Shadow of the Winter Palace

THIS IS ONE GREAT BOOK...I HAVE WANTED THIS FOR 12 YEARS. CLEAN CONDITION. THANK YOU, MS KOSLOSKY

A witty and wide-ranging study of Russia's drift to revolution from the 1825 Decembrist uprising to the final downfall in WWI. Mr. Crankshaw has drawn in the cultural influences on the Russian intelligentsia through those years -- Dostoyevsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mendeleyev -- and their influence and despair. (Mr. Crankshaw notes Mendeleyev's removal from his university professorship by the Minister of Education, a political hack, and the scientist's subsequent rescue by the Finance Minister, Witte). More and more intellectuals turn to revolutionary plotting or simple apathy while Russia's economy and military struggle to catch up to Europe and ultimately fail.You'll find vivid personal portraits all through the story -- the Tsars, of course, Nicholas I, Alexander II and III -- but also some figures struggling heroically against the ultimate failure: Gen. Totleben at the siege of Sevastopol in 1854; Gen. Loris-Melikov attempting to reform the doomed tsardom of Alexander II in 1880; prime ministers Witte and Stolypin in their time working against the clock to industrialize a sullen and balky nation. And the revolutionaries: the Decembrists; the young students-turned-assassin stalking Alexander II; intellectual rebels like Herzen and Chernyshevsky.All this puts an 80-year perspective on the events leading to the 1905 revolution and the ultimate, completed downfall in 1917. His bibliographic comments on other sources -- including Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra -- are well worth reading as well: sharp, wide-ranging and with the same depth of perspective. Well worth reading in light of the present-day Russia's attempts to find its way.

This is an outstanding choice for anyone who wants to learn more about and understand the forces involved in Russia's autocratic Tsarist political system from 1825 to the Revolution of 1917. The author masterfully blends history, political thought, biography, (and a dry sense of humor at times!) to a monumental task in examining the changes in Russia in the last 100 or so years prior to the Soviet era. (he covers some significant events in the reign of Alexander I) We see how Russia's expansion to Central Asia; the impact of the Crimean War; the economic modernizing problems resulting from serfdom; and the war with Japan in the early 20th Century shaped and influenced the thinking in the country.Crankshaw is able to clearly deliniate the trends, and the significant events and people which made those trends possible. All in an easy to read and interesting style. A fascinating and highly informative read!

Since the previous reviews have already established an able outline of the work's content I will only say that Crankshaw's masterpiece is a magnificent work of history and cuts to the heart of Russia under the Tsars, the Politburo and today's government. As always, Crankshaw's prose is lucid, elegant and highly readable.

This book is a wonderful exposition of the reigns of the last tsars of Russia as well as the evolution of Russian society during that period, from a social and political view: Nicholas I, the oppressive ruler guided by a divine concept of sovereignty, smasher of the Decembrist rebellion and creator of the Third Section of Imperial Chancellery, the primitive political police; Alexander II, the reformist, the tsar who by an ukase in 1861 abolished servitude in Russia, and who, curiously, created the Okhrana, the security police on the basis of the Third Section and established it in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1881 the tsar was assassinated as the result of a terrorist plot, and the Okhrana could do nothing to prevent it; Alexander III, as hard and terrible as Nicholas I, gave almost illimitate powers to the police and to the Governor Generals of provinces and regions. Russia was driving to the abyss as the differences between upper and lower classes were increasing dangerously in a country ruled by an absolute despotism, almost feudal; Nicholas II, weak and short-sighted, followed by inertia the politics of his predecessor. From 1905 the regime was falling apart and disintegrating: the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the Bloody Sunday of 1905, the breaking out of the I World War in 1914, all these events mainly accelerated the dethroning and later execution of the last emperor of the Romanov dinasty, His Sacred Majesty the Tsar of All Russias.