Anatol Shmelev explores the Russian Civil War in new book "In the Wake of Empire: Anti-Bolshevik Russia in International Affairs, 1917-1920"

In an interview posted by the Hoover Institution, Anatol Shmelev discusses his new book In the Wake of Empire: Anti-Bolshevik Russia in International Affairs, 1917–1920, published by Hoover Institution Press. In the book, Shmelev explores the Civil War in Russia, specifically how anti-Bolshevik Whites formed governments throughout the country and projected a foreign policy centered on their platform of “Russia – Great, United, and Indivisible.” Shmelev posits that this policy was doomed to fail, in part because of insufficient military aid from Allied forces and because the White movement lacked popular appeal and authority to address social, political, and economic issues.

For Shmelev, the Hoover Library & Archives "played an extremely important role, because the Institution contains the papers of most of the leading White figures and organizations outside of Admiral Kolchak’s government." Founded by Herbert Hoover in 1919, the Hoover Library & Archives are dedicated to documenting war, revolution, and peace in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Anatol Shmelev is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and curator of the Hoover Library & Archives’ Russia and Eurasia collection.

Read the full interview with Anatol Shmelev here.