General Interest
to historians and also those that do
not fit any of the listed categories
Scroll down the page to read about these and other books
reviewed on Russian/Soviet history
Robert Service: Trotsky: A Biography
The first thing that needs saying is that despite its 500 pages plus
footnotes this is not a heavy write, full of the dialectics of
marxism/leninism/trotskyism/stalinism and all the shades in between
that the period produced. This will probably disappoint the
theoreticans and activists of the left hoping for new insights into
Trotsky. Rather it is an attempt to provide a readable account of
who was undoubtedly one of the leading figures of the Russian
Revolution, if not the key individual in its immediate survival.
Service has produced a narrative, as it says on the tin, "a
biography". No more, no less. So we get his family, early
background, exile (Siberia), more exile (Britain), return in 1905,
more exile (Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, USA), return in
1917 - revolution - civil war - struggle inside the post Lenin
party, banishment, exile (Turkey, Norway and finally Mexico); his
assassination comes abruptly and without much fanfare.
In between all this Service weaves in his relations with the other
revolutionaries and builds up the character of this itinerant
revolutionary amongst the key stages in his passage through life.
His relations with his entrepreneurial peasant father, the emergence
of his obvious gifts as orator and writer (Service compares him in
this respect with Winston Churchill), his role in the party schisms
before 1917 and his apparent inability to win close, trusting
friends within the party as a consequence of his arrogance and
perceptions of self righteousness.
He gets closest perhaps to Lenin after mid 1917. But then of course
Lenin dies and the bottom falls out of Trotsky's political world.
Service shows clearly the misjudgements of Trotsky in this period -
again down to arrogance. Stalin is despised and fatally underated as
uncouth, brutal (this from the man who showed so little compassion
to opponents in the civil war - even if they were card carrying
communists), a non intellectual. as a result Trotsky is forced into
exile again.
In reality Trotsky is remembered for his role in a mere 7 year
period, 1917-24, of Russian history. The key events of this period
are told clearly - but with Trotsky as the focus: in Oct/Nov, at
Brest litovsk waiting for a German revolution, criss crossing the
old tsarist Empire on his battle train to win the civil war, another
example of politician turned highly professional (and brutal)
military commander. This tends to reduce his influence on other
internal policies, giving space to Stalin and also allowing the
other Bolshevik leaders to fear him as a new Bonaparte: heir to a
revolution and the head of an army.
Implicit throughout the second part of the biography is a comparison
with Stalin, and the question: what if Trotsky had succeeded Lenin
rather than Stalin? Unfortunately, despite all Trotsky wrote so
eloquently about from outside the Soviet Union there would have been
little difference. Trotsky had already shown he could ignore legal
niceties and be ruthless when dealing with perceived opponents. His
campaigns showed he had little inclination to spare the wealthier,
kulak peasants. Nor despite later protestations in exile was he a
believer in proletarian democracy. In reality Stalin's 5 Year Plans
drew heavily from Trotsky's post NEP ideas. As for foreign
involvement Trotsky was little concerned with foreign nations where
Russian (revolutionary) interests were threatened shown by his
keenness to go to war with Poland. The final chapter is a little
more explicit in drawing out this depressing conclusion.
Perhaps the pace of change would have been slower, but little else
would have been different.
The book is easily structured for students. Clear chapters on
specific periods issues lend itself easily for dipping in and out of
to get info. One especially valuable chapter is on his Jewishness.
It does not figure prominently according to Service but for one key
aspect: he argues that Trotsky believed despite not being a
practicing Jew, he would still be seen as such by a Russia that was
still highly antisemitic. He could never lead Russia as he would not
be respected because of his Jewish background. This prevented him
placing himself in a key leadership role until it was too late.
Trotsky deserves a new biography. The worthy Isaac Deutscher bio of
fifty years ago that launched the thousands of 60's and 70's
radicals is in need of supplementing by a post Soviet Union
approach. For the radicals this biography will unhappily remove a
great deal of the gloss, but for students of today it will get rid
of much of the dross (especially on the internet) that has followed
in the wake of the man who more than anyone else made the Russian
Revolution happen. Lenin lead the revolution, Stalin made the
revolutionary state a confident superpower that controlled half of
Europe. But it was Trotsky who masterminded the events of
October/November and enabled it to survive its birth, but in true
Soviet fashion, at considerable human cost. July '10 (*****)
Tim Tzouliadis: The Forsaken: An American
Tragedy in Stalin's Russia
The
"Forsaken" are a small group of US citizens who move and settle in
the USSR to escape the Depression and work in a society they
believed promised more than the capitalist USA in the 1930's.
