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The Russian Revolution
MP3 CD Format Groundbreaking in its inclusiveness, enthralling in its narrative of a movement whose purpose, in the words of Leon Trotsky, was "to overthrow the world," The Russian Revolution draws conclusions that have aroused great controversy in this country. Richard Pipes argues convincingly that the Russian Revolution was an intellectual, rather than a class, uprising; that it was steeped in terror from its very outset; and that it was not a revolution at all but a coup d'etat—"the capture of governmental power by a small minority."
1 pages, Audio CD
First published September 26, 1990
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About the author
Richard Pipes
113 books152 followersBorn in Poland, Richard Pipes fled the country with his family when Germany invaded it in 1939. After reaching the United States a year later, Pipes began his education at Muskingum College, which was interrupted in 1943 when he was drafted into the Army Air Corps and sent to Cornell to study Russian. He completed his bachelor's degree at Cornell in 1946 and earned his doctorate at Harvard University four years later.
Pipes taught at Harvard from 1950 until his retirement in 1996, and was director of Harvard's Russian Research Center from 1968-1973. A campaigner for a tougher foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, in 1976, he led a group of analysts in a reassessment of Soviet foreign policy and military power. He served as director of Eastern European and Soviet affairs at the National Security Council from 1981 until 1983, after which he returned to Harvard, where he finished his career as Baird Professor Emeritus of History.
Pipes taught at Harvard from 1950 until his retirement in 1996, and was director of Harvard's Russian Research Center from 1968-1973. A campaigner for a tougher foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, in 1976, he led a group of analysts in a reassessment of Soviet foreign policy and military power. He served as director of Eastern European and Soviet affairs at the National Security Council from 1981 until 1983, after which he returned to Harvard, where he finished his career as Baird Professor Emeritus of History.
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April 30, 2021
“The architects of War Communism, its theorists and executors…had only the most superficial acquaintance with the discipline of economics and no experience in business management. Their knowledge of economics derived largely from socialist literature. None of them had run an enterprise or earned a ruble from manufacture or trade…[T]he Bolshevik leaders were professional revolutionaries, who, save for brief stints at Russian or foreign universities (devoted mostly to political activity), had spent their entire adult lives in and out of jail or exile. They were guided by abstract formulae, gleaned from the writings of Marx, Engels, and their German disciples and from radical histories of European revolutions…That such rank amateurs would undertake to turn upside down the fifth-largest economy in the world, subjecting it to innovations never attempted anywhere even on a small scale, says something of the judgment of the people who in October 1917 seized power in Russia…”
- Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution
Author Richard Pipes was born in Poland in 1923. In 1939, shortly after the Nazi German invasion ordered by Adolf Hitler, he fled with his family to the United States. Eventually, he became a U.S. citizen, matriculated at Harvard, and got a job as a professor. With his home country under the thumb of the Soviet Union, he became an outspoken expert on Russian history. For Pipes, this history often seemed personal, and he approached his subject with an adversarial rather than objective perspective. Today, Pipes (who died in 2018) is often criticized as a hopeless artifact of the Cold War. Of course, that does not necessarily make him wrong.
Pipes’ uncompromising attitude toward the U.S.S.R. is on full display in The Russian Revolution, his mammoth, entertaining, and lacerating tale of the rise of the Bolsheviks. He argues that the October Revolution – in which the Bolsheviks took power from the Provisional Government, which had earlier taken it from Tsar Nicholas II – was no mass uprising of popular will, fueled by callus-handed workers revolting after decades of repression and exploitation. Instead, he asserts it was a top-down coup instigated by a small group of soft-palmed professional revolutionaries who wouldn’t know their way around a factory if they were on a guided tour.
While Pipes’ conclusion can be summarized easily enough, there is little about this topic that is simple. Certainly, at 842 pages of text, it is not brief.
The Russian Revolution is divided into two parts. The first part covers the “Old Regime” from 1905 – with its unrest, strikes, and Tsar Nicholas II’s modest attempts at reform – and ends in 1917, with the February Revolution that deposed Nicholas and instituted a Constituent Assembly made up of many political parties, of which the Bolsheviks were only a part. The highlight of this first section is Pipes’ controversial chapter on “the intelligentsia,” in which he traces the emergence of revolutionary thought leading up to the Russian Revolution itself.
The second part of The Russian Revolution encompasses the period between the October Revolution and the Red Terror. Here, the highlight is his coverage of Vladimir Lenin and the origins of Bolshevism. The thing I most appreciated is that Pipes – in his distaste for Communism – refuses to play by Communist rules. That is, he eschews their dense jargon (which, like all jargon in all professions is meant to intimidate outsiders) for a plain language account of their goals and philosophy.
(Brief aside: a common critique I’ve seen of Pipes is that his utter disdain for Lenin manifests in a twisting of the documentary evidence. To be sure, Pipes really seems to enjoy taking a jackhammer to the foundations of Lenin's cult. He does not resort to outright name calling, but definitely emphasizes what he sees to be Lenin’s lack of moral and – especially – physical courage. I cannot comment on Pipes’ use of primary sources in this interpretation, so I will withhold final judgment on Lenin until I read more about him. Nevertheless, I am pretty comfortable saying I would not spend a minute of my life defending him).
There is a huge mass of information contained within these pages, but Pipes does an excellent job with his structure and organization. This starts with the table of contents, which provides an overview of each chapter’s contents, just below the chapter title. There is also a timeline and glossary. Thus, even though this was written by an expert, I seldom felt lost or out of my depth. (I am, admittedly, no expert. If I had to classify myself, I would say I am an interested amateur with a manageable drinking problem).
One of my fears before lifting the front cover was that this would be unreadably pedantic. To be sure, there are some slow stretches (especially at the beginning), and Pipes lacks the overall narrative skill of, for instance, Orlando Figes. That said, he does a fine job presenting a tangled, multifaceted storyline in a coherent manner and with admirable accessibility. He also has a way of delivering an acerbic thumbnail biography, such as his take on Soviet economist Iurii Larin:
The biggest drawback to The Russian Revolution is that it was published in 1990, meaning that Pipes did not have the access to certain archival material that became available after the fall of the Soviet Union. As a result, Pipes often has to admit to a lack of evidence, or to rely on incomplete or secondhand accounts. I am guessing that many of the knowledge gaps that Pipes encountered upon first writing this have been filled. (His presentation of Rasputin, for instance, seems off). That caveat notwithstanding, Pipes’ thesis of a top-down Bolshevik coup rather than a bottom-up movement seems to be the mainstream consensus. Indeed, Sean McMeekin’s relatively-recent “new” history reaches the same place, though with an updated bibliography.
I will acknowledge being predisposed to accept Pipes’ view of the Russian Revolution. It dovetails with my own experience of how people tend to act and react. Also, like Pipes, I am no fan of Communism or the Soviet Union. While this should be a rather anodyne opinion, I recognize that it is one that potentially leaves me vulnerable to an argument with Soviet apologists, which is the last argument in the world that I want to have. Thus, I stress that this a humanitarian position, rather than an economic or political one. On its best day, I would never have wanted to live in the U.S.S.R. On its many, many, many bad days, I don’t think I would have survived.
But agreement with Pipes is not a prerequisite to getting something out of this book. No author has the last word on any historical event, especially one as epochal as the Russian Revolution. Yet Pipes’ The Russian Revolution has forged a place for itself in a vast literature. It must be grappled with, whether or not you ultimately agree.
- Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution
Author Richard Pipes was born in Poland in 1923. In 1939, shortly after the Nazi German invasion ordered by Adolf Hitler, he fled with his family to the United States. Eventually, he became a U.S. citizen, matriculated at Harvard, and got a job as a professor. With his home country under the thumb of the Soviet Union, he became an outspoken expert on Russian history. For Pipes, this history often seemed personal, and he approached his subject with an adversarial rather than objective perspective. Today, Pipes (who died in 2018) is often criticized as a hopeless artifact of the Cold War. Of course, that does not necessarily make him wrong.
Pipes’ uncompromising attitude toward the U.S.S.R. is on full display in The Russian Revolution, his mammoth, entertaining, and lacerating tale of the rise of the Bolsheviks. He argues that the October Revolution – in which the Bolsheviks took power from the Provisional Government, which had earlier taken it from Tsar Nicholas II – was no mass uprising of popular will, fueled by callus-handed workers revolting after decades of repression and exploitation. Instead, he asserts it was a top-down coup instigated by a small group of soft-palmed professional revolutionaries who wouldn’t know their way around a factory if they were on a guided tour.
While Pipes’ conclusion can be summarized easily enough, there is little about this topic that is simple. Certainly, at 842 pages of text, it is not brief.
The Russian Revolution is divided into two parts. The first part covers the “Old Regime” from 1905 – with its unrest, strikes, and Tsar Nicholas II’s modest attempts at reform – and ends in 1917, with the February Revolution that deposed Nicholas and instituted a Constituent Assembly made up of many political parties, of which the Bolsheviks were only a part. The highlight of this first section is Pipes’ controversial chapter on “the intelligentsia,” in which he traces the emergence of revolutionary thought leading up to the Russian Revolution itself.
The second part of The Russian Revolution encompasses the period between the October Revolution and the Red Terror. Here, the highlight is his coverage of Vladimir Lenin and the origins of Bolshevism. The thing I most appreciated is that Pipes – in his distaste for Communism – refuses to play by Communist rules. That is, he eschews their dense jargon (which, like all jargon in all professions is meant to intimidate outsiders) for a plain language account of their goals and philosophy.
