New Books In Military History

Historical studies on the European memory of World War I are, to put it mildly, voluminous. There are too many monographs to count on a myriad of subjects addressing the acts of remembrance and commemoration of the so-called war to end all wars. But when it comes to Russia, from which 15 million men fought, 2 million died, 5 million were captured and an estimated 1.5 million civilians perished, there is a strange historiographical silence. In fact historians of Russia speak more often of an absence of memory because the Bolshevik revolution labeled WWI as an “imperialist war,” and thus rendering its remembrance illegitimate. It is because of this silence that Karen Petrone‘s The Great War in Russian Memory (Indiana University Press, 2012) is such an illuminating and refreshing book. Petrone shows that much like their European counterparts Russians produced a rich memory of the war, even within the strictures of the Soviet system. And the issues that memory addressed were many we assume were