The ability to give a clear and well-founded oral and written report on research results in correct English, when required, or Dutch, meeting the criteria of the discipline.The ability to independently set up and carry out an original research project that can make a contribution to existing scholarly debates.The ability to independently formulate a clear and well-argued research question, taking into account the theory and method of the field and to reduce this question to accessible and manageable sub-questions.The ability to analyse and evaluate literature with a view to addressing a particular historical problem.The ability to analyse and evaluate a corpus of sources with a view to addressing a particular historical problem.The ability to independently identify and select sources, using traditional and modern techniques.The ability to independently identify and select literature, using traditional and modern techniques.This course will start with an entry test (several short essay questions), see reading list below for the compulsory literature. What was the impact of enduring traditions, such as the style of rule, the absence of consensus between heterogeneous communities and the disposition of violence among masses of peasants, workers, soldiers and revolutionaries? And how were these traditions continued, transferred, transformed and radicalized? How did they contribute to the making of modern Russia? We will try to reconstruct the direct linkages between the internal fronts and battlefronts of total war and the violence and brutalization of revolution and civil war. This course investigates the interactions between seminal points in Russian history, trying to establish the connections that form Russia’s continuum of crisis during these years. Yet, inserting the Russian experience is crucial for understanding the Great War in general. Russia has largely fallen out of the story of the First World War. The Great War in Russia was usually seen as a ‘forgotten war’ by both western and Russian/Soviet historians and portrayed as a mere prelude to the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-1921. The existence of a relationship between war, revolution and a civil war is long recognized, but has only recently started to be investigated in detail. The utter destruction of modern warfare and the strains of total war continued and shaped what came out of the remnants of old Russia, mortgaged by violence. Russia’s first world war didn’t end when Europe laid down its weapons on 11th hour of the 11th day of November 1918. A spiral of chaotic change and violence erupted, continuing to reign the warlands throughout years of revolution and apocalyptic civil war. The Russian army was the first to mobilize and plunge into war. In 1914 the Russian empire seemed a monolithic autocracy, bristling with activity to get into the modern age.

Russia empire total war