The Borderlands’ Own Revolutions

CHAPTER 9 · 1917–1921 · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

The Russian Revolution was also the collapse of an empire, and around its rim a dozen nations tried to seize their own moment. The map’s edges tell a second story running under the Red-White war. In the north-west, Finland won its independence and then tore itself apart in a savage civil war — Red workers against a German-backed White army — remembered here for the camps in which thousands of the defeated died. The Baltic states, backed by Britain and by their own riflemen, fought their way out and stayed out. In the west, Poland — partitioned for 123 years among three empires — became a state

The turn: Kiev — the borderlands’ ordeal in one city.

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.