Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire
Joshua A. Sanborn
Abstract
Imperial Apocalypse describes the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War 1. Though the empire was not in serious threat of dissolution in 1914, by 1918 it had been reduced to its sixteenth-century boundaries. This process of decolonization began in the Balkans and spread rapidly throughout Eastern Europe thereafter. Decolonization occurred in three overlapping phases: 1) imperial challenge, 2) state failure, 3) social disaster. This book traces the trajectory of all three of these phases through a narrative of the Russian war experience. It begins with an account of the early battles ... More
Imperial Apocalypse describes the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War 1. Though the empire was not in serious threat of dissolution in 1914, by 1918 it had been reduced to its sixteenth-century boundaries. This process of decolonization began in the Balkans and spread rapidly throughout Eastern Europe thereafter. Decolonization occurred in three overlapping phases: 1) imperial challenge, 2) state failure, 3) social disaster. This book traces the trajectory of all three of these phases through a narrative of the Russian war experience. It begins with an account of the early battles and the dramatic shift in modes of governance in Eastern Europe in 1914. It continues with the military defeats and social crisis of 1915, moves to the remobilization of the military effort and society in 1916, and concludes with the destruction of the empire amidst military defeat and social revolution in 1917 and 1918. Throughout the book attention is paid to the connection between the lived experience of soldiers and civilians near the combat fronts and the social and political structures of the empire as a whole. It combines intimate descriptions of the lives of many of the individuals caught up in the war with an analysis of military performance, state functionality, and social cohesion.
Keywords:
Russia,
World War 1,
decolonization,
state failure,
revolution,
soldiers,
civilians
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199642052 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199642052.001.0001 |
