Russia In Flames

Author's Note -- Part I: Last Years of the Old Empire, 1904-1914 -- Part II: The Great War : Imperial Self-Destruction -- The Great War Begins -- Germans, Jews, Armenians -- Tearing Themselves Apart -- Conflict and Collapse -- Part III: 1917 : Contest for Control -- Five Days that Shook the World -- The Provisional Government and the War -- August-September : From Putsch to Coup -- Bolshevik October -- Death of the Constituent Assembly -- Politics from Below -- Part IV: Sovereign Claims -- The Peace that Wasn't -- Treason and Terror -- Finland's Civil War -- Baltic Entanglements -- Ukrainian Drama, Act I -- Colonial Repercussions -- Part V: War Within -- The Unquiet Don -- Foreign Bodies -- Trotsky Arms, Siberia Mobilizes -- Kolchak : the Wild East -- Ukraine, Act II -- War Against the Cossacks -- Miracle on the Vistula -- War Against the Jews : 1919-1920 -- The Last Page -- War Against the Peasants -- Part VI: Victory and Retreat -- The Proletariat in the Proletarian Dictatorship -- The Revolution Turns Against Itself -- Conclusion: Revolution Against Itself

As soon as Napoleon and his Grand Army entered Moscow, on 14 September 1812, the capital erupted in flames that eventually engulfed and destroyed two thirds of the city. The fiery devastation had a profound effect on the Grand Army, but for thirty-five days Napoleon stayed, making increasingly desperate efforts to achieve peace with Russia. Then, in October, almost surrounded by the Russians and with winter fast approaching, he abandoned the capital and embarked on the long, bitter retreat that destroyed his army. The month-long stay in Moscow was a pivotal moment in the war of 1812 the moment when the initiative swung towards the Tsar's armies and spelled doom for the invading Grand Army yet it has rarely been studied in the same depth as the other key events of the campaign.Alexander Mikaberidze, in this third volume of his in-depth reassessment of the war between the French and Russian empires, emphasizes the importance of the Moscow fire and shows how Russian intransigence sealed the fate of the French army. He uses a vast array of French, German, Polish and Russian memoirs, letters and diaries as well as archival material in order to tell the dramatic story of the Moscow fire. Not only does he provide a comprehensive account of events, looking at them from both the French and Russian points of view, but he explores the Russians' motives for leaving, then burning their capital. Using extensive eyewitness accounts, he paints a vivid picture of the harsh reality of life in the remains of the occupied city and describes military operations around Moscow at this turning point in the campaign.

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.

We are running a race with Bolshevism and the world is on fire President Wilson, 1919 Paris Peace ConferenceWhile the Western leaders in Paris were drafting a peace treaty that would punish German militarism and make the world safe for democ

This carefully crafted ebook: "Russia in the Shadows (The original unabridged edition)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Russia in the Shadows is the title of the book by H. G. Wells published early in 1921, which includes a series of articles previously printed in The Sunday Express in connection with Wells's second visit to Russia in September and October 1920. Table of Contents: Petersburg in Collapse Drift and Salvage The Quintessence of Bolshevism The Creative Effort in Russia The Petersburg Soviet The Dreamer in the Kremlin The Envoy Herbert George "H. G." Wells (1866 – 1946) was an English writer, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing textbooks and rules for war games.

This memoir by a Comintern leader in the early Soviet Union is “a vital primary source . . . clear and unpretentious”(Ian Birchall, from the new preface). When Alfred Rosmer arrived in Russia in 1919, it was considered by millions to be the center of world revolution. It was also a society beleaguered by civil war and encircled by hostile powers seeking to snuff out the promise and potential the first successful workers’ revolution represented. It was in this context that revolutionaries from across the globe undertook the creation of the Communist International, hoping to forge an instrument to fan the flames of the struggle against global capitalism. In this gripping political memoir of his time in Moscow, Rosmer draws on his unique perspective as both a delegate to the Comintern and as a member of its Executive Committee to paint a stunning picture of the early years of Soviet rule. From the debates sparked by the publication of Lenin’s State and Revolution and Left-Wing Communism to the efforts of the International to extend its influence beyond Europe with the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku, Rosmer documents key developments with an unparalleled clarity of vision and offers invaluable insights.

An account of the little-known involvement of Royal Marines as they engaged the new Bolsheviks immediately after the Russian Revolution. After three years of great loss and suffering on the Eastern Front, Imperial Russia was in crisis and on the verge of revolution. In November 1917, Lenin’s Bolsheviks (later known as “Soviets”) seized power, signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers and brutally murdered Tsar Nicholas (British King George’s first cousin) and his children so there could be no return to the old order. As Russia fractured into loyalist “White” and revolutionary “Red” factions, the British government became increasingly drawn into the escalating Russian Civil War after hundreds of thousands of German troops transferred from the Eastern Front to France were used in the 1918 “Spring Offensive” which threatened Paris. What began with the landing of a small number of Royal Marines at Murmansk in March 1918 to protect Allied-donated war stores quickly escalated with the British government actively pursuing an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks on several fronts in support of British trained and equipped “White Russian” Allies. At the height of British military intervention in mid-1919, British troops were fighting the Soviets far into the Russian interior in the Baltic, North Russia, Siberia, Caspian and Crimea simultaneously. The full range of weapons in the British arsenal were deployed including the most modern aircraft, tanks and even poison gas. British forces were also drawn into peripheral conflicts against “White” Finnish troops in North Russia and the German “Iron Division” in the Baltic. It remains a little-known fact that the last British troops killed by the German Army in the First World War were killed in the Baltic in late 1919, nor that the last Canadian and Australian soldiers to die in the First World War suffered their fate in North Russia in 1919 many months after the Armistice. Despite the award of five Victoria Crosses (including one posthumous) and the loss of hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen, most of whom remain buried in Russia, the campaign remains virtually unknown in Britain today. After withdrawal of all British forces in mid-1920, the British government attempted to cover up its military involvement in Russia by classifying all official documents. By the time files relating to the campaign were quietly released decades later there was little public interest. Few people in Britain today know that their nation ever fought a war against the Soviet Union. The culmination of more than 15 years of painstaking and exhaustive research with access to many previously classified official documents, unpublished diaries, manuscripts and personal accounts, author Damien Wright has written the first comprehensive campaign history of British and Commonwealth military intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918-20. “Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War remains forgotten. Wright’s book addresses that oversight, interspersing the broader story with personal accounts of participants.” —Military History Magazine

An Economist Best Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Book of the Year Winner of the the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize An Amazon Best Book of the Month (History) One of the world’s leading scholars offers a fresh interpretation of the linked origins of World War I and the Russian Revolution "Lieven has a double gift: first, for harvesting details to convey the essence of an era and, second, for finding new, startling, and clarifying elements in familiar stories. This is history with a heartbeat, and it could not be more engrossing."—Foreign Affairs World War I and the Russian Revolution together shaped the twentieth century in profound ways. In The End of Tsarist Russia, acclaimed scholar Dominic Lieven connects for the first time the two events, providing both a history of the First World War’s origins from a Russian perspective and an international history of why the revolution happened. Based on exhaustive work in seven Russian archives as well as many non-Russian sources, Dominic Lieven’s work is about far more than just Russia. By placing the crisis of empire at its core, Lieven links World War I to the sweep of twentieth-century global history. He shows how contemporary hot issues such as the struggle for Ukraine were already crucial elements in the run-up to 1914. By incorporating into his book new approaches and comparisons, Lieven tells the story of war and revolution in a way that is truly original and thought-provoking.