REVIEWS 185 Myklebost, Kari Aga; Nielsen, Jens Petter and Rogatchevski, Andrei (eds). The Russian Revolutions of 1917: The Northern Impact and Beyond. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2020. xix + 211 pp. Notes. Figures. Bibliographies. Index. $109.00. The centenary of the Russian Revolution inspired a host of scholarly publications of various kinds that continue to appear in print. The current volume resulted from a conference that convened at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in October 2017. The volume includes twelve contributions by Russian, Norwegian, Swedish and British scholars and focuses on the ‘northern dimension’ of the Russian Revolution. The chapters discuss such diverse topics as the course of the Revolution and Civil War in Russia’s Northern region, the reception of the revolutionary events in Scandinavian countries, and the impact of the Revolution on the international relations in that part of the globe. Additional chapters focus on various other aspects and the legacy of the Russian Revolution. As almost every collected volume, this one is uneven and includes chapters of various scholarly originality. Unfortunately, the volume opens with a superficial essay by Vladislav Goldin that summarizes his 1993 book on the Allied intervention in North Russia. Almost all of his historiographic sources were published before the end of the 1970s, and it remains a mystery why the author chose ‘Contemporary Approaches and Understandings’ as the subtitle for his contribution. Other chapters, in particular those based on new documentary materials, provide a more rewarding read. Tatyana Troshina and Ekaterina Kotlova’s essay discusses the fate of foreign property in North Russia and economic relationships with Norway during the revolutionary years. The authors offer some interesting evidence about grassroots reactions to these economic contacts. For example, northern peasants strongly believed that after the Revolution forests became their own property and even tried to charge foreign entrepreneurs operating in the north for cutting ‘their’ timber for sawmills (p. 60). Such cases reveal how transnational economic relations during the revolutionary period could be shaped by very particular local interests. Reactions to the Russian Revolution in Scandinavian countries are discussed in an engaging contribution by Kari Aga Myklebost. Her subject are the Norwegian Slavist Olaf Broch’s publications in the newspaper Aftenposten during the momentous months of 1917. Broch’s enthusiasm about the liberal Provisional Government in Russia and his underestimation of the Bolsheviks resonated with many liberal Norwegians at that time. In his turn, Klas-Göran Karlsson provides a useful critical summary of Swedish-language scholarship on the effect of the Russian Revolution in Sweden. He perceptively underscores therevolution’scontradictoryimpact,as‘anticommunismandanti-Bolshevism SEER, 99, 1, JANUARY 2021 186 born out of a repudiation of the Russian Revolution is more important for Swedish political development’ than radicalization brought about by the Russian events (p. 26). A similarly balanced assessment is offered by Hallvard Tjelmeland in his regional study of the Revolution’s influence on the NorthNorwegian labour movement. The author attributes its radicalization not just to the revolutionary events in neighbouring Russia, but also to local long-term social and political conditions. Switching focus to international relations, Åsmund Egge describes Soviet diplomatic efforts in Norway and Sweden in the interwar years, and the role played by the Soviet representative Alexandra Kollontai. Particularly interesting is the discussion of Kollontai’s personal connections with some leading politicians in these countries. Ole Martin Rønning’s archival study deals with the international cadre schools in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. On the example of the Norwegian Communist Party, he reveals the heavy influence that the schools’ graduates had on the leadership of Communist parties in Scandinavia. Victoria V. Tevlina’s chapter, in turn, discusses the Russian emigration’s cultural life in Norway in the 1920s. The second part of the volume deals with the broader impact of the Revolution and is only vaguely related to the rest of the collection. Andrei Rogatchevski examines an anti-Soviet rebellion of the indigenous people of the North and its ‘remythologization’ in Aleksei Fedorchenko’s recent film, Angels of the Revolution (2014). Ekaterina Rogatchevskaia offers her reflections as lead curator on the exhibition, ‘Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths’, that was on display at the British Library...