UDC

Authors

Abstract

The paper analyzes the historical experience and lessons of the First World War, known under various names during different historical periods in our country and abroad: the Great War, the German War, the Patriotic War (the Second Patriotic War or even the Great Patriotic War), the World War, and the First World War. The main periods, advances and challenges of studying this war in the Soviet historiography are researched; the reevaluation of WWI history during perestroika in the Soviet Union is described. Further, the establishment and development of the Russian Association of the First World War Historians is analyzed and its leaders are named. The article focuses on analyzing new approaches to understanding the Great War and studying its main issues, as well as on describing its modern conceptions in 2014 in connection with the 100th anniversary of this war. The author dwells on the debates over the most complicated and controversial issues of the war both in the past and nowadays. The approaches of the leading Russian and foreign politicians and scholars to WWI and their estimation of Russia’s role in it are characterized; their views and positions on the current issues of WWI history are compared. New conceptual and theoretical definitions of WWI as “the first global war in the history of mankind”, “the European Civil War”, etc. are pointed out and described. The relation between WWI, the Russian Civil War and Allied intervention is analyzed. In addition, the author names and comments on the most interesting monographs published in Russia and devoted to the 100th anniversary of the First World War. Finally, the main results of discussions on this topic are analyzed in the context of Russia’s domestic and international situation in 2014.

Keywords

References

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