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The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism
“We are running a race with Bolshevism and the world is on fire.”―President Woodrow Wilson, 1919 While the Western leaders were hammering out a peace treaty in Paris to end the Great War, a new war had already begun. Bolshevism―the creed of the Russian Revolution―had burst on the scene in 1917 and seared itself into the world’s consciousness even faster than al-Qaeda would some eighty years later. The Allied powers tried to destroy it at its source by intervening, controversially and unsuccessfully, in the civil war in Russia. Elsewhere there were bloody revolutions and bloodier counterrevolutions in Germany, Hungary, and the Baltic States; massive strikes and civil unrest broke out in Britain, Western Europe, and in both North and South America. In the United States, a series of terrorist bombings created a wave of hysteria, later labeled the Great Red Scare, that threatened the very foundations of a free and democratic society. This book chronicles and examines the running battle with terror during the most revolutionary year since 1789.
379 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2008
5 people are currently reading
155 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Read
34 books28 followersAnthony "Tony" Read (born 21 April 1935) was a British script editor, television writer and author. He was principally active in British television from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, although he occasionally contributed to televised productions until 1999. Starting in the 1980s, he launched a second career as a print author, concentrating largely on World War II histories. Since 2004 he regularly wrote prose fiction, mainly in the form of a revival of his popular 1983 television show, The Baker Street Boys.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 21, 2017
1919 was an eventful year by any measure, but to Read it as a january-through-december almanak is not a format to do its complexities justice! One best comes armed with prior, thematic knowledge about the multiple civil wars on the territories of the former Romanov and Habsburg empires.
January 4, 2023
Might be a little bit harsh but 3.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads.
Narrative and chronological history of 1919. The writing style is pretty good but more focused on the narrative than analysis. A little bit of prior knowledge of the political time period might be helpful but I don't think it is needed. The book is mostly about two topics -
1 - The post-WWI revolutions and civil wars in Europe, particularly Germany. These parts are decent imo and I personally found them to be the more enjoyable parts of the book. Despite the book being about the Western reaction to communism there isn't that much on the Russian Civil War beyond broad details to follow what was going on. The topic of the Russian Civil War is mostly just the Western leaders and politicians arguing over whether to continue the military intervention there. The political section is very focused on Europe and to a lesser extent the USA, there is a short chapter on the colonial issues (India with Amritsar and the Third Anglo-Afghan War) but it isn't that good.
And 2 - Industrial disputes and how the fear of the Bolsheviks and Bolshevism was used by employers and governments to smear striking unions with mostly ordinary economic concerns (wages, hours, conditions etc) as being revolutionary communists intent on bringing down the government. While this theme is covered in a range of European countries I'd say the bulk of it is on the USA and the Red Scare. The author is pretty sympathetic to the unions and the workers. There is some content on the racial side of things but it is in the context of communism, the press at the time saying things like the "the blacks are being tainted by Bolshevism" or "Lenin and Trotsky are trying to lure in black support". As I'm not American and a lot of this content is about the USA I didn't enjoy this part as much.
Overall maybe worth a read if you are interested in the post-WWI period as you can get used copies pretty cheap on Amazon nowadays. However the dual focus means that there are better books that focus on one theme or the other. If you want the post-WWI revolutions and civil wars just read The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End by Robert Gerwarth instead. I'm sure there are plenty of books on the Red Scare and the unions in 1919 America but I haven't read any of them.
Narrative and chronological history of 1919. The writing style is pretty good but more focused on the narrative than analysis. A little bit of prior knowledge of the political time period might be helpful but I don't think it is needed. The book is mostly about two topics -
1 - The post-WWI revolutions and civil wars in Europe, particularly Germany. These parts are decent imo and I personally found them to be the more enjoyable parts of the book. Despite the book being about the Western reaction to communism there isn't that much on the Russian Civil War beyond broad details to follow what was going on. The topic of the Russian Civil War is mostly just the Western leaders and politicians arguing over whether to continue the military intervention there. The political section is very focused on Europe and to a lesser extent the USA, there is a short chapter on the colonial issues (India with Amritsar and the Third Anglo-Afghan War) but it isn't that good.
And 2 - Industrial disputes and how the fear of the Bolsheviks and Bolshevism was used by employers and governments to smear striking unions with mostly ordinary economic concerns (wages, hours, conditions etc) as being revolutionary communists intent on bringing down the government. While this theme is covered in a range of European countries I'd say the bulk of it is on the USA and the Red Scare. The author is pretty sympathetic to the unions and the workers. There is some content on the racial side of things but it is in the context of communism, the press at the time saying things like the "the blacks are being tainted by Bolshevism" or "Lenin and Trotsky are trying to lure in black support". As I'm not American and a lot of this content is about the USA I didn't enjoy this part as much.
Overall maybe worth a read if you are interested in the post-WWI period as you can get used copies pretty cheap on Amazon nowadays. However the dual focus means that there are better books that focus on one theme or the other. If you want the post-WWI revolutions and civil wars just read The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End by Robert Gerwarth instead. I'm sure there are plenty of books on the Red Scare and the unions in 1919 America but I haven't read any of them.
September 5, 2017
The World on Fire
1919 and Battle with Bolshevism
A definite slow starter, it can be difficult to engage with The World on Fire in the first two or three chapters. But reader endurance is richly awarded here! And becomes remarkably engaging in time as the complexities of the world of 1919, and the expanding reactions to Bolshevism, grow vibrant and contextually rich.
The idea of the world being aflame is rather more to do with the fallout of war ravished Europe, and the disenfranchisement of returning soldiers, war-economy employees now forced to adjust along with weary national strategies, and massive starvation and unrest in those countries. Bolshevism plays an antagonist role to the Allied powers and the interests of the victors and the defeated across ruined and emerging nations in Europe. Preying upon dissent and political upheaval.
The Comintern depicted as a sinister, power hungry entity which over extends past the borders of Russia to the satellite and ‘bridge’ states of the east into western Europe for the revolution. World-wide revolution fixates both Lenin and Trotsky despite the disastrous throes of their own Civil War. Which sees them struggling for their own political survival even as they attempt to plant agents within every Western nation (succeeding only in minor ways, with ability to do little else regardless of those agents’ success), and their accompanying colonials in Asia such as India and Afghanistan in the case of the British.
I would have liked to see more emphasis on the Polish-Soviet War, and less British bias in the opening chapters, but the text is analytical, precise and surprisingly immersive for such a broad and spiralling topic at a very complex time in world history.
