Military Desertion as a Counter-Modernization Response in Austro-Hungarian Society, 1868-1914

Resumen

This article is devoted to an investigation of the military desertion phenomenon during the Late Modern period; in particular, it is described as counter-modernization response of European peripheries to state-led violence and modernization. The European Modernization of the 18^th and 19^th centuries was the process that changed practically all spheres of life, including the transition from agrarian to industrial societies. This modernization had different actors, with the state as the most significant pertinacious factor of change. During the last third of the 19^thcentury, most European regimes began to implement conscription as the most modern military technology in order to protect against possible enemies. The idea of citizen-soldiers was also used for the shaping of nation-building, and the educating of citizens and the propaganda of the achievements of Modernity like literacy, education, hygiene, etc. Military service became an important period of life for most European men, a transition from teenage to maturity in all meanings of this word.

Modernization also had its losers. In contrast to metropolitan areas, in European peripheries modernization often was perceived in the form of additional obligations, not benefits. The process was sometimes complicated by the existence of patriarchal reservations in closed locations that in general were hostile towards changing their centuries-old lifestyle. The examples of military desertion from the Habsburg empire’s Northeast (Bukovina, Galicia, Eastern Hungary) to Russia demonstrate the scale of counter-modernization reactions of this peripheral region to imposed modernization and change. Those young men who could not accept the changes often had to avoid the military by leaving their own country. These people became perpetual deserters, i.e. persons, who were trying to stay in the traditional society at any price. Several times they migrated from Austria-Hungary to Russia and vice versa. The case studies of such people demonstrate the military necessities as related to modern armies, the same as the irreversibility of modernization and unenviable fate for those who could not adapt to the changing world.