(Brief aside: a common critique I’ve seen of Pipes is that his utter disdain for Lenin manifests in a twisting of the documentary evidence. To be sure, Pipes really seems to enjoy taking a jackhammer to the foundations of Lenin's cult. He does not resort to outright name calling, but definitely emphasizes what he sees to be Lenin’s lack of moral and – especially – physical courage. I cannot comment on Pipes’ use of primary sources in this interpretation, so I will withhold final judgment on Lenin until I read more about him. Nevertheless, I am pretty comfortable saying I would not spend a minute of my life defending him).
There is a huge mass of information contained within these pages, but Pipes does an excellent job with his structure and organization. This starts with the table of contents, which provides an overview of each chapter’s contents, just below the chapter title. There is also a timeline and glossary. Thus, even though this was written by an expert, I seldom felt lost or out of my depth. (I am, admittedly, no expert. If I had to classify myself, I would say I am an interested amateur with a manageable drinking problem).
One of my fears before lifting the front cover was that this would be unreadably pedantic. To be sure, there are some slow stretches (especially at the beginning), and Pipes lacks the overall narrative skill of, for instance, Orlando Figes. That said, he does a fine job presenting a tangled, multifaceted storyline in a coherent manner and with admirable accessibility. He also has a way of delivering an acerbic thumbnail biography, such as his take on Soviet economist Iurii Larin:
Although little known even to specialists, this half-paralyzed invalid, always in pain, could take credit for a unique historical accomplishment: certainly no one has a better claim to having wrecked a great power’s national economy in the incredibly short span of thirty months.
The biggest drawback to The Russian Revolution is that it was published in 1990, meaning that Pipes did not have the access to certain archival material that became available after the fall of the Soviet Union. As a result, Pipes often has to admit to a lack of evidence, or to rely on incomplete or secondhand accounts. I am guessing that many of the knowledge gaps that Pipes encountered upon first writing this have been filled. (His presentation of Rasputin, for instance, seems off). That caveat notwithstanding, Pipes’ thesis of a top-down Bolshevik coup rather than a bottom-up movement seems to be the mainstream consensus. Indeed, Sean McMeekin’s relatively-recent “new” history reaches the same place, though with an updated bibliography.
I will acknowledge being predisposed to accept Pipes’ view of the Russian Revolution. It dovetails with my own experience of how people tend to act and react. Also, like Pipes, I am no fan of Communism or the Soviet Union. While this should be a rather anodyne opinion, I recognize that it is one that potentially leaves me vulnerable to an argument with Soviet apologists, which is the last argument in the world that I want to have. Thus, I stress that this a humanitarian position, rather than an economic or political one. On its best day, I would never have wanted to live in the U.S.S.R. On its many, many, many bad days, I don’t think I would have survived.
But agreement with Pipes is not a prerequisite to getting something out of this book. No author has the last word on any historical event, especially one as epochal as the Russian Revolution. Yet Pipes’ The Russian Revolution has forged a place for itself in a vast literature. It must be grappled with, whether or not you ultimately agree.
October 1, 2020
This volume is both a rigorous history and critique of Communism. Dr. Pipes thesis, largely a consensus view among historians now, is that the revolution was not a revolution at all, but a coup d’état. The biggest surprise for me was the detailed story of how the Bolsheviks crushed all the other socialist groups (Soviet Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Left SRs, etc) until they alone remained in power. But that was later. For after the collapse of the Provisional Government, left in place by the abdicated Tsar, the Bolsheviks were just one of many soviets and the way forward was the ballot box. Imagine the frustrated Lenin losing committee vote after committee vote until the only way he could win was by threatening to quit.
Lenin would also pack the committee with Bolshevik friends or invalidate the entire vote (sound like anyone we know?) when he could not get his way. And the story of the Russian surrender to Germany ending World War I in the east will curl your hair. I had not known, for instance, that Germany tripled in size with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, nor that Lenin became “the most reviled man in Europe” because of his complicity in accepting the treaty. Moreover, this long book refutes the strange materialist/ utilitarian/ positivist (Marxist) ideology that underlay Bolshevism. It is not a disinterested book. At the same time, its arguments are clear and reasoned, animated perhaps at times as all compelling writing can be, but always insightful.
Upon the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 Pipes, still a child and his parents fled the country, eventually settling in the U.S. After the war Poland became a Warsaw Pact nation. In time Pipes found himself at Harvard where he worked and taught for more than 35 years, except for a two year stint during which he advised President Ronald Reagan on whose watch the Soviet Union crumbled, 1990/91. It’s going too far to call Pipes an old Cold Warrior. He is first and foremost a scholar. But his lifelong study of the subject, not to mention the long-term subjugation of his native country, and his ability for a short but decisive time to affect U.S. foreign policy, means he has a unique perspective on the history of the now defunct USSR.
May we never see its like again.
Lenin would also pack the committee with Bolshevik friends or invalidate the entire vote (sound like anyone we know?) when he could not get his way. And the story of the Russian surrender to Germany ending World War I in the east will curl your hair. I had not known, for instance, that Germany tripled in size with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, nor that Lenin became “the most reviled man in Europe” because of his complicity in accepting the treaty. Moreover, this long book refutes the strange materialist/ utilitarian/ positivist (Marxist) ideology that underlay Bolshevism. It is not a disinterested book. At the same time, its arguments are clear and reasoned, animated perhaps at times as all compelling writing can be, but always insightful.
Upon the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 Pipes, still a child and his parents fled the country, eventually settling in the U.S. After the war Poland became a Warsaw Pact nation. In time Pipes found himself at Harvard where he worked and taught for more than 35 years, except for a two year stint during which he advised President Ronald Reagan on whose watch the Soviet Union crumbled, 1990/91. It’s going too far to call Pipes an old Cold Warrior. He is first and foremost a scholar. But his lifelong study of the subject, not to mention the long-term subjugation of his native country, and his ability for a short but decisive time to affect U.S. foreign policy, means he has a unique perspective on the history of the now defunct USSR.
May we never see its like again.
April 22, 2020
This one has taken me some time to get through. At the expiration of my first 2 week borrow — via Libby — I determined to purchase the paberback volume (so much easier to forage within the notes while reading) ... COVID19 demanded I sit through another HOLD on Libby.
So worth what time it has taken to work my way through the volume. I don’t believe I have read anything as emotionally ‘weighty’ as this political history, not Westover’s “Educated” or even Applebaum’s volumes have managed to leave as deep and indelible an impression upon me.
“The victims usually went to the execution without resisting. What they went through cannot be imagined even approximately...Most of the victims usually requested a chance to say goodbye; and because there was no one else, they embraced and kissed their executioners.”
Pipes’ has packed his tome tight with Russian history... and eye witness accounts - incredibly researched. As often as one takes him up and attempts to immerse oneself one discovers more and more and still even more material to wade through.
Take him up then if you dare.... but trust that you may never think of Nicholas Romanov, or Lenin or Trotsky or the Russian people as once you did or be the same yourself once that last page has turned.
So worth what time it has taken to work my way through the volume. I don’t believe I have read anything as emotionally ‘weighty’ as this political history, not Westover’s “Educated” or even Applebaum’s volumes have managed to leave as deep and indelible an impression upon me.
“The victims usually went to the execution without resisting. What they went through cannot be imagined even approximately...Most of the victims usually requested a chance to say goodbye; and because there was no one else, they embraced and kissed their executioners.”
Pipes’ has packed his tome tight with Russian history... and eye witness accounts - incredibly researched. As often as one takes him up and attempts to immerse oneself one discovers more and more and still even more material to wade through.
Take him up then if you dare.... but trust that you may never think of Nicholas Romanov, or Lenin or Trotsky or the Russian people as once you did or be the same yourself once that last page has turned.
Read
September 19, 2016Very long narrative history of the lead up and early stages of the Russian Revolution and civil war. It gives a useful picture of how confused and fast-moving the situation was, particularly in 1918. There is a constant emphasis on the role of the non-Russian nationalities during the civil war, to such an extent that the book could have been more honestly called "The non-Russian Revolution", Russians being a passive lot upon whom revolution in Pipes account is visited by Czechs, Estonians and Latvians upon Russia, all of whom were using revolution to achieve national independence . I didn't feel that the account is sympathetic or shows empathy with any of the parties involved which limits its usefulness in understanding the way in which events developed. However it is certainly one of the more exhaustive narrative accounts that is available on re-enforced bookshelves.
September 11, 2016
surly cold warrior laments the death of the royal family.
December 17, 2015
Stupid propaganda which treats Marxist thought like everyone was faking it the whole time just to drink the blood of children. Full disclosure I hate his son too.
