Orlando Figes's Books

The Story of Russia

By: Orlando Figes

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“This is the essential backstory, the history book that you need if you want to understand modern Russia and its wars with Ukraine, with its neighbors, with America, and with the West.” —Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy and Red Famine Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews From “the great storyteller of Russian history” (Financial Times), a brilliant account of the national mythologies and imperial ideologies that have shaped Russia’s past and politics—essential reading for understanding the country today The Story of Russia is a fresh approach to the thousand years of Russia’s history, concerned as much with the ideas that have shaped how Russians think about their past as it is with the events and personalities comprising it. No other country has reimagined its own story so often, in a perpetual effort to stay in step with the shifts of ruling ideologies. From the founding of Kievan Rus in the first millennium to Putin’s war against Ukraine, Orlando Figes explores the ideas that have guided Russia’s actions throughout its long and troubled existence. Whether he's describing the crowning of Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral or the dramatic upheaval of the peasant revolution, he reveals the impulses, often unappreciated or misunderstood by foreigners, that have driven Russian history: the medieval myth of Mother Russia’s holy mission to the world; the imperial tendency toward autocratic rule; the popular belief in a paternal tsar dispensing truth and justice; the cult of sacrifice rooted in the idea of the “Russian soul”; and always, the nationalist myth of Russia’s unjust treatment by the West. How the Russians came to tell their story and to revise it so often as they went along is not only a vital aspect of their history; it is also our best means of understanding how the country thinks and acts today. Based on a lifetime of scholarship and enthrallingly written, The Story of Russia is quintessential Figes: sweeping, revelatory, and masterful.

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267

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Metropolitan Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1250796903

ISBN 13

9781250796905

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991

A History

By: Orlando Figes

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Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991

A History

By: Orlando Figes

From the author of A People's Tragedy, an original reading of the Russian Revolution, examining it not as a single event but as a hundred-year cycle of violence in pursuit of utopian dreams In this elegant and incisive account, Orlando Figes offers an illuminating new perspective on the Russian Revolution. While other historians have focused their examinations on the cataclysmic years immediately before and after 1917, Figes shows how the revolution, while it changed in form and character, nevertheless retained the same idealistic goals throughout, from its origins in the famine crisis of 1891 until its end with the collapse of the communist Soviet regime in 1991. Figes traces three generational phases: Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who set the pattern of destruction and renewal until their demise in the terror of the 1930s; the Stalinist generation, promoted from the lower classes, who created the lasting structures of the Soviet regime and consolidated its legitimacy through victory in war; and the generation of 1956, shaped by the revelations of Stalin's crimes and committed to "making the Revolution work" to remedy economic decline and mass disaffection. Until the very end of the Soviet system, its leaders believed they were carrying out the revolution Lenin had begun. With the authority and distinctive style that have marked his magisterial histories, Figes delivers an accessible and paradigm-shifting reconsideration of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.

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336

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Metropolitan Books

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ISBN 10

0805095985

ISBN 13

9780805095982

A People's Tragedy

The Russian Revolution – centenary edition with new introduction

By: Orlando Figes

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A People's Tragedy

The Russian Revolution – centenary edition with new introduction

By: Orlando Figes

Unrivalled in scope and brimming with human drama, A People's Tragedy is the most vivid, moving and comprehensive history of the Russian Revolution available today. 'A modern masterpiece' Andrew Marr Opening with a panorama of Russian society, from the cloistered world of the Tsar to the brutal life of the peasants, A People's Tragedy follows workers, soldiers, intellectuals and villagers as their world is consumed by revolution and then degenerates into violence and dictatorship. Drawing on vast original research, Figes conveys above all the shocking experience of the revolution for those who lived it, while providing the clearest and most cogent account of how and why it unfolded. Illustrated with over 100 photographs and now including a new introduction that reflects on the revolution's centennial legacy, A People's Tragedy is a masterful and definitive record of one of the most important events in modern history. 'The most moving account of the Russian Revolution since Doctor Zhivago' Independent

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962

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1448112648

ISBN 13

9781448112647

The Whisperers

Private Life in Stalin's Russia

By: Orlando Figes

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The Whisperers

Private Life in Stalin's Russia

By: Orlando Figes

Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.

