The Russian Revolution

It is a shame that such historians as Richard Pipes do not have a more prominent place on America's college campuses. His detailed account of the Russian Revolution convincingly debunks the long-held view that the Russian Revolution was somehow an expression of popular sentiments. Instead, it was, as Pipes calls it, a coup d'etat, led by a small group of hard-core revolutionaries. He convincingly demonstrates how this Bolshevik coup was quickly carried out by taking Petrograd's major transportation and communication hubs. By this point, the Provisonal Government was largely irrelevant, and few shots were actually fired! Not at all a repeat of the storming of the Bastille (itself something of a myth). Pipes also goes into a detailed discussion of the Bolsheviks' policies of War Communism and rule-by-terror. In so doing, Pipes argues that these policies were deliberately orchestrated to subjugate the Russian people (as opposed to being necessary wartime measures, which is often used as an apology for these policies). There are two things that Pipes discusses that are particularly interesting: the degree to which the Imperial German govt. sought to cultivate relations with the Bolsheviks in an effort to take over Russia and close down the Eastern Front and Lenin's ongoing protestations that the "Bolsheviks" were a private entity within Russia and therefore did not at all represent "offical" govt. policy. The latter allowed the Russian govt. to get around norms of international law and attempt to export Bolshevism to other areas of Europe. This duplicity served as a model for later totalitarian regimes to follow (check out Nazi Germany and the Islamic Republic of Iran for evidence of this). On a final note, Pipes demonstrates how the horrors of Stalinism had definite roots in the formative years of Bolshevik Russia (i.e., the all-pervasive Cheka and the "forced requisitions" against the peasants). I think that many people forget this fact and want to believe that Stalin was somehow an aberration within the Soviet system.

The Russian Revolution is a massive chronicle of detailed analysis, forming the middle volume to Pipes trilogy that began with Russia Under The Old Regime and concluded with Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime. This is a thoroughly absorbing work that shows from 1905 every tangled aspect leading up to the murder of the imperial family in July 1918 and start of the Red Terror. The swirling chaos brought about by the First World War and the Tsar's abdication, simultaneously created a situation of armed Russian troops that were waiting to be mobilised for the eastern front, now suddenly found themselves sitting on the edge of a power vacuum crater within Russia. Once the provisional government that stepped in to fill the void started to slide, many a contending, brutal faction rose to the boil with the odds definitely stacked against the Bolsheviks; a misleading term that means majority when in reality they were a violent minority. After the Bolshevik coup d' etat, it was the Germans who continued to prop them up, particularly after Lenin and Trotsky had signed away with the treaty of Brest-Litovsk huge amounts of Russian territory as far west as Kiev, enabling Russia to renege on its commitments to the allies who . . . `suffered immense human and material losses. As a result of Russia's dropping out of the war' . . . (only to internationalise the Revolution) . . . `the Germans withdrew from the inactive Eastern Front enough divisions to increase their effectives in the west by nearly one-fourth (from 150 to 192 divisions). These reinforcements allowed them to mount a ferocious offensive' . . . the allies . . . `lost hundreds of thousands of men. This sacrifice finally brought Germany to her knees. And the defeat of Germany, to which it had made no contribution . . . enabled the Soviet Government to annul the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and recover most of the lands which it had been forced to give up'. . . No other ruler in Russian history conceded so much territory as Lenin had. This, along with heavier taxes than under Tsarist times and multiplying murders against so called `counter-revolutionaries' made the Bolsheviks immediately unpopular. Here we have a constantly fascinating account teeming with every sort of personality and unpredictable event. We read about the fracturing succession of the Ukraine, Trans Caucasia (Georgia and Armenia) and (almost) Siberia into transient independent Republics with a startling sense of deja vu; it now seems the 1990's was a variation on a pre-existing theme. Whilst one of Pipes many themes, implicit in the titles Old Regime and Bolshevik Regime, claims that the all encompassing `patrimonial' system under Tsarist times precluded any sense of private property (everything physical and human belonged, within Russia, to the Tsar) and with the Bolshevik development of the one party state, `patrimonial' autocratic control continued; this has been keenly contradicted by several scholars but should not get in t

As for Russian history, this book is the bible regarding the revolutionary period. For French Revolution fans, here is Russia's version of "citizen" action contructed by diabolical architects who kept France's success always in front of them. As for political science, this book is wise in its interpretation of political action and didactic in its interpretation about this failed expirament in alleged utopianism. Once read one is convinced of Russia's failure in governing and appalled at its deliberate evil perpitrated by a few upon millions who sought and needed true freedom. Prof. Pipes brings home accountability for the actions of afew dangerous men. This book is a brilliant, an enlightening historical study about Russia, history in general and man as a creature who is always seeking power and social control. Pipes clearly reveals that history does repeats itself. And, like Winston Churchill, reveals how good people can understand evil actions if they understand history. Superb, superb, superb.

Of all the accounts of the Russian revolution I've read, this one is the best, most entertaining and most frightening. It is very well researched and bring the mentality of the participants into a new light. Some of the events seem almost comical but when you realize that the result was a brutal totalitarian regime, you get pretty frightened. How easy it seemed to get people not to care about who is in charge and subjugate them to your will.I guess I only have one complaint and that is the portion on the death of the czar. Pipes goes into way too much detail in this portion and in my opinion it had very little impact on the Russian revolution. Considering the millions who were killed by the Soviets, the murder of one family, doesn't amount to much.Max

It's amazing how many histories of the USSR or the Russian Revolution will gloss over the waves of terror they initiated, or imply that this terror was "necessary," or speak of it in the same phlegmatic way that one would describe routine events. This makes a stark contrast to the way that moral indignation is NOT withheld from histories of Nazi Germany. Professor Pipes should be commended for expressing moral indignation about inexcusable and unnecessary tyranny and bloodshed, just as William L. Shirer deserves commendation for telling the story of Nazi Germany the way it really happened. (Did this mean that Shirer was "biased"? If he had downplayed the Nazi terror and devoted hundreds of pages to Nazi "accomplishments" such as full employment, would this have been an accurate and meaningful account of the Third Reich?) Indeed, the fact that Pipes' book attracts criticism from intellectuals for having revealed the true face of Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Soviet government they installed--in all its ruthlessness, depravity, and mendacity--is strong proof that his book's focus on the role of depraved intellectuals and depraved theories in the establishment of the USSR is right on the money. As Pipes pointed out, one of its founding ideas can be traced back to Rousseau--the idea that man is a mere creature of his "environment," and therefore completely malleable. This amounts to an engraved invitation to bloodthirsty monsters like Lenin and Stalin to start thinking that mankind should be forced to become "good," regardless of the human cost. It's sad that intellectuals--those ceaseless announcers of irony--haven't spotted the irony here: policies that necessitate bloodshed are not "good" and cannot lead to "good." Another valuable contribution of this book is that the author is not afraid to show that Bolshevism was the creation of the upper-middle-class intelligentsia, not the workers or the peasants, and served the interests of the intelligentsia, not the lower classes.Pipes' book should be read by every person interested in history who is not afraid to be shown that ideas have consequences, and that these are often inexcusably horrible.