Customer Reviews

The Russian Revolution

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

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.'

It is a shame that such historians as Richard Pipes do not have a more prominent place on America's college campuses. His detailed account of the Russian Revolution convincingly debunks the long-held view that the Russian Revolution was somehow an expression of popular sentiments. Instead, it was, as Pipes calls it, a coup d'etat, led by a small group of hard-core revolutionaries. He convincingly demonstrates how this Bolshevik coup was quickly carried out by taking Petrograd's major transportation and communication hubs. By this point, the Provisonal Government was largely irrelevant, and few shots were actually fired! Not at all a repeat of the storming of the Bastille (itself something of a myth). Pipes also goes into a detailed discussion of the Bolsheviks' policies of War Communism and rule-by-terror. In so doing, Pipes argues that these policies were deliberately orchestrated to subjugate the Russian people (as opposed to being necessary wartime measures, which is often used as an apology for these policies). There are two things that Pipes discusses that are particularly interesting: the degree to which the Imperial German govt. sought to cultivate relations with the Bolsheviks in an effort to take over Russia and close down the Eastern Front and Lenin's ongoing protestations that the "Bolsheviks" were a private entity within Russia and therefore did not at all represent "offical" govt. policy. The latter allowed the Russian govt. to get around norms of international law and attempt to export Bolshevism to other areas of Europe. This duplicity served as a model for later totalitarian regimes to follow (check out Nazi Germany and the Islamic Republic of Iran for evidence of this). On a final note, Pipes demonstrates how the horrors of Stalinism had definite roots in the formative years of Bolshevik Russia (i.e., the all-pervasive Cheka and the "forced requisitions" against the peasants). I think that many people forget this fact and want to believe that Stalin was somehow an aberration within the Soviet system.

This is an excellent overview of the Russian Revolution. Pipes does an excellent job of distilling the different factions involved, and constructing the worldviews of those involved. The dichotomy between the outlook of the aristocracy and peasants was particularly good--much of the revolution's course was explained there.

Throughout, I think Pipes did a good job of balancing the big picture with the details that are necessary to understand what was happening in such a large country at the time. His writing style varies somewhat throughout the different chapters, but on the whole was engaging and lively.

I have only two (minor) complaints, hence 4 stars instead of 5. The first complaint is that the book ends around a chapter too soon. The civil war is left out almost entirely, and in general the book ended with many loose ends, without even a quick summary of what followed in history. This is not a problem for the scholar, but to a casual reader (like myself) it feels a bit abrupt.

The second complaint, as others have noted, is Pipes' bias. When I got to Chapter 3 I started laughing out loud, and I wondered at first if it was written by someone else. Suddenly the objective writing style becomes full of venom for the "intelligentsia." Pipes' contempt is a constant theme throughout the remainder of the book, to the point where I wasn't sure how much I could trust some of his observations.

This is still a great book. But I do wish Pipes had remained more objective--the atrocious record of the Bolshevik party's early years speaks for itself.

Of all the accounts of the Russian revolution I've read, this one is the best, most entertaining and most frightening. It is very well researched and bring the mentality of the participants into a new light. Some of the events seem almost comical but when you realize that the result was a brutal totalitarian regime, you get pretty frightened. How easy it seemed to get people not to care about who is in charge and subjugate them to your will.

I guess I only have one complaint and that is the portion on the death of the czar. Pipes goes into way too much detail in this portion and in my opinion it had very little impact on the Russian revolution. Considering the millions who were killed by the Soviets, the murder of one family, doesn't amount to much.

Max

A review in simple words.
This book is worth to read it twice. I'm a history student and I found the book to be the best in the topic of the Russian Revolution. I lived under the communist regime and agree with Richard Pipes in many of his point of views, in fact many of my point of views about communism in Russia were reflected in the book. I have read other books about this topic, but this book is the best of all books about the Russian Revolution. The chapters "The October Coup" and "The Red Terror" are the most interesting chapters of the book. The whole Revolution was about that, a coup d'état to take power by Lenin and Trotsky and the later terror that kept communism in power for more than 7 decades in Russia. The book provided me with a good source for my seminars. I recommend the book to any history student who studies the topic.

This is a great history written by a person whose opinions of the indisputable events of the Russian Revolution - events with authors - is my own. In my opinion, Pipes ought to be congratulated for stating what any normal person would conclude if he were unconcerned with flattering the pervasive left-sympathetic character of the comentariat. The fact is this event and its effects are rather plain for all to see: only those who delude themselves into believing an ideology rooted in violence, articulated in violence, established in reality through violence, and issuing in the most institutionally violent of regimes could possibly believe all this is to be ignored or forgiven because of the rationalizations and claims of peace and moral insight. Clearly, Marxism (and its related ideologies) is the disease for which it purports to be the cure. The other fact is, all this dissimulation must end, and Pipes' book is a signal contribution to that goal. No ideology has been so thoroughly tested in so wide a variety of societies and resulted so uniformly in physical slaughter and immiseration and cultural deformity. Any of its current adherents are either intellectual buffoons or moral scum. This book illustrates the apotheosis of the ideology, and is not going to be surpassed.

By the way, as one reviewer noted below, I think, one of this book's most interesting contributions is its revelations concerning the extent to which Germany propped up an paid for the Bolsheviks, especially Lenin, throughout the critical period of 1917. It's no wonder contemporary enemies considered Lenin a "mere German agent," a charge I'd thought paranoid until now.

This is simply a fantastic book about an historic event driven by a deep, consequential philosophical battle that continues to this day. I am perplexed by the few reviews that accuse the author of unreasonable bias; the facts have been researched and footnoted; historical sources are cited when opinions or commentary from participants are referenced. The book presents a detailed and captivating account Russian society as it transitions from monarchy, through oligarchy, to, ultimately, dictatorship. If you are looking for a volume to reinforce a personal bent you may have toward socialist government, this is not going to be an enjoyable read; but, may well be a rewarding one. If you value well documented accounts of historic events as important sources of insight for what may happen in the future, this is a must read.

As a history student majoring in Russia I have to say this book is the bible on the topic of the Russian Revolution. Pipes proves with enough arguments all his points through out the book. Since the origins of the Russian Revolution to the last chapter on the 'Red Terror' Pipes shows how Lenin destroyed all prospects of the revolution the moment he entered the sphere of politics in Russia. As Pipes argues, the origns of the revolution started with intellectuals protesting for the delay in the implementation of the reforms of Tsar Alexander II. Most of what the ideals of the Russian Revolution were based, was on intellectuals representing the peasants and workers claiming to have political representation in the political decisions of the country, beginning with the 'zemtsvo' and conluding in the revolutions of 1905 and of February 1917. As Pipes argues, when the Bolsheviks conquered power, they destroyed all the ideals of the revolution since they triumphed by a coup d'etat and not by a genuine revolution as it took place in 1905 and in February of 1917. The ideals of previous revolutionaries, to live in a country where all sectors of society would have a political voice in the government where all destroyed by the Bolsheviks (who besides betraying and penetrating the 'soviets') they also established an absolute tyranny where only the Bolsheviks could decide the future of the nation, thus prohibiting other parties and establishing a brutal dictatorship based on terror. This of course did not have anything to do with the ideals of previous revolutionaries who fought for a revolution where the ideal of freedom prevailed and not the imposition of one party which won its way to power by a coup organized by Lenin and Trotsky. The book is of course 'communists' worst nightmare'