THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, By Ayse Dietrich^*, Published by: Bloomsbury Academic, Edited by Geoffrey Swain and Charlotte Alston, Michael Hickey, Boris Kolonitskii, Franziska Schedewie, Year of Publishing: 2023. Subject Area: Soviet Union, Russian Revolution, Book Type: Russian History and Politics. Total Number of Pages: 645. ISBN: 978-1-3502-4313-2, hardback, $150,77.

This book is about the Russian Revolution consists of a collection of articles that present a broad picture of the Russian Revolution. This collaborative work is composed of six chapters and thirty articles.

The first section, Political Crises includes six article. With the October manifesto of 1905, the Duma was established as a single parliamentary body with significant power. In the first article of this section, Peter Waldron stresses the Duma crisis during WWI, how the Duma was disregarded during the war, why the Tsarist regime reduced the Duma’s powers and the reasons why the Duma had failed to play a central role in the political crises and why it was dissolved multiple times. The author also talks about the emergence of autonomous public organizations as a social and political force during the war coordinated by the zemstvo and municipal councils, increasing impact of these organizations in a state that traditionally controlled all the activities of groups that were independent of government.  

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa talks about  the February Revolution that was the combination of two revolts: the revolt of masses of workers and soldiers/sailors against the regime (revolution below) and the revolt of the liberal elite against tsarist autocracy, and two groups of leaders, first, leaders associated with various socialist parties, and second, liberals in the State Duma, who shared little social and political common ground with the insurgents, how socialist leaders and the Duma liberals acted mostly in cooperation. The author provides detailed explanation on the revolution below and the revolution above and states that “The revolution from below – the insurgency by the workers and the soldiers – provided the foundation color on the canvass, but the final painting was drawn by the revolution above”.

Ian Thatcher examines the Provisional Government and the Soviets, and explains the reasons why the Provisional Government failed by keeping Russia in the war, the appearance of the popular revolution in the form of the soviets, economic breakdown and military collapse. The Provisional Government had no control of the army and had to ask the Bolsheviks to help it. This made the government seem weak and made the Soviet popular, and the Provisional Government did nothing to try to end the power of the Soviets, and could not stop the inflation and the food shortages, did not distribute the land fairly, therefore the peasants began to take the lands themselves.

Anthony Heywood examines the crisis of wartime logistics of the Provisional Government and its unwillingness to end the war, its challenge of waging a two-front war among a dual enemy naval blockade that the Tsarist regime had faced. The author also discusses the problems with food and fuel deliveries and how the Provisional Government lacked any coercive authority over the railway workforce to stop that problem.

Sally Boniece examines all of the major socialist groups, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) split on the issue of revolutionary theory in 1917, and factions existed within each groups, how the Bolsheviks worked to formulate an agreement that would be acceptable to the Mensheviks and the SRs, why the Mensheviks and the SRs, hostile opponents of the Bolsheviks engaged in an armed conflict over power.

Lara Doud’s discusses the evolution of the early Soviet government, failed negotiations in coalition politics, the Bolsheviks’ full control of the congress and the establishment of one-party state.

The section Politicians and Parties, Boris Kolonitskii talks about the leader of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky who was overthrown by the Bolsheviks, his position in the Minister of War, the Kornilov affair, why Kerensky was publicly accused of trying to restore monarchy, why the left-wing and right-wing forces used negative images of Kerensky and the ‘Kerenshchina’ for their political mobilization, why some of his supporters abandoned him for his left-wing opponents and some moved to the right.

Hannu Immonen talks about Viktor Chernov who led the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), the party that won the majority of the votes in the elections for the Constituent Assembly. The author discusses why the election results and its influence on the parties, why Lenin decided to dissolve the assembly.

Barbara Allen discusses one-party rule and the hegemony of the Bolsheviks the growing confidence of the Bolshevik Party and the concerns of the government officials and moderate socialists about the Bolshevik coup and dictatorship.

Lutz Hafner examines five non-Bolshevik internationalist factions existing during war and revolution: two neo-populist groups SR-Maximalists, Left SRs and three with a purely Marxist background Menshevik-Internationalists, Interdistrictites, Social-Democrat Internationalists and their fate.

Dmitrii Ivanov discusses the anarchist’s contribution to civil strife towards a warpath, and discuss their inclination towards violence that led to a full-scale warfare, and explores whether the anarchists were the opponents or the supporters of the Bolsheviks throughout their reign.

In the section Social Groups, Nikolai Mikhailov discusses the formation of the Russian working class, the question of workers’ peasant origins, the role of workers, factory committee movement, trade unions, workers’ struggle to establish a ‘workers’ constitution’.

