Reviews for The Russian Revolution

The average rating for The Russian Revolution based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-07-08 00:00:00 Johnny Jenkins “The architects of War Communism, its theorists and executors…had only the most superficial acquaintance with the discipline of economics and no experience in business management. Their knowledge of economics derived largely from socialist literature. None of them had run an enterprise or earned a ruble from manufacture or trade…[T]he Bolshevik leaders were professional revolutionaries, who, save for brief stints at Russian or foreign universities (devoted mostly to political activity), had spent their entire adult lives in and out of jail or exile. They were guided by abstract formulae, gleaned from the writings of Marx, Engels, and their German disciples and from radical histories of European revolutions…That such rank amateurs would undertake to turn upside down the fifth-largest economy in the world, subjecting it to innovations never attempted anywhere even on a small scale, says something of the judgment of the people who in October 1917 seized power in Russia…” - Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution Author Richard Pipes was born in Poland in 1923. In 1939, shortly after the Nazi German invasion ordered by Adolf Hitler, he fled with his family to the United States. Eventually, he became a U.S. citizen, matriculated at Harvard, and got a job as a professor. With his home country under the thumb of the Soviet Union, he became an outspoken expert on Russian history. For Pipes, this history often seemed personal, and he approached his subject with an adversarial rather than objective perspective. Today, Pipes (who died in 2018) is often criticized as a hopeless artifact of the Cold War. Of course, that does not necessarily make him wrong. Pipes’ uncompromising attitude toward the U.S.S.R. is on full display in The Russian Revolution, his mammoth, entertaining, and lacerating tale of the rise of the Bolsheviks. He argues that the October Revolution – in which the Bolsheviks took power from the Provisional Government, which had earlier taken it from Tsar Nicholas II – was no mass uprising of popular will, fueled by callus-handed workers revolting after decades of repression and exploitation. Instead, he asserts it was a top-down coup instigated by a small group of soft-palmed professional revolutionaries who wouldn’t know their way around a factory if they were on a guided tour. While Pipes’ conclusion can be summarized easily enough, there is little about this topic that is simple. Certainly, at 842 pages of text, it is not brief. The Russian Revolution is divided into two parts. The first part covers the “Old Regime” from 1905 – with its unrest, strikes, and Tsar Nicholas II’s modest attempts at reform – and ends in 1917, with the February Revolution that deposed Nicholas and instituted a Constituent Assembly made up of many political parties, of which the Bolsheviks were only a part. The highlight of this first section is Pipes’ controversial chapter on “the intelligentsia,” in which he traces the emergence of revolutionary thought leading up to the Russian Revolution itself. The second part of The Russian Revolution encompasses the period between the October Revolution and the Red Terror. Here, the highlight is his coverage of Vladimir Lenin and the origins of Bolshevism. The thing I most appreciated is that Pipes – in his distaste for Communism – refuses to play by Communist rules. That is, he eschews their dense jargon (which, like all jargon in all professions is meant to intimidate outsiders) for a plain language account of their goals and philosophy. (Brief aside: a common critique I’ve seen of Pipes is that his utter disdain for Lenin manifests in a twisting of the documentary evidence. To be sure, Pipes really seems to enjoy taking a jackhammer to the foundations of Lenin's cult. He does not resort to outright name calling, but definitely emphasizes what he sees to be Lenin’s lack of moral and – especially – physical courage. I cannot comment on Pipes’ use of primary sources in this interpretation, so I will withhold final judgment on Lenin until I read more about him. Nevertheless, I am pretty comfortable saying I would not spend a minute of my life defending him). There is a huge mass of information contained within these pages, but Pipes does an excellent job with his structure and organization. This starts with the table of contents, which provides an overview of each chapter’s contents, just below the chapter title. There is also a timeline and glossary. Thus, even though this was written by an expert, I seldom felt lost or out of my depth. (I am, admittedly, no expert. If I had to classify myself, I would say I am an interested amateur with a manageable drinking problem). One of my fears before