Customer Reviews

The Russian Revolution

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Fitzpatrick's short book about the Russian Revolution is so concise one has to wonder if she skimped on the facts. This is not the case. Anybody reading the book can only remark that thickness is not indicative of weight. All one needs to know about the Russian Revolution is in this slim volume.
Fitzpatrick's main contention is that the Russian Revolution did not end in 1920, but rather in the 1930s when Stalin consolidated his power and put in place a new system which suceeded the Tsarist regime. Stalin did this by educating a new elite from the working class and placing them in the Party and Government. Future leaders came from this group. The two five year plans stabilized the revolution and placed a new order on the country.
I also found the characterization of Lenin good. Lenin put in place a situation which led to the rise of the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Lenin is seen as both good and bad.
There are more meaty books about the Russian Revolution. There is not one which is more concise and explains all the facts.

I read this book for a Russian History class, and I think Fitzpatrick does an excellent job of exploring the possibilities of this tumultuous era. It is a fast read and focuses on the heart of the matter. No extensive knowledge of Russian history is necessary to understand the main points of this book as she explains the context of all points.

This book receives lots of kudos from other reviewers for being so concise. That it is, but I didn't experience that attribute as being as positive as the others. If the topic of the Russian Revolution is assigned reading for you and you want to get it out of the way as quickly as possible, get this book. On the other hand, if the topic fascinates you and you're looking to explore it, I expect you may find this book unsatisfying. Consider skipping this "appetizer" and going right for the main course somewhere else (not sure where that is yet, but I'll be looking for it).

As the title indicates, the gist of Fitzpatrick's argument is that the Russian Revolution was not completed until 1932. Only at this time did the contours of Russian society become stable. Massive numbers of proletariats were educated and became bureaucrats who helped achieve Russian industrialization.

Other points in this book are that: (1) The Bolshevik party was a mass party in 1917. Lenin was no murdering dictator but was a persuasive leader. His threat to resign from the party pushed the decision to sign the Brest-Litovsk treaty. (2) The peasants were suspicious of the Bolshevik aims to ignite class hatred in the countryside. The Bolsheviks needed to send thugs into the countryside to wage war on a reluctant peasantry in order to force industrialization on the nation.

Although this book is relatively short, especially considering the time period covered, it is very meaty and requires careful reading to understand the main concepts.

This is an overview of the Russian Revolution of 1917 which continued through the great purges of 1938. Fitzpatrick does a good job of giving an overall view of the Russian history of this period. The book was kind of short and therefore didnt allow for much detail or explanations, but I felt it covered a great deal of facts and insight in the few pages. I have read other much larger books that did contain much more information but the purpose of the book is the key to understanding this lack of information. It is only written to give a general outline and brief understanding of what took place.
It was also a very interesting book, which was easy to read. If you are just starting out in Russian Revolution history I feel like this would be a good starting point.

Professor Fitzpatrick has done an excellent job in this well written, concise book. Although not a hefty book nevertheless she effectively sparks the reader's interest in Soviet History while suppling ample information allowing for a general understanding of Soviet Russia up until the end of Stalin's reign.

Sheila Fitzpatrick's "The Russian Revolution" is concise and well-written, making sense out of a very confusing and confused time. She sees the events generally referred to as The Russian Revolution as a series of revolutions, each with its distinct character and players, beginning with the uprisings in 1905, and culminating in Stalin's consolidation of his power with the Great Purges of the 1930's. Professor Fitzpatrick writes clearly and economically, with a dry wit which animates each page. An interesting and lively analysis.

For anyone interested in a short, coherent and compelling history of the Russian Revolution, this is an exceptional read.

Beginning with a chapter on the pre-conditions of the revolution, and then rendering a step-by-step account of Lenin's and the Bolshevik actions that precipitated the revolution, we have here a single document that makes the entire process, including the purges that terminated the revolution, understandable. I was particularly struck by the charismatic power and control that Lenin exercised over the entire movement almost until his death in 1924.

The one enormous weakness of this text is what I would call its "sanitized" version of events. By that I mean that it glosses over the horrors and the colossal human costs involved in what transpired in Russia between 1917 and 1937. That cost is estimated by some to have involved taking the lives, directly or indirectly, of up to 35 million people.

Fitzpatrick speaks about the "liquidation" of certain groups external to the revolution, such as the kulaks, the intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie, and she also mentions the internal purges within the Bolshevik party itself, but these horrific events are passed over lightly and quickly.

One of my favorite aspects of this enlightening textis the framework that Fitzpatrick uses to illuminate what happened, emphasizing the ever-dangerous and ultimately destructive utopianism that characterizes most, but not all, revolutions.

Dr. Fitzpatrick is a titan in her field and that much is clear in her writing and blessedly tight analysis. While it is, by no means, a thorough analysis of the Revolution Fitzpatrick has laid out the groundwork for further study and research. Her bibliography is likewise well composed and helpful. This was a joy to read for a class otherwise composed of seemingly endless dry tomes.

Professor Fitzpatrick helped revolutionize the American study of Soviet history in the 1980s, and this short book, written for the general reader, shows how and why. It represents the more or less definitive demolition of the old Cold War thesis of the Soviet Union as a so-called "totalitarian state" exercising virtually uncontested and tyrannical power over its people in a top-down power-system engineered by Lenin and perfected by Stalin. Instead, this book demonstrates how from the 1917 Revolution through the late 30s, popular forces operating from below, international pressures from without, and class struggles from within Russian and Soviet society shaped the choices, limitations and results of Lenin's, Stalin's and the Soviet Communist Party's leadership's acquisition and exercise of power as much or more than these actors' own preferences and ideology. What is most striking about Fitzpatrick's analysis is how from the seizure of power in October 1917 to Stalin's unleashing of the Five Year Plan in 1928 to the formation of a new class of Communist industrial experts by the late 1930s, party leaders and the regime were often pushed into action by street level militants, the exercise of power by the post-Civil War landed small peasantry or pressure from rank-and-file party members. While this work does not address the old totalitarian state thesis in what is basically a social history of the Soviet Union, that thesis appears unsustainable in the wake of this sort of evidence. This book is an excellent introduction to the newer approaches to Soviet history. It's also a well-written book that anyone interested in 20th century history will appreciate.