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The Russian Revolution
WW II's abrupt end brought us many gifts, none stranger than the papers of the German State. These were captured virtually complete, and to this day give up secrets. One that emerges from Alan Moorehead's research is the extent to which Germany was involved in the Russian Revolution. The ironic result of this clandestine maneuver was Germany's sure defeat on the Eastern front in WW II. "It all forms a fascinating chapter in the history of our century," states The Book-of-the-Month Club, "and the man ignorant of how that chapter unrolled is minus the keys to an understanding of his own time and so in part himself--Moorehead hands us that key."
301 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
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362 people want to read
About the author
Alan Moorehead
98 books91 followersAlan Moorehead was lionised as the literary man of action: the most celebrated war correspondent of World War II; author of award winning books; star travel writer of The New Yorker; pioneer publicist of wildlife conservation. At the height of his success, his writing suddenly stopped and when, 17 years later, his death was announced, he seemed a heroic figure from the past. His fame as a writer gave him the friendship of Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw and Field Marshall Montgomery and the courtship and marriage of his beautiful wife Lucy Milner.
After 1945, he turned to writing books, including Eclipse, Gallipoli (for which he won the Duff Cooper Prize), The White Nile, The Blue Nile, and finally, A Late Education. He was awarded an OBE in 1946, and died in 1983.
After 1945, he turned to writing books, including Eclipse, Gallipoli (for which he won the Duff Cooper Prize), The White Nile, The Blue Nile, and finally, A Late Education. He was awarded an OBE in 1946, and died in 1983.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
May 17, 2025
I give this book a solid 4 stars. It's clearly written as the author gets across the major points he wants to make about the Russian Revolution. Moorehead gives us a lot of detail, but not too much and does a good job telling us a rather complex story in just under 300 pages. I think he also captures the drama of the earthshaking events that unfold in this story. The book was published in 1958 but does not at all feel dated. I don't know know what new information there might be to require an update. I can't think there would be much at all to add or revise...
Moorehead covers events leading up to the Revolution in 1917, with a focus on the reign of Czar Nicholas II. A rather weak man, he believed completely in autocracy--his divine right to rule. His failure to make reforms would lead to the most terrible of consequences for his nation--and for his family and himself. He led his vast empire into the First World War in 1914, his armies ill-equipped, under-supplied, and worst of all, badly led. In the end, the Russian soldiers--peasants in uniform, really--suffered enormous losses and became demoralized. They even turned against some of their officers.. If Nicholas had kept Russia on the defensive, as it had been in 1812 when Napoleon invaded, he might have been able to win the war. But, on the other hand, the Germans in WWI had no intention of conquering Russia. They intended to separate Russian Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine from the Russian Empire--and they did manage to do that before the Armistice of 11/11/1918.
The Russian government collapsed and Nicholas was forced to abdicate in March, 1917. The soldiers had refused to fire on the mobs in the street and even joined them. That was the end for the Czarist regime. The rest of the story shows how shaky the democracy that was developing in Russia was and that it failed by the end of the year. When Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg on November 6&7--with no resistance--this was more of a coup d'etat than a revolution. The Bolsheviks were a small political minority but they were tightly organized under Lenin and his right-hand man Trotsky. Actually, I think it would have been impossible for the Bolsheviks to have taken over the government if it weren't for Lenin. This was definitely a moment in time in which a leader was decisive in changing the course of history. And, ironically so, as Marxism holds that "Great Men" do not determine history, but that history is determined by economic forces ("class struggle"). However, Lenin was a most determined man, completely self-disciplined himself, and he pursued his aims with intense single-mindedness. He proved to be the autocrat that Czar Nicholas had failed to be and, after him, Stalin was a total autocrat, a human monster.
Reading this book in 2021, long after the Soviet Union was consigned to the dustbin of history, my thoughts are that the Russian Revolution of 1917 is still relevant. There is a new czar there now, Putin, and we are still watching to see if a stable democracy can develop in that vast Eurasian land area called "Russia."
