Swain, Geoffrey A Short History of the Russian Revolution (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 373 Swain, Geoffrey. A Short History of the Russian Revolution. I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2017. xxiii + 232 pp. Illustrations. Timeline. Further reading. Notes. Index. £10.99 (paperback). The intention of the I. B. Tauris Short Histories series is to provide ‘introductions with an edge’, combining ‘informed interpretation’ with ‘factual reportage’. Geoffrey Swain’s contribution to the series certainly fulfils that remit. It is packed with factual detail, particularly about the political history of 1917 in Petrograd, and it presents a distinctive interpretation of the Russian Revolution. The main emphasis is placed upon accounting for the Bolshevik victory and subsequent consolidation of power, since, as the author states, ‘Most of the history of the twentieth century can be traced back to the events of the night of 24–25 October 1917’ (p. 1). Swain makes two salient arguments. The first is that ‘the October Revolution represented the culmination of those revolutionary ambitions first articulated by Russia’s masses during the failed 1905 Revolution’ (p. 1). He challenges the view found amongst ‘optimistic’ historians of the pre-Revolutionary years that the labour movement was reformist after 1905, arguing instead, with the ‘pessimists’, that it remained revolutionary, not least because the liberal movement consistently failed to represent its interests (for example, when it accepted ‘sham constitutionalism’ in 1905–06 at the expense of wider-ranging social reform). In this view, the February Revolution, with its seemingly fleeting prospects for a liberal outcome to the disintegration of tsarism, was an aberration in a longer-term ineluctable process. This, as Swain acknowledges, was the standard interpretation of Soviet historians, but it also echoes the work of social historians in the West who, in the 1970s and 1980s, portrayed the revolution as ‘an explosion of popular fury’ to which the Bolsheviks gave ‘political form’ (p. 3). The second main argument of the book relates to the aftermath of October. Swain argues that the roots of the one-party state are to be found in Bolshevik ideology, particularly suspicion of the peasantry. Lenin feared that Russia’s peasant majority would jeopardize the socialist revolution — which could be spearheaded only by the proletariat — by, for example, supporting a counterrevolution , as occurred after the 1848 revolution in France. This fear lay behind Lenin’s determination not to work in coalition with the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, whose support was based in the countryside, and whose position as the most popular political movement in revolutionary Russia was confirmed in the Constituent Assembly elections. The Bolshevik leader countenanced a temporary coalition with the Left SRs only because, as he saw it, they represented the ‘poorest peasants’ who might stoke class war against peasant landowners. But that coalition soon began to unravel over the Brest-Litovsk SEER, 96, 2, APRIL 2018 374 peace negotiations and the introduction of grain requisitioning in spring 1918, and the abortive Left SR uprising in July 1918 accelerated the drift towards civil war. Throughout all these developments, Lenin persistently invoked the concept of party discipline to assert his position. Ultimately, the author argues, it was this combination of discipline and ideology that led the masses ‘along an unnecessary path’ to ‘dictatorship and terror’ (p. 2). Swain makes the case for this interpretation of the revolution in a robust manner that clearly reflects his deep and detailed knowledge of the topic, and although not everyone will agree fully with his main arguments, this is a stimulating and concise introduction to some key themes. The focus is very much on the period from the February Revolution to the summer of 1918, and in this respect the book provides a more condensed chronological treatment of the revolution than has been typical in recent historiography. It can be contrasted with, for example, the growing body of scholarship that discusses 1917 as part of a broader context of uninterrupted crisis that stretched from 1914 to 1922. University of Dundee Murray Frame Chernev, Borislav. Twilight of Empire: The Brest-Litovsk Conference and the Remaking of East-Central Europe, 1917–1918. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NY and London, 2017. xx + 301 pp. Map. Illustrations. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $75.00. The latest general study on this topic before...