Russian Revolution reading list for Uni
[FONT=Verdana]I've been given my reading list for my Russian Revolution module in uni and the following books are required reading :
[/FONT][FONT=Verdana][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]Carr, E.H. (1979) The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929).
Figes, O. (1997) A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924.
Fitzpatrick, S. (1999) Everyday Stalinism
McDermott, k. (2008) Stalin. Revolutionary in an Era of War[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]Service, R. (1997), A History of Twentieth-Century Russia.[/FONT]
[FONT="][FONT=Verdana]Suny, R.G. (1998) The Soviet Experiment.
Ward, C. (2004) Stalin’s Russia.
I'm just wondering if anyone knows anywhere I can get these on the cheap or in E-book format? Also if anyone has read any of them I'd be interested in any reviews you may have.
Many thanks[/FONT]
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It looks like the reading list recommended by a fierce anti-communist. Orlando Figes!-I rest my case.
Fitzpatrick is very good and Everyday Stalinism particularly so. It provides a great overview, from the perspective of social history, of Russian society during a particularly turbulent decade. Very readable despite the subject. If you're interested in that area then Moshe Lewin's The Making of the Soviet System is also pretty informative and goes into more detail on some topics (particularly peasant society and state structures). I'd also recommend Fitzpatrick's The Russian Revolution as a good, if concise, introduction to the Revolution
Figes is a lot more controversial. As rednordman is, he's a very anti-communist writer and his book is very poor when it comes to analysing the Bolsheviks. Frankly he strips the latter to nothing but "leather jack-wearing proto-Nazis", to quote David Renton, with no motivations beyond seizing power for the sake of power. Figes is not quite as bad as the Americans (epitomised by Richard Pipes) in that he at least acknowledges the Revolution as a mass affair but his sympathies with the moderate intellectuals (the book could easily be renamed Gorky's Tragedy) are very, very obvious and very detrimental to the book. [Edit: Really, it makes the final half or third extremely suspect and almost worthless in places]
Conversely of course there is much to admire about Figes' work. Its a well written and fairly detailed overview of the period. His analysis as to the fall of the Tsardom and the failures of the liberals post-1905 is spot on (in my opinion of course) and he covers the Civil War period (and fall of Trotsky) well enough. So worth reading once you keep his bias in mind. For an infinitely more accurate account of the Bolshevik party in 1917 (and a detailed chronology of the Revolution in Petrograd) I can't reccomend Rabinowitch's trilogy (Prelude to Revolution, The Bolsheviks Come to Power, and The Bolsheviks in Power) highly enough
Service I only know by reputation... which is exactly why I've deliberately avoided his works. His biography of Lenin is supposed to be nothing short of a hatchet job. I'd like to sit down some day and read Carr's seminal work from start to finish (I've only read extracts here and there and I understand that this particular edition has a foreword by Davies... whom I'm a big fan of) but there's been so much new research in this field in the past two decades that, outside of some specific areas, its generally more rewarding to stick with the newer works
What does surprise me about your reading list is the emphasis on Stalin. Generally the creation of the Stalinist system (usually dated from the mid-twenties to 1941) is treated as a distinct subject to the Revolution itself. I can understand carrying the analysis onwards to the 1930s, as Fitzpatrick does, but your list does seem to be lacking a detailed work on 1917 and the immediate post-October years. For example, as much as I enjoyed Everyday Stalinism I wouldn't include it in any reading list that deals specifically with the Revolution
If you're interested, I'll put together a bibliography tomorrow on what I've got on the Revolution and Stalin years. I've been meaning to do this for months anyway
ludeo martens - another view of stalin is what is needed
Since they didn't include Ten Days that Shook the World I am going to assume that they want you to stay neutral (anti-Communist) on the issue. I haven't read that particular book by Robert Service but he did write a biography of Lenin and later Stalin, both are worth a read.
Be warned that Figes is so insanely anti-communist that he would accuse Lenin of eating babies for breakfast if he could get away with it.
Quote:
Fitzpatrick is very good and Everyday Stalinism particularly so. It provides a great overview, from the perspective of social history, of Russian society during a particularly turbulent decade. Very readable despite the subject. If you're interested in that area then Moshe Lewin's The Making of the Soviet System is also pretty informative and goes into more detail on some topics (particularly peasant society and state structures). I'd also recommend Fitzpatrick's The Russian Revolution as a good, if concise, introduction to the Revolution
Figes is a lot more controversial. As rednordman is, he's a very anti-communist writer and his book is very poor when it comes to analysing the Bolsheviks. Frankly he strips the latter to nothing but "leather jack-wearing proto-Nazis", to quote David Renton, with no motivations beyond seizing power for the sake of power. Figes is not quite as bad as the Americans (epitomised by Richard Pipes) in that he at least acknowledges the Revolution as a mass affair but his sympathies with the moderate intellectuals (the book could easily be renamed Gorky's Tragedy) are very, very obvious and very detrimental to the book. [Edit: Really, it makes the final half or third extremely suspect and almost worthless in places]
Conversely of course there is much to admire about Figes' work. Its a well written and fairly detailed overview of the period. His analysis as to the fall of the Tsardom and the failures of the liberals post-1905 is spot on (in my opinion of course) and he covers the Civil War period (and fall of Trotsky) well enough. So worth reading once you keep his bias in mind. For an infinitely more accurate account of the Bolshevik party in 1917 (and a detailed chronology of the Revolution in Petrograd) I can't reccomend Rabinowitch's trilogy (Prelude to Revolution, The Bolsheviks Come to Power, and The Bolsheviks in Power) highly enough
Service I only know by reputation... which is exactly why I've deliberately avoided his works. His biography of Lenin is supposed to be nothing short of a hatchet job. I'd like to sit down some day and read Carr's seminal work from start to finish (I've only read extracts here and there and I understand that this particular edition has a foreword by Davies... whom I'm a big fan of) but there's been so much new research in this field in the past two decades that, outside of some specific areas, its generally more rewarding to stick with the newer works
What does surprise me about your reading list is the emphasis on Stalin. Generally the creation of the Stalinist system (usually dated from the mid-twenties to 1941) is treated as a distinct subject to the Revolution itself. I can understand carrying the analysis onwards to the 1930s, as Fitzpatrick does, but your list does seem to be lacking a detailed work on 1917 and the immediate post-October years. For example, as much as I enjoyed Everyday Stalinism I wouldn't include it in any reading list that deals specifically with the Revolution
If you're interested, I'll put together a bibliography tomorrow on what I've got on the Revolution and Stalin years. I've been meaning to do this for months anyway
Thanks for your reply. Just to clear a few things up, I think the module focuses on Stalin (or so it seems in the synopsis) hence the emphasis on him. Also a few have said that the lecturer is an anti-communist, but it's actually the opposite, he's an open Communist. To qoute directly from his profile 'At present, my main research project is ‘Ernst Thälmann and Germany Communism, 1886–1944. I’m also a co-founding editor of the newly established journal Twentieth-Century Communism and a member of the board of Socialist History.'
That aside, thanks for your reviews on the reading list. I've actually read Fitzpatrick s other book you mentioned but if there are any other books you can recommend to me I would be very grateful. Just bear in mind that I'm only a second year student and my time is finite, so the key books that I will find most useful for my essays are the ones I'm looking for.
Thanks again
Never heard of him. (Although i am quite new to the SHS)