The Great War, the Russian Civil War, and the Invention of Big Science

2002 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexei Kojevnikov

ArgumentThe revolutionary transformation in Russian science toward the Soviet model of research started even before the revolution of 1917. It was triggered by the crisis of World War I, in response to which Russian academics proposed radical changes in the goals and infrastructure of the country’s scientific effort. Their drafts envisioned the recognition of science as a profession separate from teaching, the creation of research institutes, and the turn toward practical, applied research linked to the military and industrial needs of the nation. The political revolution and especially the Bolshevik government that shared or appropriated many of the same views on science, helped these reforms materialize during the subsequent Civil War. By 1921, the foundation of a novel system of research and development became established, which in its most essential characteristics was similar to the U.S. later phenomenon known as “big science.”

2017 ◽  
pp. 142-155
Author(s):  
I. Rozinskiy ◽  
N. Rozinskaya

The article examines the socio-economic causes of the outcome of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1936), which, as opposed to the Russian Civil War, resulted in the victory of the “Whites”. Choice of Spain as the object of comparison with Russia is justified not only by similarity of civil wars occurred in the two countries in the XX century, but also by a large number of common features in their history. Based on statistical data on the changes in economic well-being of different strata of Spanish population during several decades before the civil war, the authors formulate the hypothesis according to which the increase of real incomes of Spaniards engaged in agriculture is “responsible” for their conservative political sympathies. As a result, contrary to the situation in Russia, where the peasantry did not support the Whites, in Spain the peasants’ position predetermined the outcome of the confrontation resulting in the victory of the Spanish analogue of the Whites. According to the authors, the possibility of stable increase of Spanish peasants’ incomes was caused by the nation’s non-involvement in World War I and also by more limited, compared to Russia and some other countries, spending on creation of heavy (primarily military-related) industry in Spain.


2020 ◽  
pp. 461-471
Author(s):  
Andrey V. Ganin ◽  

The memoirs of general P. S. Makhrov are devoted to the events of 1939 and the campaign of the Red army in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Pyotr Semyonovich Makhrov was a General staff officer, participant of the Russian-Japanese war, World War I, and the Russian Civil war. In 1918, Makhrov lived in Ukraine, and in 1919-1920 he took part in the White movement in Southern Russia, after which he emigrated. In exile he lived in France, where he wrote his extensive memoirs. The events of September 1939 could not pass past his attention. At that time, the Red army committed approach in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Contrary to the widespread Anti-Sovietism among the white emigrants, Makhrov perceived the incident with enthusiasm as a return of Russia to its ancestral lands occupied by the Poles.


2020 ◽  
pp. 209-230

This chapter discusses the novel “The Quiet Don” and the controversy over its authorship. It briefly recounts some of the relevant events of World War I, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Russian Civil War. The chapter focuses on Soviet writer Mikhail Sholokhov who was awarded by the Nobel Committee in 1945 for the literature prize on his magnum opus, the four-volume The Quiet Don. It also looks into the initial claim that Sholokhov stole the book manuscript for The Quiet Don in a map case that belonged to a White Guard who had been killed in battle. It talks about an anonymous author known as Irina Medvedeva-Tomashevskaia, who wrote several historical studies and claimed that Sholokhov had plagiarized an unpublished manuscript of Fedor Dmitrievich Kriukov.


Author(s):  
Aaron Shaheen

The chapter first shows how the spiritualized version of prosthetics originated in the Civil War, which rendered approximately 60,000 veterans limbless. Prominent physicians such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and S. Weir Mitchell postulated that artificial limbs gave both physical and emotional solace to shattered soldiers, especially among those who suffered phantom limb syndrome. The devices’ “spiritual” potential proved limited, if not illusory; in fact, they were often so fragile, cumbersome, and painful that amputees simply preferred to go without them. Upon entering World War I, the United States created a rehabilitation and vocational program that aided injured veterans to reenter the workforce. Reflecting the way in which “personality” had come to replace a more traditional notion of spirit, orthopedists such as Joel Goldthwait and David Silver, both employed at Walter Reed Hospital, designed artificial limbs for both physical and psychological compatibility.


Author(s):  
Thomas J. Brown

This chapter examines the influence of Civil War commemoration on World War I commemoration and the impact of World War I on Civil War commemoration. The war limited recognition that the Lincoln Memorial climaxed development of the National Mall with less militarism than recent Lincoln statues suggested. Some sponsors of World War I monuments rejected Civil War precedents, such as those who projected useful memorials, but an army of doughboy statues built on Civil War precedents. The proliferation of male nudes was one example. The crisis of World War I caused some memorial promoters to treat the Civil War as a foreshadowing and some memorial promoters to treat the Civil War as a refuge from modernity. The Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain illustrated both tendencies and the displacement of public monuments by cinema in the 1930s.