Post-war Germany is very intense in its telling here. Always engaging however, and the radical frameworks for the right in Munich and Bavaria that would cradle ex- Freikorps and militarists for the rise of Nazism is established in The World On Fire with miniate attention to detail as far as I can see (I have not studied this specific paradigm in detail however). I would say that for this, or the history of worker-employer relations in Western Europe, or most predominately for the truth of 1919 America’s own authoritarian route, one should read this book.
Everything else is interesting but a little scattered with no great cohesive structure except that the first chapters are based earlier then the last. Otherwise locations and times are mumbled about. And though a good take on the year 1919, it feels that much is left out in this history. Which if read as the title and subject blurb suggests, such have focused more on those places specifically effected by Bolshevism. With the countries who just pissed themselves a little over it being of secondary note, not the other way around as this book would have it. It is either due to an absence of effort or of knowledge on the relevant events to the East, that the author focuses on Britain and America most after Germany. It does not feel appropriate and does so less as the story is unfolded.
Surely the Polish-Soviet War, the actual war with Bolshevism, should have received more than two pages at the end. And the Balkans, Ukraine, and accompanying satellite state of the former Tsardom should have been painted with grander kudos then as the backdrop to American and British economic and social unrests, which as we very well know held next to nothing akin with the Bolshevism. Including inspiration nine out of every ten times. As much as Lenin and Trotsky would have liked to manipulate from afar, in 1919 they barely held the region around Moscow at times. Their tendrils could not penetrate the more liberal democracies such as Britain.
An actual book of this nature, quite like this but more squarely focused on Germany and everything further east, rather than the lunacy and scapegoating of the more western establishments, may have being a more appropriate basis for the study of this book.
Not essential, but The World On Fire is worth a read.
Now just for a continued rant if you dare gander….
Now just to say something about 1919 America as investigated here, because I think it is the most worthy and noteworthy discussion presented. Namely what is catalogued here alongside all the vile reasonings and parasitic channels of industrial organisation and control, is the purposeful delegitimization of socialist thinking in America. Alongside the devaluing of labour and private rights guaranteed to American citizens in the Constitution.
The Destruction of the ‘Left’ in the United States, from the few actual Communists to the most grassroot Anarchists, Socialists or non-political labour workers and activists is near total by the end of 1919. If not in a person to person basis, then at least as a professional and constructive counter-arguments to the forces that yet rule America today. The Great Red Scare may have paused with that years closure but it repeated itself again in the 1930s-1980s and bizarrely has rose its head again in 2017 – when there is nary a trace of Lenin, Stalin or any other kind of Communists vision for Russia. Save waste and bureaucracy.
There was no central organisation to these movements across more than a couple state lines at most. Usually confined to a single city or a regional industry or trade, few required the level of note that was collapsed upon them in relation to any radical agenda or ideology. Nevermind the nationwide hysteria that conflated these more often than not, legitimate movements justifying the severe repression that waged in response to them. Opportunistic senators, governors, and Attorney Generals, some opting for presidential nominations preyed on the contrived fears of their citizens. Hoping that they themselves could be perceived heroes and as a man who saved the nation. Each unworthy character in the American strand of this industrial and state oppression seeking more to advance their own careers along the cursus honorum then anything else.
There was never seriously a risk of any kind of uprising let alone. Those that came closet were those that sought to defend themselves from the harrying of security and mob-rule forces. With the Justice Department, the general press and the super-patriot associations being the vanguard and forefront of the brutal instigations and denial of rights in 1919 America.
Regarding all three of these powerhouses this book serves as a fascinating progression package of professional bullshiting to justify means. Usually horrible means. And whatever the guilty-offices and institutes are today, the means of bullshit as written template continues for those who wield power, contriving and exaggerating until words become worthless. Such as the ‘tons’ of subversive literature seized again and again by the likes of the Lusk Committee and J’ Edgar Hoovers BI (Blustering Indictment) agents from indiscriminate organisations, meetings, movements and homes much of who were proved later to have nothing to do with Bolshevik interest.
Furthermore, we move onto the Press solely as the most seamless ruiners examined here. For the crimes invoked by their deliberate misleading and manipulation of the American people, they deserve none of the scholarly, literary or especially journalistic acclaim they now enjoy today, not when there were no disciplinary actions taken against their lies. Much has gone the same today with the 2003 War in Iraq just being one example.
Through orchestrated spectacle and contrived vilification, strikes and protests for labour rights became synonymous with anti-American, anti-State and wholly foreign enterprises of espionages usually on direct order from the Communist Comintern in Russia. There were no real links, often too not even politics involved in these peaceful marches and sit-outs yet they were illustrated as the footsteps of invasion or of a brutal proletarian dictatorship. And with the press’s coverage came the bigoted stereotyping and molesting of Eastern-European and Russian orientated peoples, witch-hunts characterised by strident beliefs in phrenology and racial profiling, but only when it suited the agenda. As Irish cops in Chicago, Catholic to a man were too labelled as atheistic Bolshevistic when protesting the conditions of their pay and work.
‘The hair-splitting over the infringements of liberty’ proclaimed by the Washington Post in the end of the year, ‘would subversive the course of action’ against alien invaders and default ‘enemies’ of America. Most strikers and activists had no connection to or general interest in the continual revolution of Trotsky or the distant ravings of Lenin. Most all citizens in Britain and America who protested the system merely wanted a degree of security on which they could rely in the post-war climate. Given that many were workers and soldiers who had indeed fought for the values of the emerging orders of the Western Allies.
Yet the propaganda instigated by papers and news outlets such as the Washington Post rallied the consent of a misinformed public for total and brutal clampdowns upon their fellow Americans and their rights. This entire book is worth the read at least for the history of illegitimate state and corporate orchestrated press and its entrenched role within policy, public life and the destiny of nations. The Washing Post, the New York Times and the New York World were among a multitude who shamelessly Red-baited the population into capitulation, in the shattering of many wholly innocent people’s lives in 1919. And who created rifts in the expectations of citizens’ rights and right to protest and speech in America that today have led to the storming chasms of eviscerated liberty today.
State-Terror techniques at their finest.
1919 and Battle with Bolshevism
A definite slow starter, it can be difficult to engage with The World on Fire in the first two or three chapters. But reader endurance is richly awarded here! And becomes remarkably engaging in time as the complexities of the world of 1919, and the expanding reactions to Bolshevism, grow vibrant and contextually rich.
The idea of the world being aflame is rather more to do with the fallout of war ravished Europe, and the disenfranchisement of returning soldiers, war-economy employees now forced to adjust along with weary national strategies, and massive starvation and unrest in those countries. Bolshevism plays an antagonist role to the Allied powers and the interests of the victors and the defeated across ruined and emerging nations in Europe. Preying upon dissent and political upheaval.