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970

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Penguin UK

Published Date

ISBN 10

014180887X

ISBN 13

9780141808871

Just Send Me Word

A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag

By: Orlando Figes

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Just Send Me Word

A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag

By: Orlando Figes

Figes reconstructs a heroic and touching love story that occurred in the midst of one of Stalin's most notorious work camps, drawing on personal letters, KGB archives and recent interviews to brilliantly illustrate the broader world in which their story unfolded.

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354

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Macmillan

Published Date

ISBN 10

0805095225

ISBN 13

9780805095227

The Whisperers

Private Life in Stalin's Russia

By: Orlando Figes

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The Whisperers

Private Life in Stalin's Russia

By: Orlando Figes

Drawing on letters, memoirs, conversations, this work tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin, conveying the reality of their terrible choices. It recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it.

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739

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ISBN 10

0713997028

ISBN 13

9780713997026

The Story of Russia

'An excellent short study'

By: Orlando Figes

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The Story of Russia

'An excellent short study'

By: Orlando Figes

The history book you need if you want to understand modern Russia' ANNE APPLEBAUM 'A magnificent, magisterial thousand year history of Russia . . . by one of the masters of Russian scholarship' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE 'A great historian at the peak of his powers' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE '[An] excellent short study' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES 'If you really want to understand Putin's Russia today, anchored in its past of myths, then you simply have to read Figes's superb account' ANTONY BEEVOR 'A lucid chronological journey that ably illustrates how narratives from the nation's past have been used to shape its autocratic present' OBSERVER ------------------------- From the great storyteller of Russia, a spellbinding account of the stories that have shaped the country's past – and how they can inform its present. No other country has been so divided over its own past as Russia. None has changed its story so often. How the Russians came to tell their story, and to reinvent it as they went along, is a vital aspect of their history, their culture and beliefs. To understand what Russia's future holds – to grasp what Putin's regime means for Russia and the world – we need to unravel the ideas and meanings of that history. In The Story of Russia, Orlando Figes brings into sharp relief the vibrant characters that comprise Russia's rich history, and whose stories remain so important in making sense of the world's largest nation today – from the crowning of sixteen-year-old Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral, to Catherine the Great, riding out in a green uniform to arrest her husband at his palace, to the bitter last days of the Romanovs. Beautifully written and based on a lifetime of scholarship, The Story of Russia is a major and definitive work from the great storyteller of Russian history: sweeping, suspenseful, masterful. ------------------------- PRAISE FOR ORLANDO FIGES 'An outstanding historian and writer, he brings distant history so close that you could feel its heartbeat' KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD 'Figes knows more about Russia than any other historian' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES

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369

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1526656892

ISBN 13

9781526656896

Natasha's Dance

A Cultural History of Russia

By: Orlando Figes

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Natasha's Dance

A Cultural History of Russia

By: Orlando Figes

History on a grand scale--an enchanting masterpiece that explores the making of one of the world's most vibrant civilizations A People's Tragedy, wrote Eric Hobsbawm, did "more to help us understand the Russian Revolution than any other book I know." Now, in Natasha's Dance, internationally renowned historian Orlando Figes does the same for Russian culture, summoning the myriad elements that formed a nation and held it together. Beginning in the eighteenth century with the building of St. Petersburg--a "window on the West"--and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself--its character, spiritual essence, and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works--by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall--with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons, and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world. Figes's characters range high and low: the revered Tolstoy, who left his deathbed to search for the Kingdom of God, as well as the serf girl Praskovya, who became Russian opera's first superstar and shocked society by becoming her owner's wife. Like the European-schooled countess Natasha performing an impromptu folk dance in Tolstoy's War and Peace, the spirit of "Russianness" is revealed by Figes as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictory--a powerful force that unified a vast country and proved more lasting than any Russian ruler or state.

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544

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Metropolitan Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1466862890

