The Empire and Nationalism at War ed. by Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen (review)

In recent years the neglected history of World War I on the Eastern Front has received long-awaited attention. The war on the Eastern Front had resulted in the collapse of three empires and the emergence of several nation-states after a horrific period of violence from 1914 to 1922. Slavica’s project on Russia’s Great War and Revolution aims to contribute to the recent literature on the Eastern Front and expand the understanding of the immediate and long-lasting impacts of war in the territories of the former Russian Empire. Over several years this project has provided a forum for scholars from several countries to expand the understanding of the history of war in the Russian context through theoretical, conceptual, and empirical studies. The project comprises the publication of selected articles of these scholars as well as a constantly updated Web site, which includes valuable supporting materials as maps, illustrations, and sound and image files. The book under review is a valuable outcome of this project and introduces new sources, methodologies, and conceptual frameworks to explore how war and imperial collapse transformed lives in the Russian imperial lands before, during, and just after World War I, and how this is remembered.

In the introductory essay Ronald Grigor Suny reiterates an argument shared by Alexei Miller, Aviel Roshwald, and Michael Reynolds that the imperial powers tried to manipulate the aspirations of ethnicities within the borders of their rivals in the course of the war. The intention behind this policy was to further imperial interests. The outcomes, however, were unexpected for both the imperial states and the nationalist groups. The following essays thoughtfully analyze these manipulative policies, their intentions, implementation, and outcomes during the war and revolutionary years in the territories of the Russian empire, with one notable exception – the Caucasus.

Mark von Hagen proposes that the “entangled history” approach can provide a productive methodological framework to understand the process of war and its aftermath on the Eastern Front. According to him, the entanglement of imperial states on the Eastern Front before the war is what shaped how the war was fought and how it ended as “the pressures and the constraints of the various entanglements also resulted in a much more radical postwar reconfiguration of borders and populations than was the case in the west.” (P. 11) Von Hagen selects certain “spaces” of entanglement – areas of military occupation, and prisoner-of-war camps, and rather than providing a conclusive analysis, points out how the existing literature on these issues can fit into “entangled history” and how future research, especially in the aftermath of the war on the Eastern Front, can benefit from this approach.

From this perspective, Joshua Sanborn’s chapter is a perfect example of that suggestion. In order to understand the dissolution of the Russian Empire (as well as the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires) at the end of World War I, Sanborn proposes to use the multifaceted process of decolonization instead of the teleological and simplified explanation of “rise of nationalism” (P. 50), because “[the rise of nationalism] framework is not robust enough to explain the complicated political and military processes that historically have led to independence, which have been powerfully influenced by both vicious fighting between purported co-nationals and by deep engagement with regional and global powers other than the imperial state most directly affected. The model of national liberation is even less helpful when attempting to explain why conflict continued, indeed frequently intensified, after the achievement of national independence” (P. 54). Sanborn then explains his “decolonization” model, which includes imperial challenge, state failure, and social collapse and can be applied to the violent processes “in Eastern Europe (and elsewhere, notably the Middle East) in the years of the Great War” (P. 71).

Eric Lohr’s essay also deals with the “rise of nationalism” framework...