THE RUSSIAN FRONT

Last October, National Review Online columnist John J. Miller sparked a lively Internet debate with the publication of an article titled “Sounding Taps” in which he decried the allegedly dismal status of military history on American university campuses. Citing such factors as “an ossified tenure system, scholarly navel-gazing, and ideological hostility to all things military,” Miller alleged that military historians have been virtually driven from the field by “tenured radicals” more concerned with “social justice” and the study of “race, sex, and class.”

Miller is hardly the first commentator to raise questions about the status of military history in the academy. Just four months earlier, historian Fred Kagan (Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute) weighed in with a piece on “Why Military History Matters”. Still, Miller’s observations touched some raw nerves…especially those of Ohio State University’s “War Historian” Mark Grimsley. Grimsley took issue with Miller’s description of a field in decline. In a series of testy web and e-mail exchanges, he repeatedly took aim at Miller’s “tendentious” musings as the politically inspired “crocodile tears” of a wingnut who, in fact, “doesn’t give a lusty crap about academic military history.” Respondents at the History News Network’s group blog Cliopatria were similarly reserved in their comments on the matter. Whether one agrees with Miller or Grimsley, neither or both, one thing is certain: “Sounding Taps” got people’s attention. The subsequent publication this past May of another high-profile piece by The New Republic’s David Bell suggests that something more than synchronicity is at work here. People have been talking about academic military history.

This is a good thing. And it’s something we’d like to see continue.

To this end, we are pleased to welcome you to The Russian Front (TRF), the first professional weblog devoted to Russian military and diplomatic history. TRF hopes to expand knowledge about and interest in the military and diplomatic history of one of the world’s most influential regions. Intended for educators, students, and interested readers, the site aims to

• provide a convenient on-line forum for informed discussions relating to issues in Russian military/diplomatic history (broadly defined)

• serve as a repository for research and teaching materials such as bibliographies, syllabi, and translations of original documents

• raise the profile of professional Russian military/diplomatic history and to publicize the work being done by academic historians

Like all web sites/blogs, TRF is a “work in progress.” Its success and longevity will depend upon the contributions of its regular contributors and the informed commentary of visitors. We believe, however, that we’ve already laid a solid foundation. TRF’s editors have assembled an outstanding group of leading scholars representing a wide range of interests, institutions, and points of view. In the weeks and months to come they’ll be posting on a variety of topics relating to their knowledge of military/diplomatic history and relevant current events.

Here at TRF our rules of engagement are pretty simple.

While we expect to draw the bulk of our posts from our core group of contributors, we are happy to accept submissions from “irregulars” as well. All we require is that individuals who post articles to TRF be professional historians or advanced graduate students (ABD level) who have an interest in (or interesting things to say about) Russian military and diplomatic history. Simply submit your article through one of TRF’s three editors. Your editor will review the submission for content, form, and site relevance before posting it to the blog. Subsequent commentary and feedback on TRF posts, though subject to moderation, will be welcomed from all site visitors.

Whether you’re a general reader, a military history enthusiast, an amateur historian, or an academic, we believe that you’re going to find a great deal of interesting and helpful material here at The Russian Front. At the very least, we hope that you will find Russian military and diplomatic historians to be alive and well. As far as we’re concerned, we’re not “sounding Taps,” but responding to “Reveille.”

Scott W. Palmer
Editor-in-Chief (”Glavkom”) of The Russian Front

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