ABSTRACT
During 1917 the Russian Empire, the largest continental land empire in the world, completely shattered, bringing to a head all the tensions that had been growing within its borders since the late nineteenth century. Almost from the moment that the Tsar abdicated his throne in March 1917 to be succeeded by the Provisional Government, all traditional political authority in the imperial borderlands collapsed. A diverse horde of political parties, demagogues and military dictators began almost immediately struggling to gain power, even as the old Imperial army, steadily disintegrating, slowly rolled back from the still-smouldering front lines of the war in Central Europe and the Transcaucasus. At first, the Bolshevik ascent to power in Petrograd in November barely impinged upon this process, and only gradually did the Russian Civil War (which, given the number of nationalities and agendas actually involved, might more accurately be given in the plural, as ‘civil wars’) begin to erect clear battle lines.1 By the time this extraordinary conflict was over, complete unification of authority under the Bolsheviks still remained ambiguous in many of the ravaged borderlands, whilst around 20 million people had by then lost their lives to famine, disease, political purges and military activity. By stark contrast, direct military action during the First World War alone had exacted from Russia a cost of ‘only’ some 1,860,000 dead, with civilian losses of course being minimal – a still-terrible figure, but one dwarfed by what was to follow.2
