The February Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Army "Soviet Studies". Glasgow. 1970, N 1. The article by the American historian A. Wildman covers a short period: March-early April 1917, but, as noted in the editorial note, it is the initial section of the monograph on the history of the Russian army throughout 1917. In fact, this is the first work in American bourgeois literature specifically devoted to the revolutionary movement in the Russian army. Until now, this topic has been considered only in general works on the history of the revolutions of 1917, and its interpretation was based mainly on the memoirs of White emigrants and foreign eyewitnesses of the events. A. Wildman used a much wider range of sources, including Soviet documentary publications, the press (the newspapers Pravda, Izvestia, etc.), and also works of Soviet historians. This allowed the author to move away from some of the provisions that are firmly rooted in Western historiography. Thus, he resolutely rejects the thesis that tsardom in 1917 was not overthrown by the revolutionary masses, but "fell" due to "internal rottenness". "a revolution has taken place, and all attempts to fit it into the framework of a dynastic upheaval or constitutional transformation are meaningless" (p.3). However, the author sees in the February Revolution only the action of spontaneous elements, which leads him to erroneous conclusions. He asserts that until February there were no signs of the revolutionary nature of the soldiers ' masses at the front. A. Wildman characterizes their mood as "a vague expectation of changes that were supposed to come from the outside" (p. 6).Therefore, the February revolution, in his opinion, turned out to be "completely sudden" for the front (p. 7). These claims are untenable. The facts of revolutionary ferment and revolutionary actions in the army were already noted a year and a half before the overthrow of tsarism. Typical in this sense is the summary of information about the mood ... Read more