Moorehead covers events leading up to the Revolution in 1917, with a focus on the reign of Czar Nicholas II. A rather weak man, he believed completely in autocracy--his divine right to rule. His failure to make reforms would lead to the most terrible of consequences for his nation--and for his family and himself. He led his vast empire into the First World War in 1914, his armies ill-equipped, under-supplied, and worst of all, badly led. In the end, the Russian soldiers--peasants in uniform, really--suffered enormous losses and became demoralized. They even turned against some of their officers.. If Nicholas had kept Russia on the defensive, as it had been in 1812 when Napoleon invaded, he might have been able to win the war. But, on the other hand, the Germans in WWI had no intention of conquering Russia. They intended to separate Russian Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine from the Russian Empire--and they did manage to do that before the Armistice of 11/11/1918.
The Russian government collapsed and Nicholas was forced to abdicate in March, 1917. The soldiers had refused to fire on the mobs in the street and even joined them. That was the end for the Czarist regime. The rest of the story shows how shaky the democracy that was developing in Russia was and that it failed by the end of the year. When Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg on November 6&7--with no resistance--this was more of a coup d'etat than a revolution. The Bolsheviks were a small political minority but they were tightly organized under Lenin and his right-hand man Trotsky. Actually, I think it would have been impossible for the Bolsheviks to have taken over the government if it weren't for Lenin. This was definitely a moment in time in which a leader was decisive in changing the course of history. And, ironically so, as Marxism holds that "Great Men" do not determine history, but that history is determined by economic forces ("class struggle"). However, Lenin was a most determined man, completely self-disciplined himself, and he pursued his aims with intense single-mindedness. He proved to be the autocrat that Czar Nicholas had failed to be and, after him, Stalin was a total autocrat, a human monster.
Reading this book in 2021, long after the Soviet Union was consigned to the dustbin of history, my thoughts are that the Russian Revolution of 1917 is still relevant. There is a new czar there now, Putin, and we are still watching to see if a stable democracy can develop in that vast Eurasian land area called "Russia."
June 9, 2021
Alan Moorehead is an excellent writer. That matters when I'm reading nonfiction. If the subject is interesting, but the writing is boring, I lose interest. The Russian Revolution has fascinated me for many years (well, any major revolutions, really), but Moorehead really brings the politics and the people to life. The beginning is very well done. He makes Lenin, Rasputin, the Empress into characters. He makes their actions and the consequences of their actions into plot points. The middle of the book is a little slow and clunky. He writes at length about the Russian and German connection since he planned his book right after the Wilhelmstrasse files were released, private documents that the German government would've kept private if they had won World War Two. Because they lost, though, well, to the victors belong the spoils. The Allies certainly spoiled Germany's attempts to keep private their negotiations and plots with, along with their infiltrations of, the Russian monarchy and soon-to-be Communist government. The last part of the book, which mostly focuses on the true Bolshevik uprising (you know, the one that took) and its consequences, highlights Moorehead's best writing once again. In fact, the last two pages of the book are among the best of the entire work.
I highly recommend this book. Even though, when Moorehead was writing, Russia was still the Soviet Union, so Moorehead's language about the crisis of the Bolsheviks’ rise to power is very strong, the book is still relevant. It's detailed and focused and really fleshes out an important historical moment. Moorehead's writing is engaging, and I also appreciate the minor details, such as his integration of quotes into his own writing and the way in which he gives credit to his sources. The details can make all the difference sometimes! The sections on Rasputin alone make this book worth reading! Give it a shot if you're ever curious about the Russian Revolution.
I highly recommend this book. Even though, when Moorehead was writing, Russia was still the Soviet Union, so Moorehead's language about the crisis of the Bolsheviks’ rise to power is very strong, the book is still relevant. It's detailed and focused and really fleshes out an important historical moment. Moorehead's writing is engaging, and I also appreciate the minor details, such as his integration of quotes into his own writing and the way in which he gives credit to his sources. The details can make all the difference sometimes! The sections on Rasputin alone make this book worth reading! Give it a shot if you're ever curious about the Russian Revolution.