The Comintern depicted as a sinister, power hungry entity which over extends past the borders of Russia to the satellite and ‘bridge’ states of the east into western Europe for the revolution. World-wide revolution fixates both Lenin and Trotsky despite the disastrous throes of their own Civil War. Which sees them struggling for their own political survival even as they attempt to plant agents within every Western nation (succeeding only in minor ways, with ability to do little else regardless of those agents’ success), and their accompanying colonials in Asia such as India and Afghanistan in the case of the British.
I would have liked to see more emphasis on the Polish-Soviet War, and less British bias in the opening chapters, but the text is analytical, precise and surprisingly immersive for such a broad and spiralling topic at a very complex time in world history.
Post-war Germany is very intense in its telling here. Always engaging however, and the radical frameworks for the right in Munich and Bavaria that would cradle ex- Freikorps and militarists for the rise of Nazism is established in The World On Fire with miniate attention to detail as far as I can see (I have not studied this specific paradigm in detail however). I would say that for this, or the history of worker-employer relations in Western Europe, or most predominately for the truth of 1919 America’s own authoritarian route, one should read this book.
Everything else is interesting but a little scattered with no great cohesive structure except that the first chapters are based earlier then the last. Otherwise locations and times are mumbled about. And though a good take on the year 1919, it feels that much is left out in this history. Which if read as the title and subject blurb suggests, such have focused more on those places specifically effected by Bolshevism. With the countries who just pissed themselves a little over it being of secondary note, not the other way around as this book would have it. It is either due to an absence of effort or of knowledge on the relevant events to the East, that the author focuses on Britain and America most after Germany. It does not feel appropriate and does so less as the story is unfolded.
Surely the Polish-Soviet War, the actual war with Bolshevism, should have received more than two pages at the end. And the Balkans, Ukraine, and accompanying satellite state of the former Tsardom should have been painted with grander kudos then as the backdrop to American and British economic and social unrests, which as we very well know held next to nothing akin with the Bolshevism. Including inspiration nine out of every ten times. As much as Lenin and Trotsky would have liked to manipulate from afar, in 1919 they barely held the region around Moscow at times. Their tendrils could not penetrate the more liberal democracies such as Britain.
An actual book of this nature, quite like this but more squarely focused on Germany and everything further east, rather than the lunacy and scapegoating of the more western establishments, may have being a more appropriate basis for the study of this book.
Not essential, but The World On Fire is worth a read.
Now just for a continued rant if you dare gander….
Now just to say something about 1919 America as investigated here, because I think it is the most worthy and noteworthy discussion presented. Namely what is catalogued here alongside all the vile reasonings and parasitic channels of industrial organisation and control, is the purposeful delegitimization of socialist thinking in America. Alongside the devaluing of labour and private rights guaranteed to American citizens in the Constitution.
The Destruction of the ‘Left’ in the United States, from the few actual Communists to the most grassroot Anarchists, Socialists or non-political labour workers and activists is near total by the end of 1919. If not in a person to person basis, then at least as a professional and constructive counter-arguments to the forces that yet rule America today. The Great Red Scare may have paused with that years closure but it repeated itself again in the 1930s-1980s and bizarrely has rose its head again in 2017 – when there is nary a trace of Lenin, Stalin or any other kind of Communists vision for Russia. Save waste and bureaucracy.
There was no central organisation to these movements across more than a couple state lines at most. Usually confined to a single city or a regional industry or trade, few required the level of note that was collapsed upon them in relation to any radical agenda or ideology. Nevermind the nationwide hysteria that conflated these more often than not, legitimate movements justifying the severe repression that waged in response to them. Opportunistic senators, governors, and Attorney Generals, some opting for presidential nominations preyed on the contrived fears of their citizens. Hoping that they themselves could be perceived heroes and as a man who saved the nation. Each unworthy character in the American strand of this industrial and state oppression seeking more to advance their own careers along the cursus honorum then anything else.
There was never seriously a risk of any kind of uprising let alone. Those that came closet were those that sought to defend themselves from the harrying of security and mob-rule forces. With the Justice Department, the general press and the super-patriot associations being the vanguard and forefront of the brutal instigations and denial of rights in 1919 America.
Regarding all three of these powerhouses this book serves as a fascinating progression package of professional bullshiting to justify means. Usually horrible means. And whatever the guilty-offices and institutes are today, the means of bullshit as written template continues for those who wield power, contriving and exaggerating until words become worthless. Such as the ‘tons’ of subversive literature seized again and again by the likes of the Lusk Committee and J’ Edgar Hoovers BI (Blustering Indictment) agents from indiscriminate organisations, meetings, movements and homes much of who were proved later to have nothing to do with Bolshevik interest.
Furthermore, we move onto the Press solely as the most seamless ruiners examined here. For the crimes invoked by their deliberate misleading and manipulation of the American people, they deserve none of the scholarly, literary or especially journalistic acclaim they now enjoy today, not when there were no disciplinary actions taken against their lies. Much has gone the same today with the 2003 War in Iraq just being one example.
Through orchestrated spectacle and contrived vilification, strikes and protests for labour rights became synonymous with anti-American, anti-State and wholly foreign enterprises of espionages usually on direct order from the Communist Comintern in Russia. There were no real links, often too not even politics involved in these peaceful marches and sit-outs yet they were illustrated as the footsteps of invasion or of a brutal proletarian dictatorship. And with the press’s coverage came the bigoted stereotyping and molesting of Eastern-European and Russian orientated peoples, witch-hunts characterised by strident beliefs in phrenology and racial profiling, but only when it suited the agenda. As Irish cops in Chicago, Catholic to a man were too labelled as atheistic Bolshevistic when protesting the conditions of their pay and work.
‘The hair-splitting over the infringements of liberty’ proclaimed by the Washington Post in the end of the year, ‘would subversive the course of action’ against alien invaders and default ‘enemies’ of America. Most strikers and activists had no connection to or general interest in the continual revolution of Trotsky or the distant ravings of Lenin. Most all citizens in Britain and America who protested the system merely wanted a degree of security on which they could rely in the post-war climate. Given that many were workers and soldiers who had indeed fought for the values of the emerging orders of the Western Allies.
Yet the propaganda instigated by papers and news outlets such as the Washington Post rallied the consent of a misinformed public for total and brutal clampdowns upon their fellow Americans and their rights. This entire book is worth the read at least for the history of illegitimate state and corporate orchestrated press and its entrenched role within policy, public life and the destiny of nations. The Washing Post, the New York Times and the New York World were among a multitude who shamelessly Red-baited the population into capitulation, in the shattering of many wholly innocent people’s lives in 1919. And who created rifts in the expectations of citizens’ rights and right to protest and speech in America that today have led to the storming chasms of eviscerated liberty today.
