Customer Reviews

A Brief History of 1917: Russia's Year of Revolution

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This is the kind of book that might be produced in any free country about almost any incident of interest. It's the memories and personal recollections of a large group of people.

In the Soviet Union such recollections had to match the party line from the time of the revolution (1917) until recently. That makes this a breakthrough book. The number of people old enough to remember what they were doing that year is rapidly shrinking.

Mr. Bainton visited Russia several times seeking people to interview. He was successful in finding a great many people to talk to him. Most were original observers, some were telling stories that had been told to them by parents or earlier relatives.

It's a very enlightening book.

Roy Bainton is a British journalist. He wrote a short narrative history of the Russian revolution in 1917, an excellent introduction in a very fluid style. He focused on the experience of the people, great and small, who influenced or just lived through those momentous events (mostly in Saint-Petersburg, the capital city). 1917 was a year of great suffering for the Russian people. The " First revolution", in February, that put an end to the Old autocratic Empire, unleashed huge hopes for freedom. The October " coup" of the Bolscheviks, however, crushed these hopes for at least 70 years, and inaugurated unheard of barbarism in the name of ideology "for the good of the people".
Roy Bainton used a variety of "general" sources, but most importantly, because he meant to recreate the ambiance of the times, contemporary eyewitness accounts; he also traveled several times to Saint-Petersburg in 2000 to speak to people who either had been through the events (although at the time they were still very small children)or who told the author about their parents' experiences. That would not have been possible before the 1990's. This is the first book I read about the Russian revolution but I found its approach particularly refreshing.

Superbly researched and written in such a manner that the facts are easily digested and you might find it hard to put down. This is not dry history; Bainton provides the atmosphere to make it an exciting read.

Although the interviews presented on this book are interesting, I found the comments of the writer detracted from the book immensely. The author, without fail, will always take it upon himself to state how awful things would soon become under Stalin. It seems as if the author is deathly afraid of being viewed as a Stalinist, and as a result must take every opportunity to state otherwise. Ironically, the actual words of the interviewees provided a more realistic, and far more interesting window into the times. If the book consisted mostly of interviews, rather than the words of the author, intent on discrediting the Soviet state whenever possible, I feel it would be an incredibly interesting book. However this is not the case. The author is clearly not an academic, historian, or even anyone very familiar with the time. This leads the majority of his commentary to be oversimplified, and in some cases even incorrect. In short, an excellent idea was sullied by a poor execution

I found the book informative and paced fairly quickly ... but I knew very little, so each and every tidbit was new to me. Not academic-y, which is a common trap to fall into for books like these. There were a few slow parts, but suprisingly readable overall.

Roy Bainton is an outstanding writer and historian, the best. Excellent.