MarzAat

Something a bit different this time.

If you find yourself in Minneapolis before March 14, 2016 and have any interest in Russian history or World War One, I would highly recommend The Museum of Russian Art’s Faces of War exhibit.

It’s the third stop for the exhibit which premiered in Moscow and then went to Belgrade.

Looking at not only events on the battlefield, it also covers the home front, internal Russian politics — particularly the lives of the royal family during the war, and the war’s aftermath.

I’ve been to the Imperial War Museum (though I have not seen their revamped World War exhibit) and the National World War One Museum in Kansas City. You will see stuff here you have not seen before.

For me the high point was the actual telegrams and hand written letters exchanged by Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas as they begin to realize the apocalypse about to descend on Europe. They corresponded in English so you can see Nicholas’ agitation in his handwriting and underlinings.

Other high points:

• Coverage of Russia’s heroic Brusilov Offensive in 1916 that vey well may have stopped a German victory at Verdun.
• Bios and photos of individual generals.
• Photo of a Russian submarine being launched.
• News reel footage of Archduke Ferdinand’s visit to Sarajevo.
• The turmoil in the Imperial Court including the Czar’s abdication speech.
• The October 1917 suicide note of a Russian Army ensign who would not serve in the post-Revolutionary army.
• Russian wartime bond drive and propaganda posters.

The exhibition book costs $35, and, to be honest, unless you are a hardcore World War One buff, it’s not worth it. It doesn’t capture much of the flavor of the exhibits though it does have some interesting material on United States aid to Russia before America entered the war, the growing hatred against the Czarina and Rasputin by not only regular Russians but some nobility, and the stalling of the new Russian government in making peace with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires in 1918.

This exhibit was put together with the help of the Russian Federation and its archives. This is not the first time the Russian government released some of its archives on the war. The first, under the Soviet regime, was to embarrass capitalist countries.

This exhibit takes a fairly neutral tone on the Czar. You can perhaps dispute its claim that Russia bears no blame for the war — but you can’t dispute a lot of things about the beginning of the war.

Perhaps understandably, the exhibit book doesn’t even mention the word “Tannenburg” though it certainly acknowledges a military defeat at the time and also mentions Russian successes in Galicia.

Both the exhibit and accompanying book mention the Allied “Polar Bear Expedition” to Arkhangelsk. The last survivor of that expedition was Harold Gunnes who was born in Barnesville, Minnesota and died in 2003.