Peter Holquist

He is the author of Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921 (Harvard, 2002) and is Associate Editor forEurope Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction(Thomson-Gale, forthcoming 2006). He is founder and editor of the journalKritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History and serves as editor for the Kritika Historical Studies (vol. 1, "The Resistance Debate in Russian and Soviet History," 2003; vol. 2, "After the Fall: Essays on Russian and Soviet History after Communism," 2004; vol. 3, "Orientalism and Empire in Russia," forthcoming in 2006). Holquist has published articles on Russia 's experience in the First World War and Russian Revolution, questions of continuity and change from the imperial period into the Stalin era, and other topics.

Holquist's current project, By Right of War, explores the emergence of the international law of war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Specifically, it analyzes the role of imperial Russia in codifying and extending these "laws and customs of war," and examines to what extent European militaries, and particularly the Russian army, observed these norms in practice. This project encompasses two distinct areas of analysis. First, it traces how international law emerged as a discipline in Imperial Russia and came to flourish there. This is a story of intellectual and diplomatic history. The second half of the project measures the extent to which these normative principles shaped actual policy. It takes the form of military and political history, examining the Russian army in three cases of military occupation: Bulgaria and Anatolia in 1877-78; Manchuria during the Boxer Rebellion, 1900-1901; and Galicia and Armenia during the First World War. The project, in other words, asks by what means, and to what degree, can one bring people's conduct, even in extremis, into line with normative and ethical prescriptions?

Recent articles:

• "‘In accord with State Interests and the People's Wishes': The Technocratic Ideology of Imperial Russia's Resettlement Administration," / Slavic / / Review / 69, no. 1 (Spring 2010), 151-79. (Posted in accordance with Slavic Review's web-posting policy.)
• “Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism: Russia in the Epoch of Violence,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 627-52. (Posted with the permission of Kritika.)
• “‘Information is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work': Bolshevik Surveillance in its Pan-European Perspective,” Journal of Modern History 69, no. 3 (1997): 415-450. (Posted in accordance with the on-line posting policy of the Journal of Modern History.)
• Introduction to Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921