Black Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolutions 1905-1917

Harrison E. Salisbury is an unusually talented writer. It is worth noting here that I said 'writer'. There are many talented historians... but few talented writers who set themselves to the worthy task of chronicling the epic events of the past. Salisbury, then, is an exception and a welcome exception. Where modern academics seem to treat interesting, artistic writing of history as the invention of Satan himself, Salisbury recognises that by giving history a touch of literary flair it becomes that much more alive, more dramatic, more interesting. I've heard it often said in high praise of historical work by the casual reader that a given book `reads like a novel'. Unfortunately our esteemed modern intelligentsia largely overlooks the fact that this is considered praiseworthy in a historical work and thus we get myriad volumes of bland, text-book-like accounts of what are in reality dramatic, lively and fascinating events. I think it is fair to say of `Black Night, White Snow' that it reads like a novel. I know any academics (which I suppose as a matter of technicality I rank amongst) reading this have probably concluded from the above (providing, of course, that they are not familiar with Salisbury's work or indeed this book itself) that this is then a second-rate work of history - a populist work with few academic merits. This is absolutely not the case. Salisbury's work on the history of Russia's three revolutions is marvellously researched, taking in a wide range of Russian and English sources as well as a variety of others. He uses many primary sources - such as the letters and diaries of Nicholas and Alexandra, first-hand accounts of Lenin -by individuals such as Nadezhda Krupskaya, his wife - as well as a variety of accounts by a whole range of people who lived through the events herein told of. The centre of the narrative is the dual lives of Lenin and Nicholas (a format taken further in Salisbury's later dual biography of Mao and Deng, `The New Emperors' - also recommended reading). Both, as Salisbury points out in his Author's Note had little mastery of the situation and the events and Lenin not so much led the Revolution to its eventual conclusion in a total Red victory as he rode the wave of revolution to the highest pinnacle of power. He deliberately sets out to wade through the sea of myths surrounding the events of 1917 in order to find the truth and to portray things as they seemed to those who lived through them - drawing on extensive primary sources, as mentioned above. The book does well to portray Lenin's nerves and his frequent fits of depression as well as Nicholas' spectacular apathy and ignorance, as well as the ease with which the court personalities were able to manipulate him - especially his German wife and through her a certain Siberian `holy' man. Despite Salisbury's liberal views he does not fall into the trap of whitewashing Lenin's evils - that is to say the Red Terror he unleashed - and does not even attemp

Harrison Salisbury, correspondent to the "Second World" of Russia during some of the most dramatic moments of its 20th Century history, occasional novelist and intellectual representative of a bygone (American) liberal elite, is now increasingly relegated to footnote status in most texts dealing with the time. Nonetheless, he had a first-rate mind, was "fair and balanced" in his reportage (meaning he neither knowingly lied about the social horrors of Communist regimes like Walter Duranty nor became an apologist for the West like many emigres from Arthur Koestler on down). He was a good reporter and a gentleman, in the old sense, who found himself, time and again, the only correspondent available to write about the bad conditions constantly emerging from even worse situations within the "Communist bloc" nations. His magnum opus, it seems, is and will be THE 900 DAYS: The Siege of Leningrad. I recall being greatly impressed, as well, by THE COMING WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA, especially when the border war between Vietnam and China, in 1979, seemed to bring this nightmare scenario one step from realization. BLACK NIGHT, WHITE SNOW is a valuable retrospective on the three Russian Revolutions, the one in 1905 and the two in 1917. The book's structure is generated by the juxtaposition of two lives, that of Czar Nicholas II and Vladimir Ulyanov, AKA "Lenin", whose character (or lack of it, in Nicholas' case) was to become so crucial for the lives of the subjects they would rule. About Nicholas II, then and now, about the best thing you can say is that he was a tragic figure, and leave it at that. Salisbury's Nicholas displays the worst features of what I call "inherited wealth syndrome". Moving beyond entitlement into realms where it seems somehow unnatural to lift a finger to help yourself, he proved fatally susceptible to the worst kind of sycophancy, and compounded this error by an almost psychopathic denial of reality, sacking all of his underlings who dared tell him the truth about the rot at work in the foundations of Russian society. When Stolypin, (the Russian Premier after 1905 and, according to Solzhenitsyn, the last man who might have averted the catastrophe of Boshevism), was assassinated, in the presence of Nicholas II, the Czar didn't even go to his funeral. Little things like that say alot. Where reform and positive action seemed too much for the Czar to contemplate, mysticism took over, resulting in the elevation of the demonic Rasputin to de facto control of the country. When Rasputin, in 1916, in his turn was killed, the Czar and Czarina Alexandra treated it as the ultimate national tragedy, and blamed all the horrors that happened afterwards on the inability of the aristocracy to tolerate the "holy man." Salisbury's treatment of Nicholas II is eye-opening, but his Lenin is a revelation, particularly for those who think that the evils of the Soviet system began and ended with Stalin. Lenin is generally seen, even now, as basica