In Blood on the Snow, Robert Service returns to the subject that
has formed the backbone of his long and distinguished career: the
Russian Revolution. For Service, the great unanswered question is
how to reconcile the two vital narratives that underpin the
extraordinary but troubled events of 1917. One puts the blame
squarely on Tsar Nicholas II and on Alexander Kerensky’s
provisional government that deposed him. The other is the view from
the bottom, that of the workers and peasants who wanted democratic
socialism, not the Bolshevik dictatorship imposed by Vladimir
Ilyich Lenin and his successors. Service's vivid and revisionist
account spans the period from the outbreak of the First World War
to Lenin’s death in 1924. In it, he reveals that key seeds of the
revolution were sown by the Tsar's decision to join the war against
Germany in 1914. He shows with brutal clarity how those events
played out, eventually leading to the establishment of the
totalitarian Soviet regime, which would endure for the next seven
decades. Nicholas II, Kerensky and Lenin are to the fore, but
Service enriches his narrative by drawing on little-known diaries
of those such as the Vologda peasant Alexander Zamaraev, the NCO
Alexei Shtukaturov and the Moscow accounts clerk Nikita Okunev.
Through the testimony of these ‘ordinary’ people, Service
traces the tortuous path that Russia took through war, revolution
and civil war.
General
Imprint: |
Picador
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
November 2023 |
Authors: |
Robert Service
|
Dimensions: |
234 x 153 x 40mm (L x W x T) |
Pages: |
464 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-5290-6582-4 |
Categories: |
Books
Promotions
|
LSN: |
1-5290-6582-8 |
Barcode: |
9781529065824 |
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