The Russian Empire entered what became known as the First World War in the summerof 1914 as a Great Power on the Eurasian continent; four years later, the RussianEmpire was no more. In its place was a Bolshevik rump state surrounded by a ringof hostile powers who shared some loyalty to the values of the Old Regime, or aconservative version of the Provisional Government. The notable exception to thiswas Menshevik-dominated Georgia in Transcaucasia, which pursued a moderate butsocialist transformation of its society. Although all the Central Europeandynastic empires (Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans, Germany and Russia) failed tosurvive the suicidal war, what succeeded the Russian Empire, namely, the Sovietsocialist state, was unlike any other successor regime. Many of the origins ofthat Soviet state, and the civil war that did so much to shape it, can be tracedto the preceding world war: new political techniques and practices, thepolarisation of mass politics, the militarisation of society and a socialrevolution that brought to power a new set of elites determined to transformsociety even further while in the midst of mobilising for its own war ofself-defence against domestic and foreign enemies. The war demanded unprecedentedmobilisation of society and economy against formidable enemies to the west andsouth. The industrial mobilisation alone triggered ‘a crisis in growth– a modernisation crisis in thin disguise’.