April 22, 2023
It seems mean to pick on Alan Moorehead's The Russian Revolution, a 1958 volume whose main fault is being a product of its time. Then again, a book by a popular author on an important subject remains notable so long as it remains shelved in libraries and thrift stores. Moorehead, of course, was a gifted writer with a skill for producing readable, novelistic accounts of historical events and personalities (Gallipoli, The White Nile, etc.). But the Russian Revolution is simply too massive a topic to lend itself to the sort of narrative history Moorehead specialized in, and though readable on a prose level the book is supremely superficial. In 300 pages Moorehead provides thin sketches of the death throes of Tsarist Russia, focusing on the lurid details of working-class unrest, terrorist outrages, the weak-minded Nicholas II and the debauched Rasputin. Moorehead's depiction of Russian politics and the ideology of the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary factions is marginally insightful at best; his account, by necessity one suspects considering when it was written, relies almost exclusively on exile literature, Trotsky's memoirs and other partial sources that frame the story in terms of a well-intentioned but unsustainable regime replaced by unreasoning demons. Moorehead's trump card is the canard that Lenin acted as an agent of the German government, a claim which can be deemed technically correct (Berlin's role in sending Lenin from exile to Finland Station, in hopes of destabilizing Russia to drive them out of the war, is undeniable) while underplaying Lenin's own ideological fervor and heastrong indepenence; mostly, this argument seems designed to discredit the legitimacy of the Soviet regime as the mere pawn of Kaiser Wilhelm. The book ends with the October coup and an epilogue detailing the murder of the Romanovs, providing no insight into the massive social and political changes wrought by the Bolsheviks, the bloodshed of the Civil War outside the context of regicide, or the repression of the Red Terror. A Western history of Red October, written during the height of the Cold War, must be considered suspect at best six decades later; Moorehead's book, with its flawed thesis, thin argumentation and focus on sensationalist details over analysis, is virtually worthless as an historical resource.
December 2, 2007
I'm an avid fiction reader, but I tend to read non-fiction with the attitude that it's good for me, but not exactly enjoyable. This book is the absolute exception. It is well-researched and invaluable in helping to understand the background of the revolution and how that revolution sowed the seeds to what followed. It's also the only history book in which I have ever marked passages simply for the poetics of the writing.
"For the first few days many of the demonstrators did not know where they were going to go or what they were supposed to do: they simply wanted to protest. But then, as more and more men poured into the streets, the crowds took confidence from their own numbers and they found with astonishment and exhilaration how very much they were not alone: not just a reckless few, but a host of comrades in a fighting mood. And so they accepted the leaders who appeared, and they went along, and in the absence of personal enemies they attacked symbols."
Read this book, if for nothing other than the description of Rasputin's assasination. Unbelievable.
"For the first few days many of the demonstrators did not know where they were going to go or what they were supposed to do: they simply wanted to protest. But then, as more and more men poured into the streets, the crowds took confidence from their own numbers and they found with astonishment and exhilaration how very much they were not alone: not just a reckless few, but a host of comrades in a fighting mood. And so they accepted the leaders who appeared, and they went along, and in the absence of personal enemies they attacked symbols."
Read this book, if for nothing other than the description of Rasputin's assasination. Unbelievable.
October 8, 2021
I learned a lot but the author is a melt who keeps saying how terrible it all was. Shut up !
June 11, 2020
Alan Moorehead's The Fatal Impact is one of my all-time favorite histories. Moorehead is a master at making complex issues and circumstances understandable and he writes with a consistent clarity and insight that make his books fast reading, even when the subject matter is dense. This book was written for Life magazine, in part a re-thinking of the Russian revolution based on German documents captured at the end of the second world war that revealed the extent of German espionage during the fall of the Czar and the subsequent political and military struggles within Russia. As such, it has an oddly German viewpoint of many events and a bias -- not unjustified -- against Russia reflective of the West's hatred of the Stalin and post-Stalin regimes. With the bear behaving badly again today, that bias feels timely. As detailed and illuminating as Moorehead's history is, the book is also too brief to provide more than a summary of many interactions and maneuvers that could occupy entire volumes, though I found it an excellent starting point for further explorations.
