A Concise History of the Russian Revolution

Rating:
Summary: Open your eyes and wake up.
Review: This is a fantastic book, a must read! Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin were Sociopaths who had the good fortune to obtain their dream: overthrow a nation against the will of the people and murder everyone, men, women, and children who didn't want to become insects without individuality, feelings, or soul; which is how communists envision people, not as individuals, but as mindless machines used to fulfill the party's goals, or get crushed. Read quotes from Trotsky and Bolshevik poets who dreamed of a day when humans would no longer need to think as individuals, but become a faceless mass of radios tuned to the same station waiting for a message from the party as to what to do that day. A reviewer below suggests for balance, read Trotsky! Gee, and while you're at it, read Hitler's apologist justifications why he just simply couldn't help himself, and just had to murder millions of Jews, Gypsies, Christians, for the Fatherland and the Party! What reeking hypocrisy! Bolsheviks, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, communists are all Sociopathic, hypocritical monsters who spoke on a little more sophisticated level than Al Capone. But mobsters and bolshevisks were all cut from the same cloth. Be warned, it's not what is said, but what is done that speaks the truth. This is a wonderful book. Thank God we live in a time and a country when it could be published. Yet, no publisher in any part of the world would have printed this book in the 30s. Think about it.

Rating:
Summary: A thorough history, from what viewpoint?
Review: When I wanted to read about the Russian Revolution a history professor I knew said that this was the book. (Actually, Pipes has written a 976-page account called The Russian Revolution, but I went for the abridged version.)

This 406-page, detailed, historical account of the revolution is definitely complete, and I learned a great deal that I did not know, of the state of the nation before the February Revolution in 1917, the revolutionaries, the Whites in the Civil War, the economic and geopolitical position of Russia in the world during World War I, and the methods and means of the Communist government and international Communist party in the early 1920s, and the horrible deaths that Lenin decreed were not warranted but were "needed" for the state to survive. Pipes' writing is clear, concise and chock full of facts. It's well organized, contains many photos of key players, as well as maps. The writing style is academic in terms of the ordering of thoughts, but completely accessible for interested parties. It really helped me sort and separate much of the information I had randomly received about this event and the shift in our world that resulted from it.

I think this book was good, well written, well researched and deeply informative. I did find myself as I read it weighing what he wrote and asserted with his political affiliations. Pipes, who is the Baird Professor of History at Harvard University, served as President Reagan's National Security Council adviser on Soviet and East European affairs. As a neophyte to this body of knowledge, I don't know how much to except at face value assertions such as:

* The October Revolution was not a revolution, as defined by a grassroots quest for governmental change, but rather a coup d'etat orchestrated by a small group representing a minority view. (Pipes feels so strongly about this, he puts the word "revolution" in quotes when writing of the October "revolution.")
* Winston Churchill was one of the few Europeans or Americans who recognized that with the advent of the communist government in Russia, the world was undergoing a shift in orientation, from nation-state focus to an ideological focus split between communism and capitalism.
*The Whites, the revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow Lenin and the communist government, were not fighting for a return to tsarism, but rather for the return to the Provisional Government, which was democratic.

While Pipes writes at length and fascinatingly about the inner workings of the party and government structure, the transformation from the revolution to the totalitarian regime of Lenin, he is deeply critical of the motives of the revolutionaries, and his kindest classification of them is that they are "naive."

One of the best features of this book is the eloquent closing chapter, "Reflections on the Russian Revolution," which sums up Pipes's views of what happened. He also includes a helpful timeline and glossary.

I learned a great deal from this book and feel I would like to read more from other perspectives. I do know of books by a London School of Economics professor, Robert Service, A Twentieth-Century History of Russia and Lenin: A Biography. I would like to get more of a grounding on the topic so that I can weigh the extensive and valuable viewpoints I got from Pipes.

I would definitely recommend this book.