How did Russia develop a modern national identity, and what role did the military play? Sanborn examines tsarist and Soviet armies of the early twentieth century to show how military conscription helped to bind citizens and soldiers into a modern political community. The experience of total war, he shows, provided the means by which this multiethnic and multiclass community was constructed and tested.
"Drafting the Russian Nation" is the first archivally based study of the relationship between military conscription and nation-building in a European country. Stressing the importance of...