Over the last 30 years there’s been a huge amount of archival material opened up, in Russia of course but also in other countries, that allows a re-examination of the Russian Revolution. Sean McMeekin has done just that in this compelling new one-volume history of the revolution that went on until 1922 and in which over 20 million people lost their lives. It’s not dry history – orgies, vodka, Rasputin, pogroms, and of course the First World War on the eastern front all ornament the story. But most of all, it’s a tightly structured story of how the revolution descended from its democratic beginnings into a Bolshevik takeover – with the connivance and help of Russia’s enemy, Germany
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