Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History

 

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History – Orlando Figes

Since the vast majority of people never manage to live 100 years, it can and does seem like an awfully long time. When looking through the backward lens of history, however, it can sometimes seem more like a blip. Sadly, there are an awful lot of “blips” throughout thousands of years of history that haven’t been pleasant nor memorable.  Don’t ever let an evangelical preacher feed you BS about how “good things used to be”.  This period of history for Russia highlighted in this book was anything but pleasant, and being that it hasn’t been that long ago, it’s quite depressing to hear about so much recent lifelong suffering of so many due to an incredibly misguided ideology.

Communism.  An incredibly dirty word.  This book shows you exactly why and, more importantly, how it came to be.  1891 is as good a year to start this story as any, but the seeds were there much longer. Likewise, sunshine and roses never bloomed in 1991 after the iron curtain finally came down.  Still, though, this 100-year period is covered well by Orlando Figes, and you could argue that this work can almost be looked at as a “Cliffs Notes” of the time period.  There’s so much more to tell than what is here, but Figes hits the highlights.  “Highlights” seems like an awful word; but you get the picture.

The story begins around the time when serfdom was finally ended in 19^th century Russia.  A good thing, but with such an abrupt U-turn in any country’s history, it must be handled carefully.  In Russia’s case, it was not, and the blood started boiling over which culminated in the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917. As Alexis de Tocqueville once said: “The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform…”

Although 100 years of Russian history is covered, the vast majority of this book deals with the fractured Romanov dynasty, Lenin, and eventually Joseph Stalin.  Once Stalin dies, the “story” here becomes less segmented and there really isn’t that much to tell. So starting around 1953, we move rather quickly to the 1990s.  This is perhaps justified, but I confess I wanted more.  One really can’t fault the author, though, as his intention isn’t necessarily to tell the “entire story” of the USSR and its place in World History, but rather to focus on the cancer within and how it eventually putrefied the soul out of the country.

It's also important to note that there’s absolutely nothing in this book about Korea, Joe McCarthy, or Reykjavik.  I seem to recall only one sentence when the author talked about the U2 spy plane, Sputnik, and the Bay of Pigs.  All of these events are extremely important when discussing 20^th century USSR, and gobs of books have been written about all of them, but this isn’t the author’s focus. We read instead about the inner turmoil, the starving peasants due to collectivization, and the highly reputable military leaders that were all executed during the 1930s mainly because Joseph Stalin had a few loose screws.

Even though much of the focus is on the actual citizens of Russia, I still wish there could have been a bit more.  Orlando Figes has, though, written many books about Russia that go into such detail if the reader wants more (“A People’s Tragedy” would get my highest recommendation).  So the intention of this book is for it to be somewhat brief, and this book is excellent for the novice, or for one wanting to refresh themselves on Russia during the particular time period.

Sadly, contrary to what a lot of Westerners thought in 1991, Russia is still Russia, and although Communism can be looked at as dead-in-the-water, it still has enough recent history that allows despotic authoritarian dictators prevail; which is what we can plainly see 30 years later.   For a detailed account of how Russia never got better (although it possibly could have), I would recommend Peter Conradi’s “Who Lost Russia”; which has a recent edition detailing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

History is never pretty.  It needs attention and study, however.   Sometimes I wish that there is a parallel universe somewhere where people actually read more, instead of letting cable networks like Fox News rot their brain out.   We can all do oh so much better, but we need to learn from our past.  There’s a lot of “past” here that needs to be studied.  One can hope.  One can only hope.