Author: John BushnellPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Russian Peasants and Soldiers During World War I
Author: John BushnellThey Fought for the Motherland
Author: Laurie S. StoffPublisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700614850
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Women have participated in war throughout history, but their experience in Russia during the First World War was truly exceptional. Between the war's beginning and the October Revolution of 1917, approximately 6,000 women answered their country's call as the army was faced with insubordination and desertion in the ranks while the provisional government prepared for a new offensive. These courageous women became media stars throughout Europe and America, but were brushed aside by Soviet chroniclers and until now have been largely neglected by history. Laurie Stoff draws on deep archival research into previously unplumbed material, including many first-person accounts, to examine the roots, motivations, and legacy of these women. She reveals that Russia was the only nation in World War I that systematically employed women in the military, marking the first time that a government run by men had organized women for combat. And although they were originally envisioned as propaganda—promoting patriotism and citizenship to inspire the thousands of males who had been deserting or refusing to fight—Russian women also proved themselves more than capable in combat. Describing the formation, provisioning, and training of the units, Stoff sheds light on their social and educational backgrounds, while recounting a number of amazing individual stories. She tells how Maria Bochkareva, commander of the First Russian Women's Battalion of Death, and her unit met its baptism of fire in combat and how Bochkareva later traveled to the U.S. and met President Wilson. Within these pages, we also meet Maria Bocharnikova, who served with the First Petrograd Women's Battalion that defended the Winter Palace during the Bolshevik Revolution and whose detailed account of her experience dispels much of the misinformation concerning that storied event. Stoff also chronicles the exploits of the Second Moscow Women's Battalion of Death, Third Kuban Women's Shock Battalion, and the First Women's Naval Detachment, all within the context of Russian society, the Revolution, and the war itself. Enhancing and informing this presentation are more than two dozen historic photos. Stoff's remarkable account rescues from oblivion an important but still little-known aspect of Russia's experience in World War I. It also provides new insights into gender roles during a pivotal period of Russia's development and, more broadly speaking, resonates with the current debates over the role of women in warfare.
The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective
Author: John SteinbergPublisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047411129
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 631
Book Description
Like Volume one, Volume two of The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective examines the Russo-Japanese War in its military, diplomatic, social, political, and cultural context. In this volume East Asian contributors focus on the Asian side of the war to flesh out the assertion that the Russo-Japanese War was, in fact, World War Zero, the first global confl ict of the 20th century. The contributors demonstrate that the Russo-Japanese War, largely forgotten in the aftermath of World War I, actually was a precursor to the catastrophe that engulfed the world less than a decade after the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth. This study also helps us better understand Japan as it emerged at the beginning of its fateful 20th century.
With Snow on Their Boots
Author: Jamie H. CockfieldPublisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 0312220820
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422
Book Description
In 1916, in an exchange of human flesh for war material, the Russian government sent to France two brigades to fight on the side of their French allies. By the end of World War I, these two brigades had experienced their own form of the Russian Revolution, had been isolated at a southern training post in a discipline move by the French government, had battled against each other in what was one of the first confrontations of the Russian Civil War, and had emerged from the conflict as a single force, the Russian Legion of Honor, which would remain loyal to France until the end of the war. The remarkable story of these Russian soldiers has been overlooked by historians until now. Jamie Cockfield here explores the journey and transformation of these men, and in so doing, he examines the impact of the revolution on the Russians who were caught in the middle of wartime alliances and nationalist ardor.
Russia's First World War
Author: Peter GatrellPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317881397
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
The story of Russia’s First World War remains largely unknown, neglected by historians who have been more interested in the grand drama that unfolded in 1917. In Russia’s First World War: A Social and Economic History Peter Gatrell shows that war is itself ‘revolutionary’ – rupturing established social and economic ties, but also creating new social and economic relationships, affiliations, practices and opportunities. Russia’s First World War brings together the findings of Russian and non-Russian historians, and draws upon fresh research. It turns the spotlight on what Churchill called the ‘unknown war’, providing an authoritative account that finally does justice to the impact of war on Russia’s home front
Fighting Without a War
Author: Ralph AlbertsonPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Soviet Union
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
Yashka My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile
Author: Maria BotchkarevaPublisher: Leonaur Limited
ISBN: 9781782827900
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
The modern 'Joan of Arc' of the Great War and Russian Revolution This the story of an astonishing life told in her own words. Maria Botchkareva (whose nickname was Yashka) was not only a soldier in the Russian Army who fought in combat during the First World War, she was also the first woman to command a military unit in the Russian Army. Born a peasant, Yashka left home at 16 years old, coerced into prostitution and tramped into exile on foot following her abusive criminal lover. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Yashka then age twenty-five and motivated by national pride, attempted to join the army. Although she was initially rejected she was eventually accepted following the intercession of the Tsar. Sent to the front Yashka was decorated for rescuing fifty wounded soldiers from the battlefield and was wounded herself several times. In 1917 she proposed the creation of an all-female combat unit which would not only fight, but provide inspiration for the flagging morale of male Russian troops at that point in the war. This eventually gave rise to the creation of the incredibly titled 1st Russian Women's Battalion of Death. The unit served on the Russian Western Front where once again Yashka was wounded in action. Botchkareva's inspirational initiative attracted international attention and she was visited by Emiline Pankhurst, the political activist and suffragette who proclaimed her 'the greatest woman of the century'. By this time Yashka was associating herself with the White Russians and had been placed on a Bolshevik 'death list', the fatal consequences of which she narrowly escaped, making her way to the USA where she pleaded with President Woodrow Wilson to aid Russia in its time of need. She was also granted an audience in Britain with King George V. Yashka returned to Russia, was eventually captured by the Bolsheviks and against Lenin's orders shot by the Cheka as an 'enemy of the state' in 1920. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.
Facing Armageddon
Author: Hugh CecilPublisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473813972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 960
Book Description
Facing Armageddon is the first scholarly work on the 1914-18 War to explore, on a world-wide basis, the real nature of the participants experience. Sixty-four scholars from all over the globe deliver the fruits of recent research in what civilians and servicemen passed through, in the air, on the sea and on land.
The Secret Betrayal
Author: Nikolai TolstoyPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Drafting the Russian Nation
Author: Joshua A. SanbornPublisher:
ISBN: 9780875806631
Category : Draft
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
How did Russia develop a modern national identity, and what role did the military play? Sanborn examines tsarist and Soviet armies of the early twentieth century to show how military conscription helped to bind citizens and soldiers into a modern political community. The experience of total war, he shows, provided the means by which this multiethnic and multiclass community was constructed and tested. Drafting the Russian Nation is the first archivally based study of the relationship between military conscription and nation-building in a European country. Stressing the importance of violence to national political consciousness, Sanborn shows how national identity was formed and maintained through the organized practice of violence. The cultural dimensions of the "military body" are explored as well, especially in relation to the nationalization of masculinity. The process of nation-building set in motion by military reformers culminated in World War I, when ethnically diverse conscripts fought together in total war to preserve their national territory. In the ensuing Civil War, the army's effort was directed mainly toward killing the political opposition within the "nation." While these complex conflicts enabled the Bolsheviks to rise to power, the massive violence of war even more fundamentally constituted national political life. Not all minorities were easily assimilated. The attempt to conscript natives of Central Asia for military service in 1916 proved disastrous, for example. Jews, also identified as non-nationals, were conscripted but suffered intense discrimination within the armed forces because they were deemed to be inherently unreliable and potentially disloyal. Drafting the Russian Nation is rich with insights into the relation of war to national life. Students of war and society in the twentieth century will find much of interest in this provocative study.