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Overview: This lecture is part of a series of four lectures that presents the history of the world wars from the perspective of Eastern Europe, where both wars began, and where both left their deepest scars. The aim is to present a familiar story from an unfamiliar vantage point, and in so doing to shed some light on the deeper roots of more recent events. All three of the great European crises of the twentieth century—both world wars, and the Cold War that followed—began in Eastern Europe. The first great European crisis of the twenty-first century has now begun there as well. It would be unwise to imagine that history is repeating itself. But the history is worth thinking about, nonetheless.
Part 1: From the Balkan Wars to the Russian Revolution (1908-1917) The immediate origins of the First World War lay in the revolutionary politics of Eastern Europe, and the inability of the great powers to manage them. Those revolutionary impulses were amplified by the war, and reached a climax with the overthrow of the last Russian tsar. Thereafter there could be no doubt that, regardless of who won the war, the map of Eastern Europe would be redrawn afterwards.