November 13, 2014
henry luce's preferred version of the narrative of the revolution, published during the cold war, alleging that lenin was a german agent. FFS.
author is a journalist, known primarily for his writings about the second world war. this text is based on Trotsky's narrative mostly, which is kind of an odd way to write an anti-bolshevist piece--i.e., by plagiarizing a bolshevist. I suppose the bolshevist won't file an intellectual property claim, though I suspect that mr. luce should take property rights more seriously next time (unless of course he is really just a fascist, as I suspect, in which case he takes only his own property seriously).
author is a journalist, known primarily for his writings about the second world war. this text is based on Trotsky's narrative mostly, which is kind of an odd way to write an anti-bolshevist piece--i.e., by plagiarizing a bolshevist. I suppose the bolshevist won't file an intellectual property claim, though I suspect that mr. luce should take property rights more seriously next time (unless of course he is really just a fascist, as I suspect, in which case he takes only his own property seriously).
August 4, 2007
The first Russian history book I read, no doubt prompted by an upcoming senior class trip taken to the (then) Soviet Union the winter of 1973.
September 8, 2022
Nothing unique about this book, but Moorhead was a top notch narrative historian. Love his book on Gallipoli too.
October 4, 2022
I had previously read Orlando Figues A People's Tragedy on the Russian Revolution, and it is a better book by a good margin than Alan Moorehead's The Russian Revolution, but it is also a much longer commitment. The Russian Revolution is only 300 or so pages and does get across much of the basic information in a readable way, but it lacks a lot of context especially for someone not well-versed in Russian history in the lead up to the revolution.
The Russian Revolution was written in 1958, and of course the Cold War was going strong. Mooreheads sympathies appear to be pretty generically common Cold War liberalism. He has a talent for describing historical personages in ways that make them come alive, including Czar Nicholas, Rasputin, Lenin, and Trotsky.
The big drawback in this book to me is that it has a difficult time articulating why the events in question are happening, even as it describes them vividly. With many of the famous revolutionaries out of the country as the revolution gains steam, what is driving mass protests and eventual armed uprisings? Why are the Kronstadt sailors so radical? How can the Bolsheviks seize power when at every turn they seem to be in the minority of socialist parties?
Moorehead attempts to answer at least the last question by linking them to demands of immediate withdrawal from the war, but it is hard to find the signal in the noise.
The history ends immediately after the revolution, and leaves on feels like a pretty truncated note.
With the enormous wealth of material on this subject out there, I don't see much reason for readers to seek out this volume.
The Russian Revolution was written in 1958, and of course the Cold War was going strong. Mooreheads sympathies appear to be pretty generically common Cold War liberalism. He has a talent for describing historical personages in ways that make them come alive, including Czar Nicholas, Rasputin, Lenin, and Trotsky.
The big drawback in this book to me is that it has a difficult time articulating why the events in question are happening, even as it describes them vividly. With many of the famous revolutionaries out of the country as the revolution gains steam, what is driving mass protests and eventual armed uprisings? Why are the Kronstadt sailors so radical? How can the Bolsheviks seize power when at every turn they seem to be in the minority of socialist parties?
Moorehead attempts to answer at least the last question by linking them to demands of immediate withdrawal from the war, but it is hard to find the signal in the noise.
The history ends immediately after the revolution, and leaves on feels like a pretty truncated note.
With the enormous wealth of material on this subject out there, I don't see much reason for readers to seek out this volume.
June 10, 2007
pretty mainstream-liberal indictment of lenin, biased but probably fairly accurate historical account.
August 14, 2017
The 100th anniversary of the RR prompted me to read this book. Lots there I didn't know about esp. the German files. I've read about Rasputin before and he has to rank as one of the most fascinating characters of the 20th Century.
On the actual Revolution I have always wondered how the Bolsheviks emerged as the strongest power and Moorehead's book still leaves me with that feeling.
One of the last few paragraphs in the book quotes Churchill on Lenin, "He alone could have found the way back to the causeway....The Russian people were left floundering in a bog. Their worst misfortune was his birth...their next worst----his death."
Stalin created an icon out of Lenin..........what Lenin would have thought about 1930s USSR is anybody's guess, but for me the biggest question is....What would Karl Marx have made of it all?
