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Title: A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes ISBN: 0-14-024364-X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.28 (39 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Detailed, fair, engaging, and gratifying
Comment: "A People's Tragedy" is a rather detailed account of the Russian Revolution which maintains an excellent balance of erudition and lucidity. Figes convincingly presents the revolution as a 33-year process involving many contending interests without ever losing his focus on the eventual replacement of Tsarism with Communism.
The first few chapters address the state of the Romanov regime in the decades preceding its overthrow, various parliamentary and cultural movements at the turn of the century, and the organization of the peasantry following the abolition of serfdom. This background information later proves essential. One can see, for example, how the land management and village self-governance of the peasants led to the soviet structure used by the victorious Reds. Figes revisits these themes throughout the book, depicting a Romanov dynasty that was more bumbling autocracy than cruel tyranny and raising the peasants from their usual role as a haplessly oppressed mass to a significant political force.
I found the treatment of the Bolsheviks to be relatively sympathetic, and the book does not suffer because of it. They are depicted as a ruthless and especially fortunate revolutionary faction, a group ready to use any means necessary to obtain power but, in the end, given a gift with the success of their unlikely coup. Some readers may find this insufficiently damning but, while I would have liked a little more about how the nature of the revolution affected later developments, the abominable governance which followed is not Figes's topic.
Rating: 5
Summary: What a Deal!!
Comment: I picked up this book by Orlando Figes on a whim. The Russian Revolution is an interesting topic so I figured that one day I'd get around to reading this massive book. I finally read it over Christmas break, and I must say that this is an excellent history book. One of the best I've ever read, actually. It is a real page turner, something very rare for a scholarly book of this size and scope. Figes certainly has the education to pull off this type of history: he was educated at Oxford and has written other works concerning Russia.
Figes goes against the grain with this book. In opposition to such scholars as Richard Pipes (author of another huge tome I own but have yet to read), Figes believes that the Russian Revolution was in fact a "bottom up" revolution. Figes proves that the peasantry in Russia were sick to high heaven of a system that degraded them to a status of barely human. To the peasant, the most important thing was land and freedom from the state. All government forms, from the tsarist state to the Bolsheviks, were judged by how much autonomy the peasants earned under them. Figes actually seems to measure the success and failure of each government according to how the peasants received them. Not surprisingly, the tsarist system was a dismal failure. It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback with history, but the tsarist regime was pathetic. The list of the problems confronting Tsar Nicholas is too numerous to list here, but what is important to note is that this regime failed them all. Land reforms were desperately wanted, but the Tsar denied them. Nationalism in the peripheral states around Russia was not only denied, but a program of Russification was instituted that caused more problems than were necessary. The list could go on and on. The problem was power. The tsarist state refused to give any ground on the autocratic principles that the Russian tsars loved so much. Figes spends a good portion of his book discussing the failures of the tsarist system and shows how that system could have averted problems and maintained the throne (although as a constitutional monarchy akin to England).
The other elements of government, the Bolsheviks, the Provisionals and the Whites, failed just as badly. The Provisionals were forced to tread the line between extremists and failed to reconcile both. The White regimes failed because the conservative elements that made up the bulk of the movement refused to budge on principles they enjoyed under the Tsar. Even the Bolsheviks failed, but their failure wasn't as pronounced because they were able to retain at least some semblance to the revolutionary principles that the peasants loved so much. Even here, the Bolsheviks had to make some concessions to retain power. The examination of the Communist regime is probably the most interesting aspect of this book.
The Communists are given heavy treatment in this text. Not only do we see how they came to power, we get huge doses of their philosophy. Figes gives a detailed examination of the intellectual currents that gave rise to the Communist movement, as well as their actions once they attained power. What emerges is a bleak picture. Communism is death to all it touches. The Bolsheviks sought to not only rule by dictatorship, but to change the very essence of man into an automaton subservient to the state. Figes shows the reader the Red Terror and some of the other methods the Bolsheviks used to try and bring about this subservience. It is a horrifying picture made worse, of course, under the rule of Stalin.
Figes states in his introduction that it took six years to do the research for this book. It is beautifully done and, I should mention, done by Figes himself without research assistants. I am amazed at how much information I have retained from this book, something that can't be said about many history books. I'd love to take a class from this scholar. His insights are fresh and his writing is erudite. Buy this book!
Rating: 5
Summary: Very memorable
Comment: The book is voluminous and the period of history in focus is densely packed, but Figes's flowing style and keen interest in the matter keep one engaged. Through snapshot descriptions of many personalities that colored the times, the narrative paints as vivid a picture as any one book can. Kerensky, Lenin, Brusilov, Gorky and many others appear as much humans as politicians/generals/intellectuals etc. This especially makes the book memorable. The occasional roughness of style or omission of some facts (for example, the transformation of Gorky, the most often quoted source in the book, from a street urchin and an orphan into an educated and rich man) is more than vindicated by colorful personal and societal portraits and some provocative thoughts.
With the backdrop of Nicholas II living in the patriarchal past and Provisional Government living in the future (ever waiting for the Constitutional Assembly), Bolsheviks emerge as the ones firmly living in the present, pragmatically resolving the conflicts of the moment regardless of ideology. They gave peasants gentry's land and in return, with peasant help, won the civil war. They exited the I World War (at the cost of a third of agricultural land and over a half of industrial enterprises) and infiltrated the soldiers' Soviets and in return had military support in the October coup d'état. They gave non-Russian peoples the right of self-determination believing that this would precipitate communist revolutions there. Of course, all these measures were later reversed. The land remained state's property and smallholding peasants were subjected to collectivization. The people were thrown into the bloody civil war and exposed to terror, starvation and disease (the conservative estimate of 10 million Russian deaths resulting from the October events far superseded Russian losses in the I World War, some 1.7 million dead). And the national territories were taken by force. Among these ever changing policies one was constant: the Bolsheviks' drive for power. Taking power by military force, shooting the Constitutional Assemblymen, taking the last food provisions from peasants at a gun point, putting Cheka, with its 250,000 members only during Lenin's times, (approximately 10 times the last Czar's secret police) above the law: descriptions of these events present Bolsheviks as a military junta more than anything else. They created a society in which the main organizing principle was terror. That, indeed, was the people's tragedy.
Figes devotes a fair bit of space to the social formations beyond Bolsheviks. The Whites, with their unfortunate Czarist image and land property mentality. Peasants, backward and apolitical but crucial, as the Civil War showed. Soldiers, who let themselves degrade to marauding and shooting millions of their own people. Intelligentsia and politicians, many of whom, in a typically Russian way, preferred to haughtily abstain rather than engage.
The book feels much tighter and more coherent than the author's "Natasha's Dance". In addition, appealing is Figes's sensitivity to the precarious historic moments when a very probable different outcome could have radically changed the future (almost reaching for peace in the I World War by the Provisional Government, almost not engaging in the military coup by Bolsheviks etc.).
To summarize, very engaging and definitely worthwhile.
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Title: Natasha's Dance : A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes ISBN: 0312421958 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 17 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes ISBN: 0679736603 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 05 November, 1991 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Russia Under the Old Regime by Richard Pipes ISBN: 0140247688 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime by RICHARD PIPES ISBN: 0679761845 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The Icon and the Axe : An Interpretive History of Russian Culture by James Billington ISBN: 0394708466 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 December, 1970 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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