AN ORIGINAL READING OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, EXAMINING IT NOT AS A SINGLE EVENT BUT AS A HUNDRED-YEAR CYCLE OF VIOLENCE IN PURSUIT OF UTOPIAN DREAMS

In this elegant and incisive account, Orlando Figes offers an illuminating new perspective on the Russian Revolution. While other historians have focused their examinations on the cataclysmic years immediately before and after 1917, Figes shows how the revolution, while it changed in form and character, nevertheless retained the same idealistic goals throughout, from its origins in the famine crisis of 1891 until its end with the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991. Until the very end of the Soviet system, its leaders believed they were carrying out the revolution Lenin had begun.
With the authority and distinctive style that have marked his magisterial histories, Figes delivers an accessible and paradigm-shifting reconsideration of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.

Introduction 1 ?

1. The Start 7?

2. The 'Dress Rehearsal' 24?

3. Last Hopes 39?

4. War and Revolution 54?

5. The February Revolution 68?

6. Lenin's Revolution 89?

7. Civil War and the Making of the Soviet System 108?

8. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin 125?

9. The Revolution's Golden Age? 135?

10. The Great Break 149?

11. Stalin's Crisis 163?

12. Communism in Retreat? 176?

13. The Great Terror 190?

14. Revolution for Export 204?

15. War and Revolution 217?

16. Revolution and Cold War 230?

17. The Beginning of the End 244?

18. Mature Socialism 260?

19. The Last Bolshevik 273?

20. Judgement 288

Notes 297?

A Short Guide to Further Reading 306?

Acknowledgments 309?

Index 311