August 1914 Book

I read the shorter, potentially cropped or incomplete version of this would be epic years ago. It impresses through bulk and scale. The set up of the initial chapters has us criss-crossing European Russia introducing us to various upper class characters on the verge of World War One, Solzhenitsyn fictionalises his story to allow Lev Tolstoy to still be alive and to talk to one character (he had been dead since 1910 in reality), I feel this is Solzhenitsyn shaking hands with his role model and putting on his mantel, and the early emphasis on aristocrats abandoning traditional Russian ways or planting foreign trees,using English motor cars, establishing English or Japanese gardens establishes a parallel with War and Peace - the natural leaders of the country are not Russian enough and therefore doomed to a beating until they can reconnect with their roots.

The novel deals with the embarrassing total defeat of a Russian army at the hands of a much smaller German force (though admittedly on their home territory) at the battle of Tannenberg in August 1914, for Solzhenitsyn this defeat is both a revelation and a condemnation of the state of Russia, and a harbinger of future bleaknesses to come. Personally I think his vision history is unfair, although crushing defeated, the army was at least capable of offensive action and remained so for several years (admittedly with massive amount of military equipment provided by the allies) and the army had bee in a steady process of reform and improvement for the preceding past century, unfortunately as generally in life doing ones best is very nice but tends not to be good enough, certainly in this case not good enough to overcome the problems of underdevelopment and relative backwardness compared to Imperial Russia's western neighbours.

There's not much to recommend about this book apart from the relative novelty of the subject matter to an English speaking audience. But even as a first world war novel it comes across as unusually heavy handed. On the whole I'd recommend Dr Zhivago or Red Cavalry in preference.