The Russian Revolution [Paperback]

Richard Pipes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0679736603 | ISBN-13: 978-0679736608 | Edition: 1st Vintage Books ed

Mr. Pipes writes trenchantly, and at times superbly....No single volume known to me even begins to cater so adequately to those who want to discover what really happened to Russia....Nor do I know any other book better designed to help Soviet citizens to struggle out of the darkness."

-- Ronald Hingley, The New York Times Book Review

Ground-breaking in its inclusiveness, enthralling in its narrative of a movement whose purpose, in the words of Leon Trotsky, was "to overthrow the world," The Russian Revolution draws conclusions that have already aroused great controversy in this country-and that are certain to be explosive when the book is published in the Soviet Union. Richard Pipes argues convincingly that the Russian Revolution was an intellectual, rather than a class, uprising; that it was steeped in terror from its very outset; and that it was not a revolution at all but a coup d'etat -- "the capture of governmental power by a small minority."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With erudition lightly worn, Harvard historian Pipes, in this massive, wonderfully vivid, gripping chronicle, stresses the role of liberals both in the Russian revolution of 1905, for which the Communists later claimed credit, and in the upheavals of 1917. He attributes the failure of the February 1917 revolution to Alexander Kerensky's rash actions, his doctrinaire vision of democracy and his dissolution of the police and the provincial bureaucracy, which plunged the nation into anarchy. He argues persuasively that the Bolsheviks' October 1917 putsch was not a true revolution, but a classic coup d'etat. His portrayal of the backward Russian peasantry, scarcely touched by westernization, and of the intelligentsia, "self-appointed spokesman" for over nine-tenths of the populace, lays the groundwork for his discerning analysis of how Lenin built a one-party dictatorship. No other book so brilliantly clarifies the inner dynamics of the Russian Revolution. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The author, a distinguished Harvard historian, seeks to present a comprehensive view of the Russian Revolution, tracing its roots in the half century before 1917, a period he has already examined in Russia Under the Old Regime ( LJ 3/15/75). His new book, which will also be published in the Soviet Union, should provoke lively debate in the age of glasnost, for it is an unsparing indictment of Bolshevism. Wide ranging in its coverage, based on a profound knowledge of the Russian past and of relevant Western and Soviet scholarship, the work analyzes the direction of Russian development to the Revolution (without whitewashing prerevolutionary figures such as Nicholas II), then goes on to examine the origins and entrenchment of Bolshevism, which Pipes sees as a savagely amoral force. If Soviet power in its first years brought any benefits at all, they are, in this evaluation, insignificant compared to the ghastly price paid for them by the Russian people. This is an important book.
- Robert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 976 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (November 5, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679736603
• ISBN-13: 978-0679736608
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #151,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, definitive and poignant in its wisdom, October 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Russian Revolution (Paperback)

As for Russian history, this book is the bible regarding the revolutionary period. For French Revolution fans, here is Russia's version of "citizen" action contructed by diabolical architects who kept France's success always in front of them. As for political science, this book is wise in its interpretation of political action and didactic in its interpretation about this failed expirament in alleged utopianism. Once read one is convinced of Russia's failure in governing and appalled at its deliberate evil perpitrated by a few upon millions who sought and needed true freedom. Prof. Pipes brings home accountability for the actions of afew dangerous men. This book is a brilliant, an enlightening historical study about Russia, history in general and man as a creature who is always seeking power and social control. Pipes clearly reveals that history does repeats itself. And, like Winston Churchill, reveals how good people can understand evil actions if they understand history. Superb, superb, superb.

50 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Antidote to Soviet Apologia, April 22, 1999

By 

Allan from San Francisco (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Russian Revolution (Paperback)

