6 - Soldiers and their wives

Summary

In 1917, Russian soldiers and their wives demanded that the revolution represent and reflect their interests and concerns. Their actions and demands shaped the revolution and contributed to the confusion and sense of disorder that were defining features of 1917. The actions and impact of the unarmed soldiers' wives alongside the actions and impact of their armed and mobilised husbands demonstrates the commonality of the experience of war and highlights that troop mobilisation was perhaps the single most important factor in shaping experiences of the revolution. The recent work of Joshua Sanborn explored the role of military conscription in forming national identities and in transmitting the violence of war to civilian Russia in the course of the civil war. This chapter explores the role played by soldiers and their wives and illustrates in part Sanborn's thesis of conscripted soldiers as the source of escalating violence and collapsing authority in provincial life. Whether deserters, members of reserve regiments, prisoners of war, on leave or invalids, soldiers played a highly vocal and visible role in political life. This was partly because they were armed, and had clear and easily identifiable group identity. Regional power structures depended on soldier support, both for their own safety and for the maintenance of their orders. When force or violence occurred in civilian life, it almost invariably included soldier participants.