The Russian Revolution: From Tsarism to Bolshevism

In English, there aren't all that many works available on the Russian Civil War. Partly this is due to the overshadowing preludes of the Great War, as well as the towering giant across the way, what would become the infamous East Front between National Socialist Germany and the International Sociali......more

This is a decent book which purports to offer a new analysis of the ‘Russian’ civil wars – that the territory of the former Russian Empire underwent a series of civil wars beginning in 1916 and ending in 1926, both ends incidentally in Muslim central Asia, and that some conflicts today are the resul......more

An excellent book in the "Russian Civil Wars" which is just on the right side of being accessible to someone who has scant knowledge of these wars. The reason for only four stars is due to the 107 pages of notes which accompany the book. There is enough interesting information within these notes to h......more

Really loved this book. The arch, very British, writing style may be a bit much for some. And others may need to consult Wikipedia alongside in order to keep up with all the characters. But I thought it was both a really fascinating overview of the birth of the USSR and a good theoretical work on wh......more

This is a big book and it deals with a huge topic. If it were to be truly comprehensive, then given the level of detail from Smele, it would have been absolutely ginormous. Hence aspects such as the various interventionist forces are largely treated as irrelevant to the main thrust (Russian Roulette......more