The Russian Revolution - A People's Tragedy

Figes pulls off a pretty impressive feat here: he makes a relatively fast and interesting book out of a complex and painful human event. This book gives a good idea of the extremities of brutality, stupidity, and treachery that accompanied the Russian Revolution. It may not please some readers seeking a final, official "judgment" of the event, but so what? It tells you what happened and gives some reasons why. That's the purpose of the study of history.

Figes' book is a remarkable achievement. He is able to capture the chaos, the confusion and the captivating power of revolutionary Russia without resorting to the dramatisation of his sybject. He tells Russia's tale from the perspective of the people - peasants, soldiers, workers - and from the great men who took centre stage - Lenin, Trotsky, Gorky, et al. Figes is fair and detailed in his account but he is also not afraid to make judgements or present an analytical viewpoint. He does not fall into the trap of simply recounting events - he seeks to shed light onto a the Revolution that shaped this century and does so with great success.
"A People's Tragedy" travels back into the 19th Century to examine the development of a revolutionary consciousness in Russia. Figes looks at the literary and theoretical heritage of the Revolution - from Tolstoy to Chernyshevksy. He explores the mentality of the Russian workers, soldiers and peasants - why did Marxism appeal to the people of Russia? He also provides fascinating insight into the psychology of the intelligentsia.
Like Simon Schama's "Citizens", Figes' book is a must-read for any student of revolution. He captures the broad and sweeping vista of the era but does not neglect the common people who lived through it. Or those who died for it. "The Russian Revolution launched a vast experiment in social engineering - perhaps the grandest in the history of mankind" says Figes. "A People's Tragedy" is a worthy chronicle of one of the most important events in history.

A People's Tragedy is an extraordinary book, and I highly recommend it. Nevertheless, I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 simply because my eyes glazed over some of the political text. I'm more keen on knowing about the personal and social history than the political narrative. I, particularly liked reading the revolutionary's romance with the common Russian peasant and their illusions, there of. The passion lasted until they come face to face with these harden and suspicious people. I've read a lot of Russian history concerning the surfs of the earlier years, but not a whole lot about the peasants during the late 19th and early 20th century. There are plenty of interesting facts that I wasn't previously aware of, plus a lot about Lenin too. If you want a precise, definitive, blow by blow perspective, with all the players on the stage, I couldn't endorse a better book.

Mr. Figes has captured the feel, the ideas and struggles of the Russian people throughout the last 150 years (give or take).He has clearly reasearched his topic and presents an impeccable account of life in Russia for those who were "ordinary" citizens. He illustrates very well the concept that outside of the bourgeoisie, there were only two "real" social classses: the aristocracy and the muzhik (peasants.)The aristocracy believed their good fortune would never end and lived life as such; the muzhik knew there would be another tomorrow and dreaded the fact; another day of hunger, slumlords, eighteen hours workdays and disease. This is not a book if you are looking for a "feel good" book, but it is a book that is real. It is everything we never learned in school about the Russian culture and, moreover, the degree of poverty most subsisted within.

This book is thick but worth reading every last page! I could not put it down there was so many fascinating facts and so many tragedies! The Russian people suffered a terrible fate when they turned to Lenin's Communist Ideology. It proved to be the death of some 60 million people! Russia is still reaping the 'terrors' of Bolshevism/Communism. Most Russian people are fearful, haunted, dejected, and extremely poor. Communism was no god but a losing ideology. It only helped those at the top and even they were hunted, fearful, killed off or put in labor camps. An excellent, information-packed book!

Figes has a most stellar habit of describing Russia's revolutionary period through the actions and thoughts of individual people. This, without losing sight of broader tides.
The book is a bit haunting in that it reads like fiction, but isn't. 'Tragedy' is definitely the appropriate word.
All-in-all its one of the best written historical accounts that I have read, of any era.

Figes is a historian of the very highest calibre, and this book is nothing short of breath-taking -- in its scope, in its fluency, in its mastery, in its impact.

As the title makes clear, this is a tragic story, told with force and coherence, on the ascendancy of Communism in Russia. Leninism was not an inevitable consequence of conditions in Russia at the start of the 20th century. Rather, as Figes argues, it was an outgrowth of circumstance, of cowardice, of miscalculation and missed opportunities. Into this breach stepped Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

The book, ultimately, stands as the most fitting possible epitaph for the unmourned death of the Soviet Union.

I have read many books on the Russian Revolution, and this one is among the best. He presents many vivid anecdotes which give one the sense of the confusion and violence, but also the euphoria and promise, of Russia during the revolutionary period. He clearly sides against the Bolsheviks (though he is fair enough to present some valid reasons why they imposed some of their policies, and carefully distinguishes the different strands of this variant of Marxism), and seems to favour Prince Lvov's liberalism and Maxim Gorky's leftist humanism, but I myself have no problem with this: of all the perspectives of the Russian revolutionary period, the latter seem to be the most humane, even if they were ultimately doomed.

Figes' work gives a great deal of information on Russia to the reader without properly analyzing it. His description of the outbreak of the First World War is basically wrong and he gives far too much credit to pan-slavism for prompting Russia's entry into the war than he does the alliance system or any of the other international events of the July Crisis. He continues to repeat the myths of the Russian Army fighting with sticks which were demolished back in the '70s by Norman Stone.
As for the Revolution, he is contradictory in a number of areas, at one point describing the attack on Poland in 1920 defensive, and then a few pages later portraying it as a measure to spread revolution to Germany.
The use of a mass of material combined with lack of analysis don't make a good book!

Mr. Figes, with his crisp, detailed writing, makes you feel the events he describes. Professor Figes has done incredibly estensive research yet the reader never feels bogged down by too much minutiae. Conversely, the seemingly minor details add the essential human element in what would otherwise read as a tale of horrific cruelty and unending sadness. This book is a must for any student of Russian history.

Orlando Figes is a rather controversial figure in his nativeBritain, but disregard the squabbles of academia. A People's Tragedyis the best book about the Russian Revolution EVER. Don't be put offby its length. A People's Tragedy reads like a novel--a great Russian novel!
Figes is a dedicated social historian but he never loses sight of the Big Issues which are, ultimately, the only reason to study history. ( )A People's Tragedy, offer a fascinating, humane and very readable introduction to the tragic history of the 20th century.

Orlando Figes' book is not concise being 966 pages long, although it is a good read all the same, going into graphic detail using personal accounts for every important event. The main personalities of the period (Tsar Nicholas, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin) are all mentioned with significant detail. The most comical part of the book is the chapter on the Russian War effort and accounts of the Peter and Paul fortress- Figes' narrative account of the period is descriptive and helpful to both student and enthusiast.

with vivid attention to the impact of the bolshevik revolution on all levels of russian society, the author provides us with a definitive picture of the individuals who determined Russia`s course for the first 70 years of this century. this is history written at its best: you`ll understand Lenin, Stalin and the rest; you`ll also realize that russia could have gone in an other direction - had only a few decisions been made differently. this book is great.

An excellent contemporary account of the Russian Revolution by a respected historian who does an excellent job of integrating new sources and old, and letting us see the effects on the common folk of Russia of both the two revolutions and the ensuing three year civil war. A must read for anyone interested in this period and these events.

I will not bother adding to the already voluminous amounts of praise afforded Figes' work here at the store. Despite its size (over 800 pages), the tome is, indeed, a wonderfully sweeping and and well-written chronological history of the Russian Revolution. However, a few -- very short -- qualifications are in order. First, Figes' often makes occasionally annoying (and inaccurate) sociological and psychological observations about "revolution" best left to social scientists; and second, his perspective tends to be (not infrequently) ideologically right-of-center, suggesting a link to the Post-Soviet "I-Told-You-So" school of Russian historiography currently fashionable among Western scholars. Enjoy, fellow readers, but Figes' monumental study, contrary to what is so boldly stated on the back cover, is NOT the last word on the subject..........

There are several problems with this overall well-executed tome that have been pointed out by others, but what I particularly took exception to was the evident eagerness to excuse bloodlust by the mob by reducing it to "violence." Professor Figes seems to believe that if a mob involved in social unrest commits an atrocity, then it can't really be an atrocity, especially if that social unrest blossoms into a full-blown revolution. This lack of a moral compass in favor of Power to the People is downright bizarre. Even a righteously angry mob is composed of men and women who possess the power of self-control, and whatever their justification for revolting, they are morally responsible for the deeds they commit when they let go of that self control. "Freedom" and "liberty" are no excuse for murder, rapine and torture, and the professor is very wrong to snidely cite Schama and Pipes as examples of modern writers with a "prejudice against violence" because they evidently couldn't turn a blind eye toward a revolutionary crowd running amuck.

And as a post script--unlike some reviewers, I welcomed most of the anecdotal material as a window onto the day-to-day struggles of the selected individuals chosen for the book. Figes' literary style is engaging and appealing, no small task in so daunting a subject. This history reads as well as his captivating social history, Natasha's Dance.

This is a well written book but there are problems with Figes that make reading problematic. He has been caught plagiarizing more than once and he even admitted to using a pseudonym to write nasty, negative reviews for books written by his perceived rivals. This is really pathological behavior. Its hard to take him seriously as a scholar with this in mind and it clouds everything he writes.

I see many five-star reviews here. Seems slightly suspicious, given that the author copped to writing some glowing reviews of his own book. I'm guessing those have been removed from the store. Right? And these that are left are authentic. Right? They are really *very* complimentary. So I just want to be sure. I've only begun to read this book, but have several other accounts of the Russian Revolution on hand and so quite a good comparison. And the first thing that strikes me on the very first page of the preface to "A People's Tragedy" is a very breezy kind of moral equivalence, combined with rather sloppy accounting that does not seem to foreshadow a really superb, richly detailed work of history. Here's Figes: "At the risk of appearing callous, the easiest way to convey the revolution's scope is to list the ways in which it wasted human life: tens of thousands were killed by the bombs and bullets of the revolutionaries, and at least an equal number by the repressions of the tsarist regime, before 1917; thousands died in the street fighting of that year; hundreds of thousands from the terror of the Reds -- and an equal number from the Terror of the Whites, if one counts the victims of their pogroms against the Jews -- during the years that followed; more than a million perished in the fighting of the civil war, including civilians in the rear; and yet more people died from hunger, cold and disease than from all these put together." Hmmm. So it all pretty much equals up then? No one side is worse than any other? There are no real victims? No real perpetrators? This is how one of the finest historians of our time begins this "account of the Russian Revolution for a new generation"?? I'd like to see a summing up that mentions the 10 million who died in the Ukraine in a genocide orchestrated by the Bolsheviks to punish the Ukrainians for resisting collectivization of their farms. Where does that fit in to this casual accounting?
The Russian Revolution, Figes writes in one of his first sentences, was "one of the biggest events in the history of the world." Yes. Yes. And so it's very, very important to understand what happened. Don't wave all aside by claiming that the blame sits equally with all sides. This is rot. Who did it, Figes? Who did it? Who overthrew the Romanov dynasty? If the October 1917 revolution was a coup, then who staged the coup? Who?
The book opens with the the lavish 1913 celebration of 300 years of Romanov rule, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, with Figes presenting us with this scene of an autocrat who is desperate to strengthen his rule by this splendorous show. The first visits of Tsar Nicholas II and his family during this celebration are to the cathedrals to pray...to Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg and in Moscow to Uspensky Sabor in Red Square. I suppose Figes meant to show the the Tsar and the Romanov dynasty was hopelessly out of touch. Instead, this reader is struck by what happened here, and what was lost. In the years that followed, a revolution (coup!) by atheists who murdered priests, destroyed thousands of churches and banished God. I'll continue with Figes. But with trepidation, and an eye out for casual falsehoods and some big omissions. To be continued!!

This book is extremely well-reviewed, so I went and got a copy of it from the library. But I have a massive problem with it: every time the author mentions something I'm aware of, his take strikes me as intensely biased and something that would easily start an argument with knowledgeable Russians. Anything you learn from this book could be easily argued with, and your interlocutors would have plenty of facts on their side.

I could cite petty examples of this, but one fairly major one is his belief about 19th century peasant life. He says (with the arrogance that only someone living 150 years later on the other side of the world can have) that Dostoyevsky and his ilk idolized the peasants too much and naively viewed them as good, Christian people. This is reiterated in depth over the book's early pages. So basically... peasants were brutish, dumb pagans? This strikes me as a rather silly misreading of basic human impulses. Did Dostoyevsky aspire to a Christian peasantry? Why? To eliminate their native substance? Or to make it more true to reality? How did he imagine that reality would materialize? Education and dogmas? Is this an "ideology" the way Marxism is an ideology? Look, here are the real questions, which Mr. Figes is so vapidly ignoring... I think I would rather read any classic work of Russian literature over this book. What a waste of time it was to get this out of the library.

While reading I found myself folding numerous pages to flip back and forth trying to understand information the book is trying to convey. Too complex, too time consuming, too much minutia, too tedious and basically impracticable reading. I still have no understanding of the Russian Revolution so I am searching for another book.

This book has amalgamated data from many sources and provides many quoted sources that illustrate aspects of the Revolution. But so much of it is utter nonsense.

1. It constantly describes isolated events during February snd October Revolution to make both events sound like wild iresponsible riots by the rabble. Figes goes so far to even suggest that the Bolsheviks had no worker support in the streets: only hooligans. Clearly figes looks down on commoners with contempt by degrading a popular uprisibg like February into a series of lootibgs and riots
2. Figes pummels you with this notion of Lenin ad a totalitarian dictator. But then he shows how lenin manipulated politics to get his way, and his views were not popular even among the bolsheviks. Well which is it? Did he have absolutebpower or not? Clearly, this whole notion is not rooted on historical reality. Lenin lost msny critical votes in the party and was voted down. Brest Litovsk for one.
3 He totally fails to correctly distinguish between the various marxistbyheories at the time. He completely miststesbthe views of trotsky and lenin on russia and fails to correcyly desribe how lenin's views on the needs of a bourgeoisbphase in russia and how this opinion changed to become more like trotsky's theory of permsnent revolution.

If you want true history, do not look for it here. He merrly pulls together a complete listnof sourcs anf distilld nothing.

Very disappointing work.