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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
Absolutely gripping and fascinating, especially coming from a background where the Revolution has always been taught as a group of scoundrels murdering the innocent Tsar and his family. It is amazing to me how much sympathy people are able to drum up for the Tsar, and how little they are able feel towards the millions his regime oppressed and threw into the slaughterhouse that was WWI.
The book gets four stars instead of five for a couple of reasons -- first, as closely as I was paying attention, I was having trouble keeping track of each group. While there was a cast of characters at the back of the book, there was no cast of organizations, and seeing as the Russian Revolution was not as much a story of individuals but of mass movements, that seems like an oversight, and it sent me to Wikipedia throughout the read.
The second reason is the noticeable lack of Stalin in the book. It's clear that Mieville holds him in contempt, and is irritated at how Stalin's legacy is used to discredit socialism these days, but it seems to me that more or less ignoring the man is not the way of confronting him. If Stalin did little personally to push the Revolution along, it seems that highlighting this would bolster rather than hinder Mieville's point that he was an incidental thug whose only ideology was power. I would have been more forgiving about his absence if Stalin's name had, in fact, been included in the cast of characters at the back of the book. He is conspicuously absent. And given Stalin's own history of erasing inconvenient political figures, this really irritated me.
That said, this is a great book. Read it.
The book gets four stars instead of five for a couple of reasons -- first, as closely as I was paying attention, I was having trouble keeping track of each group. While there was a cast of characters at the back of the book, there was no cast of organizations, and seeing as the Russian Revolution was not as much a story of individuals but of mass movements, that seems like an oversight, and it sent me to Wikipedia throughout the read.
The second reason is the noticeable lack of Stalin in the book. It's clear that Mieville holds him in contempt, and is irritated at how Stalin's legacy is used to discredit socialism these days, but it seems to me that more or less ignoring the man is not the way of confronting him. If Stalin did little personally to push the Revolution along, it seems that highlighting this would bolster rather than hinder Mieville's point that he was an incidental thug whose only ideology was power. I would have been more forgiving about his absence if Stalin's name had, in fact, been included in the cast of characters at the back of the book. He is conspicuously absent. And given Stalin's own history of erasing inconvenient political figures, this really irritated me.
That said, this is a great book. Read it.
Good for what it is, but by design focussed on narrative momentum rather than detail and nuance.
I struggled to understand when and where and who this book is talking about on any given page which is pretty rough considering each chapter examines a month in the year 1917. The story is fascinating and the writer certainly understands her subject and subjects. I think this book was a struggled effort but worth a try especially if you have a grasp on Russian Revolutionary history. I don’t and having finished the book still feel that way.
I've become addicted to the Verso catalog. And once again, happily delightfully happy I burned some euros off my credit card. Mieville is a writer and he tells the tale of 1917 on the Russian side. It reads like a poitical thriller and even if you know the ending ... well, 10 pages before the end I was wondering if they would get this revolution finished in time for history to catch up.
Highly recommended to anyone interested in general politics, history and good political and historical storytelling.
Highly recommended to anyone interested in general politics, history and good political and historical storytelling.
dark
informative
reflective
fast-paced
absolutely compelling narrative, worthwhile read for anyone interested in Russia, revolution, or how to build a movement
Really wavered between 3 and 4 stars—yet another instance when I wish Goodreads let you do half-stars.
It's impossible to separate my thoughts about this book from my origin story—I am the son of Soviet dissidents, emigres, refugees who fled the USSR for America. Generations of my family (especially on my mother's side) were brutalized by the Soviet state, and I carry all that in me. Despite this background to my life, my knowledge about the particulars of 1917 in Russia has (until now) been pretty scant. As I dig into a new writing project, I felt it would behoove me to gain deeper knowledge of how the revolution unfolded.
There's many texts about 1917, but I wanted something not too dry, so when I saw that celebrated SF/F writer China Mieville* (the author of some great books I've really enjoyed) had written a history of 1917 for leftist press Verso Books I decided to check it out. I came in cautiously—Mieville is an avowed socialist, writing for a leftist press, and I worried that this book would fall in the category of those that lionize/romanticize the Revolution and especially Lenin, eliding his role in some of the early terrors and abuses of the nascent Soviet regime.
The book is a fun one, written with a novelist's flair but (as the intro notes) drawing all of its information from primary and highly regarded secondary sources. Mieville paints the cast of characters well, and he does a great job portraying the labyrinthine jockeying of various leftist factions during a year that stretches into an epochal moment. (The structure of the book is great—a sort of table-setting followed by chapters for each month of 1917 leading up to that fateful October.)
