Customer Reviews

The Russian Century: A History of the Last Hundred Years

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
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2 star:		(1)
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I echo the views of the other reviewers ... that this book is an outstanding introduction to / overview of 20th century Russian history. It's worth the price for Brian Moynahan's sweeping, lucid narrative alone, but when I first borrowed this book from a friend it was the photographs that kept me rivited for hours at at time over several days. I'm convinced that this will come to be regarded as of the great collections of historic photography ever. Very highly recommended!

Moynihan's book serves as a solid overview of what is painted as a fairly blighted century. From collectivization, to Stalin's brutal purges, to invasion by Nazis, to the dark restless sleep of the soul inspired by Brezhnev, the Communist years were not kind to the Russians. From the tsar to Yeltsin, Moynihan offers a clear mix of history and analysis that makes this a quick read. Still, the chapter on Russia's war with Germany unfolds like the blitzkrieg, and if you're looking for details, this is not your book. Moynihan paints with very broad strokes and does not attempt to get into the minds of the Russian people. Given that they were treated as nothing more than neccessary cogs in Stalin's megalomaniacal drive to modernize a peasant state, it would be nice to know more about their perspective. Nonetheless, this is a lucid narrative of a century's worth of troubles.

Moynahan's journalistic instincts are to the fore in this fast moving account of one of history's great upheavals. The author has plenty of experience covering Russia as a journalist at The Times. The coverage doesn't just take in the politics or revolution. There's social history, art and lifestyle - as well as all the gruesome stuff involving purges, genocide and the death camps in eastern siberia.

It also has some wonderful pictures - especially one showing an old woman experiencing voting for the first time. Something that is so familiar to most of us was so alien to her. She was ninety and old enough to remember Tsar Nicholas.

The coverage is heavily bent towards the first half of the century since most of the action took place then. Moynahan's big picture style means that you really get a feel for how traumatic and vengeful these times were for ordinary people. The revolutions and the spread of communist power throughout the empire was quite simply government by a gang of murderous thugs. Fiends of the worst possible kind with a liking for violence.

The end of the party and the Russian Empire is dealt with only lightly since the book was first written in the early 1990s. (I read the 1994 version and haven't got around to reading an updated version). That, I don't, think is a big issue since most readers will have been around long enough to have a pretty good handle on the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years anyway.

All too often, these types of histories are academic (often mind numbing) and/or far too long. This one is short, sucinct and highly entertaining. In fact, anyone wishing to get into the excellent accounts of the revolution by Figes or Pipes should read this one first.

The Russian Century is a whirlwind tour through the last 100 years of Russia's history, with the core of the book dedicated to Stalin and the WWII years. This is a short, fast book that touches lightly on the key events of the century but discusses none in great detail.

Moynahan is a journalist and not a historian -- he gives the reader the feel and flavor of the Russian experience instead of a hardcore analysis. It is the sizzle of Russian history without the meat. This is a book where one learns that Lenin disguised himself with a gray wig during the Bolshevik Revolution, and that Stalin once fired a famous jazz singer because her songs were too complex for his taste. On the other hand, the Yalta conference is alluded to in just one sentence and never discussed again. Raisa Gorbachev's shopping habits receive several mentions, while the complex internal politics behind glasnost are glossed over.

These are not faults -- just differences. The Russian Century is the perfect "survey course" for someone new to Russian history. They can get the quick overview here and then learn more about specific events in other books.

I was introduced to this book by my Russian language & literature professor at college. I quickly tracked down a copy for my personal library.

This book has some AMAZING photographs!!! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Russian or Soviet history or culture. A picture certainly is worth a thousand words!

I literally read this book twice. And as I turned the pages and saw breathtaking after breathtaking photograph and read the journalist's history of Russia, I kept reminding myself that this is not fiction. This books makes one pause and ponder ... a very long time.

A short gallop through one of the most facinating periods of recent history. The author wears his heart on his sleeve most of the time - his distaste for the ideology is always to the fore. He neglects to examine the confusion and fear of many older people when communism collapsed. The pace means that some human interest stories are passed over or only briefly visited - The basement in Ekaterinberg, Stalins body in the mausoleum, Khruschevs' fall from power, etc. But this leaves you with the desire to investigate these areas further. He is especially interesting and illuminating about the events of 1917 - the sequence of events are explained brilliantly.A good read and a good place to start.

It is such a pleasure to read a historical book written in a seamlessly free flowing language. It happens so seldom. Most historians are bogged down in dusty acadmic phrase jargon. Moynahan is mainly a journalist with a keen eye for wondrous detail and bizarr events. Those absurd details makes this book since on the whole it is written with brave, broad brush strokes. It is a perfect first book for people wishing to know more about Russia, wanting to taste its flavour. But because of its magnificent summing up of apocalyptic decade after apocalyptic decade in that country's recent past it is also an intriguing read for slavophiles. It is literary rather than academic and that is the magnificence of it all, Moynahan has turned Russian modern history into poetry and tragedy of Homerian proportions.

I first spotted this book in a bookstore in Moscow, but I didn't have the money to buy it at the time.

Years later I sought it out, and I'm glad I did. The pictures are fascinating, the writing is also very good. If you have any interest in Russia during this time, and if you like great photography and photojournalism, this is the book you need to buy. Just block out a fair amount of time to read it and pour over the pictures!

I enjoyed reading this treatment of Russian history immensely. To be fair, it was concise and lacking in depth, but I was looking for an overview of the century so it was exactly what I required. The only real weakness I found in the book was that the latter half of the century was really glossed over. The Bolshevik Revolution through Stalin's reign is solid, while the 60s-90s period is given only a brief glance.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone looking to know "just the basics" of 20th century Russia. Many of the descriptions provided by primary sources are startling and chilling. It is well worth reading for this alone.