When workers and peasants rose up across Russia and smashed the centuries old Tsarist autocracy their actions reverberated across the world, and continue to inspire activists to this day. This carefully assembled and expertly translated collection of documents from the Petrograd socialist movement in 1917 provides contemporary readers with a firsthand glimpse into the revolutionary ferment as it unfolds. In Leaflets of the Russian Revolution, Barbara Allen selects and introduces the pamphlets and other agitational material that give life to the debates, disagreements and perspectives that animated the masses during the revolution.
Propaganda in Revolutionary Ukraine is a survey of domestic government and party printed propaganda in revolutionary Ukraine. It is the first account in English to study these materials using an illustrative sample of printed texts and to assess their impact based on secret police and agitator situation reports. The book surveys texts published by the Central Rada, the Ukrainian State, the Ukrainian National Republic, the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionary Party, the Ukrainian Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Independentists, Ukrainian Communist Party (UCP), Ukraine’s Bolshevik Party (CPU), and anti-Bolshevik warlords. It includes 46 reproductions and describes the infrastructure that underlay the production and dissemination of printed text propaganda. The author argues that in the war of words neither Ukrainian failures nor Bolshevik success should be exaggerated. Each side managed to sway opinion in its favour in specific places at specific times.
Author of the only full-length eyewitness account of the 1917 Revolution, Sukhanov was a key figure in the first revolutionary Government. His seven-volume book, first published in 1922, was suppressed under Stalin. This reissue of the abridged version is, as the editor's preface points out, one of the few things written about this most dramatic and momentous event, which actually has the smell of life, and gives us a feeling for the personalities, the emotions, and the play of ideas of the whole revolutionary period." Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Access to newly opened archives has allowed Alexander Rabinowitch to substantially rewrite the history of how the Bolsheviks consolidated their power in Russia. Focusing on the first year of Soviet rule in St Petersburg, he shows how state organs evolved in the face of repeated crises.
The dominant view of the Russian Revolution of 1917 is of a movement led by prominent men like Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Despite the demonstrations of female workers for ‘bread and herrings’, which sparked the February Revolution, in most historical accounts of this momentous period, women are too often relegated to the footnotes. Judy Cox argues that women were essential to the success of the revolution and to the development of the Bolshevik Party. With biographical sketches of famous female revolutionaries like Alexandra Kollontai and less well-known figures like Elena Stasova and Larissa Reisner, The Women’s Revolution tells the inspiring story of how Russian women threw off centuries of oppression to strike, organize, liberate themselves and ultimately try to build a new world based on equality and freedom for all.
A survey of the key political, economic, social, and cultural developments in Russian women’s history from 900 to 2010, and their impact on the nation. Synthesizing several decades of scholarship by historians East and West, Barbara Evans Clements traces the major developments in the history of women in Russia and their impact on the history of the nation. Sketching lived experiences across the centuries, she demonstrates the key roles that women played in shaping Russia’s political, economic, social, and cultural development for over a millennium. The story Clements tells is one of hardship and endurance, but also one of achievement by women who, for example, promoted the conversion to Christianity, governed estates, created great art, rebelled against the government, established charities, built the tanks that rolled into Berlin in 1945, and flew the planes that strafed the retreating Wehrmacht. This daunting and complex history is presented in an engaging survey that integrates this scholarship into the field of Russian and post-Soviet history. “The product of a lifetime of engagement by one of the preeminent authorities on the history of Russian women, the book reflects the author’s deep expertise in primary sources as well as her familiarity with the secondary literature.” —Choi Chatterjee, California State University Los Angeles “A significant achievement in scholarship on Russian women and gender. . . . Among this text’s many strengths are its lucidity, readability, and engaging synthesis of a large number of both primary and secondary sources. . . . Its erudite contextualization of the history of Russian women within a larger European framework ensures its interest for and accessibility to a wide readership, especially those outside of the Slavic field.” —Slavic and East European Journal “Clements’s writing is engaging, clear, and jargon free, making this book easily accessible to a general audience. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice “This daunting and complex history is presented in an engaging survey that integrates this scholarship into the field of Russian and post-Soviet history.” —Journal of Turkish Weekly
The secret life of the man who reshaped Russia Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the October 1917 uprising, is one of the most misunderstood leaders of the twentieth century. In his own time, there were many, even among his enemies, who acknowledged the full magnitude of his intellectual and political achievements. But his legacy has been lost in misinterpretation; he is worshipped but rarely read. On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Tariq Ali explores the two major influences on Lenin’s thought—the turbulent history of Tsarist Russia and the birth of the international labour movement—and explains how Lenin confronted dilemmas that still cast a shadow over the present. Is terrorism ever a viable strategy? Is support for imperial wars ever justified? Can politics be made without a party? Was the seizure of power in 1917 morally justified? Should he have parted company from his wife and lived with his lover? In The Dilemmas of Lenin, Ali provides an insightful portrait of Lenin’s deepest preoccupations and underlines the clarity and vigour of his theoretical and political formulations. He concludes with an affecting account of Lenin’s last two years, when he realized that “we knew nothing” and insisted that the revolution had to be renewed lest it wither and die.