On the actual Revolution I have always wondered how the Bolsheviks emerged as the strongest power and Moorehead's book still leaves me with that feeling.
One of the last few paragraphs in the book quotes Churchill on Lenin, "He alone could have found the way back to the causeway....The Russian people were left floundering in a bog. Their worst misfortune was his birth...their next worst----his death."
Stalin created an icon out of Lenin..........what Lenin would have thought about 1930s USSR is anybody's guess, but for me the biggest question is....What would Karl Marx have made of it all?
July 27, 2020
I have read several books about the Russian Revolution but this one is, by far, the best one so far. It explains the background to the Red and White armies and provides a great insight to the position on Lenin and Stalin in the early days. What surprised me was the number of chances Russia had to pull back from the brink of the Soviets, but never was quite able to.
August 15, 2022
Further clarifies (as if it were possible) the struggle of Marxism to bring revolution to the world. This 1958 Western perspective is interesting in its righteous, holy-than-thou attitude towards Russia and its people.
May 18, 2017
الكتاب ليس ممتع و لا انصح فيه
December 16, 2022
A refreshing read on the Russian Revolution that paints the brutal Bolsheviks as the bullies and murderers that they were!!
March 24, 2023
Decent but never finished.
September 24, 2023
You know the Ruiisa Revolution history. The book is very quick and easy to read.
November 7, 2024
One of the best books I've read. Reads smoothly and like a novel, but strictly historical nonfiction.
January 8, 2017
Alan Moorehead was a pretty famous (in the West) war correspondent, but, although he is most known for his books about various World War II campaigns, I was interested, of course, in The Russian Revolution. 2017 looks strikingly similar to 1917 and reminds about that revolution every day, so it was a good opportunity to refresh my knowledge about it and learn how a Western journalist perceives the events about which our only ideas until recently formed by the official Soviet propaganda.
It turned out to be a brilliant book! I was fascinated by the easiness with which the author so comprehensively presented a complex and intricate picture of all historic events, personalities, and moods that led to the 1917 catastrophe. The presentation is incredibly interesting, well-written, contemporary, and illuminative - I would be happy if our history books about these events were similar to this one. I was also surprised by the diligence of the author: although the book is not overwhelming with details and names, it is anything but superficial. It is equally attentive to well-know historical events, personalities of their participants, prevailing ideas, and clandestine operations. Overall, the book is very logical and consistent and looks like a high-quality piece of work (although, of course, I am not a historian and cannot be sure about this or that interpretation of something).
The most interesting aspect of the book for me was Alan Moorehead's research on the extent to which Germany was involved in the instigation and development of the revolution in Russia. A wide network of spies and secret agents, powerful financial support, propaganda... I knew some of the facts (you can read a whole article about them in Wikipedia), but Alan Moorehead presents them in a very integral and logical form, and it looks like Germany, in its desperate attempt to win World War One (or, at least, not lose it so awfully), did everything to destroy the Russian Empire "from within," by supporting every destructive movement, the most destructive of which were terror and revolution, and in these bolsheviks won the jackpot as the most immoral, inhumane, cynical, unprincipled creatures, ready for the most violent actions and not counting people's lives... That's why we got what we got - one of the most cynical and disgusting revolution in history, one of the bloodiest civil war after it, and one of the most inhumane and self-destructive state built on this basis. In fact, Germany did to Russia then all the things that modern Russia is doing to Ukraine (and the West) now, trying to prevent its own disaster by destroying other states' civil peace and stability. As we know from history, Germany was wrong in the presumption that it should help Germany itself. With these actions, Germany got itself into much bigger troubles and eventually lost millions of lives, wealth, dignity, and independence for dozens of years... Oh well.
So, The Russian Revolution is a very interesting reading and a great source of thought-provoking opinions about one of the most important events in our history. It's a pity that the book ends with the killing of Nicholas II and his family; I would love to learn Alan Moorehead's insights about the ensuing civil war.
