Andrey Vitalievich Korenevskiy,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Russian Empire after the World War: An Unfulfilled Forecast?
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-4-18
There were at least three fronts between the opposing blocs at the First World War: besides the line of military confrontation, ideology and analytics became battlefields. The British think-tank, known as Wellington House, demonstrated the greatest effectiveness on these fronts. One of the most detailed projects of the post–war settlement was created within these walls at the height of the war – A.J. Toynbee’s book “Nationality and the War”. Almost a third of this text is devoted to Russia and its prospects in the post-war world. According to the concept put forward by him, the only chance of preserving the integrity of Russia would be its federalization – partial delegation of functions to local authorities in inverse proportion to how each governorate or region is integrated into the body of the empire. In the center, where the degree of mutual dependence of individual territories is extremely high, a significant expansion of autonomy is problematic, whereas in some peripheral regions it is quite possible. Thus, each territory can be sovereign to the extent that it is economically self-sufficient and what is the maturity of the national consciousness of its population. These suggestions were not useful to the Russian Empire, which did not live through the Great War, but in the very principle of reformatting the imperial space described by Toynbee, there is some similarity with the key idea underlying the state structure of the Soviet Union. Is this consonance accidental, or could Toynbee’s concept somehow – directly or indirectly – influence the Soviet project of reintegration of the post-imperial space? This paper is an attempt to answer this question.
Publishing: 28/08/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 21/06/2023
How to cite: Korenevskiy А.V. Russian Empire after the World War: An Unfulfilled Forecast? // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 4 (30), pp. 240–258. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-4-18.pdf]
Links: Issue 4 2023
Keywords: The Russian Empire; the First World War; A.J. Toynbee; Wellington House; Political Intelligence Department; devolution; Soviet Union