Matthew Rendle studies how the most powerful social groups in tsarist Russia reacted to the challenges of 1917. He argues that the alienation of elites from the tsar and their support for the Provisional Government secured the initial success of the revolution, but the threat they posed laid the foundations of the repressive Soviet regime.

Defenders of the Motherland studies how the most powerful social groups in tsarist Russia reacted to the challenges posed by the Russian Revolutions of 1917. Arguing that elite groups-especially nobles, landowners, and officers-played an important role in these events, Matthew Rendle shows how the alienation of tsarist elites from the tsar during the First World War and their support for the new Provisional Government in February 1917 secured the initial success of the revolution.

a scholarly and well-written work