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A review by 4harrisons
October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville
4.0
A narrative re-telling of the story of the Russian revolution from February through to October. This book provides a little context at either end of the story (the lead up to February, developments after October) but concentrates on a detailed description of the action with a chapter for each month.
This structure broadly meets the brief that Mieville sets himself in the introduction - to lay out the story for the general reader from a position that he acknowledges is broadly sympathetic to the aims of the revolutionaries. It has similarities in this sense to Catherine Merrivale's "Lenin on the Train", although Merrivale focuses more strongly on Lenin himself while Mieville concentrates on more general events Petrograd where Lenin is an occasional (although very influential) presence. Both books engage the general reader in the story of the revolution with well-researched foundations.
If there is a flaw it is that Mieville sometimes gets a little lost in the detail of the debates of the various bodies created in the gap between February and October. It is sometimes a little hard to keep up with whether the description is of the Petrograd Soviet or the Congress of all-Russian Soviets or one of many other bodies. Perhaps it is a little unfair to criticise Mieville for this, what this reflects is not confusion in the retelling but confusion in the times themselves.
Mieville only touches briefly at the very end on the subject that is at the heart of much left-leaning debate on the revolution - was the Stalinist horror built in from the very start, was it part of the revolution itself or something created uniquely by Stalin and bolted on from outside?
This is a subject tackled by Slavoj Zizek, and about which I wrote briefly a year ago here https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/repeating-the-past in a way that I think is similar to the conclusion reached by Mieville. The revolution itself may have ended in terror, but the attempt to create a more just society should not end there. We can and must keep trying.
This review is also on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/review-october-the-story-of-the-russian-revolution
This structure broadly meets the brief that Mieville sets himself in the introduction - to lay out the story for the general reader from a position that he acknowledges is broadly sympathetic to the aims of the revolutionaries. It has similarities in this sense to Catherine Merrivale's "Lenin on the Train", although Merrivale focuses more strongly on Lenin himself while Mieville concentrates on more general events Petrograd where Lenin is an occasional (although very influential) presence. Both books engage the general reader in the story of the revolution with well-researched foundations.
If there is a flaw it is that Mieville sometimes gets a little lost in the detail of the debates of the various bodies created in the gap between February and October. It is sometimes a little hard to keep up with whether the description is of the Petrograd Soviet or the Congress of all-Russian Soviets or one of many other bodies. Perhaps it is a little unfair to criticise Mieville for this, what this reflects is not confusion in the retelling but confusion in the times themselves.
Mieville only touches briefly at the very end on the subject that is at the heart of much left-leaning debate on the revolution - was the Stalinist horror built in from the very start, was it part of the revolution itself or something created uniquely by Stalin and bolted on from outside?
This is a subject tackled by Slavoj Zizek, and about which I wrote briefly a year ago here https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/repeating-the-past in a way that I think is similar to the conclusion reached by Mieville. The revolution itself may have ended in terror, but the attempt to create a more just society should not end there. We can and must keep trying.
This review is also on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/review-october-the-story-of-the-russian-revolution