The fall of the three great European empires at the end of the First World War – Austria, Germany and Russia – the chief centres of autocratic rule, seemed a happy augury for the future of democratic government. After the war, this was established in the new states, whose rulers recognised the wisdom of adopting constitutions modelled by Western Powers. In every European country, except Russia, where a new form of government, a Communist dictatorship, was maintained, the principle of representative government was accepted. Source: Richards et al., 1937.
Beginning his keynote address on Russia’s War on Ukraine on 28th June 2022, the newly-commissioned Head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, spoke of the similarity of the events of 1937 in Europe to the continuing and impending events of 2022 in the central-eastern part of the continent:
Andrew James 