The sealed train: A century later, historians still disagree about what caused the Russian Revolution. Siddhartha Deb on what the Bolsheviks saw: The revolutionary imagination of 1917. How the Bolsheviks won: Alexander Rabinowitch on the Bolsheviks’ rise to power, one hundred years ago today, revisited. Patrick Iber reviews Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party by A. James McAdams (and more) and Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism by Kristen Ghodsee. Max Holleran reviews The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution by Yuri Slezkine (and more).
Mitchell Cohen on what Lenin’s critics got right. David Sessions reviews The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution by Tariq Ali. Martin Amis on Lenin’s deadly revolution. The lies we tell about Lenin: Lenin and the debates that shaped the Russian Revolution have been misunderstood by friends and foes alike. The radical experiment crushed by Stalin: An excerpt from The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution 1918-1921 by Eric Lee. How Stalin became Stalinist: Keith Gessen reviews Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 by Stephen Kotkin; and reviews Gorbachev: His Life and Times by William Taubman. Tom Gallagher reviews The New Russia by Mikhail Gorbachev.
100 years later, Bolshevism is back — and we should be worried.
