Customer Reviews

A Concise History of the Russian Revolution

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I'm a history student in my fourth year honours(with my major in Russia) and this book was the text book for my fourth year honours class. It is a great book because Pipes gives a summary of his previous 3 books "Russia Under the Old Regime", "The Russian Revolution" and "Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime". It is the equivalent to buy 3 books in one. The novelty of the book is that if the reader is interested in reading a relative short book about Russian history, this is the best book for that. However if one is interested in further details, I recommend people to read any of the 3 books summarized here in details. Pipes proves with enough arguments the gangster character of Lenin and his ambition for power. As Pipes argues, 'power' was the only ideology of the Bolshevik Party. The first part of the book provides a good background of the origins of 'autocracy' in the Old Regime. The last chapter gives the reader details about other aspects of the Bolsheviks after they achieved power, including among others 'the chapter on culture'. The chapters 'The October Coup' (here Pipes proves with details that in October 1917 a coup d'état took place and not a revolution), 'The Red Terror' (proves that it was through killing nearly a million people that Bolsheviks stayed in power) and the chapter on Lenin are of course the worst nightmare for communists around the world. I one word I have to say that Pipes' books are the 'bible' of Russian history. My deepest admiration to Dr Pipes.

Dr. Pipes is one of the great scholars of Russia and the Soviet Union. He has written at length on the origin and events of the revolution that led to the founding of the USSR. Only someone with his deep knowledge of the material and his skill at writing could pull off such a brilliant telling of these important, and tragic, historical events in only 400 pages.

The book is divided into three sections. The first is called "The Agony of the Old Regime" and provides a snapshot of the way Russia was governed and the lives of its citizens and peasants in 1900. It also discusses its experiments in constitutional government and the crisis of the First World War and the February Revolution.

The second part is entitled "The Bolsheviks Conquer Russia" and tells us about Lenin, the October Coup, and the building of the terror state.

Part three is called "Russia under the Bolshevik Regime" and discusses the Civil War, the building of the mechanisms to export communism and revolution to the rest of the world, the crisis of Lenin's stroke and the positioning for power by Stalin and then Lenin's death. The chapter on "Reflections on the Russian Revolution is very valuable. There is a list of suggested further readings and the book has many well-chosen pictures.

I wanted to understand just how the 300 year reign of Tsarist Russia ended and transformed into the Communist regime that dominated that land for 70 years.

After looking at the books available on this topic, I chose A Richard Pipe's Concise History of the Russian Revolution to answer my questions. It proved to be an excellent choice.

Don't let the word Concise in the title fool you. It is not concise in that it is short or brief. All the details are here to present a well fleshed out picture of the tumultuous events of 1917.

The necessary background of Nicholas II and Alexandra is presented. The moves of Lenin and his supporting cast are provided in detail. One also learns that the foundations murderous regime of Stalin were all put into place and utilized by Lenin himself.

The book ends with Lenin's death, and provides a glimple into Stalin and how he came to succeed Lenin.

Pipe's work is a very worthwhile work. For reading only one book on this subject, I have yet to have come across one that would better replace it.

Richard Pipes has published many studies of revolutionary Russia. This latest "concise" volume serves to confirm the views he has previously expressed, including a long list of things that anger him (indeed, he quotes Aristotle: "Those who are not angry at those things they should be angry at are deemed fools.") Pipes' list includes: the Englightenment; intellectuals (in general), Russians (in general), Russian intellectuals (in particular), Bolsheviks, Lenin, etc. He argues that the revolutions of 1917 had little to do with political oppression or social conditions (causes the vast majority of Russian historians acknowledge). Rather Pipes argues that the revolutions resulted directly from the intransigence of the intelligentsia, who believed that every problem - no matter how trivial - reflected the need to overthrow the entire political/social order. Indeed, he argues that ALL rebellions are conservative in nature (based on people looking to restore traditional rights), but that middle-class intellectuals turn rebellions into revolutions by ignoring the desires of the masses and instead insisting on changing the entire social/political structure without securing a popular mandate. They do this, he insists, because they are imbued with the "erroneous doctrine of the Enlightenment" that man is a product of his social environment, which can be altered to produce a "new man." The demise of the USSR in 1991 should "be interpreted as conclusive proof that utopianism inevitably leads to its very opposite." All of this makes for a provocative polemic, but certainly does not qualify as a careful, balanced, nuanced history of the Russian revolutions. Pipes characterizes the Russian intelligentsia as having been intellectually intolerant of those who didn't agree with them; this book reveals that Pipes is equally guilty of his own accusation.

This book is Richard Pipes own consolidation and abridgement of his two masterworks, "Russian Revolution" (1990) and "Russia under the Bolshevik Regime" (1994). The two volumes total 1,300 pages supported by 4,500 references.

The "Concise History" redaction is 406 pages and includes a glossary, chronology, one page of references, and a very good index. It also has 76 photos and five maps. Although it is a work of impeccable scholarship, it is also highly readable and accessible to the average reader.

