Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991
A History
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4.3 • 20 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the author of A People's Tragedy, an original reading of the Russian Revolution, examining it not as a single event but as a hundred-year cycle of violence in pursuit of utopian dreams
In this elegant and incisive account, Orlando Figes offers an illuminating new perspective on the Russian Revolution. While other historians have focused their examinations on the cataclysmic years immediately before and after 1917, Figes shows how the revolution, while it changed in form and character, nevertheless retained the same idealistic goals throughout, from its origins in the famine crisis of 1891 until its end with the collapse of the communist Soviet regime in 1991.
Figes traces three generational phases: Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who set the pattern of destruction and renewal until their demise in the terror of the 1930s; the Stalinist generation, promoted from the lower classes, who created the lasting structures of the Soviet regime and consolidated its legitimacy through victory in war; and the generation of 1956, shaped by the revelations of Stalin's crimes and committed to "making the Revolution work" to remedy economic decline and mass disaffection. Until the very end of the Soviet system, its leaders believed they were carrying out the revolution Lenin had begun.
With the authority and distinctive style that have marked his magisterial histories, Figes delivers an accessible and paradigm-shifting reconsideration of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Figes (A People's Tragedy) covers familiar terrain in his new account of Russia and its revolution with a sharp and confident analysis. He presents a centurylong revolution stretching from 1891 to 1991, and divides it into three phases: the rise of the Bolsheviks, Stalin's rule, and the repercussions of Khruschev's denouncement of Stalin. Figes works to dispel the mythology that still surrounds Lenin, Stalin, and the Revolution, plenty of which still survives in the West even after the Cold War. He reminds us that Lenin "was a stranger to Russia," having spent most of the preceding 17 years outside the country, and that the Bolshevik storming of the Winter Palace was more like a house arrest, a coup d' tat that few observers, including some Bolsheviks, thought could last. Analyzing Stalin's leadership, Figes notes that even though intelligence reports suggested the Germans were massing for an attack in 1941, Stalin ignored the signs and, due to fears inspired by his Great Terror, his military commanders refused to contradict him. Figes strips away the propaganda and nostalgia to emphasize the Revolution's destructive powers, a perspective that is all the more relevant as Vladimir Putin seeks to capitalize on many Russians' hunger for the so-called glory days of the Soviet Union.
