The peculiarities of the daily life of the Russian and German military elites in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: a comparative analysis

Importance. The interest in the research topic is due to the need to study the adaptation of the military elites of Russia and Germany to the challenges of modernization at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries through the prism of their daily practices, value orientations and social composition. The goal of the study is to conduct a comparative analysis of these aspects, revealing their impact on the traditional army models’ crisis.

Research Methods. The research is based on a comparative analysis of statistics, memoirs and modern works using interdisciplinary methods: comparative historical, quantitative, qualitative (content analysis, case study), institutional and socio-cultural approaches.

Results and Discussion. It is shown that the Russian military elite, while retaining archaic features, suffered from social contradictions and lack of professionalism, while the German, being meritocratic, was subject to technocratic dogmatism. Leisure practices reflected key differences: status hedonism and class traditions in Russia versus discipline and professional pragmatism in Germany.

Conclusion. It is emphasized that both models, despite their differences, turned out to be vulnerable: the Russian one because of its isolation from society, the German one because of its isolation on narrow professional tasks. The study contributes to military historical anthropology and the theory of elites by offering a model for analyzing the relationship between everyday life and institutional crises.

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