Peter Fraunholtz talks about how peasants played a significant and complex role in determining the revolutionary dynamics of 1917 and explores how the local conditions shaped the revolution in the provinces, how much peasants contributed to Russia’s war effort through various forms of state mobilization of rural resources that had a tremendous impact on the Russian village.

Konstantin Tarasov talks about the mobilization of the soldiers, their conscription from the villages that created a difficult situation in the village with a severe shortage of workers, lack of food, bad living conditions in the front. He also discusses the democratization of the army in 1917, sharp rise in desertion in the army, and the construction of a new army without an elected command and without committees, the committee structures associated with democratization.

Daniel Orlovsky gives an overview of the role of the lower middle strata in the borderlands, especially in Ukraine, and how the lower middle strata played a key role both in the early days of the revolution.

Matthew Rendle discusses the importance of the nobility, other tsarist elites, officers, landowners, industrialists, property owners and the Orthodox clergy of the old regime in the February Revolution, how they welcome the revolution and their activities. The author later integrates these activities into the revolutionary narrative.

In the section Identities, Rochelle Ruthchild discusses the gender role in the revolution and states that the role of the women played during the revolution remains largely invisible in the major histories of the period. The author talks about the beginning of  the February Revolution with a women’s demonstration, the establishment of the women’s’ battalion, and the right to vote in the Constituent Assembly elections.

Siobhan Hearne examines the path of gendered revolution from the final decades of the 19th century until just after the Bolshevik’s seizure of power in October 1917, and the impact of 1917 on changing understandings of masculinity, Bolsheviks’ attitude towards patriarchal authority, and the redefinition of manhood as something achieved only through participation in military service.

Elizabeth White deals with the question of children as a ‘privileged class’ and the impact of 1917 on childhood, the new childhood identity, the top-down youth organization Komsomol that was set up to support the new Soviet state with agitation and propaganda, the spreading of communist ideas, participation in the promotion of proletarian culture, the revolutionary forms of life and culture and the problems associated with it.

Felicitas Fischer von Weikersthal discusses the Bolshevik cultural policies that included a reformulation of values and norms, fundamental changes in the way of life and a reorientation in the cultural sphere, the creation of a new Soviet and proletarian culture and thinking, the reasons for the amalgamation of old and new into a hybrid new-old Russian-Soviet culture, limitations of artistic freedom, in the early 1920s, and introduced censorship.

In the section Regions and Peoples, Franziska Schedewie and Dennis Dierks provide a historiography of the press and examines how modern print media played an important role in shaping the Russian Revolution not only in the two capitals of Petrograd and Moscow, but also in the provinces.

Michael Hickey discusses the impact of the revolution in Smolensk province in the west of Russia, its ethnic politics popular mobilization and challenges with the state administrative authority.

Sarah Badcock looks at the situation on the Volga, to the east of Moscow, focuses on land and food use, how the revolution was experienced in the Volga countryside, population mobility and the weakening of the links between center and provinces through 1917.

Nataliya Kibita discusses the revolution in Ukraine, how national and social revolutions were linked together and how they led to contradictory outcomes, why the Central Rada failed to perform the basic function of the state to impose law and order, why the centralized administration in Ukraine was powerless during revolutionary times and why they recreated the tsarist administration.

Gero Fedtke examines the revolutionary events in Turkestan which was a colony conquered by Russia between the 1850s and 1900, how the revolts that started during the empire continued into 1917, the clash of the Turkestan Commission with Turkestan’s Muslim communists, and how  party rule kept Turkestan under central control.

In the section on The Civil War, Evan Mawdsley gives a broad  overview of the events of the civil war within three periods: 1. From October 1917 to November 1918, 2. from November 1918 to March 1920 and 3. from April to November 1920.

Murray Frame discusses the early Soviet order between 1918 and1921, challenges of the Red home front, foreign intervention, the consolidation of power, the centralized party-state, the challenges of the reconstruction of the state, cultural transformation and the new economic policy - war communism.

Nikolaus Katzer examines the White home front and the challenges that they met in uniting centrifugal forces to defeat the Bolsheviks and to reconquer the center, and the difficulties the Whites had to face on the periphery.

Geoffrey Swain questions why Russian Marxists believed in a world revolution, why it was essential for the survival of a socialist revolution in Russia, why Lenin signed the treaty of Brest Litovsk, and why the Russian revolution remained isolated.

Charlotte Alston gives a summary of the revolution by 1921 after the Civil War ended, Soviet nationality policy, revolutionary experience across the vast territory of the Russian Empire, and the importance of local economic and social conditions in shaping the development of the revolution.

This scholarly book composed of many articles that provides a broad picture the Russian Revolution and shed light on many political developments allowing reader to follow the course of events from the start.