Within a couple of years all goes wrong
as they get caught up (as dangerous "spies") in the 1930s Terror.
One by one they disappear and this is where their tragedy begins.
Innocents caught in Stalin's and then the NKVD's paranoia they are
siezed off the street, tortured, forced to confess then shot or sent
to the Siberian Gulags to be worked to death and vanish without
trace. Just like the anything up to 20 million other Soviets that
Tzouliadis includes in the narrative.
What is especially appalling about
these US victims is that they are disowned totally by the US. The
Embassy ignores appeals for help (In fact it fails to even protect
its own employees from disappearance. One of its key figures in the
1930's is Kennan of the containment telegram fame. He also sees
little point in pushing to help these US citizens, who are perceived
by many in officialdom as pinks and reds linked to US unionism.The lame response of FDR himself to the
tragedy of the US citizens and the failure to perceive the true
nature of the Stalin regime helps understanding of Churchills
frustration with FDR-Stalin relations at the wartime meetings. It
also provides a wider survey of the process of arrest, horrendous
Gulag conditions, execution and disappearance during not one but
three waves of Terror including US troops seized during and after
World War II and how the process came to an end of sorts.
"The Forsaken" is a valuable addition
to the work on Stalin's Russia. Perhaps it will also start to show a
wider audience that Stalin was no better than Hitler, in all
probability much worse, in creating a society that dehumanised its
members and eliminated millions. May ‘09 (*****)
Ryszard Kapuscinski: Imperium
This is a volume of essays dating from 1939 to the fall of Gorbachev
by the Polish journalist. In them, Kapuscinski writes clearly and
shows a sharp sense of observation of the workings of the Soviet
Empire as he finds it in his travels during the period. Although we
are well aware now that the former USSR was not a monolith but made
up of many different nationalities and Soviet Republics, his writing
from the 1980's from the Soviet "stans" reminds us that this was
also the case at a time when the west tended to consider the USSR as
one uniform state. In many ways the best is at the start and finish
- a masterly description of the 1939 Soviet occupation of eastern
Poland from a boys account and an analysis from the time by an
easterner of the fall of Gorbachev. Not quite history writing, but a
good resource for historical study of the period. Oct' 08. (***)
Frederick Taylor: The
Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989
An interesting narrative of the history of the Berlin Wall by
the author of Dresden. Like that earlier work much attention is given to
context (although the potted history of the pre 1961 Cold War period is
perhaps too potted). The Wall remains the focus, especially in the
1960's highlighting as it does the hypocrisy and lack of will of the
western powers and the federal republic to support their rhetoric with
action towards the east (which was probably the wise course...) But the
most satisfactory chapter is perhaps the final one with insights and
perceptions available only to a writer with a genuine affection and
knowledge of the east gained through personal association. Useful also
to anyone seeking an accessible, and general history of the GDR. One
final point - in my (hardback) edition there are a surprising number of
typos, signs perhaps of too swift editing. But why? Dec '07 (***)
Jonathan
Fenby: Alliance: The Inside Story of How Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill Won One
War and Began Another
Meticulously detailed this looks exhaustively (at times perhaps too much so
unless you are using this to research an essay!!) at the development of the WW2
alliance system. Several points emerge very clearly: that Teheran was probably
the key meeting - Yalta was a case of formalising what had already been decided.
Secondly, the emergence of Stalin as the main player with the support of FDR.
Equally it is a surprise how many of the leading US & UK participants were in
poor health, not just FDR but also many aides and military figures. As for
Churchill he seemed unable to get Gallipoli out of his system, but was right in
his postwar fears. For the publisher: why no maps? They would have been really
helpful to envisage the logistics of the meetings. A false economy. June '07
(***)
Simon Sebag Montefiore: Young Stalin
This has to be read by anyone who seriously wants to understand what made Stalin
tick. The account of his youth and formative years (up to Oct/Nov 1917) clearly
indicates the impact of growing up in the wilds of (still lawless and gangster
riddled) Georgia and the Caucasus. Sebag Montefiore's account does more though -
it explains perhaps the ease with which the USSR slid into oligarchy and
lawlessness in the 1990's - because of a general underlying tradition of
violence, but also the dangers of faith schools and the risks of encarcerating
enemies of the state in similar places. Stalin? More educated and culturally
rounded than I had thought, but presents as not a pleasant character at all -
easy to understand his purges and ruthlessness as later USSR leader. Equally
repugnant seemed to be his inclination towards impregnating teenage girls at
least half his age - one of whom was only 13, (he was in his 30's......) Very
readable nonetheless. May '07 (****)
Anonymous:
A Woman in Berlin
This diary, written by a Berlin woman in her 30's during the fall of Berlin
illustrates clearly and forcefully the real meaning of defeat. Interesting
asides on the nature of the Russian conquerors: raised in a society where they
received but could not choose they had little concept of "value", even of booty.
