Nationalizing the Russian Empire : The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I

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Summary: Nationalism and the End of the Old Regime
Review: Written for anyone interested in the First World War, this book tells the fascinating story of a major wave of ethnic cleansing that swept the eastern front between 1914-1917. "Nationalizing the Russian Empire" details how total war radicalized Russian politics, forcing Nicholas II to embrace a chauvinistic brand of populism that quickly undermined the imperial regime from within.

Focusing on tsarist attempts to neutralize the domestic threat posed by foreign nationals (the so-called "enemy aliens"), Lohr reveals how these measures evolved to affect many Russian subjects of German, Jewish and Muslim background. Entire populations were sent into internal exile. Land and property were sequestered and seized. Ethnic Russians were encouraged to think about their society in the most nativist of terms.

But instead of bolstering the empire, this campaign and the wave of interethnic hostility that it stirred up actually undermined the Romanovs' hold on power. Although the 1917 Russian Revolution is traditionally linked to military reversals at the front and class tensions in the rear, Lohr suggests that it was also the empire's clumsy attempt to engage in the modern politics of populist nationalism that compromised the stability of the society, the productivity of the economy, and the legitimacy of imperial rule itself.