This article investigates how officer esprit de corps was formed in the emerging interwar Finnish armed forces. The Finnish officer corps emerged during a devastating civil war from two competing groups: older Russian-educated and younger and more radical German-trained jaeger officers. Their relationship turned into a serious conflict during the 1920s. Mesolevel institutional cohesion has been sparsely examined in past scholarship, where corps esprit has usually been taken for granted. This article introduces the concept of intramilitary relations and presents seven sociological factors that can affect officer esprit de corps: ideology, identity, patronage, military experience, generation, class, and professional institutions. As intramilitary relations are closely linked to broader civil-military relations, the article also sheds light on to date largely underexplored Finnish civil-military relations. The Finnish case shows that while military institutions are crucial for esprit in the long run, without consensus, institutions can be used as instruments for power struggles and weaken cohesion.

“Slava Ukraini!” Strategy and the Spirit of Ukrainian Resistance tells the story of the volunteers lauded to have saved Ukraine twice. The volunteers first emerged in the spring of 2014 after the onset of the war in Donbas in a context characterized by ambiguity, state weakness, political uncertainty, and threat. They re-emerged again in February 2022 after the large-scale Russian invasion. Aimed at an interdisciplinary audience, this volume makes significant contributions to our understanding of events in Ukraine over the past decade. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with volunteer battalion fighters, the volume focuses on strategy, or the creation, control, and use of force. This framework is first applied to the volunteer militias to further the understanding of militia strategy conducted after 2014, and then to the first year and a half that followed the Russian invasion in 2022.“Slava Ukraini!” also discusses the long-term sociological impact of volunteer battalions and the war they fought in Ukraine. The Ukrainian spirit of resistance emerged first on the Maidan in November 2013, ignited the volunteer Spirit of 2014 after the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, and ultimately flared-up on a national scale in a manner which surprised the invading Russian forces in 2022. Yet initially the volunteers may also have exacerbated internal divisions in Ukraine. The Spirit of 2014 was also better suited to a war of movement than immobile trench warfare that left little room for heroism and aggressive soldiering. Unrealistic expectations about modern warfare led to disillusionment, and many volunteers leaving the war in 2015. The perceived stalemate and lack of Ukrainian soldiers by late 2023 raised the question of a similar dynamic witnessed in 2014 and 1914 alike.

Researchers who study civil wars and other armed conflicts are bound to face ambiguities. This article continues the discussion about research brokers in conflict zones that started in a 2019 special issue of Civil Wars and scrutinises the finding that Liberian wartime command structures continue to linger in informal guises long to the post-conflict. Absent transparent acknowledging of the ambiguities it glosses over, past scholarship risks a far too neat story that imbues arguments with untested assumptions. The result neither captures the complexity of contemporary realities of Liberian former combatants nor helps Liberia to move forward from its difficult past.