The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution 1825 - 1917 [Hardcover]

Edward Crankshaw (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 1976

Exactly 175 years ago, on the Senate Square in St. Petersburg, a failed uprising ignited a process that would, one red October, finally sweep the autocracy away. The Shadow of the Winter Palace recounts an extraordinary century of Russian history, a politically tempestuous time that was also a Golden Age of intellectual and artistic achievement—the century of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. A master stylist and a distinguished historian, Edward Crankshaw limns dazzling portraits of the czars, the revolutionaries, and a host of other unforgettable characters—and provides a riveting, sweeping history "jam-packed with information about the past and implications for the present"(Atlantic Monthly).

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Edward Crankshaw (1909–1984) reported on Soviet affairs for the London Observer for more than two decades.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 429 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1st Ed. edition (August 19, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670637823
• ISBN-13: 978-0670637829
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,090,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb!, April 1, 2002

By 

J. J. Bevill "JJBevill" (Houston, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825-1917 (Paperback)

This is an outstanding choice for anyone who wants to learn more about and understand the forces involved in Russia's autocratic Tsarist political system from 1825 to the Revolution of 1917.

The author masterfully blends history, political thought, biography, (and a dry sense of humor at times!) to a monumental task in examining the changes in Russia in the last 100 or so years prior to the Soviet era. (he covers some significant events in the reign of Alexander I) We see how Russia's expansion to Central Asia; the impact of the Crimean War; the economic modernizing problems resulting from serfdom; and the war with Japan in the early 20th Century shaped and influenced the thinking in the country.

Crankshaw is able to clearly deliniate the trends, and the significant events and people which made those trends possible. All in an easy to read and interesting style.

A fascinating and highly informative read!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ONCE OVER VERY LIGHTLY, July 25, 2007

By 

John Stahle (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825-1917 (Paperback)

Crankshaw's "The Shadow of the Winter Palace" is a very readable survey of attempts to modernize Russia in the 19th century against the stubborn gravitational pull of autocracy. Russia needed democracy built up from below, if only to bring new, able men into government and broaden the consultative base of Tsarist rule. One Emperor after another let crucial opportunities slip until at last the pressure to reform became ungovernable. Though always fun to read, Crankshaw is relentlessly superficial and adopts a smarmy, jokey tone completely at odds with the material. One looks in vain for the gritty details of Alexander II's great reforms, particularly how serfs were emancipated, and the new men who came forward during that period are never profiled adequately.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Continuation school, February 17, 2007

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825-1917 (Paperback)

It is a measure of Edward Crankshaw's originality that a book subtitled "Russia's Drift to Revolution 1825-1917" ends several years short of 1917. As he puts it, the dynasty was finished. All the hoopla and rigmarole about Kadets, arrivals at Finland Stations and harangues to the workers were an encore. The play had ended.

No historian writing in English about pre-Communist Russia can evade the question, what if? Crankshaw's answer is, Communism was the continuation of tsarism under other management. The labor camps were not invented in the 1920s, the Russification of the non-Slav minorities was not Marxist, the failure of agriculture had already been accomplished, the secret police had already organized and created all the tools they ever would.

He does not speculate in the other direction. It may be that the Mongol conquest had ruined Russia before the Russians ever got a crack at doing it. I tend to think so, following what I take to be one thread of the argument of James Billington in "The Icon and the Axe." However that may be, and it is certainly arguable, Crankshaw starts with the first Russian government, in which the boyars chose to hand over power to an autocrat.

It might have been different, but once started down that road, Crankshaw sees no real opportunity to change course. A change in outlook occurred, however, about 1825. Until that time, revolt had been frequent, but always from the lower depths. Under the stimulus of the Enlightenment, the educated classes began to doubt the divinity of tsardom.

(By educated classes, Crankshaw means solely the secular part, who were, at least in principle, open to western ideas. He has next to nothing to say about the church, which is a bit odd considering that Orthodoxy was part of the arrogation by the throne of autocratic power. In effect, in the 1820s, the educated classes were all army officers.)

The Decembrist revolt may or may not have ruined one opening for a tsar to give up some part of autocratic power. Crankshaw is not quite clear; he seems to think that Alexander I was a solipsist who would have turned into an unvarying autocrat anyway.

For half a century after 1825, there was no terror or organized subversion. This period is the most interesting in "The Shadow of the Winter Palace," as Crankshaw traces the creeping modernism that infected a growing new class. In 1825, there had been only serfs and nobles. By 1870 there were workers, university students, newspapermen, most of the modern types except perhaps accountants. It seems doubtful anybody in Russia ever had a clue about where the national account stood.

Crankshaw saves his worst disdain for Nicholas II and Alexandra. Alexandra, oversexed and under brained, was the worst sort of mate for Nicholas, although Crankshaw judges him unfit to govern in every sense. Alexandra added the ingredients that changed a sordid story into a sordid, bizarre story.

There's a great deal to chew over in this fat tome. A few remarks deserve to be singled out.

"The workings of the autocracy ensured that the people subjected to it over the ages could not exist without it."

"The very name by which they were to be known, the intelligentsia, had no counterpart in any other land." (But I would add, a similar situation -- without the name for it -- existed in China and, perhaps to a degree, is Islamic countries; and to lesser degree in most of Latin America.)

"It was only by virtue of her mastery of Poland that Russia could feel European."

"The direct threat to the autocracy came not from the convinced revolutionaries (of Alexander II's time) on the one hand or from the increasingly hard-driven peasantry on the other. It came from the disorientated, disenfranchised, politically superfluous members of the new bourgeoisie, the men whose talents should have been enlisted for the business of government but who were cast out and as it were disowned."