lifting the front cover was that this would be unreadably pedantic. To be sure, there are some slow stretches (especially at the beginning), and Pipes lacks the overall narrative skill of, for instance, Orlando Figes. That said, he does a fine job presenting a tangled, multifaceted storyline in a coherent manner and with admirable accessibility. He also has a way of delivering an acerbic thumbnail biography, such as his take on Soviet economist Iurii Larin: Although little known even to specialists, this half-paralyzed invalid, always in pain, could take credit for a unique historical accomplishment: certainly no one has a better claim to having wrecked a great power’s national economy in the incredibly short span of thirty months. The biggest drawback to The Russian Revolution is that it was published in 1990, meaning that Pipes did not have the access to certain archival material that became available after the fall of the Soviet Union. As a result, Pipes often has to admit to a lack of evidence, or to rely on incomplete or secondhand accounts. I am guessing that many of the knowledge gaps that Pipes encountered upon first writing this have been filled. (His presentation of Rasputin, for instance, seems off). That caveat notwithstanding, Pipes’ thesis of a top-down Bolshevik coup rather than a bottom-up movement seems to be the mainstream consensus. Indeed, Sean McMeekin’s relatively-recent “new” history reaches the same place, though with an updated bibliography. I will acknowledge being predisposed to accept Pipes’ view of the Russian Revolution. It dovetails with my own experience of how people tend to act and react. Also, like Pipes, I am no fan of Communism or the Soviet Union. While this should be a rather anodyne opinion, I recognize that it is one that potentially leaves me vulnerable to an argument with Soviet apologists, which is the last argument in the world that I want to have. Thus, I stress that this a humanitarian position, rather than an economic or political one. On its best day, I would never have wanted to live in the U.S.S.R. On its many, many, many bad days, I don’t think I would have survived. But agreement with Pipes is not a prerequisite to getting something out of this book. No author has the last word on any historical event, especially one as epochal as the Russian Revolution. Yet Pipes’ The Russian Revolution has forged a place for itself in a vast literature. It must be grappled with, whether or not you ultimately agree.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-27 00:00:00 Rick Havelick This volume is both a rigorous history and critique of Communism. Dr. Pipes thesis, largely a consensus view among historians now, is that the revolution was not a revolution at all, but a coup d’état. The biggest surprise for me was the detailed story of how the Bolsheviks crushed all the other socialist groups (Soviet Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Left SRs, etc) until they alone remained in power. But that was later. For after the collapse of the Provisional Government, left in place by the abdicated Tsar, the Bolsheviks were just one of many soviets and the way forward was the ballot box. Imagine the frustrated Lenin losing committee vote after committee vote until the only way he could win was by threatening to quit. Lenin would also pack the committee with Bolshevik friends or invalidate the entire vote (sound like anyone we know?) when he could not get his way. And the story of the Russian surrender to Germany ending World War I in the east will curl your hair. I had not known, for instance, that Germany tripled in size with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, nor that Lenin became “the most reviled man in Europe” because of his complicity in accepting the treaty. Moreover, this long book refutes the strange materialist/ utilitarian/ positivist (Marxist) ideology that underlay Bolshevism. It is not a disinterested book. At the same time, its arguments are clear and reasoned, animated perhaps at times as all compelling writing can be, but always insightful. Upon the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 Pipes, still a child and his parents fled the country, eventually settling in the U.S. After the war Poland became a Warsaw Pact nation. In time Pipes found himself at Harvard where he worked and taught for more than 35 years, except for a two year stint during which he advised President Ronald Reagan on whose watch the Soviet Union crumbled, 1990/91. It’s going too far to call Pipes an old Cold Warrior. He is first and foremost a scholar. But his lifelong study of the subject, not to mention the long-term subjugation of his native country, and his ability for a short but decisive time to affect U.S. foreign policy, means he has a unique perspective on the history of the now defunct USSR. May we never see its like again.