The Russian Revolution

Rating:
Summary: A book to read twice
Review: A review in simple words.
This book is worth to read it twice. I'm a history student and I found the book to be the best in the topic of the Russian Revolution. I lived under the communist regime and agree with Richard Pipes in many of his point of views, in fact many of my point of views about communism in Russia were reflected in the book. I have read other books about this topic, but this book is the best of all books about the Russian Revolution. The chapters "The October Coup" and "The Red Terror" are the most interesting chapters of the book. The whole Revolution was about that, a coup d'état to take power by Lenin and Trotsky and the later terror that kept communism in power for more than 7 decades in Russia. The book provided me with a good source for my seminars. I recommend the book to any history student who studies the topic.

Rating:
Summary: Good Antidote to Soviet Apologia
Review: It's amazing how many histories of the USSR or the Russian Revolution will gloss over the waves of terror they initiated, or imply that this terror was "necessary," or speak of it in the same phlegmatic way that one would describe routine events. This makes a stark contrast to the way that moral indignation is NOT withheld from histories of Nazi Germany. Professor Pipes should be commended for expressing moral indignation about inexcusable and unnecessary tyranny and bloodshed, just as William L. Shirer deserves commendation for telling the story of Nazi Germany the way it really happened. (Did this mean that Shirer was "biased"? If he had downplayed the Nazi terror and devoted hundreds of pages to Nazi "accomplishments" such as full employment, would this have been an accurate and meaningful account of the Third Reich?) Indeed, the fact that Pipes' book attracts criticism from intellectuals for having revealed the true face of Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Soviet government they installed--in all its ruthlessness, depravity, and mendacity--is strong proof that his book's focus on the role of depraved intellectuals and depraved theories in the establishment of the USSR is right on the money. As Pipes pointed out, one of its founding ideas can be traced back to Rousseau--the idea that man is a mere creature of his "environment," and therefore completely malleable. This amounts to an engraved invitation to bloodthirsty monsters like Lenin and Stalin to start thinking that mankind should be forced to become "good," regardless of the human cost. It's sad that intellectuals--those ceaseless announcers of irony--haven't spotted the irony here: policies that necessitate bloodshed are not "good" and cannot lead to "good."

Another valuable contribution of this book is that the author is not afraid to show that Bolshevism was the creation of the upper-middle-class intelligentsia, not the workers or the peasants, and served the interests of the intelligentsia, not the lower classes.

Pipes' book should be read by every person interested in history who is not afraid to be shown that ideas have consequences, and that these are often inexcusably horrible.

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Pipes Gives Us a Brilliant Book!
Review: It's amazing how many histories of the USSR or the Russian Revolution will gloss over the waves of terror they initiated, or imply that this terror was "necessary," or speak of it in the same phlegmatic way that one would describe routine events. This makes a stark contrast to the way that moral indignation is NOT withheld from histories of Nazi Germany. Professor Pipes should be commended for expressing moral indignation about inexcusable and unnecessary tyranny and bloodshed, just as William L. Shirer deserves commendation for telling the story of Nazi Germany the way it really happened. (Did this mean that Shirer was "biased"? If he had downplayed the Nazi terror and devoted hundreds of pages to Nazi "accomplishments" such as full employment, would this have been an accurate and meaningful account of the Third Reich?) Indeed, the fact that Pipes' book attracts criticism from intellectuals for having revealed the true face of Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Soviet government they installed--in all its ruthlessness, depravity, and mendacity--is strong proof that his book's focus on the role of depraved intellectuals and depraved theories in the establishment of the USSR is right on the money. As Pipes pointed out, one of its founding ideas can be traced back to Rousseau--the idea that man is a mere creature of his "environment," and therefore completely malleable. This amounts to an engraved invitation to bloodthirsty monsters like Lenin and Stalin to start thinking that mankind should be forced to become "good," regardless of the human cost. It's sad that intellectuals--those ceaseless announcers of irony--haven't spotted the irony here: policies that necessitate bloodshed are not "good" and cannot lead to "good."

Another valuable contribution of this book is that the author is not afraid to show that Bolshevism was the creation of the upper-middle-class intelligentsia, not the workers or the peasants, and served the interests of the intelligentsia, not the lower classes.

Pipes' book should be read by every person interested in history who is not afraid to be shown that ideas have consequences, and that these are often inexcusably horrible.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive, deep, but uneven
Review: This is an excellent overview of the Russian Revolution. Pipes does an excellent job of distilling the different factions involved, and constructing the worldviews of those involved. The dichotomy between the outlook of the aristocracy and peasants was particularly good--much of the revolution's course was explained there.

Throughout, I think Pipes did a good job of balancing the big picture with the details that are necessary to understand what was happening in such a large country at the time. His writing style varies somewhat throughout the different chapters, but on the whole was engaging and lively.

I have only two (minor) complaints, hence 4 stars instead of 5. The first complaint is that the book ends around a chapter too soon. The civil war is left out almost entirely, and in general the book ended with many loose ends, without even a quick summary of what followed in history. This is not a problem for the scholar, but to a casual reader (like myself) it feels a bit abrupt.

The second complaint, as others have noted, is Pipes' bias. When I got to Chapter 3 I started laughing out loud, and I wondered at first if it was written by someone else. Suddenly the objective writing style becomes full of venom for the "intelligentsia." Pipes' contempt is a constant theme throughout the remainder of the book, to the point where I wasn't sure how much I could trust some of his observations.

This is still a great book. But I do wish Pipes had remained more objective--the atrocious record of the Bolshevik party's early years speaks for itself.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive, deep, but uneven
Review: This is an excellent overview of the Russian Revolution. Pipes does an excellent job of distilling the different factions involved, and constructing the worldviews of those involved. The dichotomy between the outlook of the aristocracy and peasants was particularly good--much of the revolution's course was explained there.

Throughout, I think Pipes did a good job of balancing the big picture with the details that are necessary to understand what was happening in such a large country at the time. His writing style varies somewhat throughout the different chapters, but on the whole was engaging and lively.

I have only two (minor) complaints, hence 4 stars instead of 5. The first complaint is that the book ends around a chapter too soon. The civil war is left out almost entirely, and in general the book ended with many loose ends, without even a quick summary of what followed in history. This is not a problem for the scholar, but to a casual reader (like myself) it feels a bit abrupt.

The second complaint, as others have noted, is Pipes' bias. When I got to Chapter 3 I started laughing out loud, and I wondered at first if it was written by someone else. Suddenly the objective writing style becomes full of venom for the "intelligentsia." Pipes' contempt is a constant theme throughout the remainder of the book, to the point where I wasn't sure how much I could trust some of his observations.

This is still a great book. But I do wish Pipes had remained more objective--the atrocious record of the Bolshevik party's early years speaks for itself.