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For generations in the West, Cold War animosity blocked dispassionate accounts of the Russian Revolution. This history authoritatively restores the upheaval's primary social actors-workers, soldiers, and peasants-to their rightful place at the center of the revolutionary process.
Access to newly opened archives has allowed Alexander Rabinowitch to substantially rewrite the history of how the Bolsheviks consolidated their power in Russia. Focusing on the first year of Soviet rule in St Petersburg, he shows how state organs evolved in the face of repeated crises.
" . . . a comprehensive look at an enigmatic era . . . " —Choice "This provocative collection of essays certainly takes some of the polish off Soviet socialism's golden age." —Journal of Interdisciplinary History "The authors and editors of this splendid volume deserve great praise. Their work moves the field of Soviet history several large steps forward." —Slavic Review Lenin's New Economic Policy of the 1920s, although a relatively free and open potential alternative to Soviet communism, was also a time of extreme tension, as Russian society and culture were rocked by the forces of resistance and change. These essays examine the social and cultural dimensions of NEP in urban and rural Russia in the years before Stalin and rapid industrialization.
"... an expert work... remarkable for its objectivity, judiciousness, and its sure handling of the available evidence." --Political Science Quarterly "... a fine piece of historical writing." --Soviet Studies "An able and scholarly inquiry into the perplexing abortive Petrograd uprising of June and July 1917... a very interesting view of revolutionary action on the local level." --Foreign Affairs First published in 1968, this pioneering study of revolutionary events in Petrograd in the summer of 1917 revised the established view of the Bolsheviks as a monolithic party. Rabinowitch documents how the party's pluralistic nature had crucial implications for the outcome of the revolution in October.
With new research and detailed analysis, this historical study reframes the October Revolution of 1917 and its terrible aftermath in the Russian capitol. A major contribution to the historiography of twentieth century Russia, The Bolsheviks in Power shines a revealing spotlight on the fateful first year of Soviet rule in Petrograd. It examines events that profoundly shaped the Soviet political system that endured through generations. Drawing largely from previously inaccessible Soviet archives, Alexander Rabinowitch demolishes standard interpretations of the origins of Soviet authoritarianism by demonstrating that the Soviet system evolved ad hoc as the Bolsheviks struggled to retain political power amid spiraling political, social, economic, and military crises. The book covers issues such as the rapid fall of influential moderate Bolsheviks, the formation of the dreaded Cheka, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the Red Terror, the national government’s flight to Moscow, and the subsequent rivalry between Russia’s new and old capitals.
Deals with problem of workers' control in Russia
Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades Celebrations in the Time of Stalin Karen Petrone A lively investigation of the official and unofficial meanings of Stalinist celebrations. "An impressive and highly readable book that... casts a clear and disturbing light on the relationship of Stalinist mythology, state power, popular participation, and the unending complexities of social and cultural survival mechanisms and daily life." --Richard Stites In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, public celebrations flourished while Stalinist repression intensified. What explains this coincidence of terror and celebration? Using popular media and drawing extensively on documents from previously inaccessible Sovi...
Robert Weinberg examines the tumultuous events of the 1905 Revolution in Odessa, the fourth-largest city in the Russian Empire at the turn of the twentieth century, and explores why workers in Odessa were the driving force in the near-toppling of autocratic rule. Weinberg offers a compelling analysis of labor's militancy and politicization in 1905 and provides insights into the social dynamics of labor activism in late Imperial Russia. He pays close attention to how the intersection of national developments, local events, and the workers' daily experiences prompted Odessa workers to claim rights of citizenship, challenge authority, and assert greater control over their working lives. The boo...
The first biography--in any language--of Alexander Shlyapnikov, a leader and founder, along with Kollontai, of the Workers' Opposition.