PublishedProfile Books, June 2017 |
ISBN9781781259023 |
FormatHardcover, 478 pages |
Dimensions24cm × 16.2cm × 4.2cm |
At the turn of the century, the Russian economy was growing by about 10% annually and its population had reached 150 million. By 1920 the country was in desperate financial straits and more than 20 million Russians had died. And by 1950, a third of the globe had embraced Communism.
The triumph of Communism sets a profound puzzle. How did the Bolsheviks win power and then cling to it amid the chaos they had created? Traditional histories remain a captive to Marxist ideas about class struggle. Analysing never-before used files from the Tsarist military archives, McMeekin argues that war is the answer. The revolutionaries were aided at nearly every step by Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland who sought to benefit - politically and economically - from the changes overtaking the country. To make sense of Russia's careening path the essential question is not Lenin's 'who whom?', but who benefits?
Bill is one of the founders of Boffins and has been involved in selecting the books we stock since our beginning in 1989. His favourite reading is history, with psychology, current affairs, and business books coming close behind. His hobbies are reading, food, reading, drinking, reading, and sleeping.
Over the last 30 years there’s been a huge amount of archival material opened up, in Russia of course but also in other countries, that allows a re-examination of the Russian Revolution. Sean McMeekin has done just that in this compelling new one-volume history of the revolution that went on until 1922 and in which over 20 million people lost their lives. It’s not dry history – orgies, vodka, Rasputin, pogroms, and of course the First World War on the eastern front all ornament the story. But most of all, it’s a tightly structured story of how the revolution descended from its democratic beginnings into a Bolshevik takeover – with the connivance and help of Russia’s enemy, Germany
