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Voices of the Revolution, 1917

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This collection titled "Voices of Revolution" is a selection from the many letters, resolutions, requests, appeals, complaints and invective sent to various state organs and important politicians from the period of the Russian Revolution by 'regular people'. Farmers, soldiers, deserters, workers, and so on all came together in that period to elect their own representatives and form their own councils, and these councilmembers in turn responded to the many confused events of those days with letters and resolutions supporting or opposing specific policies or politicians. Equally, individual farmers, laborers etc. wrote letters, requests, insults or even poetry to popular newspapers as well as party leaders in the hope of getting their voices heard.

In between all these documents, translated into English but also available online in their Russian originals, the editor Mark Steinberg provides a short but effective history of the period to give context to the many voices of the revolution. He does this fairly and accurately, and the many-sidedness of popular opinion in those days belies any one-sided view of the revolution. Of course it is never entirely clear how representative these individual and collective letters and appeals are, but judging by the various election results and the repetition of the same complaints and issues in the letters, the two match quite well. That makes this book an invaluable insight into the views of the common man in Russia, 1917.

A remarkable collection of documents and interpretations giving one an understanding of the revolution from below. By the way, I notice that the original Russian texts of the documents are available at http://www.yale.edu/annals/Steinberg/golosa.htm