More than seventy years since the Bolsheviks came to power, there is still no comprehensive study of workers' activism in history's first successful workers' revolution. Strikes and Revolution in Russia, 1917 is the first effort in any language to explore this issue in both quantitative and qualitative terms and to relate strikes to the broader processes of Russia's revolutionary transformation. Diane Koenker and William Rosenberg not only provide a new basis for understanding essential elements of Russia's social and political history in this critical period but also make a strong contribution to the literature on European labor movements. Using statistical techniques, but without letting methodology dominate their discussion, the authors examine such major problems as the mobilization of labor and management, factory relations, perceptions, the formation of social identities, and the relationship between labor protest and politics in 1917. They challenge common assumptions by showing that much strike activity in 1917 can be understood as routine, but they are also able to demonstrate how the character of strikes began to change and why. Originally published in 1990. 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.
Whereas most Soviet and American scholars of the Russian Revolution have emphasized the great leaders and the great events of 1917, Diane Koenker reverses this trend in a study of the Russian working class. Originally published in 1981. 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.
This study examines one of the key events in history, the Russian Revolution. Since the late Gorbachev period, a wealth of new material has become available to historians that has triggered intense scholarly debate on the nature of revolution. This timely new book takes account of the new scholarship, including - for example - the role of Lenin. It is argued that the intial flexibility of Lenin and the Bolshevik party allowed them to take power, but that the conduct of both changed considerably once they were obliged to take steps to maintain their authority. This book charts the Febuary Revolution, the October Revolution, the Civil War and the main individuals involved, giving a remarkable degree of clarity to the tumultuous events in Russia whose consequences the world lived with for the rest of the twentieth century.
This groundbreaking comparative study rediscovers the socialists of Russia’s borderlands, upending conventional interpretations of working-class politics and the Russian Revolution. Researched in eight languages, Revolutionary Social Democracy challenges long-held assumptions by scholars and activists about the dynamics of revolutionary change.
More than seventy years after the birth of the Soviet Union, the events that brought the Bolsheviks to power are still poorly understood. Ever since the first reports of the revolution reached Western audiences, analysts have blamed or credited Lenin and his party for overthrowing the old order singlehandedly. Yet studies of the revolution in recent years have revealed the depth of the crisis through which Tsarist society passed late in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The essays in this book address the process of worker alienation and the way that the Bolsheviks appealed to, rather than exploited, the working population, especially in the capital cities of Petrograd and Moscow.
For generations in the West, Cold War animosity blocked dispassionate accounts of the Russian Revolution. This history authoritatively restores the upheaval's primary social actors-workers, soldiers, and peasants-to their rightful place at the center of the revolutionary process.
he eminent historian Leopold Haimson examines the nature of political power in Russia during the years leading to the Bolshevik revolution. The book explores the issue of power as it was reflected in struggles of Russian workers to control their own lives and in the outlooks and strategies of leading political figures on the objectives of the revolution and the ways to achieve them.