Review by Booklist Review
For the busy but interested reader, Pipes has condensed his classic two-volume analysis of Russia's tragic cataclysm. How that great country became saddled with and ruined by Communism is complex--despite the Bolshevik victors' claims for historical inevitability. Without World War I, they would have remained an obscure intelligentsia; Lenin doubted he would live to see the revolution scarcely weeks before the czar's abdication. Of course, Russia had muddled through the 19th century quasi-expectant of a revolution, ardently so by socialist terrorists, apprehensively so by liberals and conservatives; and the 1905 revolution should have revealed to everyone what a full-blown social overthrow would be like. But as Pipes cogently and rather wistfully describes, the reformist track under Stolypin was stymied by the monarchist reactionaries. After the bizarre interlude of Alexandra and Rasputin, enter Kerensky, the Reds Lenin and Trotsky, the Whites Kolchak and Denikin, and the dolorous drama unfolds. Despite its sadness, insight abounds in this history, among the most reliably researched and skillfully synthesized works ever written on the revolution. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Harvard historian Pipes emphasizes that the Russian Revolution of October 1917 was actually a coup d'etat, a seizing of power by a tightly organized conspiracy, carried out with a show of mass participation but with almost no mass involvement. By synthesizing and condensing his two recent booksThe Russian Revolution (1990) and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1994)into a superb narrative augmented with scores of photographs and maps, he has produced the single most readable, useful and illuminating chronicle of the revolution and its aftermath. Lenin, authoritarian, fanatical, secretive and intolerant, ordered the construction of concentration camps in 1918. Pipes shows how Lenin's one-party police state paved the way for Stalin by throttling democratic impulses and through unremitting terror and expropriations. Chapters cover the civil war, which crushed antimonarchist democrats (``Whites''); the Bolsheviks' annihilation of politically active peasants (``kulaks'') despite massive peasant revolts; the murder of the imperial family; the Soviets' subjugation of ethnic groups and nationalities; and the war against religion. Pipes's remarkably vivid, compelling narrative turns up fresh insights on every page. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Pipes (history, Harvard Univ.) has condensed his two-volume opus, The Russian Revolution (LJ 11/1/90) and Russia Under the Bolsheviks (LJ 3/15/94), into a single readable volume. Forcefully showing why the 70-year-old Communist experiment failed, he provides the nonacademic reader with accurate historical events in a highly readable format. Only a minor flaw in the fourth chapter, where he fails to explain who the Mensheviks were until 30 pages later in the next chapter, mars this excellent book. The approach parallels Dominic Lieven's contemporary volume Nicholas II (LJ 1/94) but is better organized and more complete. The last chapter does a fine job of summing up the revolution and adds a curious comparison between Bolshevik and Tsarist Russia. Ultimately, Pipes shows how the seeds of destruction of communism were planted at its inception in 1917. Recommended for public, academic, and school libraries.Harry Willems, Kansas Lib. System, Iola (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
