Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire

Domestic campaigns for the hearts and minds of the population took place in all belligerent states during World War I.An important element of this process was the dissemination of images of friend and foe.Tsarist Russia shared in this tendency.To be sure, not all enemies were immediately and irrevocably demonised, but the strains of war increasingly produced an insidious current of hatred.Accompanying the formal patriotic fervour was a more insidious undercurrent of persecution that extended to ethnic and religious communities.Material grievances helped to turn sentiment into violent action.Economic nationalism became a means of settling old scores and transferring economic assets to "loyal" populations.The campaign against the German "yoke" (zasil´e) was targeted at German ownership of land, and industrial and financial assets.The Russian High Command deported German farmers from the land on which many of them had settled for generations, and conducted a vicious campaign against Jews and other minorities.German residents in towns and cities faced opprobrium and even violence from their neighbours.Subsequently this hostility was translated into legalised expropriation.It is with radical developments such as these that this important and timely monograph is concerned.