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This is a highly readable and absorbing account of Bolshevik foreign policy during Lenin's first year in power. In tracing the development of that policy, the book considers both the impact it had on a world torn by war and the effect it had on the Bolsheviks themselves, now no longer engaged in clandestine struggle but in effective state control. The book explores Lenin's relationship with the various elements of the party – his fruitful, but frequently discordant, relationship with Trotsky in particular – and the way he sought and obtained support for his policies in the tumultuous political circumstances of 1917 and 1918. It studies Lenin's political style as well, in an attempt to ex...
At a time when the Soviet Union is disintegrating, Richard Debo provides an intriguing and detailed examination of the new political realities that slowly and painfully emerged in eastern Europe out of the chaos left in the wake of the First World War. Revealing the reasons for the victory of Lenin's Bolshevik government in the Russian civil war, Debo demonstrates that Bolshevik political and diplomatic skills were far superior to those of either their indigenous opponents or their many foreign enemies. For much of 1919, enemies of the Soviet government were more interested in fighting each other than the Bolsheviks, and, although foreign powers sought to influence competing anti-Bolshevik generals, they actually contributed little to the defeat of the Red Army. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks established realistic priorities, formulated flexible policies, and made political sacrifices unimagined by their enemies. As a result they were able to find allies and divide opponents.
A comprehensive assessment of Soviet relations with the West, set in the context of the emergence of a new Russia. This volume anlayzes the formulation of foreign policy during the period from the first decade of the Bolshevik Revolution, through the gradual erosion of ideological differences.
This book examines the international impact of Bolshevism in the period between the two World Wars. It explores both the significance of the ‘Bolshevik threat’ in European countries and colonies, as well as its spread through the circulation of ideas and people during this period. Focusing on the interplay between international relations and domestic politics, the volume analyses the rise of Bolshevism on the international stage, incorporating insights from India and China. The chapters show how the interwar international order was challenged by the ideology, which infiltrated a range of political societies. While it was incapable of overthrowing national systems, Bolshevism constituted a credible threat, which favoured the spread of fascist and nationalist trends. Offering the first detailed account of the Bolshevik danger at an international level, the book draws on multi-national and multiarchival research to examine how the peril of Bolshevism paradoxically allowed a stabilization of the post-World War I Versailles system.
At a crucial point in the twentieth century, as Nazi Germany prepared for war, negotiations between Britain, France, and the Soviet Union became the last chance to halt Hitler's aggression. Incredibly, the French and British governments dallied, talks failed, and in August 1939 the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany. Michael Carley's gripping account of these negotiations is not a pretty story. It is about the failures of appeasement and collective security in Europe. It is about moral depravity and blindness, about villains and cowards, and about heroes who stood against the intellectual and popular tides of their time. Some died for their beliefs, others labored in obscu...
The twentieth century has been fundamentally shaped by changes in Russia, where disaster in the First World War was followed by the fall of the Tsar. Nicholas II's replacement first by Kerensky's liberal government then by the Bolsheviks, and the subsequent Civil War and foreign intervention, led to the erection of a system of state tyranny previously unthought of. The Bolshevik regime, with its ideological hatred of other regimes, was a threat to the west where developments in Russia were watched with both horror and fascination. Britain's information about this series of extraordinary events, and about what might be about to happen next, was largely dependent on the small number of British...
The USA's contribution to the making of the USSR was accidental. In the belief that the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic could not survive, American statesmen strove to keep the former Tsarist empire intact for a non-communist successor regime in the face of attempts by other powers to carve out spheres of influence in both European and Asiatic Russia. In this manner, they unwittingly facilitated the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This book shows the importance of the 'Russian question' at the Washington Conference and throws light on the emergence of the 'Versailles-Washington' system of international relations.
This study aims to update a classic of comparative revolutionary analysis, Crane Brinton's 1938 study The Anatomy of Revolution. It invokes the latest research and theoretical writing in history, political science, and political sociology to compare and contrast, in their successive phases, the English Revolution of 1640-60, the French Revolution of 1789-99, and the Russian Revolution of 1917-29. This book intends to do what no other comparative analysis of revolutionary change has yet adequately done. It not only progresses beyond Marxian socioeconomic "class" analysis and early "revisionist" stresses on short-term, accidental factors involved in revolutionary causation and process; it also finds ways to reconcile "state-centered" structuralist accounts of the three major European revolutions with postmodernist explanations of those upheavals that play up the centrality of human agency, revolutionary discourse, mentalities, ideology, and political culture.
Internal collapse and a succession of varying Russian governments in 1917 necessitated the need for British policy makers to re-evaluate their attitudes toward Russia. It is well-known that this ultimately evolved into hostility towards Bolshevism. What is not so evident is how this decision was arrived at. Nor was it as clear-cut as one might believe. This cognate essay makes use of both primary sources and primary sources contained within secondary ones to argue that Britain's policy towards Russia at this time cannot be understood without first exploring the "missing dimension" that intelligence played in shaping the policy makers' final decisions. Unfortunately, at precisely this time, w...
Twilight of Empire is the first book in English to examine the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference during the later stages of World War I with the use of extensive archival sources. Two separate peace treaties were signed at Brest-Litovsk – the first between the Central Powers and Ukraine and the second between the Central Powers and Bolshevik Russia. Borislav Chernev, through an insightful and in-depth analysis of primary sources and archival material, argues that although its duration was short lived, the Brest-Litovsk settlement significantly affected the post-Imperial transformation of East Central Europe. The conference became a focal point for the interrelated processes of peacemaking, re...