Russia at war is treated by Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (London and New York, 1975). A. Knox’s With the Russian Army, 2 vols. (London, 1921), is an informative account by the British military attaché. V. A. Emets in Ocherki vneshnei politiki Rossii, 1914–17 [Outlines of Russia’s Foreign Policy, 1914–17] (Moscow, 1977) and V. S. Diakin’s Russkaia burzhuaziia i tsarizm v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–1917) [The Russian Bourgeoisie and Tsarism during the World War (1914–1917) (Leningrad, 1967) provide analyses of the political situation in Russia during World War I, relatively free of customary Soviet distortions. The same holds true of the book by the Polish historian Ludwig Bazylow, Obalenie caratu [The Overthrow of Tsarism] (Warsaw, 1976). There is much to be learned from A. I. Spiridovich’s Velikaia voina ifevral’skaia revoliutsiia, 1914–1918 gg. [The Great War and the February Revolution], 3 vols. (New York, 1962). The economic antecedents of the Revolution are treated by A. L. Sidorov’s Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny [The Economic Situation of Russia during World War I] (Moscow, 1973).
The letters of Alexandra Fedorovna to Nicholas II during the war have been edited by Bernard Pares: Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar, 1914–1916 (London, 1923). Nicholas’s letters to his wife during this period are available only in a Russian translation in KA, No. 4 (1923). Immensely valuable are the minutes of the cabinet meetings in 1915–16, prepared by A. N. Iakhontov in Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, XVIII (1926); they have been translated by Michael Cherniavsky as Prelude to Revolution (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967).
The best treatment of Rasputin is by high officials of the security services: S. P. Beletskii, Grigorii Rasputin (Petrograd, 1923), and A. I. Spiridovich, Raspoutine (Paris, 1935).
The situation in Russia on the eve of the February Revolution is reflected in the remarkably objective and well-informed confidential reports by the Corps of Gendarmes, published by B. B. Grave under the misleading title Burzhuaziia naka-nune fevral’skoi revoliutsii [The Bourgeoisie on the Eve of the February Revolution] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927). E. D. Chermenskii’s IV Gosudarstvennaia Duma i sverzhenie tsarizma v Rossii (Moscow, 1976) is a conventional Communist account that has its uses because of the author’s access to archival sources.
