Part I The Second World Wars with Victor Davis Hanson

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The New Contemporary: Notes from the Havighurst Center

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Capable in Theory: Russia’s Capacity for War in 1917

Posted on December 13, 2017 by Stephen Norris

By August Hagemann

On November 6th, 2017, Miami University’s Havighurst Center hosted the fifth speaker in its Fall Colloquium Series – Professor Eric Lohr of American University.  Lohr focused on the topic of an article he had co-authored with Lafayette College’s Joshua Sanborn, and which will eventually become the final chapter of a book he and Sanborn are writing.  Through this talk, his article, and his upcoming book, Lohr first seeks to combat the idea that Russia was economically backward and ill-equipped for World War I, and then to demonstrate that the Bolshevik Revolution was possible only because of substantial demobilization that took place in wake of the February Revolution.

To support his point, Lohr chose to focus on Russia’s material and ideological mobilization for war.  He pointed out how, on paper at least, the Russian army was more army, and that people had an incredibly wide variety of reasons for fighting,