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Красное колесо #3.3
March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 3
In March 1917, Book 3, the forces of revolutionary disintegration spread out from Petrograd all the way to the front lines of World War I, presaging Russia's collapse.
One of the masterpieces of world literature, The Red Wheel is Nobel prizewinner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution told in the form of a historical novel. March 1917--the third node--tells the story, day by day, of the Russian Revolution itself. Until recently, the final two nodes have been unavailable in English. The publication of Book 1 of March 1917 (in 2017) and Book 2 (in 2019) has begun to rectify this situation.
The action of Book 3 (out of four) is set during March 16-22, 1917. In Book 3, the Romanov dynasty ends and the revolution starts to roll out from Petrograd toward Moscow and the Russian provinces. The dethroned Emperor Nikolai II makes his farewell to the Army and is kept under guard with his family. In Petrograd, the Provisional Government and the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies continue to exercise power in parallel. The war hero Lavr Kornilov is appointed military chief of Petrograd. But the Soviet's "Order No. 1" reaches every soldier, undermining the officer corps and shaking the Army to its foundations. Many officers, including the head of the Baltic Fleet, the progressive Admiral Nepenin, are murdered. Black Sea Fleet Admiral Kolchak holds the revolution at bay; meanwhile, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the emperor's uncle, makes his way to military headquarters, na�vely thinking he will be allowed to take the Supreme Command.
One of the masterpieces of world literature, The Red Wheel is Nobel prizewinner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution told in the form of a historical novel. March 1917--the third node--tells the story, day by day, of the Russian Revolution itself. Until recently, the final two nodes have been unavailable in English. The publication of Book 1 of March 1917 (in 2017) and Book 2 (in 2019) has begun to rectify this situation.
The action of Book 3 (out of four) is set during March 16-22, 1917. In Book 3, the Romanov dynasty ends and the revolution starts to roll out from Petrograd toward Moscow and the Russian provinces. The dethroned Emperor Nikolai II makes his farewell to the Army and is kept under guard with his family. In Petrograd, the Provisional Government and the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies continue to exercise power in parallel. The war hero Lavr Kornilov is appointed military chief of Petrograd. But the Soviet's "Order No. 1" reaches every soldier, undermining the officer corps and shaking the Army to its foundations. Many officers, including the head of the Baltic Fleet, the progressive Admiral Nepenin, are murdered. Black Sea Fleet Admiral Kolchak holds the revolution at bay; meanwhile, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the emperor's uncle, makes his way to military headquarters, na�vely thinking he will be allowed to take the Supreme Command.
712 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
9 people are currently reading
1342 people want to read
About the author
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
294 books4,160 followersalso known as
Alexander Solzenitsyn (English, alternate)
Αλεξάντρ Σολζενίτσιν (Greek)
Works, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1975), of Soviet writer and dissident Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, exposed the brutality of the labor camp system.
This known Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian best helped to make the world aware of the forced Gulag.
Exiled in 1974, he returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn fathered of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a conductor and pianist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksan...
Alexander Solzenitsyn (English, alternate)
Αλεξάντρ Σολζενίτσιν (Greek)
Works, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1975), of Soviet writer and dissident Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, exposed the brutality of the labor camp system.
This known Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian best helped to make the world aware of the forced Gulag.
Exiled in 1974, he returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn fathered of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a conductor and pianist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksan...
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 22, 2024
Some people at work who saw the cover of this novel on my desk reacted by saying variations on, "Why are you reading that Commie trash?" That Solzhenitsyn would write a pro-Communist work struck me as a peculiar thing to think. But then, he does provoke many ill-judged responses, even from respected literary critics.
What this 3rd book in Node III does is set out, in fine detail, as each succeeding volume has in The Red Wheel, the thoughts, aspirations, schemes, disappointments, humiliations, and deaths in russia in these chaotic March days. (Might there be a writer who will do the same thing for the united states, specifically about its change of government, covering November 2020 to mid-January 2021?) While you read you're aware of how things worked out, but once you put that aside you enter into a febrile atmosphere where, potentially, any plan could work, anyone's future could be guaranteed. Then you look at the back pages to see what became of a Himmer or a Kornilov or a Nepenin and you see that their futures didn't go as they imagined.
