New Books In Military History

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was the most important political event of the twentieth century (no Revolution; no Nazis; no Nazis, no World War II; no World War II, no Cold War). It’s little wonder, then, that historians have expended oceans of effort and ink trying to explain why and how it happened. The answer is complex, but it boils down to this: Nicholas II’s armies had a rough time of it in World War I, his regime lost credibility, the hungry cities revolted, and the Bolsheviks usurped power in an armed coup. The key event was, then, the Russian loss to the Germans on the Eastern Front. Surprisingly, the Russian defeat –arguably the second most important political event of the twentieth century because it triggered the first–has not been widely studied. For my generation of Russian historians (and, I should add, the one that preceded it), the Revolution–the last, best hope of mankind to many–was a sexy topic indeed; the failure of the Russian Imperial Army, not so m