ISBN 13

9781466862890

The Crimean War

A History

By: Orlando Figes

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The Crimean War

A History

By: Orlando Figes

Please note that the maps available in the print edition do not appear in the ebook. From "the great storyteller of modern Russian historians," (Financial Times) the definitive account of the forgotten war that shaped the modern age The Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale—these are the enduring icons of the Crimean War. Less well-known is that this savage war (1853-1856) killed almost a million soldiers and countless civilians; that it enmeshed four great empires—the British, French, Turkish, and Russian—in a battle over religion as well as territory; that it fixed the fault lines between Russia and the West; that it set in motion the conflicts that would dominate the century to come. In this masterly history, Orlando Figes reconstructs the first full conflagration of modernity, a global industrialized struggle fought with unusual ferocity and incompetence. Drawing on untapped Russian and Ottoman as well as European sources, Figes vividly depicts the world at war, from the palaces of St. Petersburg to the holy sites of Jerusalem; from the young Tolstoy reporting in Sevastopol to Tsar Nicolas, haunted by dreams of religious salvation; from the ordinary soldiers and nurses on the battlefields to the women and children in towns under siege.. Original, magisterial, alive with voices of the time, The Crimean War is a historical tour de force whose depiction of ethnic cleansing and the West's relations with the Muslim world resonates with contemporary overtones. At once a rigorous, original study and a sweeping, panoramic narrative, The Crimean War is the definitive account of the war that mapped the terrain for today's world..

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610

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Metropolitan Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1429997249

ISBN 13

9781429997249

Crimea

By: Orlando Figes

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Crimea

By: Orlando Figes

The terrible conflict that dominated the mid 19th century, the Crimean War killed at least 800,000 men and pitted Russia against a formidable coalition of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire. It was a war for territory, provoked by fear that if the Ottoman Empire were to collapse then Russia could control a huge swathe of land from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf. But it was also a war of religion, driven by a fervent, populist and ever more ferocious belief by the Tsar and his ministers that it was Russia's task to rule all Orthodox Christians and control the Holy Land. Orlando Figes' major new book reimagines this extraordinary war, in which the stakes could not have been higher and which was fought with a terrible mixture of ferocity and incompetence. It was both a recognisably modern conflict - the first to be extensively photographed, the first to employ the telegraph, the first 'newspaper war' - and a traditional one, with illiterate soldiers, amateur officers and huge casualties caused by disease. Drawing on a huge range of fascinating sources, Figes also gives the lived experience of the war, from that of the ordinary British soldier in his snow-filled trench, to the haunted, gloomy, narrow figure of Tsar Nicholas himself as he vows to take on the whole world in his hunt for religious salvation.

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450

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Penguin UK

Published Date

ISBN 10

1846145007

ISBN 13

9781846145001

The Europeans

Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture

By: Orlando Figes

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The Europeans

Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture

By: Orlando Figes

From the “master of historical narrative” (Financial Times), a dazzling, richly detailed, panoramic work—the first to document the genesis of a continent-wide European culture. The nineteenth century in Europe was a time of unprecedented artistic achievement. It was also the first age of cultural globalization—an epoch when mass communications and high-speed rail travel brought Europe together, overcoming the barriers of nationalism and facilitating the development of a truly European canon of artistic, musical, and literary works. By 1900, the same books were being read across the continent, the same paintings reproduced, the same music played in homes and heard in concert halls, the same operas performed in all the major theatres. Drawing from a wealth of documents, letters, and other archival materials, acclaimed historian Orlando Figes examines the interplay of money and art that made this unification possible. At the center of the book is a poignant love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot, with whom Turgenev had a long and intimate relationship; and her husband Louis Viardot, an art critic, theater manager, and republican activist. Together, Turgenev and the Viardots acted as a kind of European cultural exchange—they either knew or crossed paths with Delacroix, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among many other towering figures. As Figes observes, nearly all of civilization’s great advances have come during periods of heightened cosmopolitanism—when people, ideas, and artistic creations circulate freely between nations. Vivid and insightful, The Europeans shows how such cosmopolitan ferment shaped artistic traditions that came to dominate world culture.

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688

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Metropolitan Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1627792155

ISBN 13

9781627792158

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991

A Pelican Introduction

By: Orlando Figes

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Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991

A Pelican Introduction

By: Orlando Figes

What caused the Russian Revolution? Did it succeed or fail? Do we still live with its consequences? Orlando Figes teaches history at Birkbeck, University of London and is the author of many acclaimed books on Russian history, including A People's Tragedy, which The Times Literary Supplement named as one of the '100 most influential books since the war', Natasha's Dance, The Whisperers, Crimea and Just Send Me Word. The Financial Times called him 'the greatest storyteller of modern Russian historians.

