The War Breaks the State

CHAPTER 2 · 1914–MARCH 1917 · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

In August 1914 Russia went to war to enormous cheering crowds — and the crowds were the last thing that went right. The empire mobilized fifteen million men into an army it could not arm: at the worst point in 1915 there were rifles for perhaps two soldiers in three, and men were told to pick up the weapons of the fallen. Watch the front on the map. The catastrophe opened at Tannenberg, where a whole army was encircled in East Prussia; then the Great Retreat of 1915 (the German arrow) tore Poland and Lithuania away — which is why they show as foreign on this map, behind enemy lines. Brusilov’s

The turn: Abdication at Pskov, 2/15 March 1917.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.