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A definitive new history of Russia from early Rus' to the collapse of the Soviet Union
This book represents a new reading of a key moment in the history of East European Jewry, namely the period preceding the collapse of the Russian Empire. Offering a novel analysis of relations between the Russian army and Jews during the First World War, it points to the army and military authorities as the 'gravediggers' of the Jews’ fragile co-existence with the tsarist regime. It focuses on various aspects of the Russian army’s brutal treatment of Jews living in or near the Eastern Front, where three quarters of European Jewry were living when the war began. At the same time, it shows the enormous harm this anti-Jewish campaign wreaked on the Russian empire’s economy, finances, public security, and international status.
Although overshadowed in historical memory by the Holocaust, the anti-Jewish pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were at the time unrivaled episodes of ethnic violence. Incorporating newly available primary sources, this collection of groundbreaking essays by researchers from Europe, the United States, and Israel investigates the phenomenon of anti-Jewish violence, the local and transnational responses to pogroms, and instances where violence was averted. Focusing on the period from World War I through Russia's early revolutionary years, the studies include Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Crimea, and Siberia.
In the modern Greek city of Thessaloniki, the ruins of a vast Jewish cemetery lie buried under the city’s university. Nearby is the site of the childhood home of one of the founders of the modern Turkish state. These are tantalizing reminders of what was once the bustling cosmopolitan city of Salonica, home not just to Greeks but to thousands of Sephardic Jews, Turks, Bulgarians, and Armenians living and working peacefully alongside one another. Thessaloniki is just one example among many of what used to be. Over the past two centuries, ethnic cleansing has remade the map of Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, transforming vast empires that embraced many ethnic groups into near...
This book brings together the large volume of work on late Tsarist Russia published over the last 30 years, to show an overall picture of Russia under the last two tsars - before the war brought down not only the Russian empire but also those of Germany, Austria–Hungary and Turkey. It turns the attention from the old emphases on workers, revolutionaries, and a reactionary government, to a more diverse and nuanced picture of a country which was both a major European great power, facing the challenges of modernization and industrialization, and also a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional empire stretching across both Europe and Asia.
This book examines the particular experience of ethnic, religious and national minorities who participated in the First World War as members of the main belligerent powers: Britain, France, Germany and Russia. Individual chapters explore themes including contested loyalties, internment, refugees, racial violence, genocide and disputed memories from 1914 through into the interwar years to explore how minorities made the transition from war to peace at the end of the First World War. The first section discusses so-called ‘friendly minorities’, considering the way in which Jews, Muslims and refugees lived through the war and its aftermath. Section two looks at fears of ‘enemy aliens’, which prompted not only widespread internment, but also violence and genocide. The third section considers how the wartime experience of minorities played out in interwar Europe, exploring debates over political representation and remembrance. Bridging the gap between war and peace, this is the ideal book for all those interested in both First World War and minority histories.
Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject History - Asia, grade: B+ (2), The American Central University (Department of History), course: The Historian's Craft, language: English, abstract: The Soviet Union, by the time of its creation, was the first modern state that had to confront the rising issue of nationalism. With a progressive nationality policy, it systematically promoted the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and established for them institutional forms comparable of a modern state. In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks, seeking to defuse national sentiment, created hundreds of national territories. They trained new national leaders, established national languages, and fi...
'A masterpiece' Peter Pomerantsev 'Powerful' Serhii Plokhy 'Fascinating' Daily Telegraph A history of Russian violence waged against Ukraine across the centuries. Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. And yet this attack was in fact the latest episode in a centuries-long Russian campaign. In Intent to Destroy, leading scholar of genocide and Eastern Europe Eugene Finkel uncovers the deep roots of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ever since the rise of Russian nationalism in the nineteenth century, the domination of this key borderland has become a cornerstone of Russian and Soviet policy. Using genocidal tactics - killings, deportations, starvation and cultural dest...
One of the largest and most feared military forces in the world, the Red Army was a key player in advancing the cause of Soviet socialism. Rising out of revolutionary-era citizen militias, it aspired to the greatness needed to confront its Cold War adversaries but was woefully unprepared to change with the times. In this first comprehensive study of the Soviet officer corps, Roger Reese traces the history of the Red Army from Civil War triumph through near-decimation in World War II and demoralizing quagmire in Afghanistan to the close scrutiny it came under during Gorbachev's reform era. Reese takes readers inside the Red Army to reconstruct the social and institutional dynamics that shaped...
With Friends or Foes? Norman Saul continues his monumental multivolume magnum opus on U.S.-Russian relations over the course of 200 years. This fourth volume provides the first comprehensive study in any language of an era that shaped the rest of the century and captures the major changes in relations between two nations on the verge of becoming dominant global powers. Among other things, Saul examines the rationale for America's failure to recognize the Soviet government through the early 1930s, analyzing the impact of the Red Scare and the roles of the State Department, Russian émigrés, religious groups, and key individuals--like Charles Evans Hughes, Robert Kelley, Herbert Hoover, Boris...