Мобілізація на периферії. Військовий обов’язок як фактор модернізації імперії Габсбургів 1868–1914 by С. В. Чолій (review)

Modernization before Disaster

The book by a young Kyiv historian Serhiy Choliy that appeared late in 2016 is remarkable in several aspects. First, its topic – the introduction of universal conscription in Austria-Hungary and the modernizing effect it produced on the society – is novel. Previously, Ukrainian historians were concerned with the military history of the Dual Monarchy only within the context and the timeframe of World War I. The book covers the last five decades of Austria-Hungary. Second, prior Ukrainian studies of the Habsburg Empire focused mostly on Galicia, while Choliy’s book moves beyond the scope on “Ruthenian provinces” and, while heavily relying on Galician materials, discusses the topic empire-wide.

As Choliy emphasizes in the introduction, the armed forces of Austria-Hungary epitomized the sociopolitic and ethnoconfessional order of the empire, hence the study of the imperial army is suggestive of the entire society. Moreover, the focus on the army is particularly productive when it comes to the study of modernization in the imperial borderlands (including Galicia): whereas economic development and sociopolitical transformation were slower on the periphery, military modernization had the same effect empire-wide, making it much more important for distant areas (P. 11).

The ambitious research task and scope of the study required the author to process the abundance of sources from Ukrainian and Austrian archives (260 files). Documents of the imperial government (in Vienna), of the Galician provincial administration (in L’viv), and of the Russian imperial authorities (in Kyiv) allowed Choliy to tackle the problem from three vantage points: from the imperial capital, the empire’s borderland, and the concerned observers from abroad. Unfortunately, the author limited himself to the analysis of primary sources from only one region (Galicia) and ignored other former provincial archives of the Dual Monarchy in Prague, Kraków, Bratislava, Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo. The research of sources from those archives would have greatly enriched and strengthened the comparative aspect of the book and allowed a more nuanced model. Besides the variety of archival sources, Choliy explores the wide range of published documents, starting from official yearbooks of all-imperial and local legislations of the Danube Monarchy, and ending with analytical reports produced by the Russian General Staff about different aspects of modernization of the Habsburg military forces and the accompanying developments in borderland provinces. Among personal sources, memories of Austro-Hungarian General Staff senior officers serving at the turn of the twentieth century should be mentioned.

The composition of the book is traditional: the first chapter is reserved for the analysis of primary sources and an extensive historiographic survey. Relevant scholarship is grouped by topic and national historiographic tradition: Choliy consulted studies by Austrian, German, American, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, and Ukrainian historians (in the Ukrainian, Russian, German, and English languages). The breadth of the secondary literature employed in the book is commendable, but the author nowhere explains and substantiates his neglect of relevant works in other languages (by Czech, Slovak, Croat, Slovene, Bosnian, and Serb researchers).

The second chapter introduces readers to the administrative system of post-Compromise AustriaHungary and the place of the army in this system. The author presents the ethnocultural composition of the empire’s population, province by province, and discusses conflicting assessments of imperial nationality policies by different national historiographies. Using the background information provided in this opening section, the author moves next to the question of how the complex administrative system and multicultural population of the empire affected the organization and manning of its armed forces. The military of Austro-Hungary included the Common Army, Landwehr, Landsturm, and Hungarian Honvéd, and were coordinated by the Imperial War Ministry, separate ministries of territorial defense for Austria and Hungary, Landwehr territorial commands, and the emperor’s Military Chancellery. Choliy succeeds in presenting and explaining this really complicated system in systematic and comprehensive fashion. He arrives at the conclusion that the administrative autonomy of individual regions – be it Tirol, Bosnia and Herzegovina, or even Hungary – did not fully translate into the real autonomy of the corresponding territorial armed...