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In 1914, Russia entered the First World War with a wave of patriotic flag-waving. The Tsar’s picture was held aloft by cheering crowds, and St. Petersburg was renamed the more Russian-sounding Petrograd. Less than three years later, the flags were gone, the cheers had turned to curses, the Tsar was under arrest, and the Russian Empire had ceased to exist. How did this happen? The answer is that the First World War was a catastrophe that took all of Russia’s deep-seated problems – poverty, inequality, and political repression – and magnified them a hundred times over. It was the final,…