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lajacquerie 's review for:
October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
by China Miéville
Hm. I liked this book, but only barely--I'm not sure that most folks would want to spend 300 pages diving so deeply into the eddying and swirling river of alliances, whipsawing declarations, and shifting public sentiment that was Russia in the run-up (and early days) of the Russian Revolution.
I found myself struggling to keep track of (and hold interest in) the here-today, gone-tomorrow opinions of the various thinkers, Congresses, and Soviets that took part in shaping Russia's post-monarchist future. "Come on," I thought to myself, "Tell me more about the major players, not these cast-offs that I've never heard of." But that's just the point of this book. All of these different events and streams of thought, diverted and shaped by stones and outcroppings of chance, fed into the overall river that, looking back, comes to be seen as the inevitable flow of history. But as Mieville makes very clear, the outcome was not preordained--a dis/obeying unit here, a slightly shifted demonstration timeline there, and Russia (and with it, the world) might have been a very different place. And the details of the February-October timeframe lay the groundwork for understanding what comes next.
An effective, but very niche book. For casual readers, a higher level view that covers a wider swath of time might be more interesting.
I found myself struggling to keep track of (and hold interest in) the here-today, gone-tomorrow opinions of the various thinkers, Congresses, and Soviets that took part in shaping Russia's post-monarchist future. "Come on," I thought to myself, "Tell me more about the major players, not these cast-offs that I've never heard of." But that's just the point of this book. All of these different events and streams of thought, diverted and shaped by stones and outcroppings of chance, fed into the overall river that, looking back, comes to be seen as the inevitable flow of history. But as Mieville makes very clear, the outcome was not preordained--a dis/obeying unit here, a slightly shifted demonstration timeline there, and Russia (and with it, the world) might have been a very different place. And the details of the February-October timeframe lay the groundwork for understanding what comes next.
An effective, but very niche book. For casual readers, a higher level view that covers a wider swath of time might be more interesting.