Security and Civil Society in Germany and Tsarist Russia during the First World War. The Internment of Civilian ‘Enemy Aliens’ in the Bilateral Relationship, 1914-1917

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The Russo-German collaborative project deals with the internment of subjects of the Tsarist Empire in Germany and of Germans in Russia from the beginning of the First World War until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917. Major analytical dimensions are the internment policies, the opposition to them as well as the mutual perceptions and reactions. The two governments and subordinate state authorities frequently justified internment by references to 'national security'. Yet these stringent measures endangered liberty as a crucial foundation of civil societies, which still existed as pockets in the First World War. In particular, liberals, social democrats as well as pacifist politicians and intellectuals attempted to restrict security policies in the two countries. Yet their defence of civil liberties was ambiguous, as they simultaneously supported the national war efforts of their countries. The complex and ambivalent relationship between security cultures and the norms of civil society will be analysed by investigating the propaganda and policies of internment that were directed against German and Russian civilian ‘enemy aliens’ in the two states, respectively. Beyond comparing the internment, the project will investigate mutual perceptions and transfers as well as rejections and blockages between German and Russian actors. The principle of reciprocity is to be receive particular attention by studying reprisals and alleviations. In terms of methodology, both historical comparison and recent approaches to analyzing relations and entanglements will be employed. This analytical design lends the Russo-German project its specific profile and added value. The cooperation between the two project partners relies on their long-standing collaboration since 2010. All in all, the proposed research aims to contribute to the historiography of the repression of civilian 'enemy aliens' in the name of ‘national security’, the dilemmas of civil society activism and the challenges of humanitarian engagement in the 'total' First World War. Whereas we ask the DFG to support the German part of the projekt, we will apply for financial means for the Russian part from the RFBR.