March 30, 2014
This five star review is with serious reservations. If you are very interested in the Russian Revolution, this book is the definitive account. Not only does it demonstrate impeccable scholarship, but has a definite point of view. Pipes clearly does not like Lenin or Bolshevism. Because of his strong opinions, which show through in his writing, the book is more engaging than if he had worried about feigning objectivity. The Russian Revolution was tragic and evil, and set the stage for modern totalitarianism and genocide. Regrettably, too many historians who lean left of center, have white washed Russian Communism because they think it was merely a misguided attempt to stand up for the little guy. Perhaps, they think that there are lessons from Russia that will help us moderate the ill effects of Capitalism as if American capitalism and Russian communism are both in the wrong. They may both be flawed, but Capitalism is wrong like a traffic violation and Communism is wrong like genocide is wrong. It is refreshing to read a historian not afraid to vehemently attack a thing as clearly wrong, a vast crime. And so Pipes is thorough, detailed, with brilliant analysis. He is the big dog when it comes to the Russian Revolution. And he has definite opinions which he is not afraid to voice. No one can claim to be well informed concerning this issue without having read Pipes. So why the serious reservations about 5 stars? To slog through this tome you need to want to be a Russian Revolution expert. It is detailed to the point of tedium. You reach the conclusion with enormous relief as if you have been freed of a burden. The book has no sense of joy; it is dismal, dark even. The book is a triumph of scholarship, but the reader does not feel triumphant. So if you really want a detailed understanding of the cataclysm leaving Russia a single party state with one of the monsters of the 20th century in absolute power, the precursor to the worst of the 20th century, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, then read this book.
December 13, 2010
Richard Pipes is in the same league as David McCullough- a world class historian. He deeply understands Russia and unfolds his mastery using crystal clear prose. Blows away many myths about the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. Well worth the time investment to better understand this pivotal event which is still misunderstood today.
September 19, 2019
Ez valóban egy kvázi-tökéletes elemzés Oroszország Szovjetunióvá válásának viharos évtizedeiről. Bár Pipes érzékelhetően méla undorral rajzolja meg szereplőit, de végig tárgy- és tényszerű marad. Legnagyobb erénye mindazonáltal az, hogy érthető és világos mondatokba önti azt az elképesztő zűrzavart, ami a bolsevikokat hatalomra emelte – nem mellesleg pedig lehántja a kommunista mítoszképzés során rárakódott rétegeket, amik úgy fedték el a forradalom és a polgárháború valóságát, mint parti sziklát a guanó.
Pipes tulajdonképpen a következő, Richard K. Debo által feltett kérdésre keresi a választ: „Hogyan… sikerült a szovjet kormánynak, az emberiség eladdig legpusztítóbb háborújának kellős közepén, számottevő katonai erő nélkül, túlélnie a forradalom első esztendejét?” A válasz pedig az, hogy éppen a háború miatt sikerülhetett neki, hiszen Európa kapitalista államainak kisebb dolga is nagyobb volt annál, hogy egy ilyen, számukra periferikus válsággal foglalkozzanak. Aligha meglepő, hogy miközben a harctereken hullottak katonáik, ők nem ismerték fel az események valódi jelentőségét – nem védték meg se a cárt, se a cárt leváltó többé-kevésbé demokratikus Ideiglenes Kormányt. Sőt – a németek jól felfogott érdekből még támogatták is a bolsevikokat, mert ezzel szándékoztak fenntartani a káoszt egyik ellenfelüknél. (Pipes meggyőző bizonyítékokat hoz fel amellett, hogy a német anyagi és egyéb támogatások nélkül Leninék aligha kerültek volna uralomra.)
A bolsevik siker másik oka épp a forradalmak törvényszerűségeiben keresendő. Ezek a hatalomváltások ugyanis olyan közigazgatási űrt hoznak létre, ahová eredményesen benyomulhat az a szervezet, akit ugyan a népesség töredéke támogat csak, de kellően szervezett, kegyetlen és elhivatott ahhoz, hogy bevarrja a kínálkozó ziccert. Ráadásul a szélsőségesek malmára hajtotta a vizet az is, hogy ellenfeleik egymással is képtelenek voltak közös nevezőre jutni, plusz igen határozatlanul reagáltak a kulcsszituációkban – ami mondjuk abból a szempontból nem csoda, hogy először találkozhattak olyan szerveződéssel, aki nem habozik gajra vágni egy egész országot holmi homályos jövőbeli idea kedvéért. Addig ezt a hozzáállást elképzelhetetlennek tartották..
Pipesnek van válasza arra a kérdésre is, hogy miért éppen ott tört ki a Marx által megjósolt forradalom, ahol a legkevésbé volt számottevő az iparosodott munkásság. Értelmezésében ez a látszólagos hátrány inkább előny – ugyanis az autoriter, csapnivaló közlekedéssel és hírközléssel megvert Oroszország éppenhogy eszményi tere volt a szélsőségeseknek. Nem léteztek olyan demokratikus alapok (mint amilyen az önkormányzatiság, vagy a magántulajdon tisztelete), amelyekre támaszkodva a parlamentáris elemek alternatívát tudtak volna kínálni a kommunizmussal szemben, kifogva a szelet a vitorlájából – jellemző, hogy a kommunizmus Európa nyugati részén nem is tudott igazi kormányváltó tényezővé alakulni*. A cári rezsim alatt a nép jelentős része megszokta, hogy a hatalom azt csinál, amit akar, nekik úgysem lehet beleszólásuk ebbe – olyan, mint az időjárás, amit kellő fatalizmussal lehet csak átvészelni. Miért viselkedett volna máshogy, amikor a bolsevikok kezdték el presszionálni? Mindehhez pedig még hozzájön, hogy az előző rendszer egyes elemei (például a titkosrendőrség, az Ohrana) olyan mintául szolgáltak Leninnek, amiket eredményesen be tudott építeni a saját módszertanába. Ilyen értelemben tehát a bolsevizmus nem véletlenül alakult ki Oroszországban, hanem épp ellenkezőleg: olyan jelenség, ami csakis Oroszországban alakulhatott ki. Amire van egy cáfolhatatlan bizonyíték: hogy Oroszországban alakult ki. És hát ha egy dolog bekövetkezik, az onnantól kezdve elkerülhetetlen. Persze csak onnantól kezdve.
* Már feltéve, hogy nem állt mögöttük az „ideiglenesen hazánkban állomásozó” Vörös Hadsereg.
Pipes tulajdonképpen a következő, Richard K. Debo által feltett kérdésre keresi a választ: „Hogyan… sikerült a szovjet kormánynak, az emberiség eladdig legpusztítóbb háborújának kellős közepén, számottevő katonai erő nélkül, túlélnie a forradalom első esztendejét?” A válasz pedig az, hogy éppen a háború miatt sikerülhetett neki, hiszen Európa kapitalista államainak kisebb dolga is nagyobb volt annál, hogy egy ilyen, számukra periferikus válsággal foglalkozzanak. Aligha meglepő, hogy miközben a harctereken hullottak katonáik, ők nem ismerték fel az események valódi jelentőségét – nem védték meg se a cárt, se a cárt leváltó többé-kevésbé demokratikus Ideiglenes Kormányt. Sőt – a németek jól felfogott érdekből még támogatták is a bolsevikokat, mert ezzel szándékoztak fenntartani a káoszt egyik ellenfelüknél. (Pipes meggyőző bizonyítékokat hoz fel amellett, hogy a német anyagi és egyéb támogatások nélkül Leninék aligha kerültek volna uralomra.)
A bolsevik siker másik oka épp a forradalmak törvényszerűségeiben keresendő. Ezek a hatalomváltások ugyanis olyan közigazgatási űrt hoznak létre, ahová eredményesen benyomulhat az a szervezet, akit ugyan a népesség töredéke támogat csak, de kellően szervezett, kegyetlen és elhivatott ahhoz, hogy bevarrja a kínálkozó ziccert. Ráadásul a szélsőségesek malmára hajtotta a vizet az is, hogy ellenfeleik egymással is képtelenek voltak közös nevezőre jutni, plusz igen határozatlanul reagáltak a kulcsszituációkban – ami mondjuk abból a szempontból nem csoda, hogy először találkozhattak olyan szerveződéssel, aki nem habozik gajra vágni egy egész országot holmi homályos jövőbeli idea kedvéért. Addig ezt a hozzáállást elképzelhetetlennek tartották..
Pipesnek van válasza arra a kérdésre is, hogy miért éppen ott tört ki a Marx által megjósolt forradalom, ahol a legkevésbé volt számottevő az iparosodott munkásság. Értelmezésében ez a látszólagos hátrány inkább előny – ugyanis az autoriter, csapnivaló közlekedéssel és hírközléssel megvert Oroszország éppenhogy eszményi tere volt a szélsőségeseknek. Nem léteztek olyan demokratikus alapok (mint amilyen az önkormányzatiság, vagy a magántulajdon tisztelete), amelyekre támaszkodva a parlamentáris elemek alternatívát tudtak volna kínálni a kommunizmussal szemben, kifogva a szelet a vitorlájából – jellemző, hogy a kommunizmus Európa nyugati részén nem is tudott igazi kormányváltó tényezővé alakulni*. A cári rezsim alatt a nép jelentős része megszokta, hogy a hatalom azt csinál, amit akar, nekik úgysem lehet beleszólásuk ebbe – olyan, mint az időjárás, amit kellő fatalizmussal lehet csak átvészelni. Miért viselkedett volna máshogy, amikor a bolsevikok kezdték el presszionálni? Mindehhez pedig még hozzájön, hogy az előző rendszer egyes elemei (például a titkosrendőrség, az Ohrana) olyan mintául szolgáltak Leninnek, amiket eredményesen be tudott építeni a saját módszertanába. Ilyen értelemben tehát a bolsevizmus nem véletlenül alakult ki Oroszországban, hanem épp ellenkezőleg: olyan jelenség, ami csakis Oroszországban alakulhatott ki. Amire van egy cáfolhatatlan bizonyíték: hogy Oroszországban alakult ki. És hát ha egy dolog bekövetkezik, az onnantól kezdve elkerülhetetlen. Persze csak onnantól kezdve.
