Citizenship and the Russian nation during World War One: A comment
Historians of late imperial Russia have been categorical in asserting that Russian peasants lacked any form of national identity. Scholars as diverse as Orlando Figes, Geoffrey Hosking, John Keep, Bruce Lincoln, Richard Pipes, Robert Service, Ronald Suny, and Allan Wildman have agreed that Russian peasants were too rooted in Gemeinschaft, too particularistic in their social identities, to be capable of identifying with the polity and territory of Russia.' John Keep expresses the consensus concisely when he writes: