Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 by Antony Beevor.
All up to Beevor's usual high standard so far (I'm only up to page 86) except for one niggle. There isn't much discussion about the pre-revolutionary period (1905 barely gets a mention) and, more crucially, there's little or nothing about where the major players such as Lenin, Trotsky, Kerensky etc came from, who they were and what they stood for, nor is there much on what the differences were between the Bolshevik's and Menshevik's. We are plunged into March 1917 almost immediately.
Having said all that, there are 502 reading pages in the book plus notes and index and Beevor (or his publisher) might have thought the book might become too unwieldy with too much detail. That's fair enough but many readers will be scurrying off to Google. Perhaps some of the detail will come out later but Beevor's main objective seems to be the more military side of things. Nice use made of Prokofiev's diaries though!
All up to Beevor's usual high standard so far (I'm only up to page 86) except for one niggle. There isn't much discussion about the pre-revolutionary period (1905 barely gets a mention) and, more crucially, there's little or nothing about where the major players such as Lenin, Trotsky, Kerensky etc came from, who they were and what they stood for, nor is there much on what the differences were between the Bolshevik's and Menshevik's. We are plunged into March 1917 almost immediately.
Having said all that, there are 502 reading pages in the book plus notes and index and Beevor (or his publisher) might have thought the book might become too unwieldy with too much detail. That's fair enough but many readers will be scurrying off to Google. Perhaps some of the detail will come out later but Beevor's main objective seems to be the more military side of things. Nice use made of Prokofiev's diaries though!
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