It's amazing how many histories of the USSR or the Russian Revolution will gloss over the waves of terror they initiated, or imply that this terror was "necessary," or speak of it in the same phlegmatic way that one would describe routine events. This makes a stark contrast to the way that moral indignation is NOT withheld from histories of Nazi Germany. Professor Pipes should be commended for expressing moral indignation about inexcusable and unnecessary tyranny and bloodshed, just as William L. Shirer deserves commendation for telling the story of Nazi Germany the way it really happened. (Did this mean that Shirer was "biased"? If he had downplayed the Nazi terror and devoted hundreds of pages to Nazi "accomplishments" such as full employment, would this have been an accurate and meaningful account of the Third Reich?) Indeed, the fact that Pipes' book attracts criticism from intellectuals for having revealed the true face of Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Soviet government they installed--in all its ruthlessness, depravity, and mendacity--is strong proof that his book's focus on the role of depraved intellectuals and depraved theories in the establishment of the USSR is right on the money. As Pipes pointed out, one of its founding ideas can be traced back to Rousseau--the idea that man is a mere creature of his "environment," and therefore completely malleable. This amounts to an engraved invitation to bloodthirsty monsters like Lenin and Stalin to start thinking that mankind should be forced to become "good," regardless of the human cost. It's sad that intellectuals--those ceaseless announcers of irony--haven't spotted the irony here: policies that necessitate bloodshed are not "good" and cannot lead to "good."

Another valuable contribution of this book is that the author is not afraid to show that Bolshevism was the creation of the upper-middle-class intelligentsia, not the workers or the peasants, and served the interests of the intelligentsia, not the lower classes.

Pipes' book should be read by every person interested in history who is not afraid to be shown that ideas have consequences, and that these are often inexcusably horrible.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Russia at the Crossroads: Fatalism Reinvented?, April 16, 2006

By 

Wayne Dawson (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Russian Revolution (Paperback)

The Russian Revolution is a massive chronicle of detailed analysis, forming the middle volume to Pipes trilogy that began with Russia Under The Old Regime and concluded with Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime. This is a thoroughly absorbing work that shows from 1905 every tangled aspect leading up to the murder of the imperial family in July 1918 and start of the Red Terror.

The swirling chaos brought about by the First World War and the Tsar's abdication, simultaneously created a situation of armed Russian troops that were waiting to be mobilised for the eastern front, now suddenly found themselves sitting on the edge of a power vacuum crater within Russia. Once the provisional government that stepped in to fill the void started to slide, many a contending, brutal faction rose to the boil with the odds definitely stacked against the Bolsheviks; a misleading term that means majority when in reality they were a violent minority.

After the Bolshevik coup d' etat, it was the Germans who continued to prop them up, particularly after Lenin and Trotsky had signed away with the treaty of Brest-Litovsk huge amounts of Russian territory as far west as Kiev, enabling Russia to renege on its commitments to the allies who . . . `suffered immense human and material losses. As a result of Russia's dropping out of the war' . . . (only to internationalise the Revolution) . . . `the Germans withdrew from the inactive Eastern Front enough divisions to increase their effectives in the west by nearly one-fourth (from 150 to 192 divisions). These reinforcements allowed them to mount a ferocious offensive' . . . the allies . . . `lost hundreds of thousands of men. This sacrifice finally brought Germany to her knees. And the defeat of Germany, to which it had made no contribution . . . enabled the Soviet Government to annul the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and recover most of the lands which it had been forced to give up'. . . No other ruler in Russian history conceded so much territory as Lenin had. This, along with heavier taxes than under Tsarist times and multiplying murders against so called `counter-revolutionaries' made the Bolsheviks immediately unpopular.

Here we have a constantly fascinating account teeming with every sort of personality and unpredictable event. We read about the fracturing succession of the Ukraine, Trans Caucasia (Georgia and Armenia) and (almost) Siberia into transient independent Republics with a startling sense of deja vu; it now seems the 1990's was a variation on a pre-existing theme. Whilst one of Pipes many themes, implicit in the titles Old Regime and Bolshevik Regime, claims that the all encompassing `patrimonial' system under Tsarist times precluded any sense of private property (everything physical and human belonged, within Russia, to the Tsar) and with the Bolshevik development of the one party state, `patrimonial' autocratic control continued; this has been keenly contradicted by several scholars but should not get in the way of an outstanding, breathtaking achievement by a single individual where so much has been given its proper perspective.

Pipes also argues most convincingly that the `antecedents' to Stalinism had been mapped out by Lenin. The sorcerers apprentice intensified what had already begun. The last word belongs to Pipes and is indicative of this great work in helping us understand the incomprehensible . . . `Once society disintegrated into an agglomeration of human atoms, each fearful of being noticed and concerned exclusively with physical survival, then it ceased to matter what society thought, for the government had the entire sphere of public activity to itself. Only under these conditions could a small minority subjugate millions.'