Russia’s Young Army: Raising New Generations into Militarized Patriots

This chapter addresses military-patriotic education in Russia. The Russian state pays increasing attention to the military-patriotic upbringing of children to elevate patriotic spirit in society and to get a larger number of motivated young men join the armed forces. In 2015, Ûnarmiâ was founded to unite the country’s fragmented military-patriotic youth organisations. The movement aims to operate in all schools in Russia. By deconstructing the hegemonic discourse of military-patriotic education, I analyse the linguistic modes in which the legitimization of Ûnarmiâ is constructed. Discourses of heroism, masculinity, a beneficial and fun hobby, being citizen-soldiers, and military traditionalism include key strategies of legitimization processes for influencing audiences. Discourses suggest that rather than preparing young people for immediate war, Ûnarmiâ's purpose is to raise patriotic citizens who support the prevailing regime and contribute to solving the demographic crisis by repeating ‘traditional’ gender roles.

Managing the remains of citizen soldiers

The aim of this article is to shed light on the conditions under which the funerary management of human remains was carried out by the French authorities during the early years of the First World War. It seeks to understand how the urgent need to clear the battlefield as quickly as possible came into conflict with the aspiration to give all deceased an individualised, or at the very least dignified, burial. Old military funerary practices were overturned and reconfigured to incorporate an ideal that sought the individual identification of citizen soldiers. The years 1914–15 were thus profoundly marked by a clash between the pragmatism of public health authorities obsessed with hygiene, the infancy of emerging forensic science, the aching desire of the nation to see its children buried individually and various political and military imperatives related to the conduct of the war.

Greek Orthodox Citizen Soldiers under the Ottoman Banner

The Great War proved to be an unpleasant and traumatic experience for many Greek Orthodox citizen soldiers called to fight under the Ottoman banner. Although many served dutifully in arms or otherwise, few had self-legitimized their conscription. Regardless, the denomination of minority citizen soldiers by the Ottoman military authorities led to their mass assignment to unarmed positions, which could mean their transfer to the labor battalions, and possibly their death. Most Greek Orthodox were aware of labor battalions’ harsh conditions, and their transformation into killing grounds for the Armenian citizen soldiers. Based on grassroots sources such as diaries, memoirs, and interviews, I demonstrate that this discriminatory war policy was not systematic, as several recruits were later trained and armed during the war, and I argue that a new contractual relationship emerged for those skilled and literate Greek Orthodox through which they could successfully negotiate their skills to avoid the labor battalions and, thus, have greater chances of surviving the war.

Soldaten und Garnisonen. Das Militär und sein ziviles Umfeld

Soldiers and Garrisons. The Military and its Civilian Environment. This chapter outlines a regional military history of Lower Austria in the 19th century. In the context of history of the k. k. and later k. u. k. Army, peacetime relations between the land and the military are presented in two particular areas. The chapter’s first section focuses on the land’s recruitment and its transformation from a system based on forced conscription by a late-absolutist system to a constitutional monarchy employing citizen soldiers. In a second section, the phenomenon of the garrison illustrates the interdependence of the military and its civilian environment in public, social and economic life. In both sections, the question of the militarization of society is also explored. The surprisingly high incidence of individuals unfit for service and the significantly lower number of actual conscripts demand as much consideration as the economic importance of a garrison for the towns of Lower Austria in last third of the 19th century.

The Continental Army and ‘Military Europe’: Professionalism and Restraint in the American War of Independence

Most historians now agree that the United States won its independence not with citizen-soldiers but through the exertions of a small coterie of hardened military professionals. These men fought for eight years in George Washington’s Continental Army which, these historians maintain, was fundamentally different from contemporary European institutions. This article argues that this distinction is largely overstated. Continental officers and soldiers considered themselves as members of a military community which traversed national and institutional boundaries. Their adherence to a set of common norms, customs, and behaviours suggests that, far from unique, the Continental Army was an extension of ‘Military Europe’.