Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens During World War I

In this study of the treatment of enemy minorities in the Russian Empire during World War I, Eric Lohr uncovers a dramatic story of mass deportations, purges, expropriations and popular violence. An imperial campaign initially aimed at restricting foreign citizens rapidly spun out of control, sweeping up Russian subjects of German, Jewish and Muslim backgrounds and driving roughly a million civilian from one part of the empire to another, becoming one of the largest cases of forced migration in history to that time. Because foreigners and diaspora minorities were prominent among entrepreneurial and land-owning elites, the campaign against them also became an explosive element in class and national tensions on the eve of the 1917 revolutions.