The Great War has this peculiarity in Russia have been largely overshadowed by the civil war and especially by the Great Patriotic War. The research work is renewed only. Yet it is a front cleanly "Russian", as recalled by the historian. For Russians, the First World War is a new phenomenon that is not limited to the decline of the Russian army which one guesses on the cards. The year 1915 is based on Alexandre Sumpf a turning point, in part because the war takes on a negative connotation and heightens domestic dispute, leading to the revolutions of 1917. However, historians now stop over to revolution October or even the armistice of Brest-Litovsk, but considering Russia a block 1914 to 1921 civil war included. Alexandre Sumpf divides his remarks into three parts: the first sets the conditions for entry into the war of Russia, the second back on the commitment of the Russian nation in the war, while the third discusses the consequences of war on the countries.
In the first part, the historian recalls how Russia before 1914, lives in a state of armed peace. The defeat against Japan reinforces the Franco-Russian alliance and Tsar sought to control the Balkans to extend its influence over the Straits. All on bottom inner conflict between moderates and warmongers, but these pre explain the rapid onset of the war after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. But Russia does not have, unlike a persistent myth in France, a "steamroller" human war introducing important sociological changes in the military. Russia will still send a small expeditionary force in France. The considerations on the military characteristics of the Russian front unfortunately lack the most recent references, including Anglo-Saxon, -those on the subject, few indeed, that I had used for my article. This is one of the few weaknesses of the book. The declaration of war does not cause Russia unbridled patriotism. Tsar Nicolas II does not have a real united front of him. Rest the Orthodox faith, mobilized for propaganda, but not resurrected through the war. Why Russia she was defeated militarily? The mobilization has been rather successful. But she sputtered, with riots; also the shortcomings of the staff appear quickly on the conduct of war, including the strategic plan.
The war takes place, for the Russians after the 1905 revolution and then appear the beginnings of mechanization. It happens on the western and southern borders of the empire. Sumpf takes 4 testimonials to show how the war is destabilizing, uproots, makes traveling Russians, soldiers or civilians. The front is also marked by trenches, shallow and worked in the Russian case, but where men live as elsewhere in common and face death together. More fend for themselves in other armies, the Russian soldiers question their condition. The Russian army is experiencing difficult living conditions at the front, which sometimes explains the abusive requisitioning or as widespread looting during the Great Retreat 1915. The military has the upper hand in the areas conquered in the beginning of the war. The Cossacks are often denounced for their brutal behavior but what strikes in the Russian army, the treatment by the officers to their men, to disorganization. The wounded are frowned upon and given to the phenomenon of self-harm or desertion political causes while it is far from always the case, at least until late 1916. The provisional government also restores worth death which was abolished after the revolution of February. The garrisons in the rear, composed of a variety of soldiers, were contesting ferments, without explaining alone revolution. Russia is ruined to support its war effort, which had to be completely rebuilt after the Great Retreat 1915. Nicolas II took full powers in August and war production sector remains state-controlled Russian even though private companies are requested. The Russian economy also rotates with Allied assistance, particularly British. The food situation however deteriorated to result in a state of near starvation in 1917. The number of workers increased at plants in the back but they are literally exploited for the needs of the war economy, which n ' not without causing tension. Besides prisoners of war, including the Austro-Hungarian, well treated by the Russians in general are required at height of 1.64 million to help in the same way the Russian economy. Other die to the task in particular building of railway lines. The refugees and the disabled themselves are unpopular and are struggling to find a place. Women are more assertive, especially in an economic role, besides the Russian army is virtually the only employ thousands of women in combat, not in auxiliary functions such as nurses. These tend to belong to the educated classes, but the women of the lower classes also play a big role in the back. The Russians suffer from the prohibition of alcoholic beverages, which create many disorders, even as the denunciation of speculators and profiteers of war, for example, remains quite limited. The Russian army lost at least 5.3 million men