Author(s):  
Robert W. Cherny

World War I interrupted Arnautoff’s plans for art school. After cavalry officer school, he served with some distinction to the end of the war, when his unit was significantly affected by the Bolshevik seizure of power. After the army was dissolved, Arnautoff made his way to Simbirsk where he was recruited into a White army unit in the Russian Civil War, probably that of KOMUCH. He spent from July 1918 to November 1920 retreating from the Volga across Siberia to northeastern China.


2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda J. Quiney

Abstract The experience of some 500 Canadian and Newfoundland women who served overseas as Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurses during the Great War has been eclipsed by the British record. Sent as auxiliary assistants to trained nurses in the military hospitals, Canadian VADs confronted a complex mix of emotional, physical, and intellectual challenges, including their “colonial” status. As casually trained, inexperienced amateurs in an unfamiliar, highly structured hospital culture, they were often resented by the overworked and undervalued trained nurses, whose struggle for professional recognition was necessarily abandoned during the crisis of war. The frequently intimate physical needs of critically ill soldiers also demanded a rationalisation of the VAD's role as “nurse” within a maternalist framework that eased social tensions for both VAD and patient. As volunteers assisting paid practitioners, the Canadian VAD experience offers new insights into a critical era of women's developing professional identities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wiktor Hołubko ◽  
Adam Lityński

Revolution of 1917 in the Russian Empire took place in February (according to the Julian calendar) or in March (according to the Georgian calendar used in Western Europe). As a result, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated in the first phase of the revolution which caused the fall of the Romanov dynasty. Consequently, the Provisional Government was brought into power. At the time, the First World War was ongoing and Russia suffered severe defeats in the conflict. The country was ruled by chaos and various political groupswere fighting against each other. Furthermore, many nations started their fight for independence from the Russian Empire. The most significant events took place in Ukraine. The national activists set up their own governmental authority – Central Council of Ukraine. And, at the same time, various domestic conflicts took place in Ukraine as well. The situation was very complicated then as a 600 kilometer-long front line ran across Ukraine.Moreover, most of the country was occupied by German and Austria-Hungarian armies. It is common knowledge that the Bolsheviks led their forces against the Provisional Government in Petrograd, which was the contemporary capital of Russia (modern-day Saint Petersburg), in October / November 1917. The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and, in consequence, the Russian Civil War started. The Bolsheviks were in no position to continue fighting in World War I and so they signed a separate peace treaty with Germany and Austria-Hungary in March 1918 in order to focus on the Russian Civil War. Ukraine, which was independent at the time, also signeda separate peace treaty with Germany and Austria-Hungary. A new phase in the war between Russia and Ukraine started which Ukraine eventually lost.


Author(s):  
Jakub Niebylski

The study presents a description of the theatre of war operations on the left bank of theVistula River, on the eastern foreground of the Austro-Hungarian Kraków Fortress during the Great War, later called World War I. The fighting took place in the area of the former Russian partition, on November 16–25, 1914 and December 2–6, 1914. They were fought in the area occupied from August 6, 1914 by Austria-Hungary after the declaration of war on Russia. In historiography, these fights are called the Battle of Kraków. It was aimed at stopping the Russian offensive heading west and preventing the capture of the Kraków Fortress and stopping the further march of Russian army on Silesia, Bohemia and Berlin. The result of these actions was the military success of the Austro-Hungarian army, breaking the front and pushing the Russian troops eastwards, paid for with great personal losses on both sides and the destruction of local infrastructure. The testimonies of these events are war graves and cemeteries located in the battlefields, as well as numerous finds – remains of battles.


2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-213
Author(s):  
Gregor Antoličič

ARCHDUKE EUGEN 1863–1954In the article Archduke Eugen 1863–1954 the author deals with the basic biography of Archduke Eugen from his birth until the first months after the Italian involvement into World War I. Archduke Eugen was born in 1863 as a member of the Habsburg dynasty. During his lifetime Eugen achieved a magnificent military career, culminating during the World War I. In fact, after Oskar Potiorek had left the position of the Commander of the Balkan Army, Eugen became his successor. Archduke Eugen remained in this position until May 1915, when Italy entered the war. At this time he became the Commander of the newly-established Command of the South-West Front. From the Slovenian perspective this fact matters not only because the Isonzo Front was under this Command, but also because between May 1915 and March 1916 as well as between March 1917 and November 1917 the headquarters of the Command of the South-West Front were located in the Slovenian city of Maribor. Because of the presence of this Command during the Great War, this city by the river Drava attained an exceptional position in comparison with other Slovenian cities. Archduke Eugen and the renowned Svetozar Boroević von Bojna represent the key protagonists of the organisation and implementation of military actions on the Isonzo battlefield. The core of this article consists of the presentation of the military career of Archduke Eugen, which led him to attain important positions since the beginning of World War I. At the same time the article represents a foundation for the further research of Archduke Eugen's activities during World War I.


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