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330

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Penguin UK

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ISBN 10

0141930853

ISBN 13

9780141930855

A People's Tragedy

The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 - centenary edition with new introduction

By: Orlando Figes

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A People's Tragedy

The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 - centenary edition with new introduction

By: Orlando Figes

Unrivalled in scope and brimming with human drama, A People’s Tragedy is the most vivid, moving and comprehensive history of the Russian Revolution available today. ‘A modern masterpiece’ Andrew Marr ‘The most moving account of the Russian Revolution since Doctor Zhivago’ Independent Opening with a panorama of Russian society, from the cloistered world of the Tsar to the brutal life of the peasants, A People’s Tragedy follows workers, soldiers, intellectuals and villagers as their world is consumed by revolution and then degenerates into violence and dictatorship. Drawing on vast original research, Figes conveys above all the shocking experience of the revolution for those who lived it, while providing the clearest and most cogent account of how and why it unfolded. Illustrated with over 100 photographs and now including a new introduction that reflects on the revolution’s centennial legacy, A People’s Tragedy is a masterful and definitive record of one of the most important events in modern history.

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National Geographic Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1847924514

ISBN 13

9781847924513

The Whisperers

Private Life in Stalin's Russia

By: Orlando Figes

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The Whisperers

Private Life in Stalin's Russia

By: Orlando Figes

From the award-winning author of A People's Tragedy and Natasha's Dance, a landmark account of what private life was like for Russians in the worst years of Soviet repression There have been many accounts of the public aspects of Stalin's dictatorship: the arrests and trials, the enslavement and killing in the gulags. No previous book, however, has explored the regime's effect on people's personal lives, what one historian called "the Stalinism that entered into all of us." Now, drawing on a huge collection of newly discovered documents, The Whisperers reveals for the first time the inner world of ordinary Soviet citizens as they struggled to survive amidst the mistrust, fear, compromises, and betrayals that pervaded their existence. Moving from the Revolution of 1917 to the death of Stalin and beyond, Orlando Figes re-creates the moral maze in which Russians found themselves, where one wrong turn could destroy a family or, perversely, end up saving it. He brings us inside cramped communal apartments, where minor squabbles could lead to fatal denunciations; he examines the Communist faithful, who often rationalized even their own arrest as a case of mistaken identity; and he casts a humanizing light on informers, demonstrating how, in a repressive system, anyone could easily become a collaborator. A vast panoramic portrait of a society in which everyone spoke in whispers—whether to protect their families and friends, or to inform upon them—The Whisperers is a gripping account of lives lived in impossible times.

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788

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Metropolitan Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1466829230

ISBN 13

9781466829237

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991

By: Orlando Figes

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Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991

By: Orlando Figes

What caused the Russian Revolution? Did it succeed or fail? Why are we still all living with its consequences? In his remarkable new book Orlando Figes describes and takes apart the story of Russia's century of revolution in the shortest space possible. Starting with the horrific famines of 1891, Figes charts a vast experiment in state-building. The manipulation of many millions of people, first by Tsarist ministers and then by the Communists - on a scale and with a ferocity that their predecessors could not dream of - aimed to totally transform Russian society. Through war and peace Russia's rulers battled to subdue and control their vast state, fighting off a mass of real and imagined enemies until exhaustion, corruption and intellectual bankruptcy brought the whole terrible experiment to an end. As the Soviet Union becomes ever more distant in our memory, Revolutionary Russia is an invaluable reminder of why this one, hideously violent and callous state became for so long the great focus of the hopes and fears of much of humankind. Orlando Figes teaches history at Birkbeck, University of London, and is the author of many acclaimed books on Russian history, including A People's Tragedy, which The Times Literary Supplement named as one of the '100 most influential books since the war', Natasha's Dance, The Whisperers, Crimea and Just Send Me Word. The Financial Times called him 'the gretest storyteller of modern Russian historians'.

