It’s straightforward to ascribe a causal significance to the
First World War in leading to Russia’s revolution of 1917. Follow the steps: war led to food shortages; which led to protests; which
led to revolution.
In the past 20 odd years, however, something rather strange has
happened amongst some historians of the Russian Revolution. For these
historians, 1917 stopped being the important date. Or rather, it stopped being the
only important date. And it all has to do with war.
As Peter Holquist phrased it in his enormously influential Making
War, Forging Revolution, “war and revolution […] were not two discreet
events but rather points along a common continuum.” War began for Russia in the
summer of 1914 with the Great War. It didn’t end until at least 1921 with the
end of the Russian Civil War. The revolutionary year 1917 was nestled within, and
part of, that continued period of war.
This joined-up approach to war and revolution doesn’t just
call on us to rethink where each is positioned in time. It also demands we
reconsider the causal relationship between war and revolution. In this post,
I’ll raise three observations historians have made about the “continuum of
crisis” and how it not just led to, but shaped key aspects of, the Russian
Revolution and subsequent Civil War.