It turned out to be a brilliant book! I was fascinated by the easiness with which the author so comprehensively presented a complex and intricate picture of all historic events, personalities, and moods that led to the 1917 catastrophe. The presentation is incredibly interesting, well-written, contemporary, and illuminative - I would be happy if our history books about these events were similar to this one. I was also surprised by the diligence of the author: although the book is not overwhelming with details and names, it is anything but superficial. It is equally attentive to well-know historical events, personalities of their participants, prevailing ideas, and clandestine operations. Overall, the book is very logical and consistent and looks like a high-quality piece of work (although, of course, I am not a historian and cannot be sure about this or that interpretation of something).
The most interesting aspect of the book for me was Alan Moorehead's research on the extent to which Germany was involved in the instigation and development of the revolution in Russia. A wide network of spies and secret agents, powerful financial support, propaganda... I knew some of the facts (you can read a whole article about them in Wikipedia), but Alan Moorehead presents them in a very integral and logical form, and it looks like Germany, in its desperate attempt to win World War One (or, at least, not lose it so awfully), did everything to destroy the Russian Empire "from within," by supporting every destructive movement, the most destructive of which were terror and revolution, and in these bolsheviks won the jackpot as the most immoral, inhumane, cynical, unprincipled creatures, ready for the most violent actions and not counting people's lives... That's why we got what we got - one of the most cynical and disgusting revolution in history, one of the bloodiest civil war after it, and one of the most inhumane and self-destructive state built on this basis. In fact, Germany did to Russia then all the things that modern Russia is doing to Ukraine (and the West) now, trying to prevent its own disaster by destroying other states' civil peace and stability. As we know from history, Germany was wrong in the presumption that it should help Germany itself. With these actions, Germany got itself into much bigger troubles and eventually lost millions of lives, wealth, dignity, and independence for dozens of years... Oh well.
So, The Russian Revolution is a very interesting reading and a great source of thought-provoking opinions about one of the most important events in our history. It's a pity that the book ends with the killing of Nicholas II and his family; I would love to learn Alan Moorehead's insights about the ensuing civil war.
April 1, 2015
Having read Moorehead's story of the Russian Revolution in 1959 at twelve years old, followed by Kennan's and Edward Crankshaw's late '50's and early '60's looks into the unreported nature of our cold war foe, I have since skeptically monitored the messages of Lenin's unfavored heir, Joseph Stalin's invoking of the second revolution Lenin abandoned at the end of WWI, via the Soviet infiltration, beginning in the mid-20's, of numerous American institutions, including labor, the press, and national government.
The message I took from Moorehead's book at twelve years old was reinforced in this recent reading. The message: Communists never give up. They persevere, retreat, and return to the fight somewhere else. They always return to the fight. Milovan Djilas, Tito's Vice-President, in "The New Class" introduced me in 1960 to 'dialectical materialism' and the ways of the Communist movement. Djilas warned the West the Communists would never go away when he explained the inexorable gains to be made in the implementation of Communist doctrine via the process of taking two steps forward, and upon encountering opposition, taking one step back until the opponents have lost interest in their opposition. The Communists then take two more steps forward.
I am grateful for the insights gained at an early age about one of the vilest of man's creations - collectivism and the communist state. These insights began in reading Moohehead's "The Russian Revolution".
The message I took from Moorehead's book at twelve years old was reinforced in this recent reading. The message: Communists never give up. They persevere, retreat, and return to the fight somewhere else. They always return to the fight. Milovan Djilas, Tito's Vice-President, in "The New Class" introduced me in 1960 to 'dialectical materialism' and the ways of the Communist movement. Djilas warned the West the Communists would never go away when he explained the inexorable gains to be made in the implementation of Communist doctrine via the process of taking two steps forward, and upon encountering opposition, taking one step back until the opponents have lost interest in their opposition. The Communists then take two more steps forward.
I am grateful for the insights gained at an early age about one of the vilest of man's creations - collectivism and the communist state. These insights began in reading Moohehead's "The Russian Revolution".
October 9, 2012
I don't think I could have asked for a better book to explain the history of the Russian Revolution. Moorehead not only takes you through what happened in great detail, but gives you a fair deal of background, giving you an idea of the general attitude the Russian people had to each event that took place. He also takes the time to highlight certain characters who were crucial to the movement's evolution, which I found quite interesting. Besides the obvious names, such as Tsar Nicholas II, Trotsky and Lenin, he takes you through the escapades of Rasputin, the manipulation of Empress Alexandra, and the influence of various party leaders, presidents and generals throughout the years leading up to and during the revolution.