Solzhenitsyn shows Lenin in zurich practically gnawing his insides out as he plots to return to russia. The revolution he can only read about is not going to go as he wants and therefore won't be a true revolution without his mind guiding and shaping it. His 'spiritual' twin is Nicholas II, convinced that he has been doing God's duty (aided in this belief by Tsarina Alexandra), completely uneducated, it's made apparent, in the history of depositions of emperors and stupidly unaware how hated he is for many things, and equally unaware of the accumulation of hate on the part of large swaths of russians for his predecessors.
When we turn to the back pages of the book, where the fates of the real figures who are followed over these wrenching days are given in short paragraphs, we read that many of them, important people in their time, with families and friends, and seemingly destined to live out influential lives, were killed in 1917, 1918, or later years, or else emigrated to this or that country (where some were assassinated), or lasted in governments and positions of power until they were imprisoned, exiled, or killed. Even as a reader thinks that their hopes might not be well-founded or are abhorrent, they are still humans who lived and felt, as we surely do, that their lives had purpose and would go down well in the history books.
What we have in TRW is history and narrative, Modernist methods of presentation (jump cuts, real newspaper items, actual government documents, and so on), psychological analysis, power plays and alliances (that shift, fray, or are forced into being through circumstances), as well as blood on the streets with sailors killing commanders and the populace killing policemen, and everyone in fear of this or that class or group. Riveting reading.
Could TRW be seen as old-fashioned? Of course. Does this depiction of upheaval seem to speak to the last four or five years in countries near to and far from canada? Yes. We can enjoy the literary qualities of this sequence, this particular book, and think of it as saying something about contemporary life.
What this 3rd book in Node III does is set out, in fine detail, as each succeeding volume has in The Red Wheel, the thoughts, aspirations, schemes, disappointments, humiliations, and deaths in russia in these chaotic March days. (Might there be a writer who will do the same thing for the united states, specifically about its change of government, covering November 2020 to mid-January 2021?) While you read you're aware of how things worked out, but once you put that aside you enter into a febrile atmosphere where, potentially, any plan could work, anyone's future could be guaranteed. Then you look at the back pages to see what became of a Himmer or a Kornilov or a Nepenin and you see that their futures didn't go as they imagined.
Solzhenitsyn shows Lenin in zurich practically gnawing his insides out as he plots to return to russia. The revolution he can only read about is not going to go as he wants and therefore won't be a true revolution without his mind guiding and shaping it. His 'spiritual' twin is Nicholas II, convinced that he has been doing God's duty (aided in this belief by Tsarina Alexandra), completely uneducated, it's made apparent, in the history of depositions of emperors and stupidly unaware how hated he is for many things, and equally unaware of the accumulation of hate on the part of large swaths of russians for his predecessors.
When we turn to the back pages of the book, where the fates of the real figures who are followed over these wrenching days are given in short paragraphs, we read that many of them, important people in their time, with families and friends, and seemingly destined to live out influential lives, were killed in 1917, 1918, or later years, or else emigrated to this or that country (where some were assassinated), or lasted in governments and positions of power until they were imprisoned, exiled, or killed. Even as a reader thinks that their hopes might not be well-founded or are abhorrent, they are still humans who lived and felt, as we surely do, that their lives had purpose and would go down well in the history books.
What we have in TRW is history and narrative, Modernist methods of presentation (jump cuts, real newspaper items, actual government documents, and so on), psychological analysis, power plays and alliances (that shift, fray, or are forced into being through circumstances), as well as blood on the streets with sailors killing commanders and the populace killing policemen, and everyone in fear of this or that class or group. Riveting reading.
Could TRW be seen as old-fashioned? Of course. Does this depiction of upheaval seem to speak to the last four or five years in countries near to and far from canada? Yes. We can enjoy the literary qualities of this sequence, this particular book, and think of it as saying something about contemporary life.
May 30, 2023
Red Wheel readers, if you've made it through Book 2, keep going! Book 3 has some haunting scenes in it, as Solzhenitsyn presses on toward the climactic scene: the Soviet comes face to face with the Tsar. It is an intense, maddening scene with the Russian world being turned upside down and the Red Revolution has symbolically defeated its opponents and is about to bring the Russian Empire into the pit of hell.
This volume has its ups and downs as it chronicles several more days of the Revolution. Much that happens is mundane, but there is always an undercurrent of building tension and descent into the new normal of revolutionary Russia. The Duma begins to realize they have little to no power and are only able to operate within the parameters of the Soviet--because it is they who have the people as their allies.
