@article{10.4159/harvard.9780674063204,
      recid = {1399568},
      author = {McMeekin, Sean,},
      title = {The Russian origins of the First World War [electronic  resource] /},
      publisher = {Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,},
      address = {Cambridge, Mass. :},
      number = {10.4159/harvard.9780674063204},
      pages = {1 online resource (xii, 324 p.) :},
      year = {2011},
      abstract = {The catastrophe of the First World War, and the  destruction, revolution, and enduring hostilities it  wrought, make the issue of its origins a perennial puzzle.  Since World War II, Germany has been viewed as the primary  culprit. Now, in a major reinterpretation of the conflict,  Sean McMeekin rejects the standard notions of the war's  beginning as either a Germano-Austrian preemptive strike or  a tragedy of miscalculation. Instead, he proposes that the  key to the outbreak of violence lies in St. Petersburg.It  was Russian statesmen who unleashed the war through  conscious policy decisions based on imperial ambitions in  the Near East. Unlike their civilian counterparts in  Berlin, who would have preferred to localize the  Austro-Serbian conflict, Russian leaders desired a more  general war so long as British participation was assured.  The war of 1914 was launched at a propitious moment for  harnessing the might of Britain and France to neutralize  the German threat to Russia's goal: partitioning the  Ottoman Empire to ensure control of the Straits between the  Black Sea and the Mediterranean.Nearly a century has passed  since the guns fell silent on the western front. But in the  lands of the former Ottoman Empire, World War I smolders  still. Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Jews, and other  regional antagonists continue fighting over the last scraps  of the Ottoman inheritance. As we seek to make sense of  these conflicts, McMeekin's powerful exposé of Russia's  aims in the First World War will illuminate our  understanding of the twentieth century.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1399568},
}