Russia’s Army: A History from the Napoleonic Wars to the War in Ukraine (University of Oklahoma Press). He examines the Russian military over a span of three centuries, connecting tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet histories rom Alexander I to Vladimir Putin. This approach allows Reese to consider the development of the Russian army in the context of vast diplomatic, political, economic, and social changes across Europe and the world from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the present.
Russia’s Army is a social and institutional history that engages the twin challenges the army confronted: those relating to foreign policy and those arising from internal unrest. While Russia always had a large standing army, as Reese explains neither its massive size nor service in it were uniformly desirable. Reese’s attention to uneasiness about the size of the military as well as public opinion on its nature, during both war and peace, demonstrate the importance of considering the relationship between the military and society. His consideration of the complex ways the army responded to, and sometimes shaped, foreign relations greatly enhances our understanding of how the army operated on a world stage.
Reese’s next project continues to study the Russian military. It is tentatively entitled “From Peter to Putin: The Russians and their Army.”