Pipes is a virtuoso historian and perhaps the greatest chronicler of Russian history of all time. If you decide to read this history, you will learn a great deal about the most important event of the 20th Century (which spanned the two World Wars), and certainly the greatest experiment in utopian social engineering ever. In the process you will gain an extensive knowledge about the greatest foe the United States faced in the last Century, and how that foe came to its defeat.

Pipes concludes that "the Russian Revolution appears as the unfolding of a tragedy in which events follow with inexorable force from the mentality and character of the protagonists." And his lifetime of study of these events has left him "...less sanguine about humanity's capacity to change itself."

Recommended companion read: Aleksander Zolzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956," HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2002. This is a one volume abridgement by Zolzhenitsyn from the original seven volumes, which have now been remaindered.

This book works as both an engrossing beginning to a serious study of Russia from around 1905 to the death of Lenin, or as a one-off read for those with a passing interest. A finely written history book, it manages to cram in a topical description of every major happening (and some not so major) during the aforementioned time frame as well as provide a solid foundation upon which to delve deeper into the subject matter. Pipes, a Harvard professor as well as an ex-National Security Advisor for Reagan on Soviet and Eastern European affairs (but don't let this fact dissuade you from reading the book) writes thought-provoking and informative prose with a well-tuned eye for context. The only turn-off is his constant reminders of just how awful the Bolsheviks were, finishing the book with a short diatribe supporting subjective reporting of history (which might be better wrestled with in a different book entirely). Regardless, a fine book, written by one of the world's top authorities of the subject matter

This book has a strong advantage and a disadvantage.
The advantage is that it is written by an expert in the field, Richard Pipes, who spent most of his life researching and writing about Russian history. The man is an outstanding historian.
In addition, the book is written based on never before seen archive files from the Soviet Union archives which were made available only since 1991, the year the regime collapsed. When it comes to the Russian Revolution, pre-1991 books are outdated, while Pipes' book is fresh, well-researched and reliable.
The disadvantage is that the author is, as other people noted, biased. He hates Bolshevism and Communism, which is something that the reader will come to realise pretty soon in the book. However, I do not find this as a particular issue. Pipes is still a recognised expert, and there is a clear distinction between opinion and fact when you read his book.
The reactions of people against the historian's opinions, I believe, is rooted more in the intolerance of people sympathetic to communist ideas to accept the finally relieved reality of the regime that was once called the "worker's paradise", rather than a real problem concerning the history Pipes writes. After all, I do not expect to find many historians sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, as I do not expect to find many historians sympathetic to the Nazis.
A Concise History of the Russian Revolution is an outstanding summary of the events that changed the world, and I would suggest it to anyone interested in the Russian Revolution.
But if you are really concerned about the supposed bias of the writer, I would advice "A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924", a longer and more detailed work by Orlando Figes, based again on the newly-discovered Soviet Archives.

This book is an abridged version of two much longer books Pipes has written (RUSSIA UNDER THE OLD REGIME and RUSSIA UNDER THE BOLSHEVIK REGIME). And it feels abridged. On many topics, I wanted more details, and there was a lack of endnotes. However, the details and VERY extensive endnotes are found in the extended volumes. It was written in a very matter-of-fact manner, without much narrative flair.

Which is why I find it suprising how I was nearly moved to tears on more than one occasion. This has to be one of the saddest stories in history. How one of the largest nations on Earth could be subjegated by a pack of dillusional intellectuals and then terrorized by the most brutal regime the world has ever seen should scare us all.

Pipes's longer book (of which this is the abridged version) is one of many recent histories, including Service's LENIN, and many Russian language histories, to utilize the many Soviet documents made available since the collapse of the USSR. An examination of the primary historical record only makes the Bolsheviks look worse than we thought.

This should be a must read for all. That there are still Communists and fellow-travellers out there with all we have recently learned of the Soviet regime is a stunning indictment of the failure of our educational system.

I read this book as a supplement to the 1917 Revolution segment of my History class, and found it quite helpful in providing the details behind the events described in class. As someone previously uninformed about the events described, it was helpful that Pipes did not assume an informed viewer and described the simple terms and concepts before he elaborated any further. Information is presented in an interesting form, providing information not only about the events but also the people behind the events. The pictures throughout are also useful in attatching a name to the many faces described, which results in the history being more personal, and thus more 'real', to the reader. My only complaint was that I found the last two chapters slightly hard to get through. It is clear he is deeply familiar with the issues being described, however, and the book will make a great reference book for both the beginner and the expert.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in finding out the real facts of the Russian Revolution. Despite what some of the other reviewers say, the facts simply speak for themselves and Pipes does not have to be "biased" to portray the Bolsheviks for the evil monsters that they really were. This book goes a long way in explaining how a small group of fanatics could take control of a large country such as Russia. It finally demolishes whatever "romance" that may still linger regarding the October 1917 "revolution". This is history at its finest!