the military, police, etc. We’re Celebrating Our 10th Anniversary. About Richard Pipes. Richard Pipes was a prominent scholar of Russian history at Harvard for nearly half a century. There is a constant emphasis on the role of the non-Russian nationalities during the civil war, to such an extent that the book could have been more honestly called "The non-Russian Revolution", Russians being a passive lot upon whom revolution in Pipes account is visited by Czechs, Estonians and Latvians upon Russia, all of whom were using revolution to achieve national independence . Refresh and try again. surly cold warrior laments the death of the royal family. But Pipes was and is from the hysterical school of anti-Communism, and that bias thoroughly permeates his work and measurably weakens it. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. “In my own historical writing, my central interest has always been to determine the mindset of the principle actors and then to demonstrate how it influenced their behavior.” The corollary to this method was the “sharp distinction” he drew between “educated Russians and the population at large.”. Richard Pipes on Firing Line with William F. Buckley. Richard Pipes Quotes The Empire was traditionally run by a bureaucracy and a gentry, after 1880 reinforced by a political-police organization. Blows away many myths about the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. Dr. This five star review is with serious reservations. The biggest surprise for me was the detailed story of how the Bolsheviks crushed all the other socialist groups (Soviet Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Left SRs, etc) until they alone remained in power. Richard Pipes’ book seemed like a reasonable place to start dabbling with this subject. Born in Poland, Richard Pipes fled the country with his family when Germany invaded it in 1939. The best account of the Russian Revolution--its fervor and its madness--that I have read. Be the first to ask a question about The Russian Revolution. After reaching the United States a year later, Pipes began his education at Muskingum College, which was interrupted in 1943 when he was drafted into the Army Air Corps and sent to Cornell to study Russian. No one can claim to be well informed concerning this issue without having read Pipes. For historians of the left even to raise the question of affinities between Soviet Communism and ‘Fascism’ is tantamount to conceding the possibility of a causal relationship. The Cold War “enlists everyone and calls upon everyone to assume his part” and “the historian is no freer from this obligation than the physicist,” implored the head of the American Historical Association. But […]. This was certainly not light reading. Harvard Institute for International Development, Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory. Pipes’s admiration for vile antisemitic warlords was only comprehensible by situating his extreme conservatism as not being far removed from fascism. Born in Poland, Richard Pipes fled the country with his family when Germany invaded it in 1939. Unfortunately, however, Pipes cannot separate his political and moral revulsion from his role as an historian, and his tendentiousness mars what is otherwise a very valuable history. Kornilov’s (and Pipes’s) mass repression solution, however, reflected developments that underpinned Allied policy for the next several years. This book took a major commitment (850 pages in small print). There is a constant emphasis on the role of the non-Russian nationalities during the civil war, to such an extent that the book could have been more honestly called "The non-Russian Revolution", Russians being a passive lot upon whom revolution in Pipes account is visited by Czechs, Estonians and La. By Richard Pipes Given the pivotal significance of the Russian Revolution, we wish to provide our readers with what we