State-Terror techniques at their finest.
December 21, 2012
A fascinating book on the international repercussions of the Bolshevik seizure of power; I find Read's writing both skillful and full of dry understated ironies and humor. It has real literary value as well as historical analysis. I found it hard to put down. So much for the claim that the author is only a writer of children's literature. Perhaps that experience is why his writing is so much better than academic writers or political theorists. Do we critique E.B. White's essays because he wrote Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little? I think not.
The book starts out with two fitting quotes:
"We are running a race with Bolshevism, and the world is on fire." -Woodrow Wilson, Paris, March 1919.
"They will say 'How can we leave them in peace when they set about setting the world on fire?' to that I would answer, 'We are at war, messieurs!" -Vladimir Lenin, Third Comintern, Moscow, March 1919.
Or as Trotsky said, "We were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sanctity of human life...To make the individual sacred, we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And that can only be solved by blood and iron."
Oddly, it was Trotsky who protested to Lenin, "That's dictatorship you're advocating," to which Lenin replied, "There is no other way."
This book is not really about the Russian Revolution. It does cover that event in a marvelously brief and powerful Prologue. And it goes on with an overview of the Civil War. But what Read really does show is how the hysteria Bolshevism produced played out in many other parts of the world. While this global perspective may include some mistakes , it does provide a truly global comparative view, and it is full of interesting gems that those trained in national histories might miss. And while there is little detail beyond 1919 -- a common fault in "pivotal year" books -- he does indeed mention in passing later developments. I found the brief reference to post 9/11 hysteria relevant. As Twain said, history does not repeat itself, but it echoes. I suppose one could also use 1949, the year of Communist China, as another catalyst of political hysteria, evidenced by McCarthyism in the United States.
Numerous fascinating but forgotten events that occurred as aftershocks of the Russian revolution are portrayed in Read's magnificent work: Allied military intervention in Russia, communist uprisings in Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria,terrorist bombings by radicals and anarchists in the US and Spain, J. Edgar Hoover's hunt for American communists, the development of the 3rd Comintern,street battles in South America, the Polish-Bolshevik War, the Third Anglo-Afghan war, French military intervention in the Crimea, and the rise of Mussolini's fascists. Another fascinating but forgotten aspect is British naval attacks on the Bolshevik military facilities, even after the 1919 Allied military interventions at Archangel and Vladivostok.
Read also details how the rise of militant, expansionist Bolshevik internationalism caused imperial powers, especially Britain, to mistakenly cast deep-rooted nationalist movements as conspiratorial Bolshevik reactionaries, thus resulting in their repression.
The Brest-Litovsk treaty is portrayed as a shameful peace forced through by Lenin. On one page he claims that Trotsky was forced by Lenin to vote for it. This is complete nonsense. All documentation and historical accounts record that Lenin was in a minority over supporting the peace. Only after, the party opted for Trotsky's no war-no-peace solution and this failed, did Trotsky(by prior consent with Lenin) change his vote. The vote in favor of the peace squeaked through my his 1 vote.
Read also describes the invasion of British Embassy by Bolsheviks in 1918. Read makes this sound as some diabolical anti-Western, arbitrary gesture made by Lenin. In fact, Lockhart, British diplomat, was arrested for actively arming and supporting uprisings and assassinations. The embassy was raided to arrest him. Surely no other government including US would tolerate this as well. Then again, I'm not sure if this arrest was entirely legal, either.
I do wish he had used Japan as another example. After all, Japanese troops did stay in Siberia for a disastrous three years in hopes that the revolution would fail. Few nations had a greater fear of communism in that era than Japan, and it blinded them to danger from the right. The Tokyo urban riots of 1919 scared the leadership so much they imposed rice price controls that impoverished farmers.
Other than that,a fascinating book, and I would highly recommend it.
The book starts out with two fitting quotes:
"We are running a race with Bolshevism, and the world is on fire." -Woodrow Wilson, Paris, March 1919.
"They will say 'How can we leave them in peace when they set about setting the world on fire?' to that I would answer, 'We are at war, messieurs!" -Vladimir Lenin, Third Comintern, Moscow, March 1919.
Or as Trotsky said, "We were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sanctity of human life...To make the individual sacred, we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And that can only be solved by blood and iron."
Oddly, it was Trotsky who protested to Lenin, "That's dictatorship you're advocating," to which Lenin replied, "There is no other way."
This book is not really about the Russian Revolution. It does cover that event in a marvelously brief and powerful Prologue. And it goes on with an overview of the Civil War. But what Read really does show is how the hysteria Bolshevism produced played out in many other parts of the world. While this global perspective may include some mistakes , it does provide a truly global comparative view, and it is full of interesting gems that those trained in national histories might miss. And while there is little detail beyond 1919 -- a common fault in "pivotal year" books -- he does indeed mention in passing later developments. I found the brief reference to post 9/11 hysteria relevant. As Twain said, history does not repeat itself, but it echoes. I suppose one could also use 1949, the year of Communist China, as another catalyst of political hysteria, evidenced by McCarthyism in the United States.
Numerous fascinating but forgotten events that occurred as aftershocks of the Russian revolution are portrayed in Read's magnificent work: Allied military intervention in Russia, communist uprisings in Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria,terrorist bombings by radicals and anarchists in the US and Spain, J. Edgar Hoover's hunt for American communists, the development of the 3rd Comintern,street battles in South America, the Polish-Bolshevik War, the Third Anglo-Afghan war, French military intervention in the Crimea, and the rise of Mussolini's fascists. Another fascinating but forgotten aspect is British naval attacks on the Bolshevik military facilities, even after the 1919 Allied military interventions at Archangel and Vladivostok.
Read also details how the rise of militant, expansionist Bolshevik internationalism caused imperial powers, especially Britain, to mistakenly cast deep-rooted nationalist movements as conspiratorial Bolshevik reactionaries, thus resulting in their repression.
The Brest-Litovsk treaty is portrayed as a shameful peace forced through by Lenin. On one page he claims that Trotsky was forced by Lenin to vote for it. This is complete nonsense. All documentation and historical accounts record that Lenin was in a minority over supporting the peace. Only after, the party opted for Trotsky's no war-no-peace solution and this failed, did Trotsky(by prior consent with Lenin) change his vote. The vote in favor of the peace squeaked through my his 1 vote.
Read also describes the invasion of British Embassy by Bolsheviks in 1918. Read makes this sound as some diabolical anti-Western, arbitrary gesture made by Lenin. In fact, Lockhart, British diplomat, was arrested for actively arming and supporting uprisings and assassinations. The embassy was raided to arrest him. Surely no other government including US would tolerate this as well. Then again, I'm not sure if this arrest was entirely legal, either.
