Muslims in the Russian Army: Colonial Accommodation and the Limits of Empire, 1874–1917 by FranziskaDavies. Imperial Transformations – Russian, Soviet and Post‐Soviet History. London: Routledge, 2025. xvi + 233 pp. $190.00. ISBN 978‐1‐03‐290893‐9
Journal: The Russian Review
Year: 2025

In this book, Franziska Davies presents the first comprehensive English-language study of Muslim soldiers in Russian military service in the late imperial period. Her ambitious monograph explores the issue of Muslim military service from a variety of angles, including military reform, recruitment policies, accommodation of religious practices, citizenship, and the lived experiences of Muslim soldiers. It takes into account all the Muslim regions in the empire: Crimea, the Volga-Ural region, the