Customer Reviews

White Terror: Cossack Warlords of the Trans-Siberian (Cass Military Studies)

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

 

 

OK, I'm weird. I love this stuff and have been saving up to buy this book anbd finally did. Mr. Bisher adds to the literature of the Russian Civil War in Siberia using primary sources, many of them heretofore available only in the original Russian, and does a magnificent job of ferreting out the details. The reason this book is important is twofold: 1) It helps illuminate a period and a geography heretofore ignored by all but a few scholars which was singularly important in the post Geat War period not simply for the Russian Civil War but also the postwar international scramble for position. (2) The Bolsheviks had to have Siberia to make the Russian Revolution work for them because of the natural resources so desperately in short supply in European Russian following the war which is why the failure of the Kokchak government was essential to the sustainable formation of a Bolshevik government, and hence to world history across the remainer of the 20th century (e.g., World War II, Cold War, you name it). The price is somewhat daunting, but I urge anyone interested to include this study in his collection as a sine qua non of underrstanding how the seminal (or, perhaps the Semenov?) events in Siberia 1917-1922 caused the world to be the way it is now.

This is a groundbreaking study. The Russian Civil War was still fought in Siberia and the Far East long after it was officially "over" in the Russian heartland. The book is elegantly written and meticulously documented. The mastery of sources is remarkable, considering that many sources are in Russia and therefore can be notoriously hard to penetrate. I kept thinking - how did this guy with no prior academic credits manage to turn so many stones? Found all these extinct local newspapers - hadn't they all been burned upon reading (in woodstoves), torn up for smokes, or later destroyed as evidence?

I spotted just a couple of errors. On page 133 the Bolsheviks "converted Russia from the medieval Gregorian calendar to the modern Julian one". It was the other way around: old Julian out, modern Gregorian in. On page 151 Rumanians are listed among the "east European Slavs". Rumanians are not Slavic people, they speak a language of Romance (Latin) origin. These inaccuracies are peripheral to the story and can be easily fixed in the next edition.

For now, there is only one, and the price tag just kills you. Probably a limited publication, I don't know. That makes it hard to find even in academic libraries (I tried). Too bad, because this monograph is a reliable, unbiased source of knowledge, and great reading to boot.

Not since Marx, Lenin or even Putin, has a book been written that captures what is in the hearts and minds of the average "Russian".

The author, James Bisher, comes from literary stock not seen in ages. A force to be reckoned with.

Amazing depth of research not previously seen on the subject.

Anyone studying the area should take note.