I do wish he had used Japan as another example. After all, Japanese troops did stay in Siberia for a disastrous three years in hopes that the revolution would fail. Few nations had a greater fear of communism in that era than Japan, and it blinded them to danger from the right. The Tokyo urban riots of 1919 scared the leadership so much they imposed rice price controls that impoverished farmers.
Other than that,a fascinating book, and I would highly recommend it.
October 3, 2013
Wereldbrand van Anthony Read is een goed, vlot geschreven boek over het jaar na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Het schetst hoe in de Westerse wereld in toenemende mate in de waan kwam van het 'rode gevaar'. Conflicten die in feite niets met het communisme te maken hadden, werden opgeklopt tot pogingen tot revolutie. Realiteitszin lijkt ver weg te zijn.
Als er dus één ding is wat Anthony Read laat zien, dan is het dat iedereen, elk volk, gemakkelijk waanzinnige, irrationele ideeën kan krijgen met gevaarlijke gevolgen. Het is dus niet alleen een beschrijving van wat er is gebeurd, maar tegelijkertijd impliciet ook een waarschuwing over wat er kan gebeuren als we de rationaliteit laten varen en met de waan meegaan.
Het werk is zeer omvattend en beschrijft de gebeurtenissen in Rusland, Duitsland, Oost-Europa, Verenigde Staten en Groot-Brittannië. Deze veelomvattendheid is te begrijpen, maar werkt af en toe hinderlijk. Omdat Read de gelijktijdigheid van gebeurtenissen wil laten zien, schakelt hij regelmatig tussen de landen. Het duurt dan af en toe even voor je weer weet wat er ook alweer allemaal gebeurd was. Hoewel bewonderenswaardig doet het dus enigszins af aan de leesbaarheid van het boek.
Toch is Wereldbrand al met al een aanrader om te lezen. Het schetst in duidelijke taal verschillende ontwikkelingen en geeft inzicht in een vrij onbekend onderdeel van de geschiedenis.
Als er dus één ding is wat Anthony Read laat zien, dan is het dat iedereen, elk volk, gemakkelijk waanzinnige, irrationele ideeën kan krijgen met gevaarlijke gevolgen. Het is dus niet alleen een beschrijving van wat er is gebeurd, maar tegelijkertijd impliciet ook een waarschuwing over wat er kan gebeuren als we de rationaliteit laten varen en met de waan meegaan.
Het werk is zeer omvattend en beschrijft de gebeurtenissen in Rusland, Duitsland, Oost-Europa, Verenigde Staten en Groot-Brittannië. Deze veelomvattendheid is te begrijpen, maar werkt af en toe hinderlijk. Omdat Read de gelijktijdigheid van gebeurtenissen wil laten zien, schakelt hij regelmatig tussen de landen. Het duurt dan af en toe even voor je weer weet wat er ook alweer allemaal gebeurd was. Hoewel bewonderenswaardig doet het dus enigszins af aan de leesbaarheid van het boek.
Toch is Wereldbrand al met al een aanrader om te lezen. Het schetst in duidelijke taal verschillende ontwikkelingen en geeft inzicht in een vrij onbekend onderdeel van de geschiedenis.
April 18, 2024
Great armchair history of post ww1
May 4, 2018
The book had lots of material I was familiar with regarding the Bolsheviks, collapse of Europe, and the American labor troubles, and here they are discussed and displayed in depth in well-researched and compelling chapters. Some parts…a LOT of British labor disputes…seem like a slog, but Read effectively shows how much chaos came in the wake of WWI, especially due to the violence, Wilson's disrupting the European order and the inability of anyone to control the violence unleashed by the war, Lenin and his hopes to export communism, and inflation which caused many of the economic troubles.
Certainly, things were jarred and ripped up, and the unrest throughout Europe indicated this. Read goes deep into the German troubles and the Freikrops, the instability of eastern europe, and his recounting of the horrid labor violence in America, especially the government's war against the IWW and the Palmer raids, are disturbing. We really had a dictatorship, and furor over Bolshevism shows how useless are laws and decorum when a mob mentality takes over. Really, we have it easy compared to then.
The only thing missing might have been more discussion of Hitler, who simply sat things out, and the implications are the right-wing violence created a world for him to step in. Also, the terrible famine in Germany the allies created and maintained, as well other famines throughout Europe. Read's discussions of Herbert Hoover and J.Edgar (who got started as a file clerk for Palmer, making lists of 'Bolshies' ) is good.
I also read where someone thought read didn't talk enough about the battle in 1919-1920 between the Soviets and Poland, where Pilsudski saved his country from a Soviet invasion. A good analysis of the battles can be found in J.C.F. Fuller's Decisive Battles of the Western World.
The influenza epidemic is only hinted at once. Strange how something so deadly was in effect erased from the collective memory of people. I certainly recall a lot of pop references to the period. If you see the movie Eight Men Out, this book gives a deep understanding of the period, even to an advertisement from then asking 'Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?'
I enjoyed the book, and it gave a few shivers at how easily civilization can be overturned.
Certainly, things were jarred and ripped up, and the unrest throughout Europe indicated this. Read goes deep into the German troubles and the Freikrops, the instability of eastern europe, and his recounting of the horrid labor violence in America, especially the government's war against the IWW and the Palmer raids, are disturbing. We really had a dictatorship, and furor over Bolshevism shows how useless are laws and decorum when a mob mentality takes over. Really, we have it easy compared to then.
The only thing missing might have been more discussion of Hitler, who simply sat things out, and the implications are the right-wing violence created a world for him to step in. Also, the terrible famine in Germany the allies created and maintained, as well other famines throughout Europe. Read's discussions of Herbert Hoover and J.Edgar (who got started as a file clerk for Palmer, making lists of 'Bolshies' ) is good.
I also read where someone thought read didn't talk enough about the battle in 1919-1920 between the Soviets and Poland, where Pilsudski saved his country from a Soviet invasion. A good analysis of the battles can be found in J.C.F. Fuller's Decisive Battles of the Western World.
The influenza epidemic is only hinted at once. Strange how something so deadly was in effect erased from the collective memory of people. I certainly recall a lot of pop references to the period. If you see the movie Eight Men Out, this book gives a deep understanding of the period, even to an advertisement from then asking 'Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?'
I enjoyed the book, and it gave a few shivers at how easily civilization can be overturned.
