This is a book rooted not only in intellectual curiosity about the life and demise of the Habsburg empire, but also in lived experience. John Fahey grew up in a military family and later served in active duty in the US armed forces, and so he is aware of the complex—and not always happy—relationships that link large military installations with the larger social, political, and cultural world within which they are embedded. Fahey brings these interests together by examining the city of Przemyśl, near the Habsburg-Russian frontier, and the impact that the building of a massive complex of fortifications had on it. Drawing on a number of published and archival sources in both Polish and German, the book would have benefitted from a more sharply defined analytical point (and a better title), but will nonetheless be of interest to historians of the empire and of the states that emerged from its ruin. Fahey begins with a brisk, and not entirely convincing, defense of the Habsburg military establishment's decision to build the fortifications in the late nineteenth century in order to provide Galicia with better defenses against the Russians. He then illustrates, using sources that include a full report of one of the installations’ construction, the process by which the ring of fortresses was built. From the engineering acumen required, to the sheer scale and complexity of the construction itself, it is hard not to be impressed with Imperial Austria's ability to carry out such a project, and calls to mind the arguments of historians like John Deak that the monarchy was not decrepit, but willing and able to actively engage in activities meant to strengthen and modernize the realm.
Most important and interesting, however, is Ch. 3, “Pushing Back Against the Garrison, 1899–1914.” In it, Fahey illustrates the way that the construction of the fortress, and later the garrison life it hosted, inadvertently helped first to form, and then galvanize, socialism in Przemyśl. Numerous workers were brought in to build it, swelling the number of working class residents. This swelled the ranks of socialism's supporters in the city, especially when the fortress complex was largely complete and work ran out around the turn of the twentieth century. The fortress, and the army more broadly, provided a focal point for both the quotidian resentments and frustration of the unemployed as well as the more ideological anti-militarism of the socialist movement. Fahey evocatively details this antagonism, which was amply returned by the military, and was carried out in innumerable street confrontations, occasional invitations to duel, and ongoing wars of words. The latter was the particular specialty of the local socialist newspaper, Głos Premyski, edited by Witold Reger. (A frequent matter of the paper's criticism was the shockingly high suicide rate among the soldiers stationed there). Despite the army's presence and influence over the city's affairs, in 1907, Herman Lieberman, “an antimilitary socialist Jewish lawyer” (56) and known associate of the Reger's, was elected to represent Prezmyśl in the Imperial Parliament. This, and the violent clash between thousands of celebrating workers and the local police in the wake of the elections provides powerful evidence against the argument that the k.u.k. army was a uniquely integrating force in the empire, as argued, with enduring influence, by Istvan Deak. Fahey notes, briefly, at the end of the preceding chapter that much of what he has to tell us must lead us to “question the effectiveness of the army as a unifying institution” (53), and he duly nods to the work done in this vein by Laurence Cole, but the theme might have been brought to center stage early on.
As Fahey continues his narrative into the postwar years, he sketches how the new Polish state took over the town, and how its army affected the city's life in ways quite different from the Habsburgs. This, as well as the occasional analysis of national friction in the town that runs through the book, are also important parts of the story of the city and the wider historical currents within which it was caught up. But it is the simmering civil-military hostilities, enduring over decades and occasionally flaring into violence that will have the most profound impact on readers’ views of the empire and its prospects on the eve of the Great War.
