Richard Pipes - The Russian Revolution

Masterful and timely [Pipess] history blends uncannily with todays headlines. A brilliantly focused portrait.

Newsweek

Pipess compellingly written account is a masterful culmination of his lifelong investigations of the revolutionary period.

Newsday

A truly impressive piece of scholarship A fascinating treatise, certain to become the basic research text on the subject.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Panoramic The first attempt in any language to offer a comprehensive study of the Russian Revolution Pipes is not a mere communicator of facts but a philosopher examining the deeper, broader trends beneath the surface of history.

San Francisco Chronicle

Like his illustrious predecessor among students of revolutions, Alexis de Tocqueville, Pipes has a broad, sweeping view. An imposing achievement His craftsmanship as a writer serves him well.

Boston Globe

Pipes is an extremely knowledgeable and careful historian. This is probably the best overall study of those momentous events a good, important book.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

ALSO BY RICHARD PIPES

The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 191723 (1964)

Struve: Liberal on the Left, 18701905 (1970)

Russia under the Old Regime (1974)

Struve: Liberal on the Right, 19051944 (1980)

Survival Is Not Enough (1984)

Russia Observed (1989)

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, DECEMBER 1991

Copyright 1990 by Richard Pipes
Maps copyright 1990 by Bernhard H. Wagner

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1990.

Owing to limitations of space, acknowledgment of permission to reprint previously published material will be found on .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pipes, Richard.
The Russian Revolution/Richard Pipes.1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1990.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78857-3
1. Soviet UnionHistoryRevolution, 19171921.
2. Soviet UnionHistoryNicholas II, 18941917. I. Title.

[DK265.P474 1991]
947.084 I dc20 91-50008

v3.1

To the victims

1. Lenin, March 1919. VAAP, Moscow.

. Nicholas II and family shortly before outbreak of World War I. Brown Brothers.

. Viacheslav Plehve.

. Remains of Plehves body after terrorist attack.

. Prince P. D. Sviatopolk-Mirskii.

. Governor Fullon visits Father Gapon and his Assembly of Russian Workers.

. Bloody Sunday.

. Paul Miliukov. The Library of Congress.

. Sergei Witte. The Library of Congress.

. Crowds celebrating the proclamation of the Manifesto of October 17, 1905.

. After an anti-Jewish pogrom in Rostov on Don. Courtesy of Professor Abraham Ascher.

. Members of St. Petersburg Soviet en route to Siberian exile: 1905.

. The future Nicholas II as tsarevich. Courtesy of Mr. Marvin Lyons.

. Dancing class at Smolnyi Institute, c. 1910. Courtesy of Mr. Marvin Lyons.

. Russian peasants: late nineteenth century. The Library of Congress.

. Village assembly. Courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

. Peasants in winter clothing.

. Strip farming as practiced in Central Russia, c. 1900.

. L. Martov and T. Dan.

. Ivan Goremykin.

. P. A. Stolypin: 1909. M. P. Bok Papers, Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

. Right-wing Duma deputies.

. General V. A. Sukhomlinov. The Illustrated London News.

. Nicholas II at army headquarters: September 1914.

. Russian prisoners of war taken by the Germans in Poland: Spring 1915. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London.

. General A. Polivanov. VAAP, Moscow.

. Alexandra Fedorovna and her confidante, Anna Vyrubova.

. Alexander Protopopov.

. Rasputin with children in his Siberian village.

. International Womens Day in Petrograd, February 23, 1917. VAAP, Moscow.

. Crowds on Znamenskii Square, Petrograd. The Library of ongress.

. Mutinous soldiers in Petrograd: February 1917. VAAP, Moscow.

. Petrograd crowds burning emblems of the Imperial regime: February 1917. The Illustrated London News.

. Arrest of a police informer. Courtesy of Mr. Marvin Lyons.

. Workers toppling the statue of Alexander III in Moscow (1918).

. Provisional Committee of the Duma. The Library of Congress.

. Troops of the Petrograd garrison in front of the Winter Palace.

. A sailor removing an officers epaulettes. VAAP, Moscow.

. K. A. Gvozdev. Slavic and Baltic Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

. Soldier section of the Petrograd Soviet. The Library of Congress.

. Executive Committee (Ispolkom) of the Petrograd Soviet. Slavic and Baltic Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

. Prince G. Lvov.

. Alexander Kerensky.

. N. D. Sokolov drafting Order No. 1: March 1, 1917.

. Political meeting at the front: Summer 1917. Niva, No. 19 (1917).

. Grand Duke Michael.

. Officer candidates (iunkers) parading in Petrograd: March 1917.

. Ex-Tsar Nicholas at Tsarskoe Selo, March 1917, under house arrest. The Library of Congress.

. Leonid Krasin.

. Lenin: Paris 1910.

. Kerensky visiting the front: summer 1917. Courtesy Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

. Russian soldiers fleeing Germans: July 1917. The Daily Mirror (London).

. The July 1917 events.

. P. N. Pereverzev. Niva, No. 19 (1917).

. The Palace Square in Petrograd after the suppression of the Bolshevik putsch.

. Mutinous soldiers of the 1st Machine Gun Regiment disarmed: July 5, 1917. VAAP, Moscow.

. Leon Trotsky.

. General Lavr Kornilov.

. Kornilov feted on his arrival at the Moscow State Conference.

. Vladimir Lvov.

. N. V. Nekrasov.

. Soldiers of the Wild Division meet with the Luga Soviet.

. The Military-Revolutionary Committee (Milrevkom).

. Grigorii Zinoviev. Slavic and Baltic Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

. L. B. Kamenev. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London.

. N. I. Podvoiskii.

. Cadets (iunkers) defending the Winter Palace: October 1917.

. The Winter Palace, after being seized and looted by the Bolsheviks. VAAP, Moscow.

. The Assembly Hall in Smolnyi.

. Cadets defending the Moscow Kremlin: November 1917. VAAP, Moscow.

. Fires burning in Moscow during battle between loyal and Bolshevik forces: November 1917. VAAP, Moscow.

. Iakov Sverdlov.

. Latvians guarding Lenins office in Smolnyi. State Museum of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Leningrad.