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The Mobilization of 1914 and the Question of the Russian Nation: A Reexamination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Josh Sanborn
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Extract

Sir George Buchanan, Great Britain's ambassador to Russia during World War I, published his widely read memoirs in 1923. In those pages, he provided an influential account of the response of the Russian people to Germany's declaration of war:

During those wonderful early August days Russia seemed to have been completely transformed. The German Ambassador had predicted that the declaration of war would provoke a revolution. He had even declined to listen to a friend who had advised him, on the eve of his departure, to send his collection of art to the Hermitage for safe keeping, as the Hermitage would, he foretold, be one of the first buildings to be sacked. Unfortunately for him, the only act of mob violence throughout the whole Russian Empire was the wholesale looting of the German Embassy on August 4. Instead of provoking a revolution, the war forged a new bond between Sovereign and people. The workmen proclaimed a truce to strikes, and the various political parties laid aside their grievances.

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , Summer 2000 , pp. 267 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2000

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References

Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the 1997 annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Seattle and at the conference entitled “Rossiia v pervoi mirovoi voine” held in St. Petersburg in June 1998. I would like to thank the participants and audience members at those panels, in particular Geoffrey Hosking and Bill Rosenberg, who were the designated discussants, for their comments. In addition, I would like to thank Sheila Fitzpatrick, Ron Suny, Michael Geyer, Peter Holquist, Troy Davis, and the anonymous reviewers for Slavic Review for their input and bibliographical advice. Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Center for the Advancement and Study of Peace and International Cooperation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for the funds necessary to conduct the research that led to this article.

1. SirBuchanan, George, My Mission to Russia and Other Diplomatic Memories (Boston, 1923), 1:213.Google Scholar

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3. These are not the only foreign observer sources that have been widely cited in the western literature. Other influential works include Maurice Paleologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs, vol. 1 (London, 1923), and Bernard Pares, The Fall of the Russian Monarchy: A Study of the Evidence (London, 1939).

4. See, for instance, Haimson, Leopold, ‘The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917,” Slavic Review 23, no. 4 (December 1964): 619-42CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Slavic Review 24, no. 1 (March 1965): 1-22; Lincoln, W. Bruce, Passage through Armageddon: The Russians in War and Revolution, 1914-1918 (New York, 1986), 41–45 Google Scholar; Pipes, Richard, The Russian Revolution (New York, 1990), 203-10Google Scholar; Figes, Orlando, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (London, 1996), 251-52Google Scholar; Gilbert, Martin, The First World War: A Complete History (New York, 1994), 31 Google Scholar; Wildman, Allan K., The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers'Revolt (March-April 1917) (Princeton, 1980), 76–77.Google Scholar

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6. Pavel Miliukov indicted Russian peasants for a lack of patriotism in nearly the same words that Golovin and Danilov did. See Miliukov, Paul, Political Memoirs, 1905-1917, ed. Mendel, Arthur P., trans. Carl Goldberg (Ann Arbor, 1967), 300.Google Scholar

7. For an excellent bibliography of such sources, along with Russian-language secondary sources, see Pervaia mirovaia voina: Ukazatel’ lileratury 1914-1993 (Moscow, 1994). Additional mention should be made of a handful of primary sources written by soldiers that are not covered in this bibliography and are not normally cited by historians. Gordienko, I. M., Iz boevogo proshlogo, 1914-1918 gg. (Moscow, 1957)Google Scholar; Gurko, V. I., War and Revolution inRussia, 1914-1917 (New York, 1919)Google Scholar; Ignatyev, A. A., A Subalternin Old Russia, trans. Montagu, Ivor (London, 1944)Google Scholar; Littauer, Vladimir S., Russian Hussar: A Story of the Imperial Cavalry, 1911-1920, reprint ed. (Shippensburg, Penn., 1993)Google Scholar; Vertinskii, E. A., Pamiatnye dni: Izvospominaniiguardeiskikh strelkov (Tallinn, 1932)Google Scholar; Vavilov, A., Zapiski soldata Vavilova (Moscow, 1927)Google Scholar; Vevem, Boleslav, 6-ia balareia, 1914-1917gg. Povest o wemeni velikago sluzlieniia rodine (Paris, 1938).Google Scholar

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13. Some authors, however, remained unaffected by this attempt to portray the laboring masses of Russia as instinctively opposed to imperialist wars and continued to assert the standard position that the outbreak of war had intoxicated all of Europe and that “hurrahpatriotism“ reigned throughout Russia as surely as it did in England. See, for instance, Nikolai Iakovlev, 1 avgusla 1914, 3d ed. (Moscow, 1993 [1974]), 28-29.

