Best and Worst Reads of 2004

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924, by Orlando Figes

At 824 pages of narrative, this feels like a monumental book, but it could quite clearly have been three times longer, such is the amount of information crammed into each chapter. There is nothing in the way of filler, no extraneous material, although Figes attempts to contextualize the massive social forces involved in the revolution by describing their impact on a number of individuals—Maxim Gorky, General Brusilov, Dmitry Oskin, amongst others—thereby offering some relief from what can otherwise read like a school textbook, detailing facts and figures and giving barebones accounts of events.

Figes also departs from the standard, "impartial" approach associated with textbooks by virtue of his obvious sympathy for the majority of the participants. The Tsar alone stands clearly indicted by Figes; Circumstances in Russia, as he describes them, make it clear that this was a revolution that not only had to take place but which also should have taken place. The intransigence and stupidity of the Tsar were only making matters worse. Russia's tragedy, it might be argued, was that it did not have a Tsar capable of understanding the mood of the country, a Tsar in touch with the feelings of the masses, but this is not the tragedy as Figes perceives it. Indeed, the revolution was thoroughly deserved; the tragedy was really that the circumstances of the revolution's making meant that it was destined to ruination.

Tragedy strictly defined requires some flaw in the character of the dramatis personae such that their behaviour is predisposed to self-destruction. Figes does not argue that the Russian people themselves suffered from a flaw of this sort that rendered them, for example, susceptible to authoritarianism. Rather, the tragedy arises because, at various points, the options available to the actors are so limited—by their aims, by the expectations of others, by the threats posed from outside and so on—that they have little choice but to act in such a way that even they know cannot but result in massive suffering and hardship.

For example, the decision to requisition grain from the countryside to feed the cities after a bad harvest could not but be met with resistance by the peasants. Many peasants had grain kept in storage from the previous harvest to offset the possibility of a bad harvest, but when this surplus was requisitioned too, leaving them with nothing, they were bound to regard the Bolsheviks as enemies of the peasants. The Bolsheviks, for their part, suspected that the peasants were not storing grain but, rather, hiding it, which indeed they did once it became clear that the Bolsheviks would take everything they could find.

Such actions might not have been so calamitous were it not for the fact that the peasants already regarded the revolution as complete. Once the autocracy was gone, the village councils were transformed into Soviets, so that the peasants were immediately autonomous and self-sufficient: Nothing more was needed, as far as they were concerned, for the revolution to be successful. The peasant soviets represented direct democracy, farms were, if not collectivised, organised in such a way that all those running them felt they had an equal part in the community, and the differences between rich and poor peasants were negligible. For outsiders from the cities to intervene and take what they had produced seemed to them a betrayal of the revolution.

A second example: Lenin's decision to seize power from the Kerensky government before the Congress of Soviets could convene, a decision made in spite of the view that the Congress was needed to legitimise any such seizure. Lenin argued that any delay could give Kerensky time to organize repressive measures against it, but Figes argues that Lenin deliberately invented the danger of a clampdown in order to strengthen his own arguments for a pre-emptive strike. But, he observes, Lenin also had a second reason: If the transfer of power had the backing of Congress, the outcome would almost certainly have been a coalition government made up of all the Soviet parties, a "resounding political victory" for Kamenev, Lenin's archrival in the Bolshevik Party, who would have undoubtedly emerged as the central figure in a coalition of this type. Under Kamenev's direction, the centre of power would have remained with the Soviet Congress rather than with the Bolshevik Party, and Lenin ran the risk of being sidelined, whereas a Bolshevik seizure of power prior to Congress's convention would result in Lenin's domination. Thus, at a secret meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee on 10th October, the decision was taken to prepare for insurrection; Of the 21 members of the committee, only 12 were present, and the decision was passed by 10 votes to 2. Indeed, Figes points out, it was not just a coup within the government, it was also a Leninist coup within the Bolshevik Party, but what choice did Lenin have? It was dictatorship or marginalisation.

While central actors in the revolution are given their due credit, Figes does not make the mistake of imputing to them some sort of heroic status or even a "higher consciousness," a superior awareness of the situation to that of the pleb in the street. What is clear from this book is that the revolution was indeed a popular uprising that took many years to mature and develop, and that there was an inexorable logic to its unfolding given the benefit of hindsight; thus does the angel of history fly looking backwards. Not that things had to turn out the way they did, of course, but, to take the example cited earlier, to observe that were the Bolsheviks to secure power for themselves rather than with the support of the Soviet Congress, the problems faced by the society as a whole thereby change, of necessity; a civil war becomes increasingly likely, for instance, and the Bolsheviks increasingly isolated, albeit in power (I for one didn't know that half the Kronstadt Bolsheviks were so disillusioned by party rule that in the second half of 1920 they tore up their cards).

I've read few books on the revolution that have not had axes to grind. This is one of them—or at least it had no axes that I could detect. It was also the most enjoyable book I read during 2004, not a difficult honour to attain, as you can see from past reviews, as well as being the one book I would recommend everyone who has an interest in this period have a look at. Definitely well worth a read.


Tools for Conviviality, by Ivan Illich

Definitely not worth a read. A short book at 110 pages, in which Illich manages to say precisely nothing of any substance. A series of unsupported assertions leading nowhere. And to think I read this on recommendation.

Ho hum.