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August 1914 (The Red Wheel, Vol. 1) (Paperback)

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Author), H. T. Willetts (Translator) "They left the village in the clear dawn light..." (more)
Key Phrases: western zemstvos, zemstvo men, palace commandant, Supreme Commander, East Prussia, Nikolai Yakovlevich (more...)

4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
This edition of the Nobel laureate's epic novel of Russian history, which was first published in English in 1972 ( LJ 10/15/72), contains all of the text from the original plus additional material written after Solzhenitsyn's exile from the USSR in 1974. "Screen sequences" indicate technical instructions for the shooting of a film.-- MR
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
Historical novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, published as Avgust chetyrnadtsatogo in Paris in 1971. An enlarged version, nearly double in size, was published in 1983. The novel treats Germany's crushing victory over Russia in their initial military engagement of World War I, the Battle of Tannenberg. The action takes place in the course of three days. The book's combination of epic sweep and brief time-span necessitated broad, efficient characterization, an effect that Solzhenitsyn attempts to achieve by means of frequent literary allusions and often biting irony. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

Paperback: 832 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (December 1, 1992)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0140071229
ISBN-13: 978-0140071221
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 1.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #504,818 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category: (What's this?)
#11 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Authors, A-Z > ( S ) > Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

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Front Cover | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
They left the village in the clear dawn light. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
western zemstvos, zemstvo men, palace commandant, central terror, ten versts, forty versts, twenty versts, fifty versts, central corps, three versts, few versts, fifteen versts, thirty versts, gendarme officer, state counsellor, heavy artillery battalion, ministerial reports, partial mobilization

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Supreme Commander, East Prussia, Nikolai Yakovlevich, State Council, General Staff, General Samsonov, Winter Palace, Zakhar Fyodorovich, Aglaida Fedoseevna, Port Arthur, Ilya Isaakovich, Socialist Revolutionaries, General Kurlov, Socialist Revolutionary, State Duma, Dorogobuzh Regiment, Vyborg Regiment, Central Committee, Aunt Agnessa, Far East, General Klyuev, Ministry of the Interior, Nikolai Nikolaevich, Pyotr Arkadievich, Tsarskoye Selo

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 1 book:

Peter the Great by A. Tolstoy on page 9

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	69% buy the item featured on this page: August 1914 (The Red Wheel, Vol. 1) 4.1 out of 5 stars (19)
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Customer Reviews

19 Reviews

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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Average Customer Review

4.1 out of 5 stars (19 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I really liked it. . . A Great Book, August 14, 2003

By	Robert Wynkoop (Washington State) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

August 1914
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I remember when my son was little. He would bring me August 1914 and ask me to read it to him. There were no pictures in this book, but he knew that it was a book that I loved. So we would lie on his bed and as I opened the book and read to him about a world he could only discover in a book. Solzhenitsyn is one of my hero?s, a moral voice speaking against the tyranny of Soviet repression. This book about the battle of Tennenberg in August 1914 is not only a brilliant historical novel, but also a critique of the forces that lead to the October Revolution in Russia. Let?s talk about the story, before we continue the review.

The story is about the entrance of Imperial Russia into World War I. War is declared and Russia in its hurry to honor its commitments to France, invades Prussia. Its army under the leadership of General Samsonov is unprepared for war and Russia suffers a humiliating defeat as the army is surrounded and destroyed. The story is told through the eyes of a Colonel Vorotyntsey who alone sees the coming disaster and vainly tries to avert it.

It is a story of an Army that did not understand modern warfare. Samsonov, a cavalry officer, is used to sitting on his horse and viewing the battlefield; this battlefield, however, stretches for hundreds of miles. Communication is non-existent; supplies are scarce. The Germans, however, understood the new technology and were able to listen in on all the Russian communications. Samsonov makes one blunder after another; he is out classed and doesnt know what to do. With his army collapsing around him, he is lost. Lost in a forest, he ends his life with a bullet as he and his staff are attempting to escape the encirclement.

It is a wonderfully written book. One can hear the hoof beats of the charging cavalry, see the sabers glistening in the sun, sense the terror of the soldiers huddle in their trenches as thousands of shells fall around them and smell the cordite as it drifts across the fields. But Solzhenitsyn?s purpose is more than giving us a history of a battle fought long ago, we wants to expose the corruption of a Czarist Russia that lead to an even greater corruption of the Soviet System. This is a novel about truth and the attempt to conceal it. The old Czarist regime and the Soviet one that followed could only survive by the suppression and the corruption of the truth. No wonder that this book was banned in the Soviet Union.

It is a great book; I have read it at least a half dozen times over the years.

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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 20th Century Tolstoy explains 20th Century Russia, August 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: August 1914 (Paperback)

August 1914 is a historical novel examining the causes for the decline of 19th Century aristocratic Russia to a 20th Century Russia of Socialist experimentation. Solzhenitsyn (AS) picks up his 20th Century analysis of Russia where Tolstoy left off his 19th Century point of view. This is a powerful novel displaying history, as it defines its causality. It grapples with the character of the Russian who is about to face revolutionary change which will deliver the country and its people from an agrarian peasant society to an industrialist monstrous social catastrophe. AS examines how and why Russia went socialist. For students of the French Revolution, August 1914 is another manifestation of how that earlier revolution influenced and occurred in Russia. For students interested in the transition of a culture from 19th Century behavior and values to extreme expiramental 20th political practices, this book is mandatory. August 1914 best demonstrates Henry Adams' forecast that the 19th century mode of life would change radically in the 20th century. AS' dynamo is a war, a romantic urge and a people who are ready for change and have the temperment to change as they did. This is truly an absorbing book and an important book to anyone interested in the influence of Russia in the 20th century. It is a must read for anyone who is interested in Russian history. In fact, it is a great place to start for anyone who is beginning a survey of Russia of history.

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hello from the world, February 5, 2001

By	Frank Marton (Budapest, Hungary) - See all my reviews

For lovers of Russian literature and history buffs, this is a terrific book! If you're not a fan of this genre, however, it's going to be ONE TOUGH READ. Solzhenitsyn throws in characters with machine-gun rapidity as well as hundreds of local historical references that will be lost on many folks simply eager to find out about a bit about one of the greatest writers of the century.

That having been said, this one is a winner. Rich description, lovely prose and Solzhenitsyn's obvious love for his homeland are woven into a terrific work that offers deep insights into the Russian view this tumultuous period in their history. For my money, the portion of the book dealing the desperate Russian army and their misguided leaders is Solzhenitsyn at his finest: brutally accurate and never lacking in a deeper understanding of the flawed human beings that made up the events.

This is a must read, but don't make it your first foray into Russian literature or Solzhenitsyn. Try a shorter, less complex work first and then move to this if you like the genre.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Translation of an Epic Work
"August 1914" kicks off the epic "Red Wheel" as Solzhenitsyn tries to capture the coming of the Russian Revolution in a series of novels. Read more

Published 24 days ago by K. Michael Derby

5.0 out of 5 stars Astounding...a fantastic read and a stirring protest...

Having just finished A People's Tragedy, the excellent nonfiction history of the Russian Revolution, I decided to read this fictional account of Russia's stumbling... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Mark Nadja

4.0 out of 5 stars Really Enjoyable Read
Prior to reading this book, I had never read anything by and heard very little about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Read more

Published 11 months ago by W. Marshall

5.0 out of 5 stars War and Peace in the 20th Century
This is not an easy book to read--but it's one of the greatest novels I've ever read. Readers who are familiar with the works of other Russian authors (e.g. Read more

Published 18 months ago by Shawn P. Rife

5.0 out of 5 stars august 1914 - a tragicomedy
I skim read the reviews of this book on amazon, the lower star ratings shocked me more than the others in certain comments they made. Read more

Published on January 14, 2007 by MR JM RAYNOR

4.0 out of 5 stars Man's Folly
Although difficult to follow at times, this work relates the tragedy of war, specifically war undertaken without the proper understanding and preparation necessary to sucessfully... Read more

Published on October 30, 2005 by Jeff B. Sweeten

5.0 out of 5 stars Inexorable flow of events
This is a momentous work - quite unlike FIRST CIRCLE or the GULAG ARCHIPELAGO. Solzhenitsyn cannot himself from centering on people. Read more

Published on October 20, 2003 by Avid Reader

1.0 out of 5 stars Best Left in the Dustbin of History
I first read August 1914 nearly a decade ago, and I must have enjoyed it as I spent the next ten years looking for a reasonably priced edition of the next book. Read more

Published on July 7, 2003 by jrmspnc

1.0 out of 5 stars Communism has much to answer for
Alexander Solzhenitsyn may have won the Nobel Prize, but I think the people in Stockholm would have been within their rights to ask for their money back with this one. Read more

Published on March 5, 2003 by M. A Newman

4.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking account of the end of Imperial Russia
Though the translation suffers a little, this novel of the last golden days of Imperial Russia and the frenzied destruction of the "old order" by the Bolsheviks remains... Read more

Published on December 11, 2001 by Matt Boisen

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