July 5, 2022
I have been meaning to get around to this book for several years now, but I'm actually glad I waited until now — post-pandemic — to read it. Since Brexit, the Jan.6 insurrection, Covid-19, the Russo-Ukraine war and various and sundry other disasters in the Western world, we have people running around declaring that we are living in The End Times. Well, we been through other apocalyptic years and 1919 was one of them.
Four years of World War and the destruction of the great empires of the time was followed by an unrivaled period of social upheaval. This book covers a very brief period of history, specifically from the Armistice of 11 November 1918 through early 1920.
The subtitle is a bit misleading; some of the content deals with Bolshevism specifically; the bulk of it has to do with the reaction to Bolshevism, and the first Great Red Scare. There is so much going on here that I initially found all the little factoids rather off-putting. That, and what I initially perceived as an anti-soviet bias. What seems like bias at the beginning of the book resolves itself as Read goes along, and it becomes more of a "all the devils are here" kind of feeling.
The astonishing cast of characters includes not just Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, but Eugene Debs, John Reed, Samuel Gompers, John L. Lewis, Emma Goldman, "Mother" Jones; Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover & Calvin Coolidge; Lloyd George & Winston Churchill.
Dry and rough going in places, but all in all the book is a font of historical trivia.
Four years of World War and the destruction of the great empires of the time was followed by an unrivaled period of social upheaval. This book covers a very brief period of history, specifically from the Armistice of 11 November 1918 through early 1920.
The subtitle is a bit misleading; some of the content deals with Bolshevism specifically; the bulk of it has to do with the reaction to Bolshevism, and the first Great Red Scare. There is so much going on here that I initially found all the little factoids rather off-putting. That, and what I initially perceived as an anti-soviet bias. What seems like bias at the beginning of the book resolves itself as Read goes along, and it becomes more of a "all the devils are here" kind of feeling.
The astonishing cast of characters includes not just Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, but Eugene Debs, John Reed, Samuel Gompers, John L. Lewis, Emma Goldman, "Mother" Jones; Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover & Calvin Coolidge; Lloyd George & Winston Churchill.
Dry and rough going in places, but all in all the book is a font of historical trivia.
May 2, 2010
Oh, how a once-mighty word can fall. "Bolshevism," at one time sure to inspire fear and loathing, somewhere along the way lapsed into ridiculousness, like "beatnik" or "babaloo." A quick scan of the Chronicle archives reveals only six appearances in these pages in the past decade, and one of those was a Ray Ratto reference to "the creeping Bolshevism that comes from paying an outside linebacker 'quarterback money.' "
Once a word has become ridiculous, it's hard to fathom the power it once had. It's hard to believe that vague, unsubstantiated rumors of Bolshevik activity were enough to make people so jumpy in 1919 that news of the so-called "Centralia Massacre" in Washington state - erroneously presented at the time as proof of the alleged Red menace - led to a spectacular display of violence in the Bay Area.
"A rampaging mob literally demolished every radical meeting place in Oakland to show that 'law and order shall prevail,' " Anthony Read tells us at one point in "The World on Fire," his whirlwind global survey of 1919 and the historical conflagrations playing out in the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union at the time.
If as recently as a few years ago the feverish excesses of the Great Red Scare of 1919 summoned in the contemporary reader a certain smug self-congratulation at how far we had come (cue up appropriate pictures of Gorbachev and Reagan, and of Yeltsin on a tank), that pleasant sensation has since yielded to the sickening thud of self-recognition. Once again we have become experts in the mechanics of how unscrupulous fostering of fear can stampede otherwise decent people into condoning everything from unlawful detentions to torture.
Early on in his book, Read seems to have inserted some last-minute references to al Qaeda, somewhat clumsily noting that in 1919, the word "bolshevism" was new, becoming widely known only after Nov. 7, 1917, when "Lenin's Bolshevik Party had seized power in Russia. In that short time, however, the name and the terror it represented had swept into the world's consciousness as quickly as the name 'al-Qaeda' would some eighty years later, to become as big a bogey in the Western world as militant Islam in the early years of the twenty-first century."
The fatuousness of the forced comparison draws us up short: as quickly? Whom is Read trying to kid here? Only a small percentage of Americans had heard of al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden on Sept. 10, 2001, and within hours, millions of Americans suddenly became cable-news-schooled experts. Nothing happened that quickly in 1917.
But the key part of the comparison is the "big bogey" part. What emerges from looking back at the Great Red Scare of 1919 is a shocking testimonial to how craven people can be, how thuggish and quick to discard the Constitution, if they are afraid - and, in particular, if a runaway media mob chooses to fan the flames of fear and anger and twist information to serve their purposes.
Read is the author or co-author of many well-received books on World War II, including "The Fall of Berlin," which is nothing if not thorough. He knows his material so well that he sometimes comes across as too opinionated, as when he plays favorites (his Woodrow Wilson is a contemptible prig; his Herbert Hoover a man to gush over) or slips into mawkishness: "By early 1919, only the defeated nations had been infected to any serious degree by the plague bacillus of Bolshevism."
But Read's mastery of his material is truly a marvel, and as he unscrolls his highly detailed accounts from far corners of the globe, the narrative gains a cumulative impact that is potent and liberating. He sums up the early days of the Soviet Union with a deadpan recounting of an incident in which Lenin passed a note to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, asking how many "dangerous revolutionaries" they had locked up. He wrote "about 1,500" and passed the note back to Lenin, who read it and marked it with an X and gave it back to Dzerzhinsky, who then gave the order to execute all 1,500.
"Lenin, however, had not ordered their executions," Read tells us. "Dzerzhinsky was not aware that he always marked anything he had read with a cross, to show that he had seen it. There is no record of Dzerzhinsky's being disciplined or even reprimanded for his action. It was simply accepted as part of the Terror."
Even for someone familiar with German history - or as in the case of this reviewer, someone who lives in Berlin, two blocks away from a plaque denoting a building where Lenin took part in a workers' meeting - much of the material comes as a revelation. Who knew, for example, that the beer-loving Bavarians, famous mostly for giving us BMW and lederhosen, had their own flirtation with bolshevism, and that at one point a former Berlin newspaper critic named Kurt Eisner headed up a socialist revolution in Munich that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy?
The most damning material concerns the role of the press in the United States in turning understandable concern about bolshevism in Europe into something like all-out panic. Every reporter should have to read this book and mull over similarities to present-day group behavior. Rumor was printed as fact, union activity was consistently portrayed as un-American, and facts were wildly distorted, as when an estimated 365,000 steelworkers went on strike that September, and the papers falsely reported that the strike was a flop.
