Stephen Smith is the author of the book The Russian Revolution, a senior research fellow at All Souls College, and is currently a professor of history at the University of Essex. His research interests are in the histories of modern Russia and in comparative communism. His interest in Russia led him to attend the University of Moscow and ultimately write this book. In this book Smith sets out to introduce the reader to the main events and developments from 1917 to 1929 in the Soviet Union. The book seeks to explain how and why revolution broke out in 1917; how the Bolsheviks came to power and established a regime; and how that regime grew into a form of totalitarianism.
Chapter 1: February 23, 1917 started a chain of events that changed Russian society and politics forever. The autocracy collapsed when Nicholas II was abdicated by parliament because members of parliament of the protests on the street. ‘From February to October’ charts the events of the few months that followed that day of protest by female textile-workers and housewives in late February and looks back at the seeds of those events to see what caused the dramatic crisis of modernization. The February Revolution gave rise to a short-lived mood of national unity and optimism.
Many historians argue that democratic government was a non-starter in Russia in 1917. There had been initial widespread enthusiasm for democracy. At the end of these few months, it was war that made the Bolshevik seizure of power inevitable.
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The October revolution was viewed as a chance for justice and equality to prevail over the old regime of arbitrariness and exploitation. The Bolsheviks hoped that revolution would break out in the more developed countries of Europe, and for a time this looked likely. ‘Civil war and the foundation of the Bolshevik regime’ considers the chain of events that lead to the start of Soviet power and details the extremely troubled years 1918–1922. Overall, the civil war strengthened national identities within Russia yet deepened divisions inside nationalist movements. Gradually, the party was transformed into the backbone of the new state as it acquired more functions and its apparatus proliferated.
The October revolution was followed by deep economic collapse. To mobilize the battered forces of industry and agriculture to meet the needs of war, the Bolsheviks set in place the policies that were later termed ‘War Communism’. ‘War Communism’ examines how far the Bolsheviks were able to impose state regulation on the economy along socialist lines and their achievements and failures. From the beginning, they were beset with problems in terms of industrial productivity and supply. The most critical problem was that of food supply. This led to the breakdown of urban life which caused civil war. The civil war saw the hardening conviction that the state was the modality through which socialism would be built.
In March 1921, many feared that the new regime in Russia would not survive. In response Congress endorsed the abandonment of forced requisitioning in favour of a tax in kind on the peasantry, calculated as a percentage of the harvest. This marked the inauguration of the New Economic Policy (NEP). ‘NEP: politics and the economy’ looks at the impact of the years of the NEP which turned into a wholesale repudiation of War Communism. Lenin saw the NEP as a transitional system in which market mechanisms would gradually strengthen the state sector at the expense of the private sector. One difference that marked the period of NEP was the abandonment of terror as an instrument of political rule.
Chapter 5: From the start of the NEP, social inequality rose. Class remained a fragile structure. ‘NEP: society and culture’ considers what the Soviets did to refashion the social systems in Russia, in terms of education, health care, housing, urban planning, and social work, and how it tried to combat class divisions and existing cultural issues. The Bolsheviks had to deal with social issues such as attitudes to family and marriage, orphaned and abandoned children, unemployment, homelessness, and the costs of education for the young. Following their intelligentsia forebears, the Bolsheviks sought to raise the level of ‘ culturedness’ of a society perceived to be backwards in outlook.
Smith draws extensive information from two main books, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Russian Revolution by Harold Shukman and Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution by Edward Acton. Smith uses multiple illustrations from an assortment of archives and collections. I like the fact that he uses illustrations because it gives the reader an inside look to the information covered in the book such as the International Women’s day protestors, the Red guards, and the famine of 1921-1922.
It makes a more memorable connection to the information presented when there is a photograph or illustration. Smith uses many different primary sources and places them in their own text boxes throughout the chapters of the books. Some of these text boxes are letters, declarations from groups, and reports. These primary sources are mainly named individuals such as F. Starunov, a peasant soldier in the First World War, but some are unnamed such as “woman appealing against her loss of voting rights” (Smith 133). Some sources were groups such as the Central Committee, and workers of the il’ich settlement.
These sources provide a direct look into their lives and experiences during the Russian Revolution. They show emotion, and are clear about what they are upset about, or what they want to change. Smith’s use of these primary sources and illustrations give the reader an inside look into the lives of the people living during the Russian Revolution, and make the book a more interesting read.
