A Concise History of the Russian Revolution

Harvard historian Pipes emphasizes that the Russian Revolution of October 1917 was actually a coup d'etat, a seizing of power by a tightly organized conspiracy, carried out with a show of mass participation but with almost no mass involvement. By synthesizing and condensing his two recent books--The Russian Revolution (1990) and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1994)--into a superb narrative augmented with scores of photographs and maps, he has produced the single most readable, useful and illuminating chronicle of the revolution and its aftermath. Lenin, authoritarian, fanatical, secretive and intolerant, ordered the construction of concentration camps in 1918. Pipes shows how Lenin's one-party police state paved the way for Stalin by throttling democratic impulses and through unremitting terror and expropriations. Chapters cover the civil war, which crushed antimonarchist democrats (``Whites''); the Bolsheviks' annihilation of politically active peasants (``kulaks'') despite massive peasant revolts; the murder of the imperial family; the Soviets' subjugation of ethnic groups and nationalities; and the war against religion. Pipes's remarkably vivid, compelling narrative turns up fresh insights on every page. (Oct.)