* Már feltéve, hogy nem állt mögöttük az „ideiglenesen hazánkban állomásozó” Vörös Hadsereg.
February 19, 2018
Pipes wrote an exhaustively detailed and quite gripping account of the Russian Revolution, from the time of the first Duma government through 1918. Written in the late 1980s, before later scholars had increased access to the Russian archives after the fall of the USSR, its thoroughness is remarkable. But Pipes was and is from the hysterical school of anti-Communism, and that bias thoroughly permeates his work and measurably weakens it. I am not an apologist for the USSR; it was an evil and despotic regime. Unfortunately, however, Pipes cannot separate his political and moral revulsion from his role as an historian, and his tendentiousness mars what is otherwise a very valuable history.
May 25, 2017
Finally finished this one! It was a great read, but I had to knock a star off for sheer length. There was an overwhelming amount of information in here, more even than I expected. I had some questions while reading this about the target audience here, my supposition is Russia experts and scholars. This was certainly not light reading. However, if you are looking for a comprehensive history of the Russian Revolution, this is absolutely the book that I would recommend. I thought that Richard Pipes' coverage of the transformation of old to new Russia was one of the best that I have ever read and very well researched. This book took both a lot of time and a lot of effort to write and it shows in the quality of the finished product. I've already picked up Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime and will keep going with this series on Russian history.
December 23, 2008
Pipes and Figes are the best authors if you are interested in Russian History.
July 20, 2018
Detailed but absurdly biased.
April 13, 2025
Academic historians’ reviews of this work are almost uniformly negative and reading it, it’s easy to see why. In his crusade to make the Bolsheviks (or rather, just Lenin, who is the only one he’s actually interested in giving motives or a personality) come as some of the blackest of villains, Pipes is prone to make a number of not only incorrect, but also curious claims.
For example, Pipes would have you believe that there was a strong revival for support of monarchism among peasants after the October Revolution and his sole evidence is that the Bolsheviks decided to execute the Romanovs. Yet, he ignores that most of the peasantry was hostile to the White movement precisely because the Whites were perceived as supporters of landlords and monarchy. Pytor Wrangel, himself a White general, shows cognizance of this fact in his memoirs, as did another supporter of the White movement, Boris Savinkov.
Another curious claim is that the murder of the Romanovs “carried mankind for the first time across the threshold of deliberate genocide.” Okay. What, then, are we supposed to make of the fact that, from 1915 until 1917, Ottoman officials had ordered the annihilation of 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians and indeed, the Russian Empire itself had, between the 1820s and 1870, murdered, ethnic cleansed, and expelled at least 80% (and perhaps more) of the Circassian people? Are we supposed to believe that the officials involved in both incidents of mass murder just accidentally murdered millions of people because their ethnicity and religion? This aside, it’s hard to create Pipes’ assertion that the murder of the Romanov family meant some kind of radical paradigm shift. I sincerely pity Nicholas II’s five children, but they were far from the first young royals to be murdered because they represented a threat to others’ power: consider Alexander IV of Macedon, Hieronymus of Syracuse, Caesarion, Julia Drusilla, Licinius II, Edward the Martyr, Alexios II Komnenos, Conradin, Alexios V of Trebizond, Danjong of Joseon, the Princes in the Tower, or Lê Quang Trị. Indeed, Russia had plenty of other young murdered royals, such as Saints Boris and Gleb, Dmitry of Uglich, Feodor II, and Ivan VI. Clearly, then, murdering young royals because of their perceived threat had never been particularly taboo before 1918, yet Pipes is nonetheless intent on presenting the murder of Romanovs as something with no precedent.
Those are quibbles, though, because the real problem is with the central thesis of the books: that Russia was destined for tyranny as it never developed a concept of private property, which is the key to all foundations of freedom, and instead treated all of Russia’s land as the personal property of the monarch. Such a proposition is dubious. First of all, Steve Smith pointed out in his review of this work, the concept of private property had actually come about in Russia during the late 18th century and was “well-entrenched” by 1861 when serfdom was abolished. Second, Pipes candidly ignores how the concept of private property is sometimes anything but a liberating force, particularly for the poor. After all, early conceptions of the concept of private property in Great Britain, for instance, were used to defend slavery, Irish plantations, the Enclosure Acts, debtors’ prisons, workhouses, and letting scores of Irish paupers starve just as much as they were also used to defend the ideals of freedom of speech or freedom of religion. Rather than conceding that perhaps socialists might have ever had even a tiny legitimate germ of a point in their attack on private property, Pipes can offer no explanation for the phenomena but to approvingly cite Ludwig von Mises’ theory that socialist intellectuals are just jealous.
Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of this book is how much Pipes appears to have in common with bête noire, Vladimir Lenin, as both clearly have boundless contempt for both intellectuals and the peasantry.
For example, Pipes would have you believe that there was a strong revival for support of monarchism among peasants after the October Revolution and his sole evidence is that the Bolsheviks decided to execute the Romanovs. Yet, he ignores that most of the peasantry was hostile to the White movement precisely because the Whites were perceived as supporters of landlords and monarchy. Pytor Wrangel, himself a White general, shows cognizance of this fact in his memoirs, as did another supporter of the White movement, Boris Savinkov.
Another curious claim is that the murder of the Romanovs “carried mankind for the first time across the threshold of deliberate genocide.” Okay. What, then, are we supposed to make of the fact that, from 1915 until 1917, Ottoman officials had ordered the annihilation of 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians and indeed, the Russian Empire itself had, between the 1820s and 1870, murdered, ethnic cleansed, and expelled at least 80% (and perhaps more) of the Circassian people? Are we supposed to believe that the officials involved in both incidents of mass murder just accidentally murdered millions of people because their ethnicity and religion? This aside, it’s hard to create Pipes’ assertion that the murder of the Romanov family meant some kind of radical paradigm shift. I sincerely pity Nicholas II’s five children, but they were far from the first young royals to be murdered because they represented a threat to others’ power: consider Alexander IV of Macedon, Hieronymus of Syracuse, Caesarion, Julia Drusilla, Licinius II, Edward the Martyr, Alexios II Komnenos, Conradin, Alexios V of Trebizond, Danjong of Joseon, the Princes in the Tower, or Lê Quang Trị. Indeed, Russia had plenty of other young murdered royals, such as Saints Boris and Gleb, Dmitry of Uglich, Feodor II, and Ivan VI. Clearly, then, murdering young royals because of their perceived threat had never been particularly taboo before 1918, yet Pipes is nonetheless intent on presenting the murder of Romanovs as something with no precedent.
Those are quibbles, though, because the real problem is with the central thesis of the books: that Russia was destined for tyranny as it never developed a concept of private property, which is the key to all foundations of freedom, and instead treated all of Russia’s land as the personal property of the monarch. Such a proposition is dubious. First of all, Steve Smith pointed out in his review of this work, the concept of private property had actually come about in Russia during the late 18th century and was “well-entrenched” by 1861 when serfdom was abolished. Second, Pipes candidly ignores how the concept of private property is sometimes anything but a liberating force, particularly for the poor. After all, early conceptions of the concept of private property in Great Britain, for instance, were used to defend slavery, Irish plantations, the Enclosure Acts, debtors’ prisons, workhouses, and letting scores of Irish paupers starve just as much as they were also used to defend the ideals of freedom of speech or freedom of religion. Rather than conceding that perhaps socialists might have ever had even a tiny legitimate germ of a point in their attack on private property, Pipes can offer no explanation for the phenomena but to approvingly cite Ludwig von Mises’ theory that socialist intellectuals are just jealous.
Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of this book is how much Pipes appears to have in common with bête noire, Vladimir Lenin, as both clearly have boundless contempt for both intellectuals and the peasantry.
January 25, 2010
The best account of the Russian Revolution--its fervor and its madness--that I have read. A must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of communism and totalitarianism.
January 27, 2018
Wow! This book took a major commitment (850 pages in small print). While at times I did wish it was shorter, in the end, the length was worth it to gain a thorough understanding of the Russian Revolution. It is a complex topic deserving of an in-depth treatment. I started the book with a relatively negative view of communism, Lenin, Stalin, etc. but after having read about the specifics of what happened, my view had become even more negative. Lenin was a fierce, uncompromising radical who took control of a revolution of the people for his own purposes. Him and the Bolsheviks were a small minority, not representative of the people, and they used brutal and barbaric tactics to solidify their power. Their brutality and terror tactics then became an essential part of their communist system. Millions of soviets would die so the communist system could be sustained. The book was also very good to connect all these events to longer term currents in Russian history. While reading the book, I was also struck by the similarities between the Bolsheviks and the Trumpites currently infecting American politics. Both groups deny objective truth, lie incessantly, spew meaningless jargon and talking points, see political opponents as enemies to be destroyed, put party loyalty above the good of the country, oppose the rule of law, and seek to impose the will of a minority on the majority by any means necessary. The similarities are quite remarkable. Radicals are radicals, whether from the left or the right, and they are virtually all dangerous and destructive.
March 25, 2018
This is the best book on this topic I have read yet. It is very detailed and requires some effort to get through, but by doing this one can get some understanding of how a band of fanatics, with the help of German government, managed to fool the millions of decent people and take over power in the country exhausted by the war and the autocratic rule of Romanovs, and then by exterminating of all its opponents rule it by terror for another seventy years.
May 3, 2020
Painstakingly thorough. Overwhelming amounts of research and scholarship. Very comprehensive. It has an anti-Bolshevik slant, but never claimed to be objective; Pipes clearly intended to argue that the Revolution was actually an intellectual coup d’etat carried out through terrorist acts.
March 29, 2022
In depth but was hard to follow and keep up with the jargon at all times. It was a long 40 hrs but it really set up the Russian and world affairs of the time.
April 10, 2017
For one reason or another (probably out of sheer curiosity) I wanted to get a better understanding of Russian revolution and early history of communism in Russia. Richard Pipes’ book seemed like a reasonable place to start dabbling with this subject. In many ways it turned out to be a suitable choice for a starting point for a study of this subject. At the same time, it is in my opinion a risky choice for an introduction to this historical event.
“Russian Revolution” starts off as your typical history book, with an introduction of the ‘landscape’. In this case the author starts with a consiste description of social and political situation of imperial Russia in late 19th century. The story then continues briskly with narrative of the period up to bolshevik seizure of power. The reader is led skillfully through the events of 1905 and subsequent decade filled with half-hearted reforms that failed to stabilize the situation. Next, the author analyzes the consequences for outbreak of World War I for Russia steering elite and how they led to February revolution of 1917 and downfall of the Tsar. Once we reach to the establishment of short-lived Kerensky-regime, the author has reached the designated subject matter of his book and his analysis becomes much more detailed and meticulous.
It is also at this point in the book that we encounter bolsheviks and their leader Lenin. From this point on, Pipes narrative splits into two interwoven, but in my opinion distinctly separate tracks. On one hand, he continues on with the ‘history’ and provides an informative analysis of the course of events, starting with the first (failed) attempt to take over power by bolsheviks and halting at the time of Lenin’s death in 1924. In this part of the book, the author covers a wide course of topics - the civil war, the internal political infighting with leftist ‘allies’, consequences of communistic doctrine (such as Lenin understood it) on Russian society, culture, education and finances, how foreign powers regarded and dealt with bolsheviks and their usurpation of power, etc… All this is done in very skillful, consiste and very readable, albeit somewhat stiff and formal manner. This part of the ‘Russian Revolution’ gave justification for me picking it up in the first place.
However, as the narrative reaches the time when bolsheviks grab the power, the author starts shift focus of his book. Gradually, an increasing amount of its space is dedicated to a study of bolshevik political doctrine and Lenin’s input in particular. Such analysis, in some form, is of course to be expected and in deed necessary, considering the subject of the book. But the longer one progresses into the book, the more does this political dissection take the front seat at the cost of ‘history’. I found this gradual and somewhat sneaky shift of focus rather annoying - after all, I picked it up for the ‘history’, not political analysis of bolshevik take on political doctrine of communism.
This feeling of annoyance is immensely deepened by the what I perceive to be author’s stand on bolshevism and persona of Lenin in particular. The way I understood it, Pipes’ view is absolutist - in Pipes’ opinion, bolshevism can only be regarded as one of the ‘absolute evils’ of human history and its implementation caused immeasurable sufferings for countless millions of people on which it was enforced. Through the course of the book, Lenin emerges to be both the main architect of this evil ideology and prime conductor of its implementation in Russia. As such, he’s also painted by Pipes as evil incarnated. Whether or not the author is correct in this assumption, is beyond the scope of this review. But it needs to be observed that a history of any event, written through such ‘filter’, cannot be regarded as objective. And indeed, the author is honest with the reader in this respect. In the final chapter of the book, where he provides his final judgement and utter condemnation both the revolution itself, the system it enforced and Lenin in particular, Pipes admits openly that maintenance of objectivism was not one of the objectives of this book.
In other reviews of history works, I sometimes expressed my irritation over the fact that an effort to maintain ‘objectivism’ caused the author to withhold any personal input about the topic they write about. I find that such 'self-denial' often leads to a final result to become bland and timid narrative without any edge and only limited value. In case of 'Russian revolution', my feeling is exactly the opposite - here, the author allows his feelings about a subject to be his leading star throughout the course of his effort. And when author's premise is that the subject at hand is an 'absolute evil', then the outcome is a given - everything associated with it must also be evil. This is of course a choice free for the author to be made. But at the same time, when a book is written on such a premise, this reader at least can’t help but ask himself about its credibility.
“Russian Revolution” starts off as your typical history book, with an introduction of the ‘landscape’. In this case the author starts with a consiste description of social and political situation of imperial Russia in late 19th century. The story then continues briskly with narrative of the period up to bolshevik seizure of power. The reader is led skillfully through the events of 1905 and subsequent decade filled with half-hearted reforms that failed to stabilize the situation. Next, the author analyzes the consequences for outbreak of World War I for Russia steering elite and how they led to February revolution of 1917 and downfall of the Tsar. Once we reach to the establishment of short-lived Kerensky-regime, the author has reached the designated subject matter of his book and his analysis becomes much more detailed and meticulous.
It is also at this point in the book that we encounter bolsheviks and their leader Lenin. From this point on, Pipes narrative splits into two interwoven, but in my opinion distinctly separate tracks. On one hand, he continues on with the ‘history’ and provides an informative analysis of the course of events, starting with the first (failed) attempt to take over power by bolsheviks and halting at the time of Lenin’s death in 1924. In this part of the book, the author covers a wide course of topics - the civil war, the internal political infighting with leftist ‘allies’, consequences of communistic doctrine (such as Lenin understood it) on Russian society, culture, education and finances, how foreign powers regarded and dealt with bolsheviks and their usurpation of power, etc… All this is done in very skillful, consiste and very readable, albeit somewhat stiff and formal manner. This part of the ‘Russian Revolution’ gave justification for me picking it up in the first place.
However, as the narrative reaches the time when bolsheviks grab the power, the author starts shift focus of his book. Gradually, an increasing amount of its space is dedicated to a study of bolshevik political doctrine and Lenin’s input in particular. Such analysis, in some form, is of course to be expected and in deed necessary, considering the subject of the book. But the longer one progresses into the book, the more does this political dissection take the front seat at the cost of ‘history’. I found this gradual and somewhat sneaky shift of focus rather annoying - after all, I picked it up for the ‘history’, not political analysis of bolshevik take on political doctrine of communism.
This feeling of annoyance is immensely deepened by the what I perceive to be author’s stand on bolshevism and persona of Lenin in particular. The way I understood it, Pipes’ view is absolutist - in Pipes’ opinion, bolshevism can only be regarded as one of the ‘absolute evils’ of human history and its implementation caused immeasurable sufferings for countless millions of people on which it was enforced. Through the course of the book, Lenin emerges to be both the main architect of this evil ideology and prime conductor of its implementation in Russia. As such, he’s also painted by Pipes as evil incarnated. Whether or not the author is correct in this assumption, is beyond the scope of this review. But it needs to be observed that a history of any event, written through such ‘filter’, cannot be regarded as objective. And indeed, the author is honest with the reader in this respect. In the final chapter of the book, where he provides his final judgement and utter condemnation both the revolution itself, the system it enforced and Lenin in particular, Pipes admits openly that maintenance of objectivism was not one of the objectives of this book.
In other reviews of history works, I sometimes expressed my irritation over the fact that an effort to maintain ‘objectivism’ caused the author to withhold any personal input about the topic they write about. I find that such 'self-denial' often leads to a final result to become bland and timid narrative without any edge and only limited value. In case of 'Russian revolution', my feeling is exactly the opposite - here, the author allows his feelings about a subject to be his leading star throughout the course of his effort. And when author's premise is that the subject at hand is an 'absolute evil', then the outcome is a given - everything associated with it must also be evil. This is of course a choice free for the author to be made. But at the same time, when a book is written on such a premise, this reader at least can’t help but ask himself about its credibility.
November 1, 2021
An exhaustive but acidic book. It has, to my mind, three main flaws.
1) Written before the fall of the Soviet Union, many of the unanswered questions Pipes refers to are presumably now answered.
2) Pipes purposefully ignores the 1917-1922 Civil War, not even speaking of the actions of the Soviet government during this time except as they coincide with Pipes' otherwise-exhaustive treatment of the Russian Revolution. I understand that in his mind, these are two separate events, but I think they're so closely linked that it would have been better to deal with both together.
3) Finally, Pipes is so vigorously anti-Communist that it is difficult to understand from his narratives how the Bolsheviks got and maintained power. To be sure, the Red Terror is part of the answer, but if the Bolsheviks were as cruel, bumbling, and unpopular as Pipes portrays, wouldn't they have simply collapsed, as Kerensky's provisional government had done? Thomas Childers' book on the Third Reich is a great counterexample. The reader is certain that Childers is anti-Nazi, but Childers does not let his distaste prevent him from recognizing the effective elements of the NSDAP (e.g. unparalleled political organization) that allowed them to take power in Germany. Pipes is unable to give Lenin et al. any credit, and the book suffers as a result.
1) Written before the fall of the Soviet Union, many of the unanswered questions Pipes refers to are presumably now answered.
2) Pipes purposefully ignores the 1917-1922 Civil War, not even speaking of the actions of the Soviet government during this time except as they coincide with Pipes' otherwise-exhaustive treatment of the Russian Revolution. I understand that in his mind, these are two separate events, but I think they're so closely linked that it would have been better to deal with both together.
3) Finally, Pipes is so vigorously anti-Communist that it is difficult to understand from his narratives how the Bolsheviks got and maintained power. To be sure, the Red Terror is part of the answer, but if the Bolsheviks were as cruel, bumbling, and unpopular as Pipes portrays, wouldn't they have simply collapsed, as Kerensky's provisional government had done? Thomas Childers' book on the Third Reich is a great counterexample. The reader is certain that Childers is anti-Nazi, but Childers does not let his distaste prevent him from recognizing the effective elements of the NSDAP (e.g. unparalleled political organization) that allowed them to take power in Germany. Pipes is unable to give Lenin et al. any credit, and the book suffers as a result.
May 14, 2022
Nie wiem, co mogę napisać, aby w pełni przekazać to, z jak wybitnym dziełem miałem do czynienia, czytając "Rewolucję rosyjską". Richard Pipes w tej monumentalnej - liczącej sobie niespełna tysiąc stron - monografii nie pomija żadnego aspektu historii związanej z wydarzeniami składającymi się na upadek caratu i drogę bolszewików do objęcia władzy w Rosji.
Daleki jestem od umieszczenia tej książki w kategorii zwykłego podręcznika - choć cieszy fakt, że taką rolę w niektórych szkołach i uczelniach jej wyznaczono - bowiem Pipes prezentuje tu unikalny znakomity styl, w połączeniu z niesamowicie przenikliwym krytyczno-analitycznym podejściem. Owszem, jest kilka fragmentów, które mnie osobiście mniej interesowały - choć i tu udało się autorowi zaskarbić kompletnie moją uwagę - z powodów mojego braku sympatii do tematów stricte politycznych, związanych z rozgrywkami partii i ugrupowań, ale te części książki rekompensowane są przez resztę tej opowiedzianej w porywającej manierze historii.
"Rewolucja rosyjska" to bez dwóch zdań jedna z najlepszych książek historycznych, jakie przeczytałem w życiu. To po prostu napisana z pasją opowieść o wydarzeniach, które na dekady wpłynęły i wciąż wpływają na losy świata. Polecam gorąco!
Daleki jestem od umieszczenia tej książki w kategorii zwykłego podręcznika - choć cieszy fakt, że taką rolę w niektórych szkołach i uczelniach jej wyznaczono - bowiem Pipes prezentuje tu unikalny znakomity styl, w połączeniu z niesamowicie przenikliwym krytyczno-analitycznym podejściem. Owszem, jest kilka fragmentów, które mnie osobiście mniej interesowały - choć i tu udało się autorowi zaskarbić kompletnie moją uwagę - z powodów mojego braku sympatii do tematów stricte politycznych, związanych z rozgrywkami partii i ugrupowań, ale te części książki rekompensowane są przez resztę tej opowiedzianej w porywającej manierze historii.
"Rewolucja rosyjska" to bez dwóch zdań jedna z najlepszych książek historycznych, jakie przeczytałem w życiu. To po prostu napisana z pasją opowieść o wydarzeniach, które na dekady wpłynęły i wciąż wpływają na losy świata. Polecam gorąco!
September 8, 2018
His second Russian book. after Russia Under the Old Regime.
This is a history book. Where as Old Regime included some historical data about causes and changes, but was chiefly about Russian social structure, this is about the events, from 1905 to 1917, that formed and shaped the Russian Revolution, through World War I and to the murder of the Imperial family. All sorts of things from the "dry terror" whereby any dissent was driven out of intelligentsia circles before the Revoultion to the Bolshevists informing the United States as they asked for aid that they would go on agitating to overthrow the government, to the way the lie of "War Communism" was touted only when it was clear that their efforts had failed, and they tried to blame it on the war effort.
This is a history book. Where as Old Regime included some historical data about causes and changes, but was chiefly about Russian social structure, this is about the events, from 1905 to 1917, that formed and shaped the Russian Revolution, through World War I and to the murder of the Imperial family. All sorts of things from the "dry terror" whereby any dissent was driven out of intelligentsia circles before the Revoultion to the Bolshevists informing the United States as they asked for aid that they would go on agitating to overthrow the government, to the way the lie of "War Communism" was touted only when it was clear that their efforts had failed, and they tried to blame it on the war effort.
April 11, 2017
A bit of a slog. Pipes is obviously no fan of Lenin or Russia's version of Communism the Bolsheviks instituted...with good reason for the most part. But his obvious bias detracts from the scholarship. I've no doubt reading this book will not be a priority, but if you get a chance, just read the chapter on the murder of the czar and his family. It is excellent narrative with good insight on the fragility of the Bolshevik hold on the reigns of power, and how that played into the decision to eliminate a potential rallying point for its enemies.
August 12, 2024
A long march of a book, for what must have been a long and miserable period for those living through it.
Pipes is meticulous in his detailing of events—literally, down to the counting of votes for the coup d'état. I had long wondered how Lenin and the Bolsheviks actually rose through a semi-democratic institution. What an amazing read.
Pipes' telling is not as heart-wrenching as Orlando Figes', but it is more blunt and factual as it drives home the harsh truths of the first successful Communist/Socialist regime... along with the fact that they fully knew what they were doing.
Pipes is meticulous in his detailing of events—literally, down to the counting of votes for the coup d'état. I had long wondered how Lenin and the Bolsheviks actually rose through a semi-democratic institution. What an amazing read.
Pipes' telling is not as heart-wrenching as Orlando Figes', but it is more blunt and factual as it drives home the harsh truths of the first successful Communist/Socialist regime... along with the fact that they fully knew what they were doing.
September 23, 2024
I wasn't much of a fan of Pipes screwing around with Colby's era of the CIA with the Team A, Team B, stuff where political hacks wanted to look into the data
This books gets about a 3 out of 10, more for studying for it's weird biases, and it being a sheer oddity.
His son was a lot less bonkers, and actually had some charm.
just compare the Kennedys, father vs the children, same thing here
Never been fond of Alfred Wohlstetter or Richard Pipes much in the 1970s and 1980s.
[Albert James Wohlstetter was an American political scientist noted for his influence on U.S. nuclear strategy during the Cold War]
[Pipes was head of the 1976 Team B, composed of civilian experts and retired military officers and agreed to by then-CIA director George H. W. Bush at the urging of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board as a competitive analysis exercise.]
[Team B was created at the instigation of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as an antagonist force to a group of CIA intelligence officials known as Team A. His hope was that it would produce a much more aggressive assessment of Soviet Union military capabilities.]
[Unsurprisingly, it argued that the National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet Union, generated yearly by the CIA, underestimated both Soviet military strategy and ambition and misinterpreted Soviet strategic intentions.]
[Team B faced criticism. The international relations journalist Fred Kaplan writes that Team B "turns out to have been wrong on nearly every point."]
[Pipes's group insisted that the Soviet Union, as of 1976, maintained "a large and expanding Gross National Product," and argued that the CIA belief that economic chaos hindered the USSR's defenses was a ruse on the part of the USSR.]
[One CIA employee called Team B "a kangaroo court".]
.......
[He is also known for the thesis that, contrary to many traditional histories of the Soviet Union at the time, the October Revolution was, rather than a popular general uprising, a coup under false slogans foisted upon the majority of the Russians by a tiny segment of the population driven by a select group of radical intellectuals, who subsequently established a one-party dictatorship that was intolerant and repressive from the start.]
[His writing has provoked discussions in the academic community, for example in The Russian Review among several others. Among members of this school, Lynne Viola and Sheila Fitzpatrick write that Pipes focused too narrowly on intellectuals as causal agents.]
[Peter Kenez, a former PhD student of Pipes', argued that Pipes approached Soviet History as a prosecutor, intent solely on proving the criminal intent of the defendant, to the exclusion of anything else, and described Pipes as a researcher of "great reputation" but with passionate anti-communist views.]
[Other critics have written that Pipes wrote at length about what Pipes described as Vladimir Lenin's unspoken assumptions and conclusions while neglecting what Lenin actually said.[32] Alexander Rabinowitch writes that whenever a document can serve Pipes' long-standing crusade to demonize Lenin, Pipes commented on it at length; if the document allows Lenin to be seen in a less negative light, Pipes passed over it without comment.]
An interesting quasi-crank to be sure.
one of the stranger works out there
...........
but all of Pipes stuff is nutty and interesting if you know when he's a mental case
and when he's not all freaky like a Werewolf when the meds kick in
//////
Jacobin Magazine
Relentless anticommunism defined Pipes as a propagandist rather than historian. More talented cold warriors would occasionally admit the obvious, such as Robert Conquest, who conceded that the Bolsheviks won “the bulk of the working classes in the cities.”
Pipes, however, wrote only for the ideologically converted and rarely made factual concessions that undermined his political mission.
Nor did Pipes engage with his critics such as the social historians of the 1970s and ‘80s who displaced the anticommunists. The new social history by scholars such as Alexander Rabinowitch, Ronald Suny, and David Mandel had replaced the simplistic Cold War narrative by placing the actions and sentiments of ordinary workers, peasants, and soldiers at the center of the revolutionary process.
