Inside The Russian Revolution

This is the story of the Russian Revolution of 1917-1921 told through the medium of the personal accounts of those there at the time. It also describes, through the same medium, Russia's involvement in WWI. The author, a socialist sympathiser was in Russia at the time of the Revolution. She says," I saw a people delivered from one class tyranny deliberately hasten to establish another, quite as brutal and as unmindful of the common good as the old one." Rheta Dorr was an American journalist and political activist.

Russians from all walks of life joyously celebrated the end of Nicholas II’s monarchy, but one year later, amid widespread civil strife and lawlessness, a fearful citizenry stayed out of sight. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa offers a new perspective on Russia’s revolutionary year through the lens of violent crime and its devastating effect on ordinary people.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the twentieth century. Now, to mark the centenary of this epochal event, historian Steve Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the nineteenth century, through the First World War and the revolutions of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s, when Stalin simultaneously unleashed violent collectivization of agriculture and crash industrialization upon Russian society. Drawing on recent archivally-based scholarship, Russia in Revolution pays particular attention to the varying impact of the Revolution on the various groups that made up society: peasants, workers, non-Russian nationalities, the army, women and the family, young people, and the Church. In doing so, it provides a fresh way into the big, perennial questions about the Revolution and its consequences: why did the attempt by the tsarist government to implement political reform after the 1905 Revolution fail?; why did the First World War bring about the collapse of the tsarist system?; why did the attempt to create a democratic system after the February Revolution of 1917 not get off the ground?; why did the Bolsheviks succeed in seizing and holding on to power?; why did they come out victorious from a punishing civil war?; why did the New Economic Policy they introduced in 1921 fail?; and why did Stalin come out on top in the power struggle inside the Bolshevik party after Lenin's death in 1924? A final chapter then reflects on the larger significance of 1917 for the history of the twentieth century - and, for all its terrible flaws, what the promise of the Revolution might mean for us today.

The Russian Revolution may be the most misunderstood and misrepresented event in modern history, its history told in a mix of legends and anecdotes. In A People's History of the Russian Revolution, Neil Faulkner sets out to debunk the myths and pry fact from fiction, putting at the heart of the story the Russian people who are the true heroes of this tumultuous tale. In this fast-paced introduction, Faulkner tells the powerful narrative of how millions of people came together in a mass movement, organized democratic assemblies, mobilized for militant action, and overturned a vast regime of landlords, profiteers, and warmongers. Faulkner rejects caricatures of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as authoritarian conspirators or the progenitors of Stalinist dictatorship, and forcefully argues that the Russian Revolution was an explosion of democracy and creativity--and that it was crushed by bloody counter-revolution and replaced with a form of bureaucratic state-capitalism. Grounded by powerful first-hand testimony, this history marks the centenary of the Revolution by restoring the democratic essence of the revolution, offering a perfect primer for the modern reader.

At the turn of the century, the Russian economy was growing by about 10% annually and its population had reached 150 million. By 1920 the country was in desperate financial straits and more than 20 million Russians had died. And by 1950, a third of the globe had embraced communism. The triumph of Communism sets a profound puzzle. How did the Bolsheviks win power and then cling to it amid the chaos they had created? Traditional histories remain a captive to Marxist ideas about class struggle. Analysing never before used files from the Tsarist military archives, McMeekin argues that war is the answer. The revolutionaries were aided at nearly every step by Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland who sought to benefit - politically and economically - from the changes overtaking the country. To make sense of Russia's careening path the essential question is not Lenin's "who, whom?", but who benefits?

In the 1990s, all eyes turned to the momentous changes in Russia, as the world's largest country was transformed into the world's newest democracy. But the heroic images of Boris Yeltsin atop a tank in front of Moscow's White House soon turned to grim new realities: a currency in freefall and a war in Chechnya; on the street, flashy new money and a vicious Russian mafia contrasted with doctors and teachers not receiving salaries for months at a time. If this was what capitalism brought, many Russians wondered if they weren't better off under the communists. This new society did not just appear ready-made: it was created by a handful of powerful men who came to be known as the oligarchs and the young reformers. The oligarchs were fast-talking businessmen who laid claim to Russia's vast natural resources. The young reformers were an elite group of egghead economists who got to put their wild theories into action, with results that were sometimes inspiring, sometimes devastating. With unparalleled access and acute insight, Chrystia Freeland takes us behind the scenes and shows us how these two groups misused a historic opportunity to build a new Russia. Their achievements were considerable, but their mistakes will deform Russian society for generations to come. Along with a gripping account of the incredible events in Russia's corridors of power, Freeland gives us a vivid sense of the buzz and hustle of the new Russia, and inside stories of the businesses that have beaten the odds and become successful and profitable. She also exposes the conflicts and compromises that developed when red directors of old Soviet firms and factories yielded to -- or fought -- the radically new ways of doing business. She delves into the loophole economy, where anyone who knows how to manipulate the new rules can make a fast buck. Sale of the Century is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall economic thriller -- an astonishing and essential account of who really controls Russia's new frontier.

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Excerpt from Inside the Russian Revolution And what do you think happened to that train my daughter was to have taken? He asked. It was the regular night express to Petrograd, correspond ing somewhat to the Congressional Limited between New York and Washington. A few miles out of Moscow a difference arose between the engineer and the stoker, and in order to settle it they stopped the train and had a fight. One of the men hit the other on the head with a monkey wrench, injuring him pretty badly. Authority of some kind stepped in and arrested the assailant. The engineer's cab was blood-stained, and some authority unhitched the engine and sent it back to Moscow as evidence. The train all this time, with its hundreds of passengers, stood on the tracks waiting for a new engine and crew, and if it was not run into and wrecked it was because it was lucky. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.