Rating: 
Summary: Communism has much to answer for
Review: 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. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and Gulag are great books, but the other works are just dreadful and this book is no exception. Characters are wooden, plots are contrived. The person who does not read Russian is fortunate since this book is even worse in its native language. Mr. Willetts deserves all manner of praise not only for completing this work, but for also managing to read it not just once, but for many times. This book is Solzhenitsyn's attempt to construct the Russian history novel. In the hands of a master like Tolstoy, this becomes War and Peace, perhaps the greatest work in all Russian literature, in Solzhenitsyn's hands this is the result. When I first read this work, I am not sure I knew quite what to expect since it is a departure from Solzhenitsyn's usual subject matter, the crimes of the Soviet state. One would be prepared to forgive those old gray men in the Kremlin much if they had successfully banned this particular book and prevented it from ever being published. Solzhenitsyn's intent is to create a work which shows how communism came to power and he uses the beginning of the first world war as a jumping off point. This is an excellent start, but really by the first 50 pages no one really cares and the story remains flat and uninteresting for the duration. It does say something that Solzhenitsyn has taken one of the most interesting eras in human history and made it dull and boring.
Rating: 
Summary: 20th Century Tolstoy explains 20th Century Russia
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: I really liked it. . . A Great Book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: I really liked it. . . A Great Book
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Hello from the world
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Best Left in the Dustbin of History
Review: 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. Having finally found one, I decided to re-read August 1914. I have no idea what I could possibly have liked about it the first time through. Solzhenitsyn tries too desperately to write his own War and Peace and fails miserably. Where Tolstoy truly breathes life into his characters, Solzhenitsyn creates cardboard cutouts that lack depth and ring false at every turn. Where Tolstoy kept his historical lectures separate from the narrative, Solzhenitsyn puts his in the mouths of the characters, creating incredibly obtuse dialogues that make one want to throw the book down. Perhaps realizing that the readers are not likely to releate to the characters, Solzhenitsyn tells how character A (whom we apparently are supposed to like) really likes character B (whom up until now we haven't cared for at all), so now, therefore, we must like him, too. Characters, like Russian general Samsonov, who might have had some subtle nuances get stamped with "good" or "evil", completely destroying any chance for the reader to form his own impressions. Partly this occurs because Solzhenitsyn, as he did in his earler works, is pursuing his own agenda and is unable or unwilling to provide a dispassioned viewpoint (one need only skim through Lenin in Zurich, originally part of August 1914). Once the Battle of Tannenberg gets underway the situation improves, but it is a long, long painful slog until that point and it is not worth it. Do not misunderstand me; Solzhenitsyn will remain a part of my libary for the Gulag Archipelago and his semi-autobiographical fiction. But the Red Wheel series will not be rolling in my house anymore. Rereading August 1914, I kept recalling Vladimir Voinovich's caricature of Solzhenitsyn in Moscow 2042 - a writer utterly convinced he alone can save Russia by riding in on a white horse. That's the Solzhenitsyn we see in August 1914. Avoid this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Yep, it's tedious
Review: I have to confess I have not made it all the way through this huge tome yet, and I already have 1916 to look forward to as well. I had to put this one down because I ultimately lost interest. What is good is that Solzhenitsyn was able to actually interest me somewhat in the ins and outs of how an army functions not so much physically (I was always completely lost about which regiment was moving where and why) but psychically. The problem I have with the book is that I did not sense any real character development happening. There are tons of people in this book, and they pop in and out sometimes with no warning. You never know if you are supposed to start investing yourself in a character or not, because more often than not they drop out of the picture only to return long after you've forgotten who the heck they were. There is a glossary in the back, but it only contains the true historical figures who often don't have much of a role in the actual story. I found that to be frustrating. I need more character development! War and Peace was much better at holding it all together. I got about 400 pages into this book, and continually wondered at how I got that far without remembering how I got there.
Look for interesting chapters containing Tolstoy and Lenin interacting with the fictional characters.
It will probably be worth trying again some day.
Rating:
Summary: "War and Peace" without the peace
Review: I read an earlier translation by Misha Glenny. Just because the author won the Nobel Prize and stuff didn't mean I had high expectations for this book. In fact, his lecture to Harvard on the decadence of the West put me off. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself reading a classic of 20th century literature, more significant, really, than Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago" (a remake of Flaubert, "Sentimental Education", after all) and as effortlessly masterful in cutting back and forth between a multiplicity of characters as Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace", his great original and frequently-cited model. On the heels of reading "The First World War" by John Keegan, this book made perfect sense of the opening days of the Great War on the Eastern Front. Alan Furst readers, move up!
Rating:
Summary: Well written, detailed coverage of period in Russian History
Review: Solzhenitsyn's The Red Wheel, Knot I is an extraordinarily work. His attention to historical detail and ability to draw the reader into the mind of each character make this an extremely enjoyable reconstruction of this chaotic period in Russian history. Solzhenitsyn incorporates newspaper clippings, military communiqués, multiple character viewpoints including German, Russian, revolutionary, soldier, and student in an almost patchwork manner which conveys history's turbid nature. The author occasionally employs a screenplay method, which lends an interesting visual element to the book. Overall, the only comparable book I have read would be Tolstoy's War and Peace. Solzhenitsyn's The Red Wheel is not an "easy read", but I highly recommend it to anyone with some backround in Russian history (without which you may find yourself lost at times) and an interest in historical fiction. Read the "complete and unabridged" version to get the most out of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Inexorable flow of events
Review: This is a momentous work - quite unlike FIRST CIRCLE or the GULAG ARCHIPELAGO. Solzhenitsyn cannot himself from centering on people. Despite the epic events depicted, the start of WW1, the Battle of Tannenburg, the meeting of cultures, in the end this is a book of individuals, great and small. The word pictures he has created of the rolling plains of battle, the lumbering armies, life in the military, are some of the greatest ever painted. One is transported back to that date when backward, religiously zealous, serf-like Russia meets the modern age. The story of the first vision of the industrial West by the illiterate Russian soldier - and the impact it makes on them - was breathtaking. The story switches from one vista to another, battlefield to palace, and finally from the Romanovs to Lenin as the march of history continues steadily and inexorably onward. Even knowing the awful outcome does not decrease the pleasure of the story. At the end, you have come only so far and are ready for the next in the series, NOVEMBER 1916. I like the method in which he has chosen to write history - the selection of specific periods of time which he considered to have had the greatest impact on the modern Soviet state.
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