The Bolsheviks In Power -- Alexander Rabinowitch

[The Feral Underclass]

I have this book. I haven't started reading it yet though. I wondered if others had and what they thought about it.

[motion denied]

Rabinowitch is very good.

Though I read The Bolsheviks Come to Power

[Sandy Becker]

Not nearly as good as the book he wrote in the 70s, "The Bolsheviks Come to Power." You would do better with EH Carr's works on the early USSR.

[The Feral Underclass]

Not nearly as good as the book he wrote in the 70s, "The Bolsheviks Come to Power." You would do better with EH Carr's works on the early USSR.

I would do better at what?

[Sharia Lawn]

If I remember right Rabinowitch strongly disagrees with the idea that the Bolsheviks came to power through a coup. You might be deeply offended by what he has to say.

[The Feral Underclass]

If I remember right Rabinowitch strongly disagrees with the idea that the Bolsheviks came to power through a coup. You might be deeply offended by what he has to say.

Then maybe he will be able to convince me that I'm wrong. It's best to keep an open mind when reading new thing, don't you agree?

[Sharia Lawn]

Then maybe he will be able to convince me that I'm wrong. It's best to keep an open mind when reading new thing, don't you agree? You'll hear no arguments from me on that front.

[Sandy Becker]

Edward Hallet Carr wrote a 14(!) volume history of the Bolsheviks and the USSR from 1917 to 1929. He was a British historian, not a Marxist. His scholarship is remarkable -- he used all kinds of Russian language sources. The level of detail is daunting, in fact. He also wrote a condensed one volume history called, "The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin 1917-1929." He stated that this condensed version was for the "non-specialists." Carr also wrote an excellent book entitled "What is History?"

In his earlier book, Rabinowich does do violence to the idea that the October Revolution was a coup. Of course any decent history of the revolution should lay waste to that idea. While the Bolsheviks getting a foothold in the hinterlands came very late in 1917, they had become the mass party of the Proletariat in Petrograd and Moscow.

[RedBlackStar]

I too am interested in reading more into the USSR. I do have some knowledge on it but it seems basic in comparison to many of the people in here.

From what I know I'm extremely critical of the Bolsheviks, not really a fan of Marxism in general really; but that doesn't bother me as long as the Historian isn't 'selective'. Are these books mentioned the most useful or are there any others to mention?