" 'CONDITIONS ALMOST NORMAL IN ALL STEEL PLANTS,' crowed the headlines in the Pittsburgh papers," Read writes. " 'STRIKE CRUMBLING,' 'WORKERS FLOCK BACK TO THEIR JOBS.' The number of strikers reported as returning to work added up to 4,800,000 - almost ten times the total number of men employed in the entire industry. Coincidentally, between 27 September and 7 October the same newspapers carried no fewer than thirty full-page advertisements, in nine different languages, exhorting the workers to return to their jobs and to 'Stand by America.' " {sbox}
Steve Kettmann's latest book is "Letter to a New President," co-written with Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, due out in June from St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne Books.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi...
This article appeared on page M - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Once a word has become ridiculous, it's hard to fathom the power it once had. It's hard to believe that vague, unsubstantiated rumors of Bolshevik activity were enough to make people so jumpy in 1919 that news of the so-called "Centralia Massacre" in Washington state - erroneously presented at the time as proof of the alleged Red menace - led to a spectacular display of violence in the Bay Area.
"A rampaging mob literally demolished every radical meeting place in Oakland to show that 'law and order shall prevail,' " Anthony Read tells us at one point in "The World on Fire," his whirlwind global survey of 1919 and the historical conflagrations playing out in the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union at the time.
If as recently as a few years ago the feverish excesses of the Great Red Scare of 1919 summoned in the contemporary reader a certain smug self-congratulation at how far we had come (cue up appropriate pictures of Gorbachev and Reagan, and of Yeltsin on a tank), that pleasant sensation has since yielded to the sickening thud of self-recognition. Once again we have become experts in the mechanics of how unscrupulous fostering of fear can stampede otherwise decent people into condoning everything from unlawful detentions to torture.
Early on in his book, Read seems to have inserted some last-minute references to al Qaeda, somewhat clumsily noting that in 1919, the word "bolshevism" was new, becoming widely known only after Nov. 7, 1917, when "Lenin's Bolshevik Party had seized power in Russia. In that short time, however, the name and the terror it represented had swept into the world's consciousness as quickly as the name 'al-Qaeda' would some eighty years later, to become as big a bogey in the Western world as militant Islam in the early years of the twenty-first century."
The fatuousness of the forced comparison draws us up short: as quickly? Whom is Read trying to kid here? Only a small percentage of Americans had heard of al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden on Sept. 10, 2001, and within hours, millions of Americans suddenly became cable-news-schooled experts. Nothing happened that quickly in 1917.
But the key part of the comparison is the "big bogey" part. What emerges from looking back at the Great Red Scare of 1919 is a shocking testimonial to how craven people can be, how thuggish and quick to discard the Constitution, if they are afraid - and, in particular, if a runaway media mob chooses to fan the flames of fear and anger and twist information to serve their purposes.
Read is the author or co-author of many well-received books on World War II, including "The Fall of Berlin," which is nothing if not thorough. He knows his material so well that he sometimes comes across as too opinionated, as when he plays favorites (his Woodrow Wilson is a contemptible prig; his Herbert Hoover a man to gush over) or slips into mawkishness: "By early 1919, only the defeated nations had been infected to any serious degree by the plague bacillus of Bolshevism."
But Read's mastery of his material is truly a marvel, and as he unscrolls his highly detailed accounts from far corners of the globe, the narrative gains a cumulative impact that is potent and liberating. He sums up the early days of the Soviet Union with a deadpan recounting of an incident in which Lenin passed a note to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, asking how many "dangerous revolutionaries" they had locked up. He wrote "about 1,500" and passed the note back to Lenin, who read it and marked it with an X and gave it back to Dzerzhinsky, who then gave the order to execute all 1,500.
"Lenin, however, had not ordered their executions," Read tells us. "Dzerzhinsky was not aware that he always marked anything he had read with a cross, to show that he had seen it. There is no record of Dzerzhinsky's being disciplined or even reprimanded for his action. It was simply accepted as part of the Terror."
Even for someone familiar with German history - or as in the case of this reviewer, someone who lives in Berlin, two blocks away from a plaque denoting a building where Lenin took part in a workers' meeting - much of the material comes as a revelation. Who knew, for example, that the beer-loving Bavarians, famous mostly for giving us BMW and lederhosen, had their own flirtation with bolshevism, and that at one point a former Berlin newspaper critic named Kurt Eisner headed up a socialist revolution in Munich that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy?
The most damning material concerns the role of the press in the United States in turning understandable concern about bolshevism in Europe into something like all-out panic. Every reporter should have to read this book and mull over similarities to present-day group behavior. Rumor was printed as fact, union activity was consistently portrayed as un-American, and facts were wildly distorted, as when an estimated 365,000 steelworkers went on strike that September, and the papers falsely reported that the strike was a flop.
" 'CONDITIONS ALMOST NORMAL IN ALL STEEL PLANTS,' crowed the headlines in the Pittsburgh papers," Read writes. " 'STRIKE CRUMBLING,' 'WORKERS FLOCK BACK TO THEIR JOBS.' The number of strikers reported as returning to work added up to 4,800,000 - almost ten times the total number of men employed in the entire industry. Coincidentally, between 27 September and 7 October the same newspapers carried no fewer than thirty full-page advertisements, in nine different languages, exhorting the workers to return to their jobs and to 'Stand by America.' " {sbox}
Steve Kettmann's latest book is "Letter to a New President," co-written with Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, due out in June from St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne Books.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi...
This article appeared on page M - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
June 28, 2019
I confess that I was a bit disappointed at first... the first chapter seems to indicate that this would focus mainly on the bungled military operations that took part in response to the Soviet Revolution. However, once I got the feel for what the author was doing, the text flowed smoothly, pointing out how various countries reacted with differing levels of alarm and concern to the events of 1919. A very useful addition to any World History collection, which fills in an era that is often overlooked in the immediate aftermath of World War I.
April 13, 2019
"We are running a race with Bolshevism, and the world is on fire."
-Woodrow Wilson, March 1919.
Anthony Read is one of those writers who can craft a coherent narrative out of seemingly random parts. Through his prose we are told of the year 1919, the year of the Paris Peace Conference and (one would wish) a better hope for the future. However, as Read remarks, just because the guns on the Western Front are silent does not mean that peace is all pervasive. As Winston Churchill notes, “the war of the giants is over, the war of the pigmies has begun.”
Pigmies indeed. The theme of this book is a sort of global history of the year 1919 the the many conflicts which arose due to the rise of communism in Russia, both perceived and real. Few events are overlooked in Read's quest for total comprehensiveness on the “Battle with Bolshevism” that arose, crafting a decent narrative of events and their significance. In each chapter we move chronologically from month to month, exploring not only the major events such as Kurt Eisner's Bavarian Soviet Republic, the Russian invasion of the Baltic States and Poland, or the Peace Negotiations at Versailles, but also the protests of British conscripts (tired of war but now to be sent to intervene in the Russian Civil War) of workers in Chicago and Winnipeg who strike for better wadges, or the brutal yet allegedly justified evils of the German Freikorps (post-war militia groups of demobilized soldiers) throughout Germany. What the book lacks in depth it makes up for in breadth.