Finally in the last chapter, Mieville grapples with the question that has to be asked: can October 1917 be held blameless for what came after October? He wrestles with this line of questioning admirably, and is not shy about holding the regime's feet (even the youngest days of it) to the fire. But he seems reticent to undercut the romantic portrait of Lenin that he's painted by then. In what seems to me a totally irresponsible act, considering some of his readers might not know this, he doesn't explain that it was Lenin who instituted the Gulag system long before Stalin cranked it to 11, so to speak.
Nor does he give the Tsar (a fascinating, puzzling character for the first half of the book) a coda. Which seems like his way of avoiding a simple fact: Lenin ordered the execution of the Tsar and his entire family. Including young children. Their bodies mutilated and thrown in unmarked graves.
Still, I'm glad I read it. It was full of rich detail which I will plunder for my own writing, and really gave me a sense of what it was like in tumultuous, wild Leningrad (the city of my family for many generations) in that most interesting and fateful year.
*about halfway through this book I learned about abuse allegations against Mieville. very disappointing to say the least. just as the person who passed me this info felt they were doing due diligence in letting me know, so I am in including that info here.
It's impossible to separate my thoughts about this book from my origin story—I am the son of Soviet dissidents, emigres, refugees who fled the USSR for America. Generations of my family (especially on my mother's side) were brutalized by the Soviet state, and I carry all that in me. Despite this background to my life, my knowledge about the particulars of 1917 in Russia has (until now) been pretty scant. As I dig into a new writing project, I felt it would behoove me to gain deeper knowledge of how the revolution unfolded.
There's many texts about 1917, but I wanted something not too dry, so when I saw that celebrated SF/F writer China Mieville* (the author of some great books I've really enjoyed) had written a history of 1917 for leftist press Verso Books I decided to check it out. I came in cautiously—Mieville is an avowed socialist, writing for a leftist press, and I worried that this book would fall in the category of those that lionize/romanticize the Revolution and especially Lenin, eliding his role in some of the early terrors and abuses of the nascent Soviet regime.
The book is a fun one, written with a novelist's flair but (as the intro notes) drawing all of its information from primary and highly regarded secondary sources. Mieville paints the cast of characters well, and he does a great job portraying the labyrinthine jockeying of various leftist factions during a year that stretches into an epochal moment. (The structure of the book is great—a sort of table-setting followed by chapters for each month of 1917 leading up to that fateful October.)
Finally in the last chapter, Mieville grapples with the question that has to be asked: can October 1917 be held blameless for what came after October? He wrestles with this line of questioning admirably, and is not shy about holding the regime's feet (even the youngest days of it) to the fire. But he seems reticent to undercut the romantic portrait of Lenin that he's painted by then. In what seems to me a totally irresponsible act, considering some of his readers might not know this, he doesn't explain that it was Lenin who instituted the Gulag system long before Stalin cranked it to 11, so to speak.
Nor does he give the Tsar (a fascinating, puzzling character for the first half of the book) a coda. Which seems like his way of avoiding a simple fact: Lenin ordered the execution of the Tsar and his entire family. Including young children. Their bodies mutilated and thrown in unmarked graves.
Still, I'm glad I read it. It was full of rich detail which I will plunder for my own writing, and really gave me a sense of what it was like in tumultuous, wild Leningrad (the city of my family for many generations) in that most interesting and fateful year.
*about halfway through this book I learned about abuse allegations against Mieville. very disappointing to say the least. just as the person who passed me this info felt they were doing due diligence in letting me know, so I am in including that info here.
adventurous
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
[Disclaimer: my attention span is terrible, which did not help in trying to keep up with the events in this book. Also I'd give it 3.5 stars if that was possible] Admittedly, I had overly-high expectations - Mieville said in an interview that he had to cut a ton of stuff out, and I feel like this is very evident in the text. I kept finding myself asking like "wait, why are they meeting now? Where? What was the purpose of this meeting? Who led the meeting? What was the press coverage of the meeting like (though this was sometimes discussed) Who wasn't able to make the meeting? Did that affect the outcome?" and so on. I was just confused throughout the book about how/why/when certain people/groups had openly switched sides or had secretly decided to side with Kerensky (for example). Basically I think it could have just had 3 long chapters - February, July, and October - with all of these details, rather than a chapter for each month. The October chapter was a big blur to me, the only part I really "got" was the battles over the different bridges.