New Books in Military History · Marshall Poe

Colleen M. Moore, "The Peasants' War: Russia's Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

·56 min

1. New Books in Military History hosts Colleen M. Moore on "The Peasants' War: Russia's Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy." 2. Colleen M. Moore is the author of the 2025 McGill-Queen's UP book, and the host presses her on how she reached the topic. 3. The episode asks why Russian peasants, about 85% of the imperial population, became central to the First World War and the end of autocracy. 4. Moore traces her interest to "Rocky IV," a high-school Russian studies class with Mr. Fruchet, and a Great War seminar with Deb Cohen at American University. 5. She says graduate work at Indiana University with Ben Eklav and reading about peasants pushed her toward questions about how peasants enter the historical record. 6. Moore argues that Nicholas II believed he had a special bond with peasants and ignored evidence that contradicted that belief. 7. She says military men like General Denikin and NN Yanushkevich assumed peasants could not understand the war without national context. 8. Moore rejects the idea that the main problem was peasant nationalism alone and says peasants still answered the state's call to arms and supplied labor and food. 9. She links wartime politics to the scale of mobilization, noting that Russia's first general mobilization since 1874 sent roughly four or five million men into service in July and August 1914. 10. Moore explains that newspapers, censorship, and the scholarship of Benedict Anderson helped peasants see that shortages and sacrifice were shared across the empire. 11. She says the war made the relationship between state and peasant visible because peasants were carrying burdens while the state still treated them as loyal subjects. 12. The host asks about the "myth of the Tsar," and Moore explains that peasants could use it to resist laws by claiming the Tsar's true will was being hidden. 13. She says wartime propaganda used lupki, songs, and poems to present peasants as loyal heroes and to promise family support for widows and orphans. 14. Moore recounts the booklet on Stefan Veremchuk of Volhyn province, whose death was followed by lifetime pensions for his mother and wife and scholarships for his sons. 15. She says the state could not easily match its promises, since wives receiving wartime rations constantly complained that the allowances were too small. 16. Moore explains that transport bottlenecks, railway delays, and speculation by private traders drove shortages and price rises for food and goods. 17. The conversation turns to prohibition, and Moore says Nicholas II extended it from a wartime measure into a permanent ban after petitions, mobilization concerns, and the death of his cousin Oleg. 18. She describes resistance through liquor-store raids, black-market sales, and the consumption of cologne, varnish, and wood alcohol with fatal results. 19. The interview is detailed and cumulative, with the host asking long, specific questions and Moore answering in a careful, archival style. 20. Listeners interested in Russian history, empire, war, and peasant politics will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a brief military overview may skip it.

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