution, 1914–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/CNJF3673

Liudmila Sultanovna Gatagova, The Global War in Russian Patriotic Literature, 1914–15
https://doi.org/10.52500/VVGU6668

Thomas Bürgisser, Flight to Neutral Territory: Escaped Russian POWs and Deserters in Switzerland
https://doi.org/10.52500/LLXC9908

Marina Soroka, Family Networks in a Divided Europe: The Case of the Benckendorff Family
https://doi.org/10.52500/TLFP2364

John W. Steinberg, The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: The Wilsonian Moment before Wilson
https://doi.org/10.52500/MSQG7856

Oleg Budnitskii, The Diplomacy of the “Second Russia,” 1918–22
https://doi.org/10.52500/NDNS9115

Alastair Kocho-Williams, The Persistence of Tsarist Diplomacy after the Russian Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/ILYD1707

Anatol Shmelev, Foreign Minister Redux: Sergei Dmitrievich Sazonov and White Diplomacy in Paris, 1918–20
https://doi.org/10.52500/NADM7699

Dinah Jansen, Wilsonian Principles and the Defense of Russian Territory at Versailles, 1919
https://doi.org/10.52500/GADD3063

Charlotte Alston, International Intervention in Russia’s Civil War: Policies, Experiences, and Justifications
https://doi.org/10.52500/RWMB2616

Shūsuke Takahara, Woodrow Wilson’s Intervention in North Russia and Siberia
https://doi.org/10.52500/QUXR5641

Oleksa Drachewych, The Bolsheviks’ Revolutionary International: The Idea and Establishment of the Communist International, 1914–22
https://doi.org/10.52500/ANIJ7435

Daniel C. Waugh, Britain Confronts the Bolsheviks in Central Asia: Great Game Myths and Local Realities
https://doi.org/10.52500/ZCXA5036

Taline Ter-Minassian, From the Transcaspian to the Caucasus: Reginald Teague Jones’s Secret War (1918–21)
https://doi.org/10.52500/LVKE6925

Yulia Yurievna Khmelevskaya, “A la Guerre Comme à la Guerre”: America’s Battle with Hunger in Soviet Russia (1921–23)
https://doi.org/10.52500/HKCM5036

Anthony J. Heywood, Russian and Soviet Foreign Trade, 1914–28: Rethinking the Initial Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/HXIF7628

Historians devote a great deal of attention to the diplomacy that led Russia into the Great War, but have tended to neglect the course of this diplomacy once the fighting erupted. This volume addresses that lacuna with a broad range of essays examining the foreign relations of the empire, as well as its republican and early Soviet successors, from the July 1914 Crisis to the end of the Civil War in 1922. Written by distinguished and emerging scholars from North America, Europe, Russia, and Japan, the essays make abundant use of Russian archival collections, largely inaccessible until the 1990s, to reassess the conjectures and conclusions previously drawn from other sources. While some chapters focus on traditional “diplomatic” history, others adopt new “international history” by placing Russia’s relations with the world in their social, intellectual, economic, and cultural contexts. Arranged in roughly chronological order, the first volume covers the late imperial period, from 1914 through mid-1916, while the second proceeds through the revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War, up to the end of that conflict in 1922. Together, these books’ comments should foster a renewed appreciation for international relations as a central element of Russia’s Great War and Revolution.

David MacLaren McDonald, Introduction
https://doi.org/10.52500/UTGI6993

David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, The Historiography of Russian International Relations during the Great War and Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/SWZE7383

Dominic Lieven, Russia against Napoleon and Wilhelm: Explaining Success and Failure
https://doi.org/10.52500/LDYM8120

David MacLaren McDonald, From Tsushima to the July Crisis
https://doi.org/10.52500/HRYX6681

Marina Soroka, The Russian Foreign Ministry in War and Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/KRMX6802

Irina Sergeevna Rybachenok, Russian Foreign Policy at the Turn of the 20th Century: Goals, Challenges, and Methods
https://doi.org/10.52500/TAGF9628

Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Managing a “Long-Distance” Coalition War: France and Russia, 1914 to Early 1917
https://doi.org/10.52500/WUJO9882

Keith Neilson, Anglo-Russian Relations in the First World War
https://doi.org/10.52500/KKZJ7629

Sean Gillen, “A Great Russia”: The State of a Free, Disciplined Nation, 1904–14
https://doi.org/10.52500/WGCJ2199

David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, From the Guns of August to Sazonov’s Fall
https://doi.org/10.52500/YDSH1036

Jennifer Siegel, Foreign Finance and Russia’s War Effort
https://doi.org/10.52500/TNJQ2448

Ronald P. Bobroff, The Question of the Turkish Straits during World War I
https://doi.org/10.52500/QEAF8183

T. G. Otte, The Waning of the Monarchies: War, Revolution, and Royal Diplomacy
https://doi.org/10.52500/GFBZ4374

Evgenii Iur´evich Sergeev, Russian Military Intelligence in the Coalition War, 1914–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/DIPZ6381

Kirill Andreevich Solov´ev, The State Duma and Russian Foreign Policy in the Great War
https://doi.org/10.52500/KNXU4640

Alexander Polunov, The Russian Orthodox Church in Years of War: International Activity and Plans for Postwar Reconstruction
https://doi.org/10.52500/GVMP7865

Aleksandr Vladimirovich Golubev and Ol ́ga Sergeevna Porshneva, The Image of the Ally in Russian Public Consciousness in the Context of World War I
https://doi.org/10.52500/CUTI6940

Tatiana Filippova, Pickelhaube and Fez: The German and the Turk in Russian Satirical Journals during the Great War
https://doi.org/10.52500/TRQU6767

