Prit Buttar - The Splintered Empires: The Eastern Front 1917–21

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This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in Great Britain in 2017

2017 (Prit Buttar)

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Prit Buttar has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work.

ISBN: 978-1-4728-1985-7 (HB)
ISBN: 978-1-4728-2984-9 (PB)
ISBN: 978-1-4728-1987-1 (eBook)
ISBN: 978-1-4728-1986-4 (ePDF)
ISBN: 978-1-4728-2602-2 (XML)

Front cover: Russian prisoners of war being marched into captivity by their German captors, circa 1916. The prisoners include a 15-year-old boy, who claimed he volunteered in order to avoid starvation after his father joined the army and his mother fled their home. (Photo by FPG / Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

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CONTENTS

LIST OF MAPS

AUTHORS NOTE

This is the fourth volume of a series that describes the First World War on the Eastern Front. After the huge battles and bloodshed of the preceding years, 1917 saw comparatively little fighting as Russia became embroiled in its revolutions and the Germans took advantage of this to concentrate their energies elsewhere. Compared to the first three volumes, this work therefore contains less about purely military matters and more about the politics that shaped events. Unlike the Western Front, there was no tidy end to the war in Eastern Europe, and conflicts dragged on into the 1920s, shaping the nations that were born from the splinters of the great empires. Ultimately, the imperfections in borders and other matters would lead to a second conflict barely two decades later, and an understanding of the end of the First World War in the east, particularly with regard to its legacy, therefore requires an account of events after the armistice in the west in November 1918.

CHRONOLOGY

1917