Eric Lohr

Patriotic Violence and the State: The Moscow Riots of May 1915

If patriotism is defined as allegiance to and affinity for a state and the state is defined as that institution which controls a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence, then an inquiry into the nature of patriotic violence should take seriously the role of the state. This article closely examines the anti-German Moscow riots of 26–29 May 1915 and some other violent manifestations along patriotic lines during World War I, concentrating on the role of the state and its attitudes toward both patriotism and violence. The war itself, of course, was a massive exercise in the legitimate use of patriotic violence. I focus on the attitudes of the state toward patriotic mobilization and its monopoly on violence among civilians behind the front lines. The Moscow riots primarily targeted ethnic Germans and foreigners, especially those from enemy states. The events brought the second city of the empire into a chaotic orgy of looting, arson, destruction, and violence that observers saw as akin to civil war or revolution. Approximately eight were killed and 40 seriously injured by the rioters. When the troops finally intervened on 29 May, at least seven soldiers were killed and several dozen seriously injured, and an unknown number of civilians were killed and injured when the troops fired into the crowds. Although a few earlier Jewish pogroms had higher death tolls, the financial losses were probably greater than in any other pogrom in Russian history, mainly because so many stores and factories were ransacked along with private apartments. The Moscow Mayor M. V. Chelnokov estimated the damage at 70 million rubles shortly after the events. The Moscow Fire Chief reported that over

Die Deutschen in der Moskauer Gesellschaft: Symbiose und Konflikte (1494-1941) (review)

Victor Dönninghaus has made a major contribution to the historiography of minorities in the Russian empire with the publication of this thoroughly researched volume on the Germans of Moscow from their origins to Stalin’s deportation of the entire remaining population to Karaganda in 1941. Making thorough use of the remarkable number of articles, books, and conference proceedings on the history of the Russian-Germans that have been published since perestroika, as well as extensive research in the Moscow city archives, Dönninghaus provides us with a tremendously detailed and nuanced account of the variety of communities, individuals, and groups composing the “Moscow German” population. The study joins a handful of excellent recent monographs on the history of Russian-Germans in other regions (including Dönninghaus’s own study of the Volga Germans, also published in 2002) that together have made a quantum leap in our knowledge of the history of the German minority in Russian history. In its structure, thoroughness, and stress on symbiosis of the Germans with the broader urban population, the book complements Margarete Busch’s recent study of Germans in St. Petersburg particularly well.

The papers of grigorii n. trubetskoi. A new source publication for the study of diplomacy, orthodoxy, and liberalism, 1900-1931

Grigorii N. Trubetskoi was a unique and contradictory figure in the first three decades of the twentieth century He was a leading liberal -- often scathing -- critic of autocracy, yet was perhaps most influential in pushing the regime toward an aggressive annexationist stand in the Balkans. Personally deeply religious and idealistic about his faith, he became the proponent of deep reforms of Orthodoxy and pragmatic solutions to the divisions between the church that remained in the Soviet Unio...