Alexandre Sumpf, Defining Enemy Atrocities: Krivtsov’s Extraordinary Commission
https://doi.org/10.52500/XLYZ3657

Wim Coudenys, High Politics in a Small Country: Belgian-Russian Military Relations in War and Revolution
https://doi.org/10.52500/UNAZ4484

This volume brings together the work of researchers in North America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Turkey, who are generating important, archivally based scholarship in their respective fields, languages, and nations of study. The larger goal of this volume is to sit in conversation with the others in this series that directly deal with Russia and its Great War and Revolution. Therefore, the volume provides an entry point for scholars who need a quick assessment of recent historiographic perspectives from the “other side of the hill.” The aim is to introduce readers to the myriad ways that the populations of the Central Powers nations both perceived and encountered Russia’s Great War and Revolution. The volume has been organized around four key areas in order to give the reader a glimpse into new lines of research on the war experience of the Central Powers. The first section looks at the ways in which Russia appeared in the eyes of others. The Central Powers went to war against Russia with their own preconceived notions. How those notions changed when put in the pressure cooker of violence, invasion, and occupation forms a crucial point for understanding Russia in the imagination of the people and elites in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. The war also brought peoples into direct contact. The second section examines the variety of borderland encounters: positive, negative, and ambiguous. Ethnic violence and atrocity is certainly one aspect of those encounters which needs telling. But the war also opened up new spaces for economic exploitation and fraternization that colored and shaped the experiences of the soldiers and civilians. Section 3 focuses on the big-picture mechanics of strategy and policy. Armies in this new era of warfare increasingly functioned as administrators—of occupation regimes, veteran programs, and as quartermasters of the entire war economy. The chapters here explore the facets of military policy toward the end of the formal fighting in the war. And finally, the fourth section speaks to the transformation of the war in the East and its legacy for the continuum of violence that succeeded formal hostilities.

John Deak, Heather R. Perry, and Emre Sencer, Introduction: Russia’s Great War and Revolution, the Central Powers
https://doi.org/10.52500/GTGF8954

Stephan Lehnstaedt, Pride and Prejudice: The Central Powers’ Images of Poles and Jews, 1915–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/SOLK9863

Troy R. E. Paddock, The Threat from the East
https://doi.org/10.52500/UETZ5795

Alexander Will, Beating Russia in the Periphery: Austria-Hungary in the Middle East, 1914–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/DVQV1447

Yiğit Akın, “The Greatest Enemy of the Ottomans and Muslims”: The Russians in Ottoman Propaganda during the First World War
https://doi.org/10.52500/VQDG4021

Elke Hartmann, Dashed Hopes: Perspectives of Ottoman-Armenian Elites on Russia
https://doi.org/10.52500/HBBQ9929

Jesse Kauffman, Nationalism, Imperialism, and Occupation in the Shatterzone of Empires: Russia’s Western Frontier, 1905–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/JNKT6627

Christian Westerhoff, New Forms of Recruitment? German Labor Policy in the Occupied Territories of the Russian Empire, 1917–18
https://doi.org/10.52500/KZHA9650

Candan Badem, Rethinking Russian Influence: Religious and Ethnic Violence in the Southwest Caucasus in World War I
https://doi.org/10.52500/IAPC7337

Yücel Yanıkdağ, Flirting with the Enemy: Ottoman Prisoners of War and Russian Women during the Great War
https://doi.org/10.52500/YRAO5709

David Hamlin, Economic War and Economic Peace: Germany Reconstructs an Economic Order in Ukraine and Romania, 1918
https://doi.org/10.52500/KSZQ5982

Peter Lieb, German Politics in the East between Brest-Litovsk and Versailles
https://doi.org/10.52500/ZAJC4248

Robert L. Nelson and Justin Fantauzzo, Soldiers as Settlers in East Central Europe during and in the Wake of the Great War
https://doi.org/10.52500/RTJW4131

Verena Moritz and Hannes Leidinger, The Influence of the Russian Revolutions on the POWs in Austria-Hungary and Russia
https://doi.org/10.52500/OIVG4816

Wolfram Dornik, Between Military Pragmatism and Colonial Fantasies: Intervention and Occupation in Eastern Europe, 1914–19
https://doi.org/10.52500/NXOW5580

Ivan the Terrible continues to fascinate and confuse historians. In Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish Charles J. Halperin presented a new and comprehensive interpretation of Ivan’s personality and reign. In his second book on Ivan, Ivan IV and Muscovy, Halperin both explores in depth conclusions adumbrated only briefly in his first and more often provides additional research on subjects he has not previously discussed. Original studies address a wide panoply of topics and themes. In source study he examines chronicles, German foreigner accounts, and the writings of Ivan Peresvetov. In historiography Halperin analyzes the Russian- and English-language versions of Ruslan Skrynnikov’s classic Reign of Terror. Social history topics include dysfunctional families, contests for office under the precedence system, foreign slaves, and apolitical violence. Evidence of rational rather than ideological thinking by Muscovite diplomats and Elizabeth I’s flattery of Ivan as a ladies’ man belong to diplomatic history. On economic history Halperin raises the question of the weight, literally, of Muscovite coinage. Under the rubric of intellectual history, he continues his examination of “land” concepts, especially the Rus´ Land. Finally, Halperin advances novel observations on Ivan’s famous, or rather infamous, personality, charisma, and temper tantrums. These studies are based upon a range of source material from narrative and diplomatic texts to administrative documents and private legal charters. Conclusions rest upon interpretation of passages or quantitative studies of data bases containing from dozens to hundreds of records. The chapters in this anthology substantiate and greatly supplement theconclusions advanced in Halperin’s monograph and shed further light upon Ivan’s contradictory personality and paradoxical reign.