Most of all it reveals the commonplace nature & acceptance of rape or of
attaching oneself to an Ivan lover - for protection and survival. A very human
diary of survival in year zero. Sept '06 (****)
Giles MacDonogh: After the Reich - from the fall of
Vienna to the Berlin Airlift Any modern writer of post war Germany who mentions the names of Hajo
Holborn and Michael Balfour in the first few pages clearly has done their
reading. This book fills in the gap left in many English language histories of
postwar central Europe: from the actual end of war and its immediate impact to
the outbreak of the Cold War. Covering not just the zones of Germany, but also
Austria and the events of German speaking Europe elsewhere - the German Reich at
its largest.The initial 100 pages or so are a harrowing account of the treatment
of the
German speakers as they were invaded, occupied, looted, raped and for the
millions in the east, moved westwards. The brutality by all concerned is
meticulously documented - too much so in places - I wanted to skip on as it was
so disturbing and relentless. The Red Army is well documented by others, less so
the proportionately greater savagery of the Czechs on the Sudetenlanders
(especially grim as MacDonogh makes clear the pre 1938 Sudetenlanders were ex
Austrians, not Germans who had been unlawfully deprived of the chance at self
determination after Versailles by a nationalist Czech regime.).
Another eyeopener is the evidence that all the allies used prisoners
of war in ways similar to Speer in his use of slave labour (and often in the
face of resultant deaths). The US was especially cynical in this matter
announcing they had released all POW's in mid 1946 when in fact they released
them to be handed over to other allies: Belgium and France, for manual work. The
USSR was still returning POW's in the mid 1950's.
The early stance of the US was surprisingly tough. Outside the Soviet
Zone, the US had and maintained the hardest stance to its prisoners and civilian
population for the first 18 months. Torture seems to have been common initially
amongst all the occupiers as they sought to do the necessary and root out
Nazi's. However MacDonogh's examples indicate a direct line of war's
dehumanisation that makes treatment of Iraqi prisoners seem minor.One issue with After the Reich
is caused by its heavy reliance on documentary sources, especially memoirs. This
had meant a skew towards recounting the experiences of the better off, in
particular the womenfolk of the German/Prussian nobility. At times this leads
perhaps to a too unconsidered appreciation of the sometime self-serving
motivation of the 1944 plotters, many of whom were close to the writers of the
memoirs used.
The final sections takes a reader swiftly but clearly through the fog
of the origins of the Cold War, only after 500 pages of the aftermath analysis
what follows has a clarity lacking in the work of many other revisionist
writers. Ultimately the emergence of the postwar west Germany is shown to be
linked closely to the creation of the European community, with Adenauer
consciously supporting a pro western & French future, even if it, as suggested,
meant sacrificing the old historic Prussian, socialist and protestant eastern,
(and at the time more slavic influenced) provinces of the old Reich.
Since the Wende, this has
been a topic occupying the history shelves of most German bookshops. MacDonogh
has done English readers a service with this account. The underlying sentiment
is that this book records the consequences of the far greater evil perpetrated
on others by the Germans - a feeling that many of those recorded reflect,
despite their misery. It is not surprising that with the opening of the east
Germans have wished to document the period, nor is it surprising that Anglo-saxon
writers have shunned it for so long. May '06 (*****).
The first thing that needs saying is that despite its 500 pages plus
footnotes this is not a heavy write, full of the dialectics of
marxism/leninism/trotskyism/stalinism and all the shades in between
that the period produced. This will probably disappoint the
theoreticans and activists of the left hoping for new insights into
Trotsky. Rather it is an attempt to provide a readable account of
who was undoubtedly one of the leading figures of the Russian
Revolution, if not the key individual in its immediate survival.
Service has produced a narrative, as it says on the tin, "a
biography". No more, no less. So we get his family, early
background, exile (Siberia), more exile (Britain), return in 1905,
more exile (Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, USA), return in
1917 - revolution - civil war - struggle inside the post Lenin
party, banishment, exile (Turkey, Norway and finally Mexico); his
assassination comes abruptly and without much fanfare.
Imperialism
Latin America
Middle East
Russia/USSR
Single
Party States
The Cold War
Women's
History
English
Civil War
Young casahistoria
Teachers' pages
