Norman Stone
Country on the Move
Dreams of a Great Small Nation: The Mutinous Army that Threatened a Revolution, Destroyed an Empire, Founded a Republic, and Remade the Map of Europe
By Kevin J McNamara
Public Affairs 395pp £19.99 order from our bookshop
‘Fourth Army has actually been captured’, ran a telegram to Austrian headquarters in June 1916. An enterprising Russian general, Aleksei Brusilov, had worked out how the trench war could be won, using methods that were not adopted on the Western Front until two years later. His victory, however, was over an Austrian army that seemed to be full of weaknesses. It was made up mainly of Slav troops – largely Czechs and Ruthenes (the term used at the time for Ukrainians) – and they were said simply not to have fought. It was not as simple as that. The new method involved a short, hurricane bombardment that, in the dry Eastern European summer, levelled trenches and threw up clouds of dust. The Russian attackers were carefully concealed and told to move ahead fast, bypassing strong points. Between 266,000 and 400,000 bewildered soldiers from the Austrian army were marched off to prisoner-of-war camps. Was this defeat evidence of great disaffection on the part of the Habsburg army’s Slav troops, as Allied propaganda had it, or was it just the kind of collapse that stupid generals more or less invited?
Whatever the case, there were more than two million prisoners from the German and Austro-Hungarian armies in Russian camps by 1917 and they had some grounds for disaffection, the more so as conditions there were poor. The very well-meaning Countess Kinsky came on a Red Cross inspection, and enjoined loyalty
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'This is entertainment of the highest class.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews new thrillers by Mick Herron, Kassandra Montag, @LVaughanwrites, @AuthorSJBolton, @ajaychow, @tombradby, @SaraParetsky, @writejemmawayne & @GillianMAuthor.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/may-2022-crime-round-up
'The day Simon and I Vespa-d from Daunt to Daunt to John Sandoe to Hatchards to Goldsboro, places where many of the booksellers have become my friends over the years, was the one with the high puffy clouds, the very strong breeze, the cool-warm sunlight.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/temple-of-vespa
Some salient thoughts on book collecting from Michael Dirda with a semi tragic conclusion that I suspect many of us can relate to from the @Lit_Review #WednesdayMotivation