14. Seniavskaia, Elena, “Kornetbezhitna \'o'mu,” Pogranichnik, no. 3 (March 1994): 61 Google Scholar.

15. Jahn, Hubertus F., Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War 1 (Ithaca, 1996), 171-73.Google Scholar

16. The quote that the Russian countryside responded to the declaration of war with “eternal silence” comes from Kadet leader Pavel Miliukov. Miliukov, Political Memoirs, 300.

17. Gorodovikov, O. I., Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1957), 34.Google Scholar

18. “Zapisi starshego unter-ofitsera kom. 253 pekhotnogo Cherekopnogo polka Ivan Vasil'evich Kuchernigo,” Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 6281, op. 1, d. 178,11. 1-3.

19. Semina, Khristina D., Tragediia russkoi armiipervoi velikoi voiny 1914-1918gg.: Zapiski sestry miloserdiia kavkazskogo fronta (New Mexico, 1963), 1:11.Google Scholar

20. Akhmatova, Anna, “Iiul’ 1914,” in Primite etot dar … : Stikhotvoreniia (Moscow, 1995), 171.Google Scholar

21. In addition to Buchanan, see Paleologue, An Ambassador's Memoirs, 46-52; Pares, Fall of the Russian Monarchy, 187-89; Rodzianko, M. V., Krushenie imperii i Gosudarslvennaia Duma ifevral'skaia 1917 goda revoliutsiia (Valley Cottage, N.Y., 1986), 100–107 Google Scholar.

22. “Zapisi starshego unter-ofitsera kom. 253 pekhotnogo Cherekopnogo polka Ivan Vasil'evich Kuchemigo,” GARF, f. 6281, op. 1, d. 178,1. 4-4ob.

23. Botchkareva, Maria [Mariia Bochkareva], Yashka: My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile, as set down by Levine, Isaac Don (New York, 1919), 64.Google Scholar

24. Pireiko, A., Vtylu i nafronteimperialisticheskoi voiny: Vospominaniia riadovogo (Leningrad, 1926), 9.Google Scholar

25. GARF,f. 1745,op. l,d.58,11. 370-421 (daily reportsof Plotskdistrictmilitarycommander, 17July through 26July 1914).

26. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA), f. 2000, op. 3, d. 2647,1. 1 (letter from Nikolai Ianushkevich to chief of the Main Staff, 18July 1914).

27. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 19, d. 86,1. 8 (Sukhomlinov report, 22July 1914).

28. “Pravila o prieme v voennoe vremia okhotnikov na sluzhbu v sukhoputnye voiska.” Approved by the tsar, signed by Sukhomlinov, ibid., 1. 10; distributed as “Prikaz po voennomu vedomstvu no. 454,” 28 July 1914, ibid., 11. 34-35.

29. See, for instance, RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 3, d. 2647, 1. 16 (telegram from “volunteers under the leadership of P. Shaposhnikov” to Sukhomlinov, 23 July 1917); ibid., 1. 30 (letter from N. Bogomolov to the Mobilization Department, 22 July 1914); ibid., 1. 15 (telegram from chairman of the Kostroma draft board to the war minister, 22 July 1914); RGVIA, f. 400, op. 19, d. 86,1. 38 (telegram from General Ebelov [Odessa] to chief of Main Staff, 27 July 1914).

30. RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 3, d. 1159,1. 6 (letter from Pension and Service Department of the Main Staff to the Mobilization Department of the General Staff, 15 August 1914).

31. Botchkareva [Bochkareva], Yashka, 64; RGVIA, f. 2003, op. 2, d. 28,1. 53 (petition to the tsar from 11-year-old Vulf Iankel'son of Riga, n.d.); for Rodzianko's request to enlist his son despite the fact that he had failed his medical exam (and approval of request), see RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 3, d. 2608,1. 85 (report from Sukhomlinov to the tsar, 21 July 1914); for Krivoshein children, see ibid., 1. 88.

32. Telegram from Tomsk province included in “O bezporiadkakh na sbomykh punktakh vo vremia mobilizatsii,” report from department of police to the MVD Conscription Administration, 1914, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, St. Petersburg (RGIA), f. 1292, op. 1, d. 1729,1. 26.

