The Battle of Gumbinnen: A Forgotten Victory Electronic Publication
The GS Group Holding produced a deluxe compendium of materials The Battle of Gumbinnen: A Forgotten Victory to commemorate 100 years of the Battle of Gumbinnen. The printed edition was handed to the guests at the grand opening of the memorial park. The electronic version is available on our website.
“We are at the very beginning of the road to restoration of the memory of World War I. The collection of articles presented is dedicated to the Battle of Gumbinnen that took place in August 1914. This battle determined the nature and, in the end, the results of the 1914 – 1918 war.
In creating this publication, the authors resorted to the historical heritage of the first wave of Russian emigration. It was the Russian émigrés who preserved in full the historic memory of the role Russia played in World War I and of the impact the war had on Russia. They devoted a lot of effort to the analysis of this war, since they realized, sometimes unconsciously, that it was World War I that became the cradle of Russian Revolution in 1917, deprived them of their homeland and doomed them to wandering, and became the cause of national and their personal tragedy. On the other hand, it would not be an exaggeration to say that this memory of World War I and its aftermath was one of the factors that allowed the Russian émigrés not to become undone in a strange land, to survive, to preserve their national identity, creating what is known these days as the Russian World abroad.
Of the vast heritage left by the Russian emigration, the collection presents excerpts from memoirs and historiographical works of the Russian military and military historians of the 1920s – 1930s. At best, these works were known only to a small circle of experts, gathering dust in archives and restricted-access library collections. Thus, the authors of this project are introducing to a wide circle of readers an interesting source that bears witness to forgotten pages of the Great War of 1914 – 1918.”
E. N. Rudaya,
Candidate of Historical Sciences,
Head of Scientific, Educational, and Cultural Programs of the
Historical Perspective Foundation