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473

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ISBN 10

0141043679

ISBN 13

9780141043678

The Story of Russia

By: Orlando Figes

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The Story of Russia

By: Orlando Figes

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267

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Metropolitan Books

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ISBN 10

1250796903

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9781250796905

Crimea

The Last Crusade

By: Orlando Figes

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Crimea

The Last Crusade

By: Orlando Figes

The Crimean War dominated the mid 19th century, killed at least 800,000 men and pitted Russia against a formidable coalition of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire. It was a war for territory, provoked by fear that if the Ottoman Empire were to collapse then Russia could control a huge swathe of land from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf. But it was also a war of religion, driven by a fervent, populist and ever more ferocious belief by the Tsar and his ministers that this was a crusade, the fulfilment of Russia's task to rule all Orthodox Christians and control the Holy Land. And it was a war based on hatreds and hypocrisy, specifically the overwhelming Russophobia that swept much of Europe. Orlando Figes' major new book reimagines this extraordinary war, in which the stakes could not have been higher. It was both a recognisably modern conflict - the first to be extensively photographed, the first to employ the telegraph, the first 'newspaper war' - and a traditional one, with illiterate soldiers, amateur officers and huge casualties caused by disease. The iconic moments of the war - the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Siege of Sebastopol, the impact of Florence Nightingale - are all here, but there is also a rich sense of the entire region and of the many nationalities caught up in the fighting. The conflict engulfed the Danube principalities, the Baltic and the Caucasus as well as the Crimea, with the British creating vast if ultimately delusive plans for the partition of much of Russia. Drawing on a huge range of fascinating, often untapped sources, Figes also gives the lived experience of the war, from that of the ordinary British soldier in his snow-filled trench, to the haunted, gloomy, narrow figure of Tsar Nicholas himself, as he vows to take on the whole world in his hunt for religious salvation.

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575

Published Date

ISBN 10

0713997044

ISBN 13

9780713997040

Peasant Russia, Civil War

The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917-1921

By: Orlando Figes

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Peasant Russia, Civil War

The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917-1921

By: Orlando Figes

From the preface Many historians outside the Soviet Union have sought to explain why the Bolsheviks won the civil war. Some have focused on the military history of 1918-20. Others have connected the victory of the Red Army to the growth of the Soviet State. But none has made a detailed study of the relationship between the Bolsheviks and the peasantry, the overwhelming majority of the Russian population, during the formative years of the Soviet regime. None has seriously investigated the ways in which the Bolshevik victory was made possible by the transformation of the Russian countryside in the years leading up to and during the revolution. That is the purpose of this book.

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400

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Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published Date

ISBN 10

1842124218

ISBN 13

9781842124215

Natasha's Dance

A Cultural History of Russia

By: Orlando Figes

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Natasha's Dance

A Cultural History of Russia

By: Orlando Figes

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544

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Metropolitan Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1466862890

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9781466862890

Interpreting the Russian Revolution

The Language and Symbols of 1917

By: Orlando Figes,B. I. Kolonit͡skiĭ

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Interpreting the Russian Revolution

The Language and Symbols of 1917

By: Orlando Figes,B. I. Kolonit͡skiĭ

The authors examine the diverse ways that language and other symbols--including flags and emblems, public rituals, songs, and codes of dress--were used to identify competing sides and to create new meanings in Russia's political struggles of 1917. 32 illustrations.

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198

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ISBN 10

0300081065

ISBN 13

9780300081060

Historically Inevitable?

Turning Points of the Russian Revolution

By: Tony Brenton

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Historically Inevitable?

Turning Points of the Russian Revolution

By: Tony Brenton

Marx held that the progression of society from capitalism to communism was 'historically inevitable'. In Russia in 1917, it seemed that Marx's theory was being born out in reality. But was the Russian Revolution really inevitable? This collection of fourteen contributions from the world's leading Russian scholars attempts to answer the question by looking back at the key turning points of the revolution. From the Russo-Japanese conflict of 1904-5 through to the appropriation of church property in 1922, and focusing especially on the incredible chain of events in 1917 leading to the October Revolution itself, Historically Inevitable? is a forensic account of Russia's road to revolution. Each contribution gives not only a fast-paced, incisive narrative account of an individual aspect of Revolution but also, for the first time, an intriguing counter-factual analysis of what might have gone differently. Featuring Richard Pipes on the Kornilov affair, Orlando Figes on the October Revolution, Dominic Lieven on foreign intervention and Martin Sixsmith on the attempted assassination of Lenin in 1918, Historically Inevitable? explains how each of these moments, more through blind luck than any historical inevitability, led to the creation of the world's first communist state. Tony Brenton's afterword to the volume draws parallels between the Revolution and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and places the events of 1917 in the context of more recent events in Russia and the Crimea. Featuring contributions from: Donald Crawford - Sean McMeekin - Dominic Lieven - Orlando Figes - Richard Sakwa - Douglas Smith - Martin Sixsmith - Simon Dixon - Boris Kolonitsky - Richard Pipes - Edvard Radzinsky - Catriona Kelly - Erik Landis - Evan Mawdsley

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413

Publisher

Profile Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1847658598

ISBN 13

9781847658593

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