Amazon.co.uk Review
Written in a narrative style that captures both the scope and detail of the Russian revolution, Orlando Figes' history is certain to become one of the most important contemporary studies of Russia as it was at the beginning of the 20th century. With an almost cinematic eye, Figes captures the broad movements of war and revolution, never losing sight of the individuals whose lives make up his subject. He makes use of personal papers and personal histories to illustrate the effects the revolution wrought on a human scale, while providing a convincing and detailed understanding of the role of workers, peasants, and soldiers in the revolution. He moves deftly from topics such as the grand social forces and mass movements that made up the revolution to profiles of key personalities and representative characters.
Figes' themes of the Russian revolution as a tragedy for the Russian people as a whole and for the millions of individuals who lost their lives to the brutal forces it unleashed make sense of events for a new generation of students of Russian history. Sympathy for the charismatic leaders and ideological theorising regarding Hegelian dialectics and Marxist economics--two hallmarks of much earlier writing on the Russian revolution--are banished from these clear-eyed, fair-minded pages of A People's Tragedy. The author's sympathy is squarely with the Russian people. That commitment, together with the benefit of historical hindsight, provides a standpoint Figes can take full advantage of in this masterful history.
Review
"It is by far the best history of the Russian Revolution I have ever read."
-Frank McLynne
"From the Trade Paperback edition."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"It is by far the best history of the Russian Revolution I have ever read."
-Frank McLynne
Book Description
The first single-volume history of the century's most tragic and brutal revolution; a brilliant, highly readable narrative in the manner of Simon Schama's
Citizens.
Product Description
Vast in scope, based on exhaustive original research, and written with passion, narrative skill and human sympath,
A People's Tragedy is the definitive account of the Russian Revolution for a new generation. It has won the Wolfson History Prize, the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and the Longman/
History Today Book of the Year Award.
About the Author
Orlando Figes is a professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, and former University Lecturer in History at Cambridge. Born in London in 1959, he graduated with a double-starred first in History from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1982. His first book, Peasant Russia, Civil War, was described by one reviewer as 'one of the most important books ever published on the Russian Revolution'.
His website can be found at www.orlandofiges.co.uk
(19961129)
