PASSAGE THROUGH ARMAGEDDON: The Russians in War and Revolution, 1914-1918

A documentary history of the tribulations of Russia during the Great War of 1914-1918, including the pains of their own 1917 revolution, by a well-respected student of Russia who has authored The Romanovs and In War's Dark Shadow, among others. Here, Lincoln narrates the story of Russia's terrible price in the cataclysm of WW I. Maladministered by an incompetent Czar Nicholas (who Wilhelm II said was ""only fit to live in a country house and grow turnips""), Russia found herself with an army of 15 million but only enough boats, rifles, and ammunition to support one-fourth that number. Conditions such as these led to millions of casualties against the armies of Germany. Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey, only to be followed by a trebling of those violent losses by starvation and disease. Lincoln tells this story, which led first to the overthrow of the Romanovs and then to Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution, with the help of rare letters, diaries, memoirs, and interviews that have up until now been inaccessible to Western historians. The story itself has been told many times before, but the personal touch added by the new material gives new insights into the participants of this gruesome tale. Missing, even so, are the struggles of Russia's Jews against persecutions and of Armenians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Finns for independence. A tale of power, wealth, and great populations laid low by economic, political, and military ineptitude, told in a riveting manner.