The Study ofthe Russo-Japanese War and the First Revolution from the viewpoint of Russian nation-building

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The results of this three years' study are following1. Research on the home front of Russia demonstrates that the role of social organs such as the General-zemustvo Organizations and city councils was crucial for the war efforts during the Russo-Japanese war. Meanwhile, peasant communities sometimes rejected to aid the families of reserves who registered for draft because they thought it was not their own war or they believed the families received enough support from the state. Such attitude of peasants derived from the lack of sense of modern nationalism.2. The situation of the Japanese home front was contrastive to the above-mentioned Russian situation. In Japan, from the time of the Sino-Japanese War (1894), the military organizations spread all over the country and the system of soldiers' family support by the state was established in 1904. The system of national representatives, primary education system and the universal conscription altogether served for the Japanese nation-building. As a result, we can conclude that the nation state of Japan was formed by the Russo-Japanese war.3. Military failures at the battle fields caused more hostile criticism of the liberal oppositional movements to the Russian autocratic government than before the war. Some liberal activists, especially those who were organized in the Union of Liberation lead by P. Struve, considered excellence of Japan to be in their "national spirits", that is, nationalism, and from this viewpoint, tried to establish a national representative system on the basis of universal, direct, secret and equal election without sex and nationality for uniting the multi-national empire. This was among the most important demands in the first Russian revolution of 1905.