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A Minor Apocalypse: Warsaw during the First World War
Robert E. Blobaum
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Description for A Minor Apocalypse: Warsaw during the First World War
Hardback. Num Pages: 320 pages, 19, 16 black & white halftones, 3 maps. BIC Classification: 1DVP; 3JJF; HBJD; HBLW; HBTB; HBWN. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 152 x 22. Weight in Grams: 628.
In A Minor Apocalypse, Robert Blobaum explores the social and cultural history of Warsaw's forgotten war of 1914-1918. Beginning with the bank panic that accompanied the outbreak of the Great War, Blobaum guides his readers through spy scares, bombardments, mass migratory movements, and the Russian evacuation of 1915. Industrial collapse marked only the opening phase of Warsaw's wartime economic crisis, which grew steadily worse during the German occupation. Requisitioning and strict control of supplies entering the city resulted in scarcity amid growing corruption, rapidly declining living standards, and major public health emergencies. Blobaum shows how conflicts over distribution of and access to resources led to social divisions, a sharp deterioration in Polish-Jewish relations, and general distrust in public institutions. Women's public visibility, demands for political representation, and perceived threats to the patriarchal order during the war years sustained one arena of cultural debate. New modes of popular entertainment, including cinema, cabaret, and variety shows, created another, particularly as they challenged elite notions of propriety. Blobaum presents these themes in comparative context, not only with other major European cities during the Great War but also with Warsaw under Nazi German occupation a generation later.
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2017
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Condition
New
Number of Pages
320
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9781501705236
SKU
V9781501705236
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Robert E. Blobaum
Robert Blobaum is Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at West Virginia University. He is the editor of Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, also from Cornell, and author of Feliks Dzierzynski and the SDKPiL: A Study of the Origins of Polish Communism. Robert Blobaum is Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of History at West Virginia University. He is theauthor of A Minor Apocalypse: Warsaw during the First World War andRewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904-1907and editor of Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland,all from Cornell.
Reviews for A Minor Apocalypse: Warsaw during the First World War
In A Minor Apocalypse, Robert Blobaum presents a powerful new narrative of the occupied East during 1914-1918. We know that the Eastern Front was horrific during World War II, and Blobaum's social history of life in Warsaw during wartime shows that conditions during World War I were not dissimilar. Blobaum has done an extraordinary job of teasing out ordinary people's experiences from between the lines of public proclamations and from the silences he has mined from extant sources.
Robert L. Nelson, University of Windsor, author of German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War A Minor Apocalypse is the first history of Warsaw in World War I to appear in decades and the first ever in English. Few people in Poland want to remember World War I except as the prelude to independence, and, as a result, the horrible suffering experienced in Warsaw during the war is never discussed. Until reading this book, I had no idea that the situation in the city was so bad, and many readers will be surprised to learn of the events Robert Blobaum describes so clearly. Blobaum's earlier work is mandatory reading in the history of Poland and Eastern Europe, and this meticulously researched, well-written, and persuasively argued book is sure to join that list.
Brian Porter-Szucs, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History, University of Michigan, author of Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom An engaging and learned study based on a wide range of historical sources in German, Polish, and Russian that are woven into a convincing account of a critical chapter in Polish and European histories. ... Historians of everyday life and scholars of the home front in times of war will be fascinated by Blobaum's detailed discussion of Polish society under Russian and, after August 1915, German occupation. ... [C]arefully researched, clearly written, and academically grounded... Blobaum's invaluable study... will both serve as a model of research and scholarship for future students and scholars as well as provide an opportunity for contemplation and reflection among a variety of politicians and pundits.
Scott Ury
American Historical Review
This is a finely crafted book that is superbly researched, well written, and full of all kinds of telling details. Readers will also appreciate the many interesting parallels drawn by the author with other major European cities, such as Berlin, Paris, and London.
Canadian Journal of History
Blobaum provides the first full-length English-language account of the city's experience of World War I.
Foreign Affairs
Robert Blobaum's excellent and captivating new monograph, A Minor Apocalypse: Warsaw during the First World War, is a welcome and necessary contribution to the otherwise scant historiography of the Polish experience during World War I. The first history of Warsaw during the Great War to appear in decades, and the first ever of its kind in English, A Minor Apocalypse demonstrates the precariousness of life, the difficulty of wartime privation, and the hardships ordinary Varsovians experienced during the war... [It] is a remarkably rich study that is sure to become, like Blobaum's other scholarship, mandatory reading for scholars and students of Poland, the First World War, and the history of everyday life.
Michal J. Wilczewski, University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of History
REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia
Robert L. Nelson, University of Windsor, author of German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War A Minor Apocalypse is the first history of Warsaw in World War I to appear in decades and the first ever in English. Few people in Poland want to remember World War I except as the prelude to independence, and, as a result, the horrible suffering experienced in Warsaw during the war is never discussed. Until reading this book, I had no idea that the situation in the city was so bad, and many readers will be surprised to learn of the events Robert Blobaum describes so clearly. Blobaum's earlier work is mandatory reading in the history of Poland and Eastern Europe, and this meticulously researched, well-written, and persuasively argued book is sure to join that list.
Brian Porter-Szucs, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History, University of Michigan, author of Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom An engaging and learned study based on a wide range of historical sources in German, Polish, and Russian that are woven into a convincing account of a critical chapter in Polish and European histories. ... Historians of everyday life and scholars of the home front in times of war will be fascinated by Blobaum's detailed discussion of Polish society under Russian and, after August 1915, German occupation. ... [C]arefully researched, clearly written, and academically grounded... Blobaum's invaluable study... will both serve as a model of research and scholarship for future students and scholars as well as provide an opportunity for contemplation and reflection among a variety of politicians and pundits.
Scott Ury
American Historical Review
This is a finely crafted book that is superbly researched, well written, and full of all kinds of telling details. Readers will also appreciate the many interesting parallels drawn by the author with other major European cities, such as Berlin, Paris, and London.
Canadian Journal of History
Blobaum provides the first full-length English-language account of the city's experience of World War I.
Foreign Affairs
Robert Blobaum's excellent and captivating new monograph, A Minor Apocalypse: Warsaw during the First World War, is a welcome and necessary contribution to the otherwise scant historiography of the Polish experience during World War I. The first history of Warsaw during the Great War to appear in decades, and the first ever of its kind in English, A Minor Apocalypse demonstrates the precariousness of life, the difficulty of wartime privation, and the hardships ordinary Varsovians experienced during the war... [It] is a remarkably rich study that is sure to become, like Blobaum's other scholarship, mandatory reading for scholars and students of Poland, the First World War, and the history of everyday life.
Michal J. Wilczewski, University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of History
REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia