A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia During World War I

Peter Gatrell offers a fresh perspective on social and political upheaval in revolutionary Russia through a close examination of population displacement during World War I. Involuntary migrations - in part the consequence of defeat on the battlefield, in part the result of deliberate action by tsarist generals - led government officials and educated society to question prevailing modes of thinking about social identity and the nature of social order in an unraveling polity. Drawing on previously unused archival material in Russia, Latvia, and Armenia and on insights from social and critical theory, Peter Gatrell considers the origins of displacement and its political implications and provides a close analysis of humanitarian initiatives and the relationships between refugees and the communities in which they settled.