Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905-1925 [Hardcover]

Joshua Sanborn (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0875803067 | ISBN-13: 978-0875803067 | Publication Date: October 19, 2002 | Edition: 1

How did Russia develop a modern national identity, and what role did the military play? Sanborn examines tsarist and Soviet armies of the early twentieth century to show how military conscription helped to bind citizens and soldiers into a modern political community. The experience of total war, he shows, provided the means by which this multiethnic and multiclass community was constructed and tested.

Drafting the Russian Nation is the first archivally based study of the relationship between military conscription and nation-building in a European country. Stressing the importance of violence to national political consciousness, Sanborn shows how national identity was formed and maintained through the organized practice of violence. The cultural dimensions of the "military body" are explored as well, especially in relation to the nationalization of masculinity.

The process of nation-building set in motion by military reformers culminated in World War I, when ethnically diverse conscripts fought together in total war to preserve their national territory. In the ensuing Civil War, the army's effort was directed mainly toward killing the political opposition within the "nation." While these complex conflicts enabled the Bolsheviks to rise to power, the massive violence of war even more fundamentally constituted national political life.

Not all minorities were easily assimilated. The attempt to conscript natives of Central Asia for military service in 1916 proved disastrous, for example. Jews, also identified as non-nationals, were conscripted but suffered intense discrimination within the armed forces because they were deemed to be inherently unreliable and potentially disloyal.

Drafting the Russian Nation is rich with insights into the relation of war to national life. Students of war and society in the twentieth century will find much of interest in this provocative study.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Lively and engaging.... This work should be read by anyone interested in or concerned by the enduring relationship between war and the modern nation-state."—Canadian Journal of History

"Highly original.... A very important work."—Mark von Hagen, author of Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship

"An impressive, important, and thought-provoking book. No one else has brought together the themes of war, mobilization, and ethnicity so clearly and effectively."—Peter Gatrell, author of A Whole Empire Walking

About the Author

Joshua A. Sanborn is Assistant Professor of History at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press; 1 edition (October 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875803067
• ISBN-13: 978-0875803067
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,327,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a very interesting thesis, January 23, 2003

By 

1. "John Henninger" (Littleton, CO United States) - See all my reviews

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

The main thesis of Sanborn's book is that violence as seen through the examples of the Tsarist and Soviet armies cemented the Russian nation together. The first part of the book, Sanborn writes about how the Soviet army managed to tighten draft evasions by rewarding those families that had members serving in the military while confiscating the land of draft evaders and their families during the Russian Civil War.Sandborn also deals with the different nationalities in the Russian empire. Belorussians and Ukrainians assimilated into the Russian army but were later segregrated into seperate ethnic units during the Russain Civil War. While Central Asians resisited service in the Russian army and the Jews were regarded by both Tsarist and Communist officers as subversives and dangerous to morale. The middle section Sanborn descibes how gender roles were coonected to the new Russin nationalism. Both Tsarist and Soviet propaganda stated that Russian men must develop their bodies to protect their nation and the family, while Russian women were required to have sons that could drafted into the army. The final section Sanborn writes how the Russian state would redeem criminals and draft evaders if they rejoined the army, but both the Soviet and Tsarist system would harshly punish pacificit sects. Although the state rewarded violent behavior it could not control it as seen through the various atrocities during the Russian Civil War.The main weakness of Sanborn's book is that he does not write about the treatement about the injured soldiers during and after the Russian Civil War and how this influeced their perception of the Soviet state. Overall this an excellent social history of the Russian army and how it contributed the creation of the Soviet Union.