Russian Responses to the Great War: Reconsidering Textbook Narratives

In July 1914, Russia entered the First World War. It was a momentous decision, which would ultimately seal the fate of the Tsarist government and shape the revolutionary and Soviet regimes that succeeded it.

But how did the people of the Russian Empire respond?

This post provides an explanation and outline to teaching the question of the response of Russians (and non-ethnic “Russians” and non-Russians) to the outbreak of war. Lesson resources can be found in the link here.

In Context

It’s been commonplace to see the outbreak of war in 1914 as popular. Indeed, part of a KS3 scheme on the Great War that I planned a couple of years ago explicitly drew attention to outbreaks of ethnic violence against “enemy” civilians in belligerent countries (not just Russia). This interpretation certainly has its merits, not least in its ability to unify the wartime experiences of Russia and other belligerents, which likewise saw a surge of patriotic chauvinism and ethnic violence.

One textbook account, which I used as a starting point in my own lesson planning, puts it like this:

The Tsar’s decision to go to war was initially a popular one, supported by a wave of anti-German sentiment. Strike activity ceased, and extremists were imprisoned for their lack of patriotism. Having voted for war credits, the [State] Duma dissolved itself, declaring that it did not want to burden the country with ‘unnecessary politics’ in war time. The Germanic ‘St. Petersburg’ became the Slavonic ‘Petrograd’ and a vast army was rapidly assembled, amazing the Germans by the speed with which the Russian ‘steamroller’ was able to get to the Eastern Front.

Yet while patriotism was part of the story of Russia’s start to the war, historian Josh Sanborn has warned it was only one part of that story, and not necessarily the main one:

The declaration of mobilization and war in July 1914 brought about three basic responses from the Russian populace. The first was by far the most prevalent: a private response to the danger and disruption of the war. The most common sound in Russia was that of men, women, and children weeping. The other common sound was silence, not the ‘eternal silence’ of the Russian countryside that Russian urbanites, too deaf to rural noises to know the difference, generally heard, but a stunned silence. Rural men themselves recalled the eeriness of buzzing villages falling silent as families quietly grieved.

In a number of cases, starting with initial mobilisation in 1914 but peaking most spectacularly with the 1916 Central Asian Revolt of Muslims conscripted for military service (which I’ll post about next time), mobilisation led to open protest and significant disruption, including armed resistance. So not, therefore, an unambiguously "initially popular" response.

Textbooks in general tend to lag well behind current (or even more generally recent) scholarship. This is partly a reflection on the gap between academia and teaching, with scholars in the field having little involvement in shaping teaching resources. It may also be to do with a tendency of some textbooks to reproduce the narratives of earlier textbooks. Both factors might help explain a degree of scholarly stasis in textbook narratives, which often remain broadly consistent with one another, yet fail to keep pace with academic research. (Simon Fosterand Eleni Karayianni have suggested that Holocaust textbooks, in a rather similar manner, have reproduced outdated research whilst failing to reflect up-to-date scholarship.)

What to do when the textbooks don't reflect what we're reading in scholarship? Many of us may choose not to directly critique and challenge textbook accounts in our teaching. Without significant scholarly knowledge beyond the textbook, and with the pressure of shovelling students through public examinations, it just seems like too much of a risk to deviate from the agreed story.

However, as Christopher Edwards argued in Teaching History 130 back in 2008, it’s odd from a disciplinary perspective that “we continue to treat textbooks as it they were sources of ‘safe’ knowledge and […] put aside our customary need for a critical stance.”

Edwards demonstrated how textbooks from years bygone could be critically examined alongside present-day textbooks to expose the inherent biases of the time. I would contend that textbooks from the here and now can also be critically examined against non-textbook accounts written by historians in the field, and that, moreover, such practice may offer students a valuable demonstration of process of constructing historical knowledge. As new research is conducted, the material basis on which interpretations are built up shifts. It’s only right that this disciplinary reality is reflected in our teaching.

 

Key Considerations for Teaching

• Textbooks provide interpretations of the past, and as such are not immune from inaccuracies, contestation, and scholarly revision.
• The start of the First World War might well have been greeted by patriotic sentiment on the part of many Russians, but it also brought significant upheaval, distress, and protest.
• These complex responses are not reflected in some textbook accounts, but are clearly relevant to students’ understanding of the First World War and its role in the transformation and ultimately collapse of the Russian Empire after 1914.
• Textbook accounts can and should be opened up to scrutiny by means of comparison with scholarship produced by historians working in the field. Doing so is one of the most powerful disciplinary tools for exposing the way historical knowledge is constructed that we can use in the History classroom.

 

Vocabulary and Substantive Concepts

Before tackling this lesson, students should have a grasp of the following terms and their meanings.

• War
• Total War
• Civilians
• Nationality/Race
• Protest
• Mutiny/Armed Rebellion
• Military
• Empire

 

Lesson Outline and Resources

1. The background of war and Russia’s entry is first given as context.
2. A textbook interpretation is then provided and students are asked to consider what this suggests about the start of war. In this instance, the textbook extract is presented as if it were a historical extract of the kind students are required to critically evaluate in their exams.
3. This textbook extract is used to introduce the “established story” of the start of war, as a popular event greeted by mass support.
4. Then, students are presented with Josh Sanborn’s contrasting interpretation. Again, they are asked to consider what this extract suggests about the start of war.
5. Students are now provided with a broader narrative of the war, beginning in 1914 and running through 1916. They are asked to identify impacts (consequences) of the war and categorise these as “Responses to the Start of War”, “Military Problems”, “Political Problems”, and “Economic Problems”.
6. Finally, students are asked to return to the textbook extract and redraft it to reflect the findings they have seen in the lesson.

 

Further Reading

Christopher Edwards, “The How of History: Using Old and New Textbooks in the Classroom to Develop Disciplinary Knowledge”, Teaching History 130 (March 2008)

Stuart Foster and Eleni Karayianni, “Portrayals of the Holocaust in English History Textbooks, 1991-2015: Continuities, Challenges and Concerns”, UCL (2016): link here

Joshua Sanborn, ‘The Mobilization of 1914 and the Question of the Russian Nation: A Re-examination’, Slavic Review 59:2 (2000)