Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914–1921

Engelstein (Slavophile Empire), professor emerita of Russian history at Yale, chronicles the violence that preempted the “unprecedented and monumental” Russian Revolution and did not cease at the conclusion of the ensuing civil war, which ushered in a state that “substituted the forced mobilization of popular participation for the formal institutions of political democracy.” Social unrest in the Russian Empire predated the country’s entry into WWI. An unsuccessful war with Japan, pogroms against Jews, domestic terrorism, and the widening gulf between monarchists and the social, cultural, and economic groups “trying to lead Russia into the future” all contributed to an atmosphere of increasing instability, Engelstein writes. By the time “the old regime effectively crumbled” in February of 1917, mutinous soldiers, sailors, and workers had taken to the streets of Petrograd. The efforts of new legislative bodies, including the Duma Committee and the Soviet Executive Committee, to regain control, proved insufficient and were undermined by the Bolsheviks, who “were busy calculating the best strategy for knocking out the political center.” Engelstein delivers a clear-eyed, if dry, account of the difficulties confronting the population, now citizens of a country where “the dream of democracy had been abandoned,” and everyone was subject to the “arbitrary swing of the sword.” (Oct.)