The Eastern Front 1914-1917 (76 page)
Read The Eastern Front 1914-1917 Online
Authors: Norman Stone
*
Even in England, which was well-organised, government met the same problem with farmers. Direct taxes (including an income-tax that took 6/- in the
£
of incomes above
£135
) were levied on farmers with a rule-of-thumb that their profits would be twice their rent. Not many farmers objected to this rule-of-thumb.
8
*
In England, direct taxation accounted for a quarter of government revenue in 1917 and 1918.
*
Some nobles responded meanly against their remaining labour-force. The Olsufievs took back six cows they had given to their labourers; Prince V. F. Gagarin cut by half the flour ration he gave them; Prince Lvov—of Provisional Government fame—cut back his present of potatoes by six-sevenths.
15
*
The word ‘kulak’ (fist) is traditionally applied to these people, as a token of their unpopularity with most peasants. It is a misnomer. ‘Kulak’ meant village usurer, like gombeen-man’ in Ireland. He might also of course own land, but only incidentally. Prosperous peasants were simply known to the peasants as ‘prosperous peasants’.
*
The anti-semitic ‘Black Hundreds’ opened their own bread-shops.
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Penguin Edition
CHAPTER ONE: The Army and the State in Tsarist Russia
CHAPTER TWO: The Military Imperative, July 1914
CHAPTER THREE: The Opening Round: East Prussia
CHAPTER FOUR: The Opening Round: Galicia
CHAPTER FIVE: The First War-Winter, 1914–1915
CHAPTER SIX: The Austro-Hungarian Emergency
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Shell-Shortage, 1915
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Retreat, 1915
CHAPTER NINE: The Political War-Economy, 1914–1917
CHAPTER TEN: The Second War-Winter, 1915–1916
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Summer, 1916
CHAPTER TWELVE: The Romanian Campaign, 1916–1917
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: War and Revolution, 1917
Introduction
Page 13
CHAPTER THREE: The Opening Round: East Prussia
Page 53
CHAPTER FIVE: The First War-Winter, 1914–1915
Page 95
Page 99
Page 114
CHAPTER SIX: The Austro-Hungarian Emergency
Page 124
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Shell-Shortage, 1915
Page 144
Page 149
Page 151
Page 155
Page 159
Page 160
Page 163
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Retreat, 1915
Page 169
Page 170
Page 187
CHAPTER NINE: The Political War-Economy, 1914–1917
Page 197
Page 200
Page 204
CHAPTER TEN: The Second War-Winter, 1915–1916
Page 214
Page 219
Page 220
Page 221
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: War and Revolution, 1917
Page 288
Page 289
Page 290
Page 293
Page 294
Page 297