The Duma, who all along, thought the people were on their side, were really just the useful idiots who had fought the political fight for a generation only to pass the torch to the true radicals waiting in the wings who would assume all the power once the Tsar was delegitimized.
This is another extraordinary addition to the Red Wheel.
This volume has its ups and downs as it chronicles several more days of the Revolution. Much that happens is mundane, but there is always an undercurrent of building tension and descent into the new normal of revolutionary Russia. The Duma begins to realize they have little to no power and are only able to operate within the parameters of the Soviet--because it is they who have the people as their allies.
The Duma, who all along, thought the people were on their side, were really just the useful idiots who had fought the political fight for a generation only to pass the torch to the true radicals waiting in the wings who would assume all the power once the Tsar was delegitimized.
This is another extraordinary addition to the Red Wheel.
January 28, 2023
My rating for the whole Red Wheel series to date is a full 5 stars. This epic historical fiction account of the Russian revolution is intense, complex, and exceptionally long. To date I have read about 4000 pages in the series and have one more book in node 3 with 1 or more books in node 4. Books have varied from over 600 pages to over 1000 pages.
This book has a nice list of characters in the back encompassing fictional and real people involved in the complex story line. This book would make little sense unless one had at least read the two prior books in this node. Really one must have read nodes 1 and 2 to appreciate this book. Also a number of maps in the back for orientation. Both are great helps.
Highly recommend to those who love Russian history or the Russian revolution and don't mind a multi-year reading experiences.
This book has a nice list of characters in the back encompassing fictional and real people involved in the complex story line. This book would make little sense unless one had at least read the two prior books in this node. Really one must have read nodes 1 and 2 to appreciate this book. Also a number of maps in the back for orientation. Both are great helps.
Highly recommend to those who love Russian history or the Russian revolution and don't mind a multi-year reading experiences.
December 17, 2021
This is literature at its very best. I didn't think that Solzhenitsyn would be able to top part 2, but he did. I can't wait for the translation of the last part!
September 17, 2025
Solzhenitsyn wrote his epic history of the Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel, as an episodic novel taking place in a series of discontinious months in separate books, what he called in English "Nodes." The first two, August 1914 and November 1916 were in one volume each (at which time they were called "Knots" but Solzhenitsyn made it clear before he died that he preferred "Nodes.")
The book here is the third volume of the four that make up the third Node, March 1917 covering the events of the so-called February Revolution. Russia did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until after the Revolution and the Revolution related here took place it February of the preceding Julian Calendar. Similarly, Lenin and the Bolsheviks took control in a second revolution later in 1917, in what was denoted as November under the Gregorian Calendar but is known as the October Revolution.
This book is set over one week from March 16 - 22, 1917. Most of the characters really existed (there are some fully fictional characters who provide a view of what ordinary Russians were experiencing) and the focus here is on the abdication of the Romanovs and how the Provisional Government struggled to gain control. It is an extraordinary work in demonstrating the detailed mechanics of how the government of the Tsars was overthrown and replaced. Still to come is the fourth and last volume of March 1917 and the two volumes of April 1917, the second of which is still being translated. I don't believe that Solzhenitsyn wrote any further than April books and I don't know if that was intentional or if he intended to continue through the Bolshevik revolution later that year.
The book here is the third volume of the four that make up the third Node, March 1917 covering the events of the so-called February Revolution. Russia did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until after the Revolution and the Revolution related here took place it February of the preceding Julian Calendar. Similarly, Lenin and the Bolsheviks took control in a second revolution later in 1917, in what was denoted as November under the Gregorian Calendar but is known as the October Revolution.
This book is set over one week from March 16 - 22, 1917. Most of the characters really existed (there are some fully fictional characters who provide a view of what ordinary Russians were experiencing) and the focus here is on the abdication of the Romanovs and how the Provisional Government struggled to gain control. It is an extraordinary work in demonstrating the detailed mechanics of how the government of the Tsars was overthrown and replaced. Still to come is the fourth and last volume of March 1917 and the two volumes of April 1917, the second of which is still being translated. I don't believe that Solzhenitsyn wrote any further than April books and I don't know if that was intentional or if he intended to continue through the Bolshevik revolution later that year.
September 26, 2023
Disclaimer: I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway promotion.
