#Historian, #Russia specialist and anti-#Putin #activist, #OrlandoFiges (‘A People’s Tragedy’) maintains that the #intellectualism of the moderate #Bolsheviks (eg Kamenev) prevented any pressure or authority being applied to Lenin’s de facto dictatorship by the end of 1917 in the immediate political aftermath of the October Revolution. Worth pausing on that thought. The #Intellect v. the will to #Power

@nzas95 @bookstodon #OrlandoFiges ‘A People’s Tragedy’ (story of Russian Revolution and Civil War). Already well into it so that’s a carry-over. Then Michel Winock, ‘Gouverner La France’.

#OrlandoFiges classic, #ThePeoplesTragedy. That title is relegated to subtitle in this #Gallimard #Foliohistoire edition in 2 vols. A shame because the cack-handed, almost farcical October revolution was not the rising of a people. It was the beginning of a civil war and in the long-run a people’s oppression #Russia.

Die #Rezension eine klare #Empfehlung
#Geschichte #Russland #OrlandoFiges #Bücher #Sachbuch

https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000141431537/geschichte-orlando-figes-erklaert-was-russland-ist

@nidgethompson Just to say I’m revisiting # #MacCulloch (Hist. of Christianity) to get a perspective on the #history of the emergence of #Ukraine relative to #Russia. I have no other significant source. A secondary source those is #OrlandoFiges’ brilliant A People’s Tragedy, #History of the #Russian #Revolution. The second volume of the French translation shown in photo. In English, one big massive tome. Superb book. MacCulloch is a master as you know.