Summary Of Decolonization By Joshua Sanborn

Joshua Sanborn’s book changes the framework for Russia during the First World War to a war of decolonization. He argues that the Russian Empire decolonized during the war due to the altered view of war, the rise of nationalism, and the new states formed after the end of war. Moreover in framing decolonization, Sanborn provides a brief history of imperial Russia and the early twentieth-century while ultimately focusing on 1914 to 1918. In this period, he aims to describes the wide variety of actors and analyze Russia’s decolonization. The decolonization process is further broken down into stages of decolonization: imperial challenge, state failure social disaster, and state-building. These stages aid Sanborn in describing the experiences of

the war and decolonization for those living in the Russian Empire. Furthermore Sanborn utilizes the human experience to explain why this was a war of decolonization.
By analyzing Imperial Apocalypse through human experiences, Sanborn acknowledges several groups within Russian imperial society such as soldiers, civilians, and ethnic groups.

Soldiers’ influence on the decolonization process is prominent throughout the work. The soldiers’ viewpoint and experience supports Sanborn’s thesis because there is never a chapter that does not reference either the soldiers’ relationship to an aspect of the war or society generally. One of his best pieces of evidence on the effects of the war comes from a commander in 1914 named Aleksandr Uspenskii; Sanborn describes how this war changed soldiers’ perspectives of warfare. Hence he articulates how the horrors of war appear in the soldiers’ nightmares and “Uspenskii spent one awful night in a barn, watching his soldiers screaming and thrashing in their dreams as they slept, producing an unwelcome feeling that their lodging had become a mental hospital” (35). This “shock of combat,” that Sanborn articulates aids in understanding the mental constraints of soldiers fighting in a war that they already felt inadequate for. This inadequacy of the soldiers is from the incompetency of command and lack of arms which Sanborn demonstrates throughout his

work.
In describing the Great Retreat, remobilization, and the revolution (Chapters 2, 3, and 5); Sanborn demonstrates how the soldiers began to resent the leadership who could not provide supplies, competent officers, and ultimately victory. Overall the strength in describing the experiences of soldiers is how Sanborn develops their discontent from the start of the conflict to the critical failings that led to the February and October Revolutions. The discontent described successfully shown through the experiences of soldiers demonstrated how the Russian Empire failed and supports his decolonization theory. However Sanborn’s significance placed on the impact that the soldiers and army had, his scope of actual soldiers’ experiences is limited with the majority of accounts derived from officers. While the officers can attest to the soldiers’ sentiments, Sanborn’s argument would have been strengthened by additionally evidence from soldiers of their discontent. The soldiers’ dissatisfaction with the army and government created and exploited circumstances for the first three stages of decolonization through violence and social insecurity.
Consequently the discussion of civilians’ wartime experience is exasperated by the soldiers’ discontent according to Sanborn. He determines the beginning of social disaster and state failure for civilians started with the martial law zones at the front. As the armies massed at the front, Sanborn demonstrates the breakdown of imperial government and economy at the front led to civilians facing storages and violence. Civilians had to deal with shortages, black markets, and looting. Sanborn describes a typical case, “the residents of an estate…returned to the premises they had fled…to find Russian soldiers milling about, eating vegetables, and pointlessly destroying furniture, When one of the bailiffs complained, a soldier struck him, threatened him with a bayonet, and told him to shut up” (50). As the war progresses, Sanborn employs evidence from civilians being threatened by violence, looting, and the breakdown of society. Moreover as the army retreats and refugees move east from German military advances, civilians are experiencing increased violence due to institutions collapsing, goods shortages, and increased insecurity in the state. However during this crisis, Sanborn’s chapter on “Remobilizing Society” discusses medical staffs’ experiences working with limited numbers and supplies against the staggering amount of injured. The lack of planning experienced by civilians is shown repeatedly by Sanborn with numerous accounts from the front lines. Furthermore he uses the experiences of civilians to show the growing importance of non-governmental institutions that provided a level of stability for civilians as the state and society began to collapse.
Meanwhile Sanborn effectively builds upon the civilians and soldiers’ experiences to provide another layer in examining the decolonization of the Russian Empire.

The violence, societal collapse, and state failure are successfully demonstrated throughout the work through the numerous examples of ethnic groups being targeted. Whether he is describing the military using ethnopolitics for allies or discussing how refugees were deported based upon their ethnic group to the culmination that Sanborn describes the situation as forced migration or cleansing. The ethnic groups’ experiences varied with the failure of the state demonstrated by the Armenian genocide and targeted violence throughout the war targeted at Germans and Jews. Ultimately Sanborn shows that the experiences of some ethnic groups results in state-building like Poland and to an extent Ukraine. The argument for decolonization is the strongest when examining the experiences of various ethnic groups because their experiences reveal the process of state failure and social

collapse.
Joshua Sanborn successfully changes the narrative surrounding the First World War and the collapse of the Russian Empire to one of decolonization. Throughout his work, Sanborn provides examples and experiences of how the imperial government failed which intensified to revolution and decolonization. The use of experiencing war demonstrates larger understanding of the societal and state problems that led to lower class revolution and decolonization. Nonetheless the need for additional evidence of societal discontent and a comparative element to other failed empires from the Great War to support this decolonization theory.