Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905-1925 (review)

This book is about nation building and the role the military played in the attempt of tsarist generals to change the nature of the nation between 1905 and 1917, and the role the Red army played from 1918 to 1925. The author's most salient theme and premise is that the Imperial Russian military spearheaded the effort to redefine Russia away from identification with the tsar and autocracy, which are owed loyalty and service, to that of Russia as a nation of people that are owed something from the state for their military service. A new idea took hold that that service conveys citizenship and citizenship entails the empowering of the people. The campaign was begun in the 1870s with the passing of the Universal Military Service law, but took until the First World War for a new national compact to emerge as the reciprocal rights and duties of the citizen and the state were publicly acknowledged. Sanborn maintains that the newly created citizen-soldier, who originated from universal military conscription and the ideology of the nation, produced a powerful subjectivity, which undermined both the tsarist and Soviet regimes. That is, neither autocracy nor Bolshevism could accommodate an empowered populace, particularly in the realm of politics. The process, however, was not all about the nation being one; in their national-community building efforts the military used in-group/out-group policies, defining pariahs unworthy of military service on racial, religious, and, under the Soviet regime, class bases.

The strongest argument Sanborn makes for military transformation of society is the contention that universal military conscription was the basis for changed attitudes both of the governing authorities and the Russian populace. The weakest arguments are those about the supposed reinterpretation of the use of violence as a civic activity, and the attempt by the military to normalize a single militarized form of masculinity.

The book is written thematically so each topic is carried through from the tsarist era into the Soviet period, effectively demonstrating both the continuities and discontinuities in military policies. The major topics are conscription, with its high and low politics, and in particular the change in political attitudes regarding what the state owes its citizens for their service. A second topic is how the state used in-group/out-group conscription policies to define citizenship, discriminating against the "other" in society. A third topic is the military use of the masculine ideal as a nation-building technique. The final topic is the use of violence as a civic activity.

By the nature of the argument, this work is heavily theoretical in its interpretation of motives, policies, and behaviors and rests heavily on abstract qualities of community, nation, physical ideal, and the production of violence. Analysis is, therefore, at times, heavily subjective. Nevertheless, Sanborn has raised important questions regarding the formation of Russian popular national identity in the early years of the twentieth century and the military's role therein and will be read with great interest by scholars of identity formation.