When I got about 3/4 way through I found it a little tedious. I don't think it was to do with the author's writing so much as the scenario itself. Riot / meeting / riot / meeting. But once I was through that I regained interest and finished it with a good taste in my mouth.
As I mentioned, I couldn't have asked for a better book to explain the Russian Revolution to me. It was interesting, informative and very insightful.
When I got about 3/4 way through I found it a little tedious. I don't think it was to do with the author's writing so much as the scenario itself. Riot / meeting / riot / meeting. But once I was through that I regained interest and finished it with a good taste in my mouth.
As I mentioned, I couldn't have asked for a better book to explain the Russian Revolution to me. It was interesting, informative and very insightful.
June 16, 2012
A good, well written overview of the Russian revolution, from the view of a pretty objective American historian. Easy to read and flow through, it covers from the beginnings of the regime of Nicholas, including Rasputin and other characters and the gradual growth of the revolutionary movements that toppled the regime. It ends with the play-out of the Leninist Bolsheviks taking power and making the first Soviet. From a 1950's perspective (book was published in '56), where Stalin was still in the throes of his rein of terror, many in both Europe and America held out the hope that something good would finally come out of Stalin's regime.
Nonetheless a good read for the beginning in Russian history.
Nonetheless a good read for the beginning in Russian history.
May 20, 2008
Good basic information on the Russian Revolution. Covers the years between the late 1880's to about 1919.
I had not realized that the Russian Revolution was not originally a communist or socialist revolution. The people were rebelling against Czar Nicholas, the war, lack of food and fuel. The Bolsheviks had little to do with inciting the turmoil; most of the big names were out of the country at the time (Lenin, for example). However the Bolsheviks were very adroit at turning the situation to their advantage, and despite their relative small numbers, managed to take over the entire country within months of the revolt.
I had not realized that the Russian Revolution was not originally a communist or socialist revolution. The people were rebelling against Czar Nicholas, the war, lack of food and fuel. The Bolsheviks had little to do with inciting the turmoil; most of the big names were out of the country at the time (Lenin, for example). However the Bolsheviks were very adroit at turning the situation to their advantage, and despite their relative small numbers, managed to take over the entire country within months of the revolt.
January 13, 2014
If you haven't read any Alan Moorehead, I should really take the time to type out some quotes. He is funny, clever, surprising, well-organized, everything you could want in a writer. I had a little more trouble with this book than his others because of the Russian names, but I finally just had to go with the flow and hope I was getting the important character distinctions.
The main thing I learned from this book was what an egomaniacal jerk Lenin was. Somehow that had never sunk in. I learned many other things, of course. Turns out I was completely ignorant as to the real facts of the Russian revolution, and I am happy to be awakened. And those quotes? Just can't do it today.
The main thing I learned from this book was what an egomaniacal jerk Lenin was. Somehow that had never sunk in. I learned many other things, of course. Turns out I was completely ignorant as to the real facts of the Russian revolution, and I am happy to be awakened. And those quotes? Just can't do it today.
June 2, 2017
Great book. It was just what I needed with just the right amount of depth to give me a good insight into the RR and the characters in it. I now feel I have the requisite knowledge to move onto some more in-depth books on the subject.
The most credible thing about the book was that it was only written 45 years after the revolution so a lot of primary references would still have available then.
The most credible thing about the book was that it was only written 45 years after the revolution so a lot of primary references would still have available then.
May 23, 2007
This book is pretty far from objective, I think the description of Lenin coming back on a train from Sweden described him as returning like a "virus" but despite that it was still pretty engaging.
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February 3, 2009Amazing book on an amazing tragedy. If you dont like in depth history at its best then dont read it.
May 24, 2010
I found this to be a balanced discussion o the events. The german involvement in bringing about the revolution was something I had not come across in previous studies.
January 31, 2015
It gives a good overview of the Russian Revolution.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews