The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution

Author: Sean McMeekin

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2017-05-30

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 046509497X

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From an award-winning scholar comes this definitive, single-volume history that illuminates the tensions and transformations of the Russian Revolution. ​ In The Russian Revolution, acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin traces the events which ended Romanov rule, ushered the Bolsheviks into power, and introduced Communism to the world. Between 1917 and 1922, Russia underwent a complete and irreversible transformation. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Tsarist regime in the middle of World War I, the Bolsheviks staged a hostile takeover of the Russian Imperial Army, promoting mutinies and mass desertions of men in order to fulfill Lenin's program of turning the "imperialist war" into civil war. By the time the Bolsheviks had snuffed out the last resistance five years later, over 20 million people had died, and the Russian economy had collapsed so completely that Communism had to be temporarily abandoned. Still, Bolshevik rule was secure, owing to the new regime's monopoly on force, enabled by illicit arms deals signed with capitalist neighbors such as Germany and Sweden who sought to benefit-politically and economically-from the revolutionary chaos in Russia. Drawing on scores of previously untapped files from Russian archives and a range of other repositories in Europe, Turkey, and the United States, McMeekin delivers exciting, groundbreaking research about this turbulent era. The first comprehensive history of these momentous events in two decades, The Russian Revolution combines cutting-edge scholarship and a fast-paced narrative to shed new light on one of the most significant turning points of the twentieth century.


Year One of the Russian Revolution

Year One of the Russian Revolution

Author: Victor Serge

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2017-01-15

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 1608466094

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An eyewitness account of the world-changing uprising—from the author of Memoirs of a Revolutionary. “A truly remarkable individual . . . an heroic work” (Richard Allday of Counterfire). Brimming with the honesty and passionate conviction for which he has become famous, Victor Serge’s account of the first year of the Russian Revolution—through all of its achievements and challenges—captures both the heroism of the mass upsurge that gave birth to Soviet democracy and the crippling circumstances that began to chip away at its historic gains. Year One of the Russian Revolution is Serge’s attempt to defend the early days of the revolution against those, like Stalin, who would claim its legacy as justification for the repression of dissent within Russia. Praise for Victor Serge “Serge is one of the most compelling of twentieth-century ethical and literary heroes.” —Susan Sontag, MacArthur Fellow and winner of the National Book Award “His political recollections are very important, because they reflect so well the mood of this lost generation . . . His articles and books speak for themselves, and we would be poorer without them.” —Partisan Review “I know of no other writer with whom Serge can be very usefully compared. The essence of the man and his books is to be found in his attitude to the truth.” —John Berger, Booker Prize–winning author “The novels, poems, memoirs and other writings of Victor Serge are among the finest works of literature inspired by the October Revolution that brought the working class to power in Russia in 1917.” —Scott McLemee, writer of the weekly “Intellectual Affairs” column for Inside Higher Ed


Passage Through Armageddon

Passage Through Armageddon

Author: W. Bruce Lincoln

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 664

ISBN-13:

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Invaded by foreign armies and threatened by the terrors of civil strife, Russia's leaders mobilized more than fifteen million fighting men between 1914 and 1918 only to find that at least a quarter of them had no boots, rifles, or ammunition. With field casualties soaring into the millions, scourges of starvation and disease joined the enemy's guns to double and treble Russia's human losses. Never in modern history had war so devastated a nation. Recounting the tale of the Russians' passage through the shattering experience of the First World War and the revolutions of 1917, W. Bruce Lincoln offers a profoundly intelligent and detailed chronology of the watershed events and devastating hardships that led to the Bolshevik Revolution. Mining an abundance of resources, including letters, diaries, memoirs, government reports, military dispatches, and testimony given to the revolution's first Supreme Commission of Inquiry, he allows the reader to step directly into army headquarters, state council chambers, boudoirs, trenches, and underground revolutionary hideaways of the men and women who shaped the events of this crucial era.


Brest-Litovsk

Brest-Litovsk

Author: Sir John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett

Publisher:

Published: 1966

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13:

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American edition (New York, W. Morrow & co., 1939) has title: The forgotten peace, Brest-Litovsk) Bibliography: p. 455-459.


Spies and Commissars

Spies and Commissars

Author: Robert Service

Publisher: Soft Skull Press

Published: 2012-05-08

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1610391403

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Traces the power struggle between the Bolsheviks and the West at the dawn of the Russian Revolution, offering insight into the roles of diplomats, reporters, dissidents and others who impacted foreign policy throughout subsequent decades.


With Snow on Their Boots

With Snow on Their Boots

Author: Jamie H. Cockfield

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 1999-07-02

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 0312220820

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In 1916, in an exchange of human flesh for war material, the Russian government sent to France two brigades to fight on the side of their French allies. By the end of World War I, these two brigades had experienced their own form of the Russian Revolution, had been isolated at a southern training post in a discipline move by the French government, had battled against each other in what was one of the first confrontations of the Russian Civil War, and had emerged from the conflict as a single force, the Russian Legion of Honor, which would remain loyal to France until the end of the war. The remarkable story of these Russian soldiers has been overlooked by historians until now. Jamie Cockfield here explores the journey and transformation of these men, and in so doing, he examines the impact of the revolution on the Russians who were caught in the middle of wartime alliances and nationalist ardor.


My Life

My Life

Author: Leon Trotsky

Publisher: Wellred Books

Published: 2023-03-02

Total Pages: 719

ISBN-13:

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Since My Life was first published it has been regarded as a unique political, literary and human document. Written in the first year of Trotsky's exile in Turkey, it contains the earliest authoritative account of the rise of Stalinism and the expulsion of the Left Opposition, who heroically fought for the ideas and traditions of Lenin. Trotsky's exile is the culmination of a narrative which moves from his childhood, his education in the "universities" of Tsarist prisons, Siberia and then foreign exile - to his involvement in the European revolutionary movement and his central role in the tempestuous 1905 revolution and the Bolshevik victory in October 1917 and the civil war which followed. The work concludes with his deportation and exile. With an introduction by Alan Woods and a preface by Trotsky's grandson, Vsievolod Volkov.


The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction

The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction

Author: S. A. Smith

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2002-02-21

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0191578363

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This Very Short Introduction provides an analytical narrative of the main events and developments in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1936. It examines the impact of the revolution on society as a whole—on different classes, ethnic groups, the army, men and women, youth. Its central concern is to understand how one structure of domination was replaced by another. The book registers the primacy of politics, but situates political developments firmly in the context of massive economic, social, and cultural change. Since the fall of Communism there has been much reflection on the significance of the Russian Revolution. The book rejects the currently influential, liberal interpretation of the revolution in favour of one that sees it as rooted in the contradictions of a backward society which sought modernization and enlightenment and ended in political tyranny. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.