Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Russian Research Center Studies)
Nationalizing the Russian Empireis based on wide reading in the primary and secondary literature of modern Russian history, on a prodigious survey of archival materials, and on the literature of comparative imperialisms and nationalisms. As such, it reflects some of the best thinking (and rethinking) of Russian history to come out of the transformation of power and identity in the post-Soviet space. Lohr raises some important issues about the continuities of regime practice and ideas across the divide of 1917 and illustrates powerfully how individuals and groups actually practiced nation, ethnicity and other rival forms of loyalty, solidarity, and exclusion. (Mark Von Hagen, Columbia University)This important and interesting book tackles crucial and much-debated issues such as home fronts during the First World War, the impact of civil-military relations in 1914-1918, the causes of the Russian Revolution, ethnic cleansing in east-central Europe, and the transformation of empires into nations. The greatest virtue of Lohr's work is that it approaches these hugely important topics from a fresh and original Russian angle, and does so on the basis of exhaustive archival work. It is also well written and easily accessible. (Dominic Lieven, London School of Economics and Political Science)Lohr has mined unique and wide-ranging materials to make this invaluable contribution to one of the most crucial and unexplored periods of modern Russian history--the transformation of the Russian Empire into a modern nation. (A. V. IsaenkoChoice2004-01-01)