Reviews for Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905-1925

The average rating for Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905-1925 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-10-12 00:00:00 Steve Wynne an excellent military history of the draft and mobilization in Russia, that along with other more recent Russian histories, continue to argue for Russia's (restoration) to a place in the "European" history of the World War and a more nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between Imperial Russia, Russia in the war, and the revolutions and civil wars that followed. Sanborn arranges his book thematically, which has its own strengths and weakenesses; something the author acknowledges in the introduction. I appreciated his discussion and contextualization of the theory he would use, particularly in relation to the notion of identity and nation, situation his work alongside the likes of Brubaker, Benedict Anderson, Eugen Weber, Hans Kohn, Carleton Hayes.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-09-28 00:00:00 John Love I should probably not even mark this as read... "skimmed" is really more like it. And only the second half. Another book for my research project, very little was useful for me - I only took one page of notes. Once again, however, I found myself very interested in most of the subject matter. The chapters are rather disjointed, organized both topically and chronologically, with each chapter basically comprising it's own, separate essay. I did accidentally read the entirety of chapter 12, on the Yalta Conference, even though it is not exactly relevant to my research. I made a note to track this book down again later and possibly do more reading on Yalta - super interesting stuff!