Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A Pelican Introduction (Pelican Books)

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Makers of their own tragedy". The Independent. 23 October 2011. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022. After his arrival in the capital, St Petersburg, in 1893, Lenin moved much closer to the standard Marxist view—that Russia was only at the start of its capitalist stage and that a democratic movement by the workers in alliance with the bourgeoisie was needed to defeat autocracy before a socialist revolution could commence. No more talk of a coup d'état or terror. It was only after the establishment of a ‘bourgeois democracy', granting freedoms of speech and association to the workers, that the second and socialist phase of the revolution could begin. Figes has also condemned the arrest by the FSB of historian Mikhail Suprun as part of a "Putinite campaign against freedom of historical research and expression". [48] Appleyard, Bryan (3 October 2010). "The Wild Charges He Made". The Sunday Times . Retrieved 5 March 2020.

Book review: Revolutionary Russia 1891-1991, by Orlando Figes Book review: Revolutionary Russia 1891-1991, by Orlando Figes

Figes is known for his works on Russian history, such as A People's Tragedy (1996), Natasha's Dance (2002), The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (2007), Crimea (2010) and Just Send Me Word (2012). A People's Tragedy is a study of the Russian Revolution, and combines social and political history with biographical details in a historical narrative. Figes has also contributed significantly on European history more broadly, notably with his book The Europeans (2019). Born in Islington, London in 1959, Figes is the son of John George Figes and the feminist writer Eva Figes, whose Jewish family fled Nazi Germany in 1939. The author and editor Kate Figes was his elder sister. [5] [6] He attended William Ellis School in north London (1971–78) and studied History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating with a double-starred first in 1982. He completed his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge.The growth of mass-based nationalist movements was contingent on the spread of rural schools and institutions, such as peasant unions and cooperatives, as well as on the opening up of remote country areas by roads and railways, postal services and telegraphs—all of which was happening very rapidly in the decades before 1917. The most successful movements combined the peasants' struggle for the land (where it was owned by foreign landlords, officials and merchants) with the demand for native language rights, enabling the peasants to gain full access to schools, the courts and government. Angus Macqueen (10 October 2010). "Crimea: The Last Crusade by Orlando Figes – review". The Observer. London . Retrieved 31 August 2011. Guy Dammann (14 July 2008). "Interview: Guy Dammann talks to Orlando Figes". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 31 August 2011.

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991 - Google Books

Just Send Me Word has been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. [36] Crimea [ edit ] Demonstration St Petersburg, 23 February 1917, Origins of the Russian Revolution, February Revolution, 1917

Russia had been a relatively stable society until the final decades of the nineteenth century. It was untroubled by the revolutions that shook Europe's other monarchies in 1848–9, when Marx called it ‘the last hope of the despots'. Its huge army crushed the Polish uprisings of 1830 and 1863, the main nationalist challenge to the Tsar's Imperial rule, while its police hampered the activities of the tiny close-knit circles of radicals and revolutionaries, who were mostly driven underground.

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A Pelican Introduction

Writing in the Financial Times, Simon Sebag Montefiore called Just Send Me Word "a unique contribution to Gulag scholarship as well as a study of the universal power of love". [33] Several reviewers highlighted the book's literary qualities, pointing out that it 'reads like a novel' [34] [35] Christiansen, Rupert (15 September 2019). "A ménage a trois that transformed European culture". The Sunday Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. The influence of the exiled Marxist theorist Georgi Plekhanov was vital here. It was he who first mapped out the two-stage revolutionary strategy. With it the Russian Marxists at last had an answer to the problem of how to bring about a post-capitalist society in one only now entering the capitalist phase. It gave them grounds for their belief that in forsaking the seizure of power—which, as Plekhanov put it, could only lead to a ‘despotism in Communist form'—they could still advance towards socialism.Harding, Luke (7 December 2008). "Luke Harding, "British scholar rails at police seizure of anti-Stalin archive", The Observer, 7 December 2008". The Guardian. London. Even the young Lenin only became fully converted to the Marxist mainstream in the wake of the famine crisis. Contrary to the Soviet myth, in which Lenin appeared as a fully fledged Marxist theorist in his infancy, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution came late to politics. In his last school year he was commended by his headmaster (by an irony of fate the father of Kerensky, his arch-rival in 1917) as a model student, ‘moral and religious in his upbringing', and never giving ‘cause for dissatisfaction, by word or deed, to the school authorities'.14 The second stage, led by the heirs of the founding generation of the revolution, was the age of Joseph Stalin, war and peace, and terror. Despite the paranoia of Stalin's three-decade-long rule, Figes notes that the dictator is held in high regard by many Russians today. Figes, Orlando (16 December 2013). "Is There One Ukraine?". Foreign Affairs . Retrieved 24 July 2015.