Reviews for 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labor, Society, and Revolution

The average rating for 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labor, Society, and Revolution based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-10-29 00:00:00 Steffen Posch Sure uses workers' diaries and recollections to create an account of the 1905 revolution which focuses on the lived experiences of laborers. Surh notes how the workers consciousness developed largely autonomously, being driven by events and revolutionary experiences. Seen in this light, 1905 represents notmamtriumph of reaction but a temporary respite. I would have liked to have seen more attention paid to the SRs and their experiences, and less about the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-04-22 00:00:00 Donnalynn Dolan I've been reading Russian/Soviet history lately, Alexander Rabinovitch's three unsurpassed studies of the revolution in St. Petersburg, and W. Bruce Lincoln's three volumes on Russia's revolutionary background, that nation's experience of WWI, revolution and civil war. Master story-tellers the both of them. So I'm taking break from the thrill of such writing by picking up Surh's monograph. He writes good, solid, academic prose, and his book is much needed, but for the life of me - and I hold a Phd in the subject - I don't understand how he managed to eliminate from his book every suggestion that human beings actually experienced the uprising of 1905. I'll recover from my current befuddlement with the information I need to appreciate other narrative accounts - Trotsky's for example - more fully. But in exchange Surh demands - and gets - his pound of flesh. This too shall pass. It helps a great deal to read Galai's "The Liberation Movement in Russia, 1900-1905," before taking on this door-stop.