But because they had paid little attention to his work, Pipes wrote in his memoirs, he decided to turn the “tables on them and largely ignored their work as well.”
Having published five monographs by the mid-1970s, Pipes was recognized as the foremost conservative authority on the Soviet Union.
In 1976, Pipes led a group of military and foreign policy experts, known as Team B, to counter the CIA’s own Team A, in an analysis of the Soviet Union’s military strategy and the supposed “strike first” threats they posed to the United States.
His principal adversary was none other than Henry Kissinger, advisor to John F. Kennedy during the 1960 election campaign, as proponent of a fictional “missile gap” with Soviet Union that would help propel Kennedy to victory.
.......
Henry Kissinger (Harvard) and Stephen F. Cohen (Princeton) were the sane ones from the smears of Pipes (Harvard).
........
the wild Amazone
Not nearly as definitive as it claims to be
4/10
This book is not nearly the definitive work that its admirers believe. On crucial areas such as the role of much of the peasantry and the 1906 Duma only a couple of contemporary sources are cited while leading works in the historiography go unmentioned. A chapter on intelligentsia looks quote Edmund Burke, Raymond Aron, Hippolyte Taine and other conservatives. The idea being is that intellectuals are an irresponsible, bloodthirsty, power-aggrandizing lot, except for those like the author who are senior professors at Harvard and advisors to the Reagan administration. Not merely does the book dislike the Bolsheviks it is also completely unsympathetic to the Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries, and even the Kadets. It is not that Pipes has much admiration for the Czar, but he appears to believe that such is the horror of revolution that one should give unconditional support to an incompetent monarch in a war he cannot win. Although there is much contempt for the utopianism of the intelligentsia, he blandly accepts Russia's entry into the first world war, and the millions of deaths that resulted from it.
pnotley
//////
Big Does Not Necessarily Mean Good
4/10
I regretfully write that this book, simply, is not good.
The book is long but most of it is Pipes commentating and analyzing the politics of the Revolution, and not actual laying out the facts of what happened.
I read a history of the Revolution to learn, first and foremost, what actually happened. But I couldn't even do that despite the book length.
Here is an example. About 250 pages into the book Pipes finally gets to the actual Revolution in February of 1917.
But when he talks about the first day of protests and rioting he spends just a few paragraphs on it. There were literally just a handful of sentences stating what happened. A lot of people demonstrating in the street doing stuff. I still don't even know what happened.
Somehow he spends chapters describing Russia's property system in the 19th century but little on the actual Revolution. That's the point when I put the book down for good.
Even worse, much of his analysis of what happened seems poor and just wrong.
For instance, he says that the Revolutionary movement originated as mainly mainstream liberals who wanted a bit more freedom and he dated it to 1899 and some student protests.
But then he drops this thread, doesn't explain how the student protests caused further events, and casually notes that during this whole time period terrorists were constantly assassinating the Tsar's ministers.
So in Pipes analysis, the assassinations are a meaningless sideshow, and the movement was really forced by student protests? Sorry, I don't buy it.
Spent hours on this book. Unfortunately did not learn much. People seem to assume it is a good book because it is big and scholarly sounding. Sorry, not so! I'm still looking for a good book on this history!
Dan
/////
Two Stars - 4/10
Boring and pedantic
William Frazier
/////
Total nonsense
2/10
This book is total nonsense. It is one of the most slanderous histories on the Russian Revolution that I have ever read. The sources are measly at best (often taking enemies of the Bolsheviks at their word), and most of the book is semi-truthful narrative. I'm not calling for one to read communist histories, but do read something at least more neutral.
Jude Gamache
//////
Biased, hypocritical and blatant propaganda
2/10
This book is incredibly uninformative on what the Russian Revolution truly was and its history, no surprise as this is coming from a right-winger who spent his entire career with conservative and borderline fascist wealthy elites.
Pipes absolutely refuses to acknowledge the incredible popularity for the Bolsheviks and the unrivaled mass support and prestige that was held for socialism by the vast majority of the Russian populace.
He continues saying that the Revolution and the Revolutionary organizations had no support by the populace, when in fact they were built ground up from the work-toiled hands of the masses, not the "left-wing" elite.
He blames the left-wing intellectuals for a plethora of reasons, and yet does not bring up the fact he himself is a right-wing intellectual, and unlike his left-wing rivals, he has the full support of wealthy groups, individuals and state institutions who use him to espouse their propaganda. One wonders if he was not Jewish, that he would claim the Russian Revolution was a Jewish conspiracy.
This is an ideological book, not a history book.
This propaganda piece outright attacks the very idea of democracy in some cases, this is of course no surprise, Pipes' heroes are in fact those who fear the popular struggle and proletarian democracy like Edmund Burke, who quotes among other authoritarian figures.
What's confusing is that Pipse absolutely acknowledges the legitimacy of a disastrous monarch who killed millions of his own people in one the largest wars in human history, and accepts it, while crying about the much fewer deaths caused by the Bolsheviks who were in charge of an unorganized army of proletarians against essentially the whole world (with the only support coming from the mass popularity they had with the populace).
What Pipes won't tell you is that the reasons that the Bolsheviks were so iron-clad was because of the environment they were born out of, war, famine, authoritarianism, death, private tyranny, poverty and slavery.
On top of that they were the first Marxist state, and had to fight to secure it with the upmost urgency and sacrifice, because every power that be tried to destroy it, because of what democratic struggle that their own populace may fight.
Aziz
//////
Comprehensive, deep, but uneven
8/10
This is an excellent overview of the Russian Revolution. Pipes does an excellent job of distilling the different factions involved, and constructing the worldviews of those involved. The dichotomy between the outlook of the aristocracy and peasants was particularly good, much of the revolution's course was explained there.
Throughout, I think Pipes did a good job of balancing the big picture with the details that are necessary to understand what was happening in such a large country at the time. His writing style varies somewhat throughout the different chapters, but on the whole was engaging and lively.
I have only two (minor) complaints, hence 4 stars instead of 5. The first complaint is that the book ends around a chapter too soon. The civil war is left out almost entirely, and in general the book ended with many loose ends, without even a quick summary of what followed in history. This is not a problem for the scholar, but to a casual reader (like myself) it feels a bit abrupt.
The second complaint, as others have noted, is Pipes' bias.
When I got to Chapter 3 I started laughing out loud, and I wondered at first if it was written by someone else.
Suddenly the objective writing style becomes full of venom for the "intelligentsia." Pipes' contempt is a constant theme throughout the remainder of the book, to the point where I wasn't sure how much I could trust some of his observations.
This is still a great book. But I do wish Pipes had remained more objective, the atrocious record of the Bolshevik party's early years speaks for itself.
Tom
//////
However, I do have a problem with Pipes spending every minute of this book to make Lenin and Bolshevik leaders look evil. Furthermore, Pipes attempts to read Lenin's mind; something impossible for us looking back.
Charlie
//////
This books gets about a 3 out of 10, more for studying for it's weird biases, and it being a sheer oddity.
His son was a lot less bonkers, and actually had some charm.
just compare the Kennedys, father vs the children, same thing here
Never been fond of Alfred Wohlstetter or Richard Pipes much in the 1970s and 1980s.
[Albert James Wohlstetter was an American political scientist noted for his influence on U.S. nuclear strategy during the Cold War]
[Pipes was head of the 1976 Team B, composed of civilian experts and retired military officers and agreed to by then-CIA director George H. W. Bush at the urging of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board as a competitive analysis exercise.]
[Team B was created at the instigation of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as an antagonist force to a group of CIA intelligence officials known as Team A. His hope was that it would produce a much more aggressive assessment of Soviet Union military capabilities.]
[Unsurprisingly, it argued that the National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet Union, generated yearly by the CIA, underestimated both Soviet military strategy and ambition and misinterpreted Soviet strategic intentions.]
[Team B faced criticism. The international relations journalist Fred Kaplan writes that Team B "turns out to have been wrong on nearly every point."]
[Pipes's group insisted that the Soviet Union, as of 1976, maintained "a large and expanding Gross National Product," and argued that the CIA belief that economic chaos hindered the USSR's defenses was a ruse on the part of the USSR.]
[One CIA employee called Team B "a kangaroo court".]
.......
[He is also known for the thesis that, contrary to many traditional histories of the Soviet Union at the time, the October Revolution was, rather than a popular general uprising, a coup under false slogans foisted upon the majority of the Russians by a tiny segment of the population driven by a select group of radical intellectuals, who subsequently established a one-party dictatorship that was intolerant and repressive from the start.]
[His writing has provoked discussions in the academic community, for example in The Russian Review among several others. Among members of this school, Lynne Viola and Sheila Fitzpatrick write that Pipes focused too narrowly on intellectuals as causal agents.]
[Peter Kenez, a former PhD student of Pipes', argued that Pipes approached Soviet History as a prosecutor, intent solely on proving the criminal intent of the defendant, to the exclusion of anything else, and described Pipes as a researcher of "great reputation" but with passionate anti-communist views.]
[Other critics have written that Pipes wrote at length about what Pipes described as Vladimir Lenin's unspoken assumptions and conclusions while neglecting what Lenin actually said.[32] Alexander Rabinowitch writes that whenever a document can serve Pipes' long-standing crusade to demonize Lenin, Pipes commented on it at length; if the document allows Lenin to be seen in a less negative light, Pipes passed over it without comment.]
