Robinson, Paul Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Supreme Commander of the Russian Army (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 3, july 2016 552 they believed Eurasia represented. This is why, she argues, their approach should be seen as a form of geographical ideology. Finally, Stefan Wiederkehr looks at how Karl Popper’s activist concept of historicism helps us understand the core of Eurasianism’s philosophy. Chapters six to eight explore the beliefs of three leading Eurasianists. Whilst Martin Beissenger investigates the religious and economic underpinnings of Savitskii’s concept of Eurasianism, Igor Torbakov attributes Vernadskii’s historical revisions, beginning with 1917 to his search for national identity, to his Ukrainian roots and state of exile. Harsha Ram poses a possible nexus between Velimir Khlebnikov’s futurist vision of a common linguistic space centred in Russia and Roman Jakobson’s concept of the ‘Eurasian linguistic alliance’ and the extent to which this distanced him from the original intention of the Russian symbolist movement (p. 147). In the last two chapters Hama Yukiko investigates Eurasianism’s influence on Japan’s pan-Asianism, whilst Mark Bassin focuses on the contemporary legacy of the Eurasianists, which is torn between Eurasian revisionists such as Lev Gumilev on one hand and increasingly radical positions taken by Russian nationalists on the other, and has resulted in the polemic and contradictory stance taken by Neo-Eurasianists such as Aleksandr Dugin. As Laruelle concludes in the Postface, the legacy of Eurasianism has been mired by neo-Eurasianists’ Russia-centric and highly opportunistic take on the philosophy of the 100-year-old movement. However, this ‘incredible incubator of ideas’ (p. 190) will likely remain a helpful framework for those trying to build a radically distinct and self-contained identity for the post-Soviet space. It will also likely resurface, however distorted and aleatory, whenever it suits the Russian elite to deploy the type of nationalistic discourse that supports their ambitions abroad, whilst assuaging the harsh economic reality at home. UCL SSEES V. Ceban Robinson, Paul. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Supreme Commander of the Russian Army. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL, 2014. ix + 435 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $44.95. The Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich was a — literally — towering figure in the history of late Imperial Russia and of the First World War. As ‘Uncle Nikolasha’ he occupied a central place in the extended imperial family; he had an extremely close relationship with Emperor Nikolai II, although his interaction with all members of the family was not so consistently friendly. He also played an important, but more passive, role in the politics of the Russian REVIEWS 553 emigration, especially in the last years before his death in 1929. Readers owe a debt of gratitude to Paul Robinson for having produced such a thorough and readable biography of the man. While this book is academically rigorous and valuable to the historical specialist, the subject matter (the Russian court) and clarity of style make it attractive to a wider audience. The disparate stages of the Grand Duke’s life are traced here, and in a measured and balanced way; at each stage the author displays a high degree of expertise. There is the Grand Duke’s background and early military career; his involvement in the 1905–06 revolution, and then his service as a military reformer in the short-lived Council of State Defence. Above all there is his role as Supreme C-in-C of the Russian Army in the first months of the World War, before defeat in Poland and his ill-fated replacement by the Emperor himself. The Grand Duke’s time as Viceroy of the Transcaucasus in 1915–17 has echoes in more recent events. Perhaps surprisingly he played virtually no part in the 1917 Revolution, the Civil War or the first years of the emigration. Although generally providing a straightforward account of an unfolding life, Robinson is prepared to take issue with memoirists and other historians at key points in the Grand Duke’s career. For example, he defends his role as a military reformer at the turn of the century. He also clarifies his key decision, in October 1905, not to serve as a military dictator who would have supported by force the Emperor and the counter-revolution; instead he accepted...