33. For an analysis of the July riots in the context of liquor disturbances, see William Arthur McKee, “Taming the Green Serpent: Alcoholism, Autocracy, and Russian Society, 1881-1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1997), esp. 525-32.

34. RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 3, d. 1196, 1. 93. (telegram of the governor-general of the Steppe district to Sukhomlinov, 18 August 1914). All liquor stores were required by law to remain closed during the mobilization period, a law that generally appears to have been enforced. See also Golovin, Russian Army, 204, for a similar interpretation of the riots.

35. RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 3, d. 18,1. 6-6ob. (report of commander of Kazan’ military district to the war minister, 8January 1910).

36. RGVIA, f. 2000, op. 3, d. 1154,11. 242-43 (report of the chief of the Lugansk garrison to the war minister, 24July 1914).

37. RCVIA, f. 2000, op. 3, d. 1154, 11. 238-41 (report of commander of Kazan’ military district to war minister, 24July 1914).

38. Accounts of these events are collected in RGIA, f. 1292, op. 1, d. 1729.

39. “Svedeniia o chisle lits, postradavshikh vo vremia byvshikh v iiule mobilizatsiiu 1914 g. bezporiadkov v nekotorykh mestnostiakh imperii,” RGIA, f. 1292, op. 1, d. 1729,11. 129-30.

40. For a summary of the 1915 riots, see “PerecherT ‘besporiadkov,’ uchinennykh ratnikami 2-go razriada prizyva 5 sentiabria 1915 g., sostavlennyi v departamente politsii,” secret, 2 November 1915, RGIA, f. 1292, op. 1, d. 1729,11. 131-81.

41. Cited in Golovin, Voennye usiliia, 2:121.

42. See account of the conflict between workers and Tolstoians in Tula in the court proceedings against the Tolstoians in Gosudarstvennyi muzei istorii religii (GM1R), f. 13, op. l,d. 376.

43. RGVTA, f. 2000, op. 3, d. 1196,1. 91 (letter from Polivanov to Shcherbatov, 5 August 1915).

44. RGIA, f. 1278, op. 5, d. 1193, 1. 106-106ob. (letter from “The peasantry” to the State Duma, 5 August 1915).

45. RGV1A, f. 400, op. 19, d. 147, 1. 5 (letter from “a peasant” to the war minister, 20 January 1915). Emphasis added.

46. David Moon, “Peasants into Russian Citizens? A Comparative Perspective,” Revolutionary Russia 9, no. 1 (June 1996): 43-81.

47. Ibid., 76.

48. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870- 1914 (Stanford, 1976).

49. Moon, “Peasants into Russian Citizens?” 44.

50. Duara, Prasenjit, “Historicizing National Identity, or Who Imagines What and When,” in Eley, Geoff and Suny, Ronald Grigor, eds., Becoming National: A Reader (Oxford, 1996), 152-53.Google Scholar

51. Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, Eng., 1996), 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52. Moon, “Peasants into Russian Citizens?” 45, 47.

53. Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, 195-96, 375, 379, 380.

54. Moon conscientiously acknowledges here that his interpretation “conflicts with some recent work on the evolution of Russian national identity among peasants,” citing the work of A. V. Buganov on collective memory and Jeffrey Brooks on popular literature in particular. He deals with the former by agreeing with David Ransel's criticism that Buganov had a weak conceptualization of national consciousness and with the latter by claiming that Brooks inadequately dealt with “the critical analytical problem of recreating the attitudes of the readers rather than the content of what they read.” Moon, “Peasants into Russian Citizens?” 47.

55. Ibid., 49.

56. Havel, Vaclav, Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990 (New York, 1992), 136.Google Scholar

57. Lih, Lars, Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921 (Berkeley, 1990), 71.Google Scholar

58. Ibid.

59. Brubaker, Nationalism Refrained, 19.

60. Moon, “Peasants into Russian Citizens?” 55-67.

61. Lehning, James R., Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France during the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Eng., 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62. Moon, “Peasants into Russian Citizens?” 68-73.

63. General [A. N.] Kuropatkin, The Russian Army and the Japanese War, trans. A. B. Lindsay, 2 vols. (London, 1909), 1:296.

64. The definitive work on the ideological crisis among Russian elites in this period is Andrew M. Verner, The Crisis of Russian Autocracy: Nicholas 11 and the 1905 Revolution (Princeton, 1990).