An interesting quasi-crank to be sure.
one of the stranger works out there
...........
but all of Pipes stuff is nutty and interesting if you know when he's a mental case
and when he's not all freaky like a Werewolf when the meds kick in
//////
Jacobin Magazine
Relentless anticommunism defined Pipes as a propagandist rather than historian. More talented cold warriors would occasionally admit the obvious, such as Robert Conquest, who conceded that the Bolsheviks won “the bulk of the working classes in the cities.”
Pipes, however, wrote only for the ideologically converted and rarely made factual concessions that undermined his political mission.
Nor did Pipes engage with his critics such as the social historians of the 1970s and ‘80s who displaced the anticommunists. The new social history by scholars such as Alexander Rabinowitch, Ronald Suny, and David Mandel had replaced the simplistic Cold War narrative by placing the actions and sentiments of ordinary workers, peasants, and soldiers at the center of the revolutionary process.
But because they had paid little attention to his work, Pipes wrote in his memoirs, he decided to turn the “tables on them and largely ignored their work as well.”
Having published five monographs by the mid-1970s, Pipes was recognized as the foremost conservative authority on the Soviet Union.
In 1976, Pipes led a group of military and foreign policy experts, known as Team B, to counter the CIA’s own Team A, in an analysis of the Soviet Union’s military strategy and the supposed “strike first” threats they posed to the United States.
His principal adversary was none other than Henry Kissinger, advisor to John F. Kennedy during the 1960 election campaign, as proponent of a fictional “missile gap” with Soviet Union that would help propel Kennedy to victory.
.......
Henry Kissinger (Harvard) and Stephen F. Cohen (Princeton) were the sane ones from the smears of Pipes (Harvard).
........
the wild Amazone
Not nearly as definitive as it claims to be
4/10
This book is not nearly the definitive work that its admirers believe. On crucial areas such as the role of much of the peasantry and the 1906 Duma only a couple of contemporary sources are cited while leading works in the historiography go unmentioned. A chapter on intelligentsia looks quote Edmund Burke, Raymond Aron, Hippolyte Taine and other conservatives. The idea being is that intellectuals are an irresponsible, bloodthirsty, power-aggrandizing lot, except for those like the author who are senior professors at Harvard and advisors to the Reagan administration. Not merely does the book dislike the Bolsheviks it is also completely unsympathetic to the Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries, and even the Kadets. It is not that Pipes has much admiration for the Czar, but he appears to believe that such is the horror of revolution that one should give unconditional support to an incompetent monarch in a war he cannot win. Although there is much contempt for the utopianism of the intelligentsia, he blandly accepts Russia's entry into the first world war, and the millions of deaths that resulted from it.
pnotley
//////
Big Does Not Necessarily Mean Good
4/10
I regretfully write that this book, simply, is not good.
The book is long but most of it is Pipes commentating and analyzing the politics of the Revolution, and not actual laying out the facts of what happened.
I read a history of the Revolution to learn, first and foremost, what actually happened. But I couldn't even do that despite the book length.
Here is an example. About 250 pages into the book Pipes finally gets to the actual Revolution in February of 1917.
But when he talks about the first day of protests and rioting he spends just a few paragraphs on it. There were literally just a handful of sentences stating what happened. A lot of people demonstrating in the street doing stuff. I still don't even know what happened.
Somehow he spends chapters describing Russia's property system in the 19th century but little on the actual Revolution. That's the point when I put the book down for good.
Even worse, much of his analysis of what happened seems poor and just wrong.
For instance, he says that the Revolutionary movement originated as mainly mainstream liberals who wanted a bit more freedom and he dated it to 1899 and some student protests.
But then he drops this thread, doesn't explain how the student protests caused further events, and casually notes that during this whole time period terrorists were constantly assassinating the Tsar's ministers.
So in Pipes analysis, the assassinations are a meaningless sideshow, and the movement was really forced by student protests? Sorry, I don't buy it.
Spent hours on this book. Unfortunately did not learn much. People seem to assume it is a good book because it is big and scholarly sounding. Sorry, not so! I'm still looking for a good book on this history!
Dan
/////
Two Stars - 4/10
Boring and pedantic
William Frazier
/////
Total nonsense
2/10
This book is total nonsense. It is one of the most slanderous histories on the Russian Revolution that I have ever read. The sources are measly at best (often taking enemies of the Bolsheviks at their word), and most of the book is semi-truthful narrative. I'm not calling for one to read communist histories, but do read something at least more neutral.
Jude Gamache
//////
Biased, hypocritical and blatant propaganda
2/10
This book is incredibly uninformative on what the Russian Revolution truly was and its history, no surprise as this is coming from a right-winger who spent his entire career with conservative and borderline fascist wealthy elites.
Pipes absolutely refuses to acknowledge the incredible popularity for the Bolsheviks and the unrivaled mass support and prestige that was held for socialism by the vast majority of the Russian populace.
He continues saying that the Revolution and the Revolutionary organizations had no support by the populace, when in fact they were built ground up from the work-toiled hands of the masses, not the "left-wing" elite.
He blames the left-wing intellectuals for a plethora of reasons, and yet does not bring up the fact he himself is a right-wing intellectual, and unlike his left-wing rivals, he has the full support of wealthy groups, individuals and state institutions who use him to espouse their propaganda. One wonders if he was not Jewish, that he would claim the Russian Revolution was a Jewish conspiracy.
This is an ideological book, not a history book.
This propaganda piece outright attacks the very idea of democracy in some cases, this is of course no surprise, Pipes' heroes are in fact those who fear the popular struggle and proletarian democracy like Edmund Burke, who quotes among other authoritarian figures.
What's confusing is that Pipse absolutely acknowledges the legitimacy of a disastrous monarch who killed millions of his own people in one the largest wars in human history, and accepts it, while crying about the much fewer deaths caused by the Bolsheviks who were in charge of an unorganized army of proletarians against essentially the whole world (with the only support coming from the mass popularity they had with the populace).
What Pipes won't tell you is that the reasons that the Bolsheviks were so iron-clad was because of the environment they were born out of, war, famine, authoritarianism, death, private tyranny, poverty and slavery.
On top of that they were the first Marxist state, and had to fight to secure it with the upmost urgency and sacrifice, because every power that be tried to destroy it, because of what democratic struggle that their own populace may fight.
Aziz
//////
Comprehensive, deep, but uneven
8/10
This is an excellent overview of the Russian Revolution. Pipes does an excellent job of distilling the different factions involved, and constructing the worldviews of those involved. The dichotomy between the outlook of the aristocracy and peasants was particularly good, much of the revolution's course was explained there.
Throughout, I think Pipes did a good job of balancing the big picture with the details that are necessary to understand what was happening in such a large country at the time. His writing style varies somewhat throughout the different chapters, but on the whole was engaging and lively.
I have only two (minor) complaints, hence 4 stars instead of 5. The first complaint is that the book ends around a chapter too soon. The civil war is left out almost entirely, and in general the book ended with many loose ends, without even a quick summary of what followed in history. This is not a problem for the scholar, but to a casual reader (like myself) it feels a bit abrupt.
The second complaint, as others have noted, is Pipes' bias.
When I got to Chapter 3 I started laughing out loud, and I wondered at first if it was written by someone else.
Suddenly the objective writing style becomes full of venom for the "intelligentsia." Pipes' contempt is a constant theme throughout the remainder of the book, to the point where I wasn't sure how much I could trust some of his observations.
This is still a great book. But I do wish Pipes had remained more objective, the atrocious record of the Bolshevik party's early years speaks for itself.
Tom
//////
However, I do have a problem with Pipes spending every minute of this book to make Lenin and Bolshevik leaders look evil. Furthermore, Pipes attempts to read Lenin's mind; something impossible for us looking back.
Charlie
//////
May 23, 2022
Brilliant!
October 21, 2021
Well written and quite easy to read given its length. Contains excellent depictions of the political maneuvering and infighting within the successive Russian governments and their relationship with the Kaiser's Germany. Unfortunately the author's framing of political issues undermines his attention to detail, even at a cursory glance. On one page striking workers have no inkling that their demonstration will be anything but peaceful, on the very next page they are martyrs in religious ecstacy eager to be shot by the Tzar's police. A strike, organized by railway workers, which is illegal under the absolutist authoritarian government, somehow only becomes political when leftists involve themselves. All of this leads the reader to believe that the author has an overly sympathetic view of the Tzar's regime and a position that economic issues are somehow apolitical, the latter of which has not aged well. While he is open about his distaste for Lenin, it is my opinion that this is still a piece of propaganda intended for Russian citizens such that they do not mourn the fall of the USSR.
November 1, 2022
A very interesting book, I'm listening to it for the 10th time probably, but I can feel that he is putting a slight spin on things. I would recheck some statements. I'm together with Richard in his aversion to the Bolshevik rule, I must note. My grand-grandfather's brother was one of the members of the Petrograd Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, and my grand-grandfather, an ironsmith in Rezh (the Urals) was a communist since before 1917, but he got disillusioned in the Bolsheviks, and his son, my grandfather, was disillusioned too.
February 4, 2020
Highly educational, but almost too much detail, making it at times hard to follow who was doing what when. I think that was just the nature of Russia and the multitude of various factors that made - and make - up this complicated place and its peoples. Pipes is clearly a master of this subject. Very much recommended for those wishing to 'drink deep' the history of Russia from the 1860s to the early 1920s.
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