Roy Bainton takes one of the most pivotal years in the twentieth
century, the year of the Russian Revolution and examines it
extensively, largely through the testimonies of eyewitnesses.
Bainton has sought out and interviewed elderly people who still
remember what it was like to be living in Russia at the time.
Amongst others, he includes accounts by a British woman who lived
in Russia as a child and the son of a merchant in Petrograd. A very
old woman tells how she went for a walk with three princesses.
Bainton concentrates on the human side of the revolution, which
began with such hope but led to terrible upheaval and hardship for
many. He conveys the confusion of ordinary people who did not
understand what Bolshevism was and who found their lives turned
upside down. This is perhaps the last moment in history when
Bainton could have written this book, because fewer and fewer
survivors of the Revolution remain to tell their story.(Kirkus UK)
The words are those of a working class Red Army veteran and they
are in stark contrast to the opinion of a 34-year-old Russian
entrepreneur: Lenin and Trotsky were totally evil men - they turned
my country into a nightmare... What was it like to be a worker in
Petrograd or Moscow before the Revolution? How much did a tram
driver's family know about Bolshevism? What was the price of a loaf
of bread or a pair of boots? Who kept the power stations running,
the telephone exchanges, bakeries, farms and hospitals? How did it
feel to be a stockbroker one day, then a forced labourer the next?
The Great War tore at the nation's heart, and Russia's autocracy
dined and danced while the people starved. The Revolution of 1917
has remained a controversial political and academic battleground -
much has been written about Lenin, Trotsky and Kerensky, their
politics relentlessly analysed. Yet there is also a compelling
human side, and Roy Bainton tells it, not only through the
staggering bravado of revolutionary politicians, but through the
poignant stories recounted to him by ordinary families whose hopes
and aspirations were soon turned to fear.
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