The basic argument that Read makes throughout the book is essentially Ben Franklin's quote that “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." In 1919 Bolshevism is suddenly a magical word to justify all sorts of actions, a synonym for evil, bloodshed, and things “un-American.” Whether it was socialism, syndicalism, liberalism, atheism, left-wing democracy, or a lack of patriotism, all are decried as “Bolshevist” and all are equal in punishment. Whether used out of genuine fear or as an excuse to personally profit, Bolshevism is the universal given cause. Steel workers in Chicago are refused trade unions on the excuse that trade unions are Bolshevik. Every small strike in 1919 is seen as potential Bolshevik revolution waiting to happen, Read argues, regardless if their more complex realities.
However, one critical thing about the book is how it deals with the Revolution in Russia. This is *not* a complete study on the events of the Russian Civil War in 1919, nor is it really focused on the Russian Communists themselves. Lenin, Trotsky and others flit in and out the narrative as needed, but they are by no means the focus of the study. The Russian Civil War and the allied intervention there is covered briefly in the prologue but it remains a diversionary event. Much like it was at the time, the Russian Civil War is a far off event, responsible for the events of the story, but lacking in specifics. While not necessary, an understanding of the Russian Revolution/Civil War would be helpful for anyone seeking to get the full benefit of the narrative.
Additionally, sometimes Read does like to showcase his favorites. Pre-presidency Herbert Hoover is given a glowing review when compared with the worn out Woodrow Wilson. However, Read does remain candid throughout most of the book and, as a fellow historian, I do know the urge to explain when you see a historical figure you feel has been unfairly dismissed or insufficiently explored by past writers. It is questionable, but understandable.
Overall, The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism is a praiseworthy read if you are looking for a general history book on a less-well known topic, well worth the time and money.
-Woodrow Wilson, March 1919.
Anthony Read is one of those writers who can craft a coherent narrative out of seemingly random parts. Through his prose we are told of the year 1919, the year of the Paris Peace Conference and (one would wish) a better hope for the future. However, as Read remarks, just because the guns on the Western Front are silent does not mean that peace is all pervasive. As Winston Churchill notes, “the war of the giants is over, the war of the pigmies has begun.”
Pigmies indeed. The theme of this book is a sort of global history of the year 1919 the the many conflicts which arose due to the rise of communism in Russia, both perceived and real. Few events are overlooked in Read's quest for total comprehensiveness on the “Battle with Bolshevism” that arose, crafting a decent narrative of events and their significance. In each chapter we move chronologically from month to month, exploring not only the major events such as Kurt Eisner's Bavarian Soviet Republic, the Russian invasion of the Baltic States and Poland, or the Peace Negotiations at Versailles, but also the protests of British conscripts (tired of war but now to be sent to intervene in the Russian Civil War) of workers in Chicago and Winnipeg who strike for better wadges, or the brutal yet allegedly justified evils of the German Freikorps (post-war militia groups of demobilized soldiers) throughout Germany. What the book lacks in depth it makes up for in breadth.
The basic argument that Read makes throughout the book is essentially Ben Franklin's quote that “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." In 1919 Bolshevism is suddenly a magical word to justify all sorts of actions, a synonym for evil, bloodshed, and things “un-American.” Whether it was socialism, syndicalism, liberalism, atheism, left-wing democracy, or a lack of patriotism, all are decried as “Bolshevist” and all are equal in punishment. Whether used out of genuine fear or as an excuse to personally profit, Bolshevism is the universal given cause. Steel workers in Chicago are refused trade unions on the excuse that trade unions are Bolshevik. Every small strike in 1919 is seen as potential Bolshevik revolution waiting to happen, Read argues, regardless if their more complex realities.
However, one critical thing about the book is how it deals with the Revolution in Russia. This is *not* a complete study on the events of the Russian Civil War in 1919, nor is it really focused on the Russian Communists themselves. Lenin, Trotsky and others flit in and out the narrative as needed, but they are by no means the focus of the study. The Russian Civil War and the allied intervention there is covered briefly in the prologue but it remains a diversionary event. Much like it was at the time, the Russian Civil War is a far off event, responsible for the events of the story, but lacking in specifics. While not necessary, an understanding of the Russian Revolution/Civil War would be helpful for anyone seeking to get the full benefit of the narrative.
Additionally, sometimes Read does like to showcase his favorites. Pre-presidency Herbert Hoover is given a glowing review when compared with the worn out Woodrow Wilson. However, Read does remain candid throughout most of the book and, as a fellow historian, I do know the urge to explain when you see a historical figure you feel has been unfairly dismissed or insufficiently explored by past writers. It is questionable, but understandable.
Overall, The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism is a praiseworthy read if you are looking for a general history book on a less-well known topic, well worth the time and money.
July 18, 2008
After visiting St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Estonia a couple of months ago, I became extremely interested in the history of Germany and the Baltic region in general.
I saw this book as newly published in Barnes & Noble and picked it up. It was a fantastic history of one fo the most tumultuous years in modern history, 1919. The Versailles Peace Treaty ending World War I had been recently adopted but the world remained on the brink of disaster as Bolshevism took root in Russia and began to spread itself throughout the rest of the world.
This period of American history has been overshadowed by World War II, however, much of what happened in the 1930s and 1940s can be directly linked to 1919.
I also want to read "The Illusion of Victory" by Thomas Fleming and "Savage Peace" by Ann Hagedorn.
I saw this book as newly published in Barnes & Noble and picked it up. It was a fantastic history of one fo the most tumultuous years in modern history, 1919. The Versailles Peace Treaty ending World War I had been recently adopted but the world remained on the brink of disaster as Bolshevism took root in Russia and began to spread itself throughout the rest of the world.
This period of American history has been overshadowed by World War II, however, much of what happened in the 1930s and 1940s can be directly linked to 1919.
I also want to read "The Illusion of Victory" by Thomas Fleming and "Savage Peace" by Ann Hagedorn.
August 12, 2014
Good book if you want to know more about the Russian Revolution, and you don't want a scientific book
Read
April 28, 2014I had no idea of the back ground of Bolshevism. How and who or even where. This was interesting as our whole century ( 1900's ) was under it's influence and suffered it's effect and impact.
January 4, 2013
Excellent read. What the rest of the world was doing during the rise of communism in Russia.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews