“Russians Never Surrender”: Origins and Dissemination of a Slogan in Russian Empire

Abstract

This article investigates the emergence and dissemination of the well-known military slogan “Russians never surrender” during the pre-revolutionary period of Russian history. It challenges widespread myths attributing the slogan’s origin to World War I or the Great Patriotic War, demonstrating through extensive source analysis that the phrase was already widely recognized as early as the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The study examines and analyzes materials from periodicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries where this slogan appears, considering the context of its usage. For the first time, a number of publicistic texts from newspapers such as “Rus’,” “Petersburg Listok,” “Novoye Vremya,” “Russkoye Slovo,” “Russky Invalid,” “Utro Rossii,” and “Birzhevye Vedomosti,” which referenced “Russians never surrender,” are introduced into scholarly discourse. A substantial body of pre-revolutionary historical literature is scrutinized, significantly enriching the understanding of how and when the slogan was employed throughout various periods of Russian history. It is suggested that the expression became a military motto at the turn of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The research demonstrates that, having first appeared in print in the 1820s, the slogan rapidly evolved into a fixed cliché and by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had gained nationwide recognition, becoming an important element of official propaganda. The novelty of this study lies in its detailed and systematic examination of the slogan’s origins and spread within the Russian Empire — an aspect that has not previously been explored in depth within historical scholarship.