65. Col. A. G. Elchaninov, Vedenie sovremennykh voiny i boia (lektsiia) (St. Petersburg, 1909), 12, 13. Emphasis in the original.

66. See A. I. Guchkov, Kvoprosu ogosudarstvennoi oborone: Rechi v Gosudarslvennoi dume. trel'iagosozyva 1908-1912 gg. (Petrograd, 1915).

67. See the 1 August 1914 report from Nizhegorod included in “O bezporiadkakh na sbornykh punktakh vo vremia mobilizatsii,” report from Department of Police to the MVD Conscription Administration, 1914, RGIA, f. 1292, op. 1, d. 1729, II. 106-7.

68. These statistics injoshua A. Sanborn, “Drafting the Nation: Military Conscription and the Formation of a Modern Polity in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, 1905-1925” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1998), 541. These are literacy rates at the time of induction. Reading classes in the army itself meant that by the time a soldier left the army he was still less likely to be illiterate.

69. Meirion and Susie Harries, The Last Days of Innocence: America at War, 1917-1918 (New York, 1997), 137.

70. Recent studies of the competence of junior officers and soldiers more broadly have emphasized the relative success of their training in the years before World War I. For the judgment of the preeminent American historian of the tsarist army to this effect, see Bruce Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914 (Bloomington, 1992), 273; see also Kipp, Jacob, “Mass, Mobility, and the Origins of Soviet Operational Ait, 1918-1936,” in Reddel, Carl W., ed., Transformation in Russian and Soviet Military History (Washington, D.C., 1990), 94 Google Scholar. Despite the dates in the title of Kipp's article, he spends the first pages of his article discussing the tsarist era.

71. See the comments made by one such junior officer to Sir Alfred Knox. Knox, With the Russian Army, 2:452-53. See also the dislike and scorn for old-style officers among the junior officers in Fedor Stepun's artillery unit evident throughout his wartime letters. F. Stepun, h pisem praporshchika artillerista (Prague, n.d.).

72. The most prolific private publisher for soldiers was the publishing house of V. A. Berezovskii, which had published more than 3,000 books and several periodicals for soldiers by 1910. See S. V. Belov, “Izdatel'stvo V. A. Berezovskogo (Iz istorii izdaniia voennoi literatury v Rossii),” Voenno-istorichesltii zhurnal, 1989, no. 11:85-90.

73. RGlA,f.821,op. 133, d. 603,1. 64ob. (translated prayer from a mullah in Ural'sk). Emphasis added.

74. RGIA, f. 821, op. 133, d. 603, 1. 26ob. (letter from the governor of Riazan’ province to E. V. Menkin [chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Department of Spiritual Affairs] 16 September 1914).

75. Peter Paret, Understanding War: Essays on Clausewitz and the History of Military Power (Princeton, 1992), 41, 44.

76. RGIA, f. 821, op. 133, d. 603,1. 77 (letter from Saltykov [military veterinarian] to the governor-general of Turkestan, secret, 1 November 1914).

77. RGIA, f. 821, op. 133, d. 603,1. 102 (letter from the director of the Chancellery of the Steppe Region to E. V. Menkin, 28 November 1914).

78. The literature on women's mobilization and World War I is large and growing. See, for instance, Margaret Randolph Higonnet et al., eds., Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven, 1987); Woollacott, Angela, On Her Their Lives Depend: Munitions Workers in the Great War (Berkeley, 1994).Google Scholar

79. See here especially Lih, Bread and Authority in Russia, Semina, Tragediia nisskoi armii, and Siegelbaum, Lewis H., The Politics of Industrial Mobilization in Russia, 1914-17: A Study of the War-Industries Committees (New York, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80. “Nasha slava,” publication of Sel'skii vestnik, included in RGIA, f. 821, op. 133, d. 603, 11. 40, 43.

81. RGIA, f. 821, op. 133, d. 603,1. 89 (letter from Kazan’ governor to E. V. Menkin, 10 November 1914).

82. For a more detailed exploration of this topic, see Sanborn, Josh, “Conscription, Correspondence, and Politics in Late Imperial Russia,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 24, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 1997): 27–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83. RGIA, f. 1292, op. 7, d. 298,1. 125 (letter from “wives of reservists” Tat'iana Iaremenko, Sinklatia Bozheiko, and Serafima Totskaia [from Radomysl’] to minister of internal affairs, 8 October 1915).