Volume 3: Russia's Home Front In War And Revolution, 1914-22: Book 3. National Disintegration

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. 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. Contents From the Series Editors Acknowledgments Preface The End of Tsarism The Russian Economy Russia’s Home Front, 1914–22: The Economy The Revolutionary Implications of Russian Alcohol Prohibition: 1914–25 Imperial Russia’s Railways at War, 1914–17: Challenges, Results, Costs, and Legacy Responding to the People: The Borisov Commission and the (Misnamed) Five-Year Railroad Construction Plan of 1916 A Land and Population in Crisis Of Populations and Wars Russia’s Forests in War and Revolution: Resources, Impacts, Plans, and Realities Marriage and Divorce in Revolutionary Russia: A Demographic Analysis Continuity and Upheaval in Russia’s Social Classes The Tsarist Elites in Revolutionary Russia Intelligentsia Conceptions: Duty and Obshchestvennost ́ in War and Revolution Land for Service: Russian Peasant Views of a Postwar Land Settlement during World War I Labor Activism in the Early Period of the Soviet Regime’s Formation The Politics of Working-Class Dissent in Early Soviet Russia, 1920–221 Notes on Contributors