THE FIRST WORLD WAR: A DOCUMENTARY RECORD
Series One: European War, 1914-1919, The War Reserve Collection (WRA-WRE)
from Cambridge University Library
Part 7: Economics, Finance and Socialism
Part : Russian Affairs, Bolshevism and the Eastern Front
Publisher's Note - Part 8
The First World War: A Documentary Record is a major microfilm series which is making available for the first time the riches of the Cambridge War Reserve Collection. This collection is acknowledged to be one of the finest sources of documentation concerning the First World War in the world, with much unique, rare and ephemeral material.
Professor Jay Winter, Department of History, Yale University, is the Consultant Editor for the microfilm edition. The emphasis is on the inclusion of materials unlikely to be held in most libraries.
In Part 8 Alexinsky's La Russie et la guerre (Paris, 1915), Levinson's The tragedy of the Jews in the European war zone (Edinburgh, n.d.), Les Ukrainiens et la guerre universelle (Lucerne, 1919) and Why is War carried on in East Galicia? (Vienna, 1919) provide a vivid picture of the devastating realities of the conflict on the Eastern front. There is material on all aspects of the Russian front, the Ukraine, Galicia, Poland, Hungary and Lithuania.
The social history of the Russian Revolution is well covered, with many publications from Petrograd, Moscow, Lucerne, Leipzig, Stockholm and Berlin providing detailed assessments of events:
- Kollantay, A. The activity of the Russian people’s commissariat for Social Welfare. London, 1919.
- Message from the Petrograd Soviet. 1919.
- Red paper on executions and atrocities committed in Russia. London, 1919.
- Briantchaninoff, A. H. En défense du peuple russe. Copenhagen, 1918.
- North Russian Zemstvos and Municipalities. London, 1919.
- Russian workers and the control of industry. London, 1919.
- Héroys, B. Lenin’s fighting force. London, 1919.
- The Horrors of Bolshevism. London 1919.
- Dobrynine, V. La lutte contre le Bolchevisme. Prague, 1920.
American, British, French, Swiss, and Russian imprints cover topics such as the horrors of Bolshevism; Jewish Pogroms in Ukraine; peasant communes; social reconstruction in Russia; life in Petrograd; proletarian culture; lessons of the Russian Revolution; and the Russian plan for the League of Nations. Arthur Ransome's The Truth about Russia (1919) is included as well as titles by Andreiev, Choulguine, Gorki, Kerry, Lansbury, Lenin, Litvinoff, MacDonald, Nevsky, Reed, Saunders, Stepankovsky, Timochenko and Williams.
There is a whole series of publications by the Russian Liberation Committee. There are titles in a variety of different languages, especially English, Russian, French, German.
Russia had the largest standing army of all the Great Powers in 1914 with 1.3 million military and naval personnel. The human cost of the war was enormous. Russian war deaths exceeded 1.8 million by the end of the conflict. The Eastern Front was perhaps even bloodier than the Western front and included vast operations in Poland, the Ukraine, Galicia and the Carpathian mountains.
The material included here provides details on some of the major battles and offensives on the Eastern Front: the Battle of Tannenberg (August 1914), the Battle of the Masurian Lakes (September 1914), the First and Second Battles of Warsaw (September-November 1914), the Battle of Limanowa (December 1914), attacks in the Carpathians (January 1915), the summer offensive by the Central Powers with the German breakthrough at Gorlice (May-September 1915), the Brusilov offensive (June-August 1916), the Kerensky offensive (June-July 1917), and the German counter-offensive including the capture of the port of Riga (July-September 1917). The new Bolshevik government signed an armistice with the Germans on 5 December 1917.
The Russian army sealed the fate of Kerensky’s Provisional Government by its disintegration after the July 1917 offensive. Soldiers lost any belief in victory and streamed home to join peace demonstrations in all the major cities. As Trotsky stated: “the troops voted with their feet.” Power slipped from the hands of the Kerensky regime into the hands of the Bolsheviks, the one political group totally committed to ending Russian participation in the war. A counter-revolutionary coup led by General Kornilov failed. The Bolsheviks secured majorities on the workers’ and soldiers’ councils (soviets) in Petrograd and Moscow.
This prepared the way for the seizure of power by the revolutionary committee of the Petrograd Soviet on 7 November 1917. Kerensky fled. The Second All Russian Congress of Soviets endorsed the coup and handed power to the Bolsheviks. Allied attempts at military intervention in Russia in 1918-1919 proved futile and were not pursued with the vigorous strength required to influence events.
There is much evidence on disaffection with the war. Material deprivation became critical in 1917 and was apparent to all observers of the Russian economy. By the summer of 1917 the Kerensky regime was brought to the verge of collapse by strikes and unrest. Urban workers were often less well fed than farmers or soldiers. Food shortages worsened. Throughout central and eastern Europe there was the frequent scene of urban crowds struggling to get to soup dispensers on street corners, malnourished children, as well as riots for increased food rations. Events in Russia had wider repercussions with demonstrations and strikes in France, Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary during the final two years of the war. The European working class were presented with a new vision of the future at a time when the old order was failing to deliver the goods: food and victory.
A number of works look at these issues:
- Timochenko, W. L’Ukraine et la Russie dans leurs rapports économiques. Paris, 1919.
- Tyrkova-Williams, A. Why Soviet Russia is Starving. London, 1919.
- Sanders, W S. The tragedy of Russia.
- The Food situation in Soviet Russia. London, 1919.
Scholars and students will be able to use this collection to explore the issues and arguments of the war from the perspectives of both sides. They will be able to examine the economic debate from a variety of different angles and study the various factors leading to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The documents allow one to seek answers to the following questions:
- How did experiences on the Eastern Front differ from other theatres of the war?
- How did people perceive the war in the Ukraine and in Galicia?
- What were the causes of the Russian Revolution?
- How were city soviets elected?
- What was the impact of the Russian Revolution?
- How did the working classes in Britain, France and Germany react to the events of 1917?
- What bearing did events in Russia have on the final outcome of the war?
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