Encyclopedia of Russian History

In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Lenin argued that modern war was due to conflicts among imperialist powers and that any revolution within the imperialist world would weaken capitalism and hasten socialist revolution. The contradictions of capitalism and imperialism provided the soil that nourished world revolution. In the fall of 1917, when Lenin cajoled his comrades to seize power, he argued that the Russian Revolution was “one of the links in a chain of socialist revolutions” in Europe. He believed in the imminence of such revolutions, which he deemed essential to the Bolshevik revolution’s survival and success. His optimism was not unfounded, as revolutionary unrest engulfed Central and Eastern Europe in 1918-1920.

In 1919 Lenin helped to create the Communist International (Comintern) to guide the world revolution. As the revolutionary wave waned in the 1920s, Stalin claimed that world revolution was not essential to the USSR’s survival. Rather, he argued,

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

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WORLD WAR I

developing socialism in one country (the USSR) was essential to keeping the world revolutionary movement alive. Other Bolshevik leaders, notably Leon Trotsky, disagreed, but in vain. Nonetheless, until it adopted the Popular Front policy in 1935, the Comintern pursued tactics for world revolution. Unlike previous Comintern policies, which sought to spark revolution, the Popular Front was a defensive policy designed to stem the rise of fascism. It marked the end of Soviet efforts to foment world socialist revolution. See also: LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McDermott, Kevin, and Agnew, Jeremy. (1997). The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Nation, R. Craig. (1989). War on War: Lenin, the Zim-merwald Left, and the Origins of Communist Internationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

WILLIAM J. CHASE

WORLD WAR I

Imperial Russia entered World War I in the summer of 1914 along with allies England and France. It remained at war with Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Turkey until the war effort collapsed during the revolutions of 1917.

In 1914 military theory taught that new technologies meant that future wars would be short, decided by initial, offensive battles waged by mass conscript armies on the frontiers. Trapped between two enemies, Germany planned to defeat France in the west before Russia, with its still sparse railway net, could mobilize. Using French loans to build up that net, Russia sought to speed up the process, rapidly invade East Prussia, and so relieve pressure on the French. Berlin therefore feared giving Russia a head start in mobilizing and, rightly or wrongly, most statesmen accepted that if mobilization began, war was inevitable.

On June 28, 1914, a nationalist Serbian student shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, at Sarajevo. To most statesmen’s surprise, this provoked a crisis when Austria, determined to punish the Serbs, issued an unacceptable ultimatum on July 23. Over the next six days, pressure mounted on Nicholas II but, rec1676 ognizing that mobilization meant war, he refused to order a general call-up that would force a German response. Then Vienna declared war on Serbia, Nicholas’s own efforts to negotiate with Kaiser William II collapsed, and on July 30 he finally approved a general mobilization. When St. Petersburg ignored Berlin’s demand for its cancellation within twelve hours, Germany declared war on August 1. Over the next three days Germany invaded Luxembourg, declared war on France on August 4, and by entering Belgium, added Britain to its enemies.

THE WAR OF MOVEMENT: SUMMER 1914-APRIL 1915

Some Social Democrats aside, Russia’s educated public rallied in a Sacred Union behind their ruler. Strikes and political debate ended, and on August 2, crowds in St. Petersburg cheered Nicholas II after he signed a declaration of war on Germany. Local problems apart, the mobilization proceeded apace as 3,115,000 reservists and 800,000 militiamen joined the 1,423,000-man army to provide troops for Russian offensives into Austrian Galicia and, as promised, France and East Prussia.

Although Nicholas II intended to command his troops in person, he was pressured into appointing instead his uncle, Grand Duke Nikolai Niko-layevich the Younger. Whatever its merits, this decision split the front administratively from the rear thanks to a new law that assigned the army control of the front zone. This caused few problems when the battle line moved forward in 1914 and early 1915. However, without the tsar as a civil-military lynchpin, it led to chaos during the later Great Retreat.