Reviews for A Brief History of 1917: Russia's Year of Revolution (A Brief History Of Series)

The average rating for A Brief History of 1917: Russia's Year of Revolution (A Brief History Of Series) based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-04-02 00:00:00 Thomas Koch Growing up in Vietnam, once a staunch ideological ally of the Soviet Union, I came to know about the October Revolution through standard history textbooks at school: Lenin was the ultimate champion of a new socialist utopia in which the proletarian class took power into their own hand and plotted out their own destiny to a happy and egalitarian society. This book is the very somber counterbalance to that idyllic facade. It is a primer into a world of chaos and seismic social changes that plunged a country deep into decades of political struggles, wars, horror and death. Revolutionary though they were, Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolshevik bandwagon were by no means romantic revolutionists-they embodied a wave of radicalism, hell-bent on destroying everything and everyone blocking its way. They possessed deep hatred for the "bourgeois scums", the nobility and all those deemed "enemies to the working class". They betrayed, intimidated, tortured and killed their way to total and absolute power, subjugating the whole population to their iron will. And ironically enough, many of them would meet the same tragic fate at the hand of fellow comrades. In any significant event, the mass plays the most crucial role in catapulting the leading figures into the prominence of history. People of the Russian Empire, ravaged by unutterable hardship of wars, famine and exploitation under the Tsarist Regime decided "enough is enough" in 1917. They rallied under the banner of the Provisional Government and later on the Bolshevik, sacrificing their blood for a better future of freedom, only to have their hopes and dreams dashed by the very people with whom they had entrusted them.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-10-11 00:00:00 David Aplin B Nothing special. A nice introductory text on the subject if you don't know too much, but by no means illuminating on any broader issues.