until 1916, with the particularity to have many missing-at least 500 000. Besides the graves vary widely from case to case, grave, cemetery with individual graves, etc. The Russian military medicine made progress but suffers from prewar underestimates and should be helped by local initiatives. The nearly 3 million Russian POWs experienced more harsh conditions than their Allied counterparts in the German camps. The refugees also suffer the shortcomings of the Tsarist regime; people turn against the enemy assumed inside, Russians of German origin and especially Jews, the army will not be the last to drive pogroms. Part of the empire is busy, and the German occupation is relatively brutal civilian casualties is relatively strong Russian side. The Germans exploited the resources of conquered territories and tightly control the population. They favor of Ukrainian independence attempts, which are divided and especially lacking popular support. The Russian elite supports a war. The press paritcipe the mobilization of the population in the rear. Postcards, posters, press photos are multiplying. The cinema, which develops, does not favor the warrior theme. Fiction often highlights the duplicity German, French imports the theme of enemy atrocities, trying to raise the opinion with the drama of Kalisz town sacked by the Germans in August 1914. The public assistance, which is born during the war, is a victim institutional competition. The traditional philanthropy tsars is offset by assistance from local authorities, including Moscow, action that also helps structure communities around sometimes more political goals.
The war ended to complete the decline of the imperial autocracy. The Duma, the soviets are all contesting poles, in addition to local authorities. The radical opposition parties play an important role in the revolution of February 1917. The Mensheviks initially seem to have more advantages than the Bolsheviks. But the revolution also occurs because the tsar has completely lost its capital of authority, even after his decision to take the head of the army in September 1915. The Empress was never popular. The Tsar is criticized by his own supporters, as also shown the murder of Rasputin in 1916. The war provides a window to the outbreak of national ideas, particularly through population displacement. Ukraine and plays the Triple Alliance and the Entente to create after a long period of fermentation. The powers also fueling Polish nationalism, Russians making more promises after 1915. Poland failures eventually be recreated in 1918. The Baltic states also see up the national idea, as shown in the Latvian case. Finland profits from war to break away from the Russian orbit. Muslim populations of Central Asia also come into revolt against Russian demands during the conflict. Russia, in 1917, experienced a truly democratic explosion. The population symbolically occupies the spaces of the capital, and the model is available in province. The soldiers committees politicize the army and develop political, parallel to that of Petrograd to the front, even if the gap between officers and soldiers is not changing. The election process is complicated to set up and sometimes reinforces excessive violence born of war. However, the soviets are in town as a learning democracy. The elections for the Constituent Assembly freely place overall and dedicate the victory of the Socialist Revolutionaries. But the conditions of war and political crisis give primacy to the forces leading to the breakup of the nation, with the dissolution of the Assembly by the Bolsheviks in January 1918. The revolution is indeed taking place in Petrograd, the capital, but also in the provinces and in Moscow, as shown by the recent work. Spontaneous agrarian revolution broke out following the consequences of the war, but also based on a fertile soil ready to explode. The Bolsheviks, in turn, can lead the revolution of October because of the hostility of the staff with regard to the civil power, and because the army remains neutral. It must be said that the Bolsheviks contributed to undo the attempted putsch of Kornilov against the provisional government. The army, still somewhat politicized in early 1917, has left win by Bolshevik propaganda and aspires to peace. Unions and the Bolshevik party also gaining ground among the workers in 1917, which did not spontaneously all joined from the start in this discourse. The Mensheviks are the only ones trying to oppose the Bolshevik tidal wave, in vain. The Russian civil war prolongs the Great War in the east. We should also speak instead of civil wars in the plural, as the end of political pluralism and the peasant revolt take various forms. Demobilized at the end of 1917, the remobilized soldiers are sometimes less than a year later in Trotsky's Red Army. The Bolsheviks involve 55,000 "specialists", former officers of the tsarist army, and exert State authority which contrasts with that of their opponents. The cons-revolution is divided and only the military solution is needed, with the failure is known. The civil war also involves far fewer fighters, proportionately, than the Great War. But in war violence continue, especially against the Jews, but the Bolsheviks were able to limit the pogroms, while they are attacking the Cossacks. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk involves foreign intervention, Allied side, to maintain the fiction of Russia in the war, and to establish the "cordon sanitaire" it has suffered from the ambitions of powers Claims nationalities and lassitude soldiers veterans of the Great War. In France, the authorities must crush incipient revolution in the Russian expeditionary force stationed in the Courtine, in Creuse. The civil war not only against the Reds and the Whites: there are other actors, the anarchist Black Army of Makhno, the Czech and Slovak legion, the "Greens", host of rebellious peasants whose last are crushed, in Tambov, in June 1921. To counter the threat, the Bolsheviks imposed in January 1918 when a real dictatorship: the lower power gives way to a power from above, disputed even among the Bolsheviks. The political police chasing the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, but the Red Terror is quickly denounced. The Reds triumphed nevertheless, in an economy of scarcity, due to better organization and effective propaganda whites lack a leader, a project of an attractive ideology. In 1931, Churchill wrote that the Great War was still "unknown". The Bolsheviks are starting their key dates in 1917 and completely neglect the Great War, whose memory was not reactivated in 1941. It was not until the fall of the USSR and especially the twenty-first century that Russia reclaims more conflict , not without difficulty. Car rally the European discourse of remembrance, peace, conflicts with the martyrology of the Russian and Soviet armed forces. Soviet historians neglect conflict or reinterpreted in the light of subsequent events; in the West, only white immigrants, often former officers of the Tsar, obviously provide a partisan point of view, heroic victim. This is why the history of the conflict, even today, is handled mainly by foreign historians, though the Russians are beginning to catch historiographical delay. In the cinema, the Great War is often only the prologue to the Revolution and the Civil War. Written evidence, very rare, are nevertheless more pacifist than revolutionary. The current expectation of the Russian public historians sometimes confined in their tradition of a mostly diplomatic and military history. They also lack the release of a private memory of the conflict, difficult to learn despite the gradual opening of the archives. This memory is reactivated.
The Great War in the east is an experience for Russia, which often resembles that of other nations at war. The human losses are substantial, the experience of war is unprecedented for the population. However, population movements were much more massive, as well as the rejection of a cleverly constructed enemy within. Isolated, the tsarist empire experienced food shortages, while the army was spreading practices of violence outside the single institution, contributing to the spread of war violence. But the war also creates a civil society, with the collapse of the monarchy. Social tensions were heightened, creating the conditions of revolutions. The civil war contributes to redraw Russian borders. Alexandre Sumpf doubts the current revival of interest in Russia for the conflict, which seems to be part of a néopatriotisme which might influence the reading of history: as far as he recognizes is a there is still much ground to explore, particularly through comparative history (with the allies or enemies of the conflict with the Second World War).
With this book, Alexandre Sumpf certainly fills a void. This brilliant synthesis covers all aspects of the Great Russian War under historiographical issues to date. One can simply regret perhaps that this dynamic is not applied completely to the military history of the conflict, which the historian seems to have passed on the most recent work, especially Anglo-Saxon. Besides the first part, the shortest, quickly gives way to the other two, much provided, the commitment of the Russian nation in the war and the consequences of the conflict. The bibliography is also rather small for a subject of this magnitude but includes many foreign works, including Russian; Furthermore, the subject itself has, indeed, led to fewer historian literature than others, although the trend was reversed for two decades. The work of A. Sumpf is certainly evidence that the French university, contrary to commonly held idea too in some circles, may still reserve nice surprises on a topic related to conflict. Perhaps we must prefer the solid work of a French university that goes beyond the military history (here a little limited, it must be admitted) for a military history that might be a bit more challenging but reduced to an old "history-battle" without taking into account the new challenges and new directions of history as a discipline. And that is what we have here.
