What was the impact of world war first on the Russian economy
Answers
The First World War is Russia’s ‘forgotten war’. After the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, the memory of the war was subsumed into the history of the revolutionary process. The war was a difficult subject for the new rulers of Soviet Russia, since they viewed it as an expansionist conflict, embarked upon by Russia – and the other European Great Powers – as an inevitable consequence of their imperialist ambitions. Despite the death of some two million Russian soldiers during the war, the Bolshevik regime concentrated on the events of 1917 in their historical treatment of the period, seeing the war as almost incidental to the triumphal progress of the revolutionary movement. Western historians too have given relatively little treatment to Russia’s war; the volumes published by the Carnegie Foundation in the late 1920s remain the most comprehensive treatment of Russia’s First World War in all its aspects. The military side of the war was well covered in Norman Stone’s The Eastern Front(1975), but until now there has been no satisfactory modern treatment of the social and economic aspect of Russia’s First World War. Peter Gatrell’s book is therefore especially welcome.
The First World War is Russia’s ‘forgotten war’. After the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, the memory of the war was subsumed into the history of the revolutionary process. The war was a difficult subject for the new rulers of Soviet Russia, since they viewed it as an expansionist conflict, embarked upon by Russia – and the other European Great Powers – as an inevitable consequence of their imperialist ambitions. Despite the death of some two million Russian soldiers during the war, the Bolshevik regime concentrated on the events of 1917 in their historical treatment of the period, seeing the war as almost incidental to the triumphal progress of the revolutionary movement. Western historians too have given relatively little treatment to Russia’s war; the volumes published by the Carnegie Foundation in the late 1920s remain the most comprehensive treatment of Russia’s First World War in all its aspects. The military side of the war was well covered in Norman Stone’s The Eastern Front(1975), but until now there has been no satisfactory modern treatment of the social and economic aspect of Russia’s First World War. Peter Gatrell’s book is therefore especially welcome.