An Army Like That of Gideon: Communities of Transnational Reform on the Pages of Free Russia

Abstract

This article explores how a transnational network of reformers used the short-lived newspaper Free Russia to help sustain a movement to topple Russia's czarist government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Prominent American reformers and writers of the era, including Mark Twain and Julia Ward Howe, subscribed and contributed to the newspaper, which was edited by exiled Russian revolutionaries in London. Free Russia helped buoy movement actors and establish a movement narrative, much like nineteenth-century abolitionist newspapers. The article also illustrates the international impulses of American and European reformers at the turn of the century, particularly in their efforts to reshape pre-revolutionary Russia.