Finally! I finished this book - it only took two years. This history of the Russian Revolution for the month of March, 1917 and written in such detail that it was pretty much a day by day (sometimes an hour by hour) description of the revolution. The amount of detail in this work is staggering. The number of pages written and translated simply boggles my mind. There are ten books in the series, the final two still to come, that cover the years 1914 - 1917. True to Russian literature, there are numerous characters , some are integral to the story and reappear over and over, some are simply passing through for a page or two. I understand in the final books there are lists of characters and their purposes and roles in the books. That certainly would have been a help.
If you are a student of Russian literature or the the Russian Revolution, this work is indispensable. Although it was heavy reading, it cast a light on the truth of the revolution and not a glorified version of it or of the Romanov family.
Finally! I finished this book - it only took two years. This history of the Russian Revolution for the month of March, 1917 and written in such detail that it was pretty much a day by day (sometimes an hour by hour) description of the revolution. The amount of detail in this work is staggering. The number of pages written and translated simply boggles my mind. There are ten books in the series, the final two still to come, that cover the years 1914 - 1917. True to Russian literature, there are numerous characters , some are integral to the story and reappear over and over, some are simply passing through for a page or two. I understand in the final books there are lists of characters and their purposes and roles in the books. That certainly would have been a help.
If you are a student of Russian literature or the the Russian Revolution, this work is indispensable. Although it was heavy reading, it cast a light on the truth of the revolution and not a glorified version of it or of the Romanov family.
August 30, 2025
The Soviet strengthens and takes outrageous steps to make the Executive Committee of the Provisional Government inconsequential. The Tsar and his family are taken prisoner. Agitators are inserted everywhere by the Bolsheviks to cause mayhem. Workers refuse to return to work. Soldiers refuse commands. And yet the middle-class cheers naively for the turmoil unaware that the seeds of the bourgeoisie’s demise are being cultivated by ignorance.
January 19, 2024
It took me awhile to finish these. It was an amazing inspiring series. Solzhenitsyn makes you experience the Revolution through the eyes of those who were there. He was a brilliant writer. Compassionate and observant he makes you feel that you were there.
It is my understanding that there are 2 more volumns waiting for translation. I’m hoping to be able to read those.
It is my understanding that there are 2 more volumns waiting for translation. I’m hoping to be able to read those.
May 24, 2025
The book is sometimes a slog to get through, but there are moments of brilliance and clarity about the revolution, its characters, and the complex issues that were interacting that make this a valuable and wonderful read.
November 7, 2021
Another great story in the continuation of the Red Wheel
As I started reading this looking at the 1917 version of cancel cultUre, the police suppression.
The way politicians scampered to appease their outspoken opponents and the way the press could only publish truth that did not offend “the people” I was wondering if the author was talking about 1917 Petrograd or current Seattle.
The author does a great job detailing both the actions of key figures and their reasons for doing so. One can also see the utter cluelessness of the Russian royal family and western leaders. The author lays the groundwork for the second Lenin revolution (or coup) as it seems the Bolsheviks are the only party both organized and with a clue of what is happening. They also seem to be the one group making a concerted effort to secure guns.
This is an interesting (though sad as you know what happens to the Russian people over the next 70 years) read. The book is broken into relatively short chapters which I think aids it the mechanics of reading. I enjoyed the book and highly recommend the book. It is the third one of the March portion and it would probably be better to read the first two before this one. As I don’t read Russian I can only hope the next volume is soon translated.
As I started reading this looking at the 1917 version of cancel cultUre, the police suppression.
The way politicians scampered to appease their outspoken opponents and the way the press could only publish truth that did not offend “the people” I was wondering if the author was talking about 1917 Petrograd or current Seattle.
The author does a great job detailing both the actions of key figures and their reasons for doing so. One can also see the utter cluelessness of the Russian royal family and western leaders. The author lays the groundwork for the second Lenin revolution (or coup) as it seems the Bolsheviks are the only party both organized and with a clue of what is happening. They also seem to be the one group making a concerted effort to secure guns.
This is an interesting (though sad as you know what happens to the Russian people over the next 70 years) read. The book is broken into relatively short chapters which I think aids it the mechanics of reading. I enjoyed the book and highly recommend the book. It is the third one of the March portion and it would probably be better to read the first two before this one. As I don’t read Russian I can only hope the next volume is soon translated.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews