Rating: 
Summary: Haunting and unforgettable
Review: Figes manages to cover all of the major events leading up to, including and immediately following the Russian Revolution with a broad, almost cinematic, sweep. The signifcance and details of the events of the revolution are covered in exacting detail, but what makes this book truly important is the focus on the individuals. The Russian Revolution was an event that completely and drastically changed a nation, but Figes does not fall in the trap of focusing only on the broader aspects; he captures the story of soldier, peasant, revolutionary, bourgeiosie, and common individual through the harrowing events of the revolution. He lets the people tell their own stories--stories of feverish revolution, of the betrayal of a nation, of tragedy, and horror. The images of these stories are seared permanently into your consciousness. A People's Tragedy is a long book, but most definitely, worth the time it takes to read it. For any student of Russian history, it will shake up your dry and academic notions about the revolution. Figes' book places a distinctly human face on all of the events of the revolution, and the faces and stories are ones that you will not soon forget.
Rating: 
Summary: Big and detailed, but a fast read
Review: Figes pulls off a pretty impressive feat here: he makes a relatively fast and interesting book out of a complex and painful human event. This book gives a good idea of the extremities of brutality, stupidity, and treachery that accompanied the Russian Revolution. It may not please some readers seeking a final, official "judgment" of the event, but so what? It tells you what happened and gives some reasons why. That's the purpose of the study of history.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully articulated - rich in every way.
Review: Figes' book is a remarkable achievement. He is able to capture the chaos, the confusion and the captivating power of revolutionary Russia without resorting to the dramatisation of his sybject. He tells Russia's tale from the perspective of the people - peasants, soldiers, workers - and from the great men who took centre stage - Lenin, Trotsky, Gorky, et al. Figes is fair and detailed in his account but he is also not afraid to make judgements or present an analytical viewpoint. He does not fall into the trap of simply recounting events - he seeks to shed light onto a the Revolution that shaped this century and does so with great success. "A People's Tragedy" travels back into the 19th Century to examine the development of a revolutionary consciousness in Russia. Figes looks at the literary and theoretical heritage of the Revolution - from Tolstoy to Chernyshevksy. He explores the mentality of the Russian workers, soldiers and peasants - why did Marxism appeal to the people of Russia? He also provides fascinating insight into the psychology of the intelligentsia. Like Simon Schama's "Citizens", Figes' book is a must-read for any student of revolution. He captures the broad and sweeping vista of the era but does not neglect the common people who lived through it. Or those who died for it. "The Russian Revolution launched a vast experiment in social engineering - perhaps the grandest in the history of mankind" says Figes. "A People's Tragedy" is a worthy chronicle of one of the most important events in history.
Rating:
Summary: Sound but biased
Review: Figes' mammoth volume is a welcome addition to the already vast literature on the October Revolution. Not only is his narration factually sound, he provides a staggering amount of detail and anecdotal material. He also lays to rest a number of myths (not least the Communists' version of the heroic storming of the Winter Palace, and the anti-Communists' insistence that the Bolsheviks led the masses by the nose over the precipice). My only complaint -- and it is a significant one -- is the rather aristocratic and conservative tone of the book -- so intent is Figes on demythologizing the Russian left, especially the Bolsheviks, and the "noble masses" that halfway through the book I began to feel as though I were reading the reminiscences of an exiled nobleman or bourgeois. His depiction of the masses is shot through with the finicky squeamishness of an aristocratic aesthete, and soon becomes quite irksome. The Revolution may well have degenerated into the counterrevolutionary attack on the Kronstadt insurgents and the rise of the Stalinist monstrosity that has deformed all subsequent "Marxist" states -- for which Lenin and his comrades bear much of the blame -- but Figes seems all too willing to throw the baby of October out with the bathwater of its betrayal. Still, when read with a critical eye, this is one of the best books in English on 1917 next to Rabinowitch's _The Bolsheviks Come to Power_ and Lincoln's _Passage through Armageddon_.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of anecdotes, short on analysis
Review: Figes' work gives a great deal of information on Russia to the reader without properly analyzing it. His description of the outbreak of the First World War is basically wrong and he gives far too much credit to pan-slavism for prompting Russia's entry into the war than he does the alliance system or any of the other international events of the July Crisis. He continues to repeat the myths of the Russian Army fighting with sticks which were demolished back in the '70s by Norman Stone. As for the Revolution, he is contradictory in a number of areas, at one point describing the attack on Poland in 1920 defensive, and then a few pages later portraying it as a measure to spread revolution to Germany. The use of a mass of material combined with lack of analysis don't make a good book!
Rating:
Summary: A Superb Book Well Worth Reading
Review: For those of you undaunted by the length of Figes book (actually it is shorter than most books about Russia), this book is truly rewarding. Figes grasp of the lives of the people who led, followed and were effected by this event truly amazed me. While I knew how rough life was in Russia both pre and pst revolution, this book gave me new insights into it. The book also provided many insights into the minds of leaders and the outcome of events. I highly recommend this book to any person who truly likes histroy.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book on the Revolution Available
Review: Having recently read several books on Stalin and the Revolution by such illustrious scholars as Stephen Cohen and Robert Conquest, I preferred this one mostly because it is not assumed that you already have a background in the subject. You are given full historical, political, and social context in a fascinating way. It is an incredibly violent book with disturbing primary sources and bizarre facts about the truly medieval lives of the peasantry (it was not uncommon for mothers to fellate infants to keep them from crying in peasant Russia). The Tsars, Lenin, and Stalin are very much alive in this book and it will haunt you for years to come. Can't recommend it more highly.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating history
Review: I had long wondered how a bunch of pretentious intellectuals in St. Petersburg managed to take control over the world's largest country. Orlando Figes explains it as best as anyone can. The book does not begin in 1917 but rather provides a good overview of Russian history in the years leading up to the revolution. Recommended for anyone interested in history
Rating:
Summary: Figes can write
Review: I like to read history, but I often become distracted and lost by the generally poor quality of most historians' writing style. Not so with this Figes. He can write, for sure. I'll agreee to some extent with others who have said that this book "fails" to come to any conclusions/judgments. But, for me, that's quite secondary to the fact that this book is the finest example of history writing I've come across.
Rating: 
Summary: Darn. We accidentily dropped The People and they broke.
Review: I liked this book more than I should have, owing to my inordinate glee of reading people who are so thoroughly wrong. I call Figes historical account the 'Brittany Spears "Oops I did it again" theory of Soviet massacres' for its approach to the eventual massacre of Russian civilization by a group of men dedicated to an idea about history. The curious end effect of this "post-cold war" postmodern history is that it takes the marrow out of the bones of the dead on which it rests. I did appreciate so much about this history that it almost seems petty of me to rest my objection on the small matter of Figes treating the massacre of the Russian population as just events getting out of control, as if the Russian Revolution were just a tea and crumpet party gone terribly, terribly wrong, and ended up killing a couple dozen million people. Those boys in the Politburo, they sure do get in some wacky capers. A lot of this was interesting, and I liked it. The personal accounts and uses of personal documents are done better here than almost anywhere else except with Volkoganov's treatments of the Soviet leadership, and I appreciate the attempt at sobriety in scholarship. However, in an attempt to avoid the heavy-breathing aspects of the Pipe's and the Conquest's of historiography, Figes has essentially exculpated the Soviet leadership of blame while simultaneously blaming them for lesser evils. The net effect is Figes looks like he's trying to cover for them, and this is unnacceptable. In the end, the book ended up valuing a sober tone in expense of the truth of the subject. What Figes should have aimed for was sobriety plus truth. As it is, I got no sense of the inevitability of the hell unleashed by an apocryphal ideology bent on conquering the world. I know it's unfashionable now to say things like it now, but you know, the commies did this, not the Rotarians or Tsar Nicholas or Stolypin his own dumb self. The "skepticism" NYTBR's Steven Miner sees in Fige's treatment of Lenin leaves quite a lot to be desired, namely, the square blame of the Soviet "experiment". While stressing how badly things did suck for the average peasant under Lenin, Figes always stops short of the plain blame we can find in, say, William Shirer's account of Hitler. This is unnacceptable, and it amounts to a historical double standard that I cannot help but think is ideologically based. Simply put, like the Easter Bunny and moderate Arabs, the non-ideological discussion of the Soviet experiment doesn't exist, nor should it. Those who attempt non-ideological approaches invariably end up merely disguising their presuppositions rather than airing them openly. I did like a lot else about the book, namely, as another reviewer put it, it's not a history that assumes the reader has foreknowledge of the early Soviet times. Other prominent historians like Pipes and Conquest write first rate history, but they do so for my clique, those who are already well educated on the subject at hand. This is not to say their approaches are wrong, but that more basic tomes such as Fige's are quite useful for beginners who want a serious understanding of an important event. All in all, I recommend the book. It would be perfect if not for the tiny problem of being wrong. The Russian people were not destroyed because Lenin wasn't good at foreseeing economic relations or he was crabby after getting shot. The end result was forordained in the nature of the system. Trotsky in charge would have been another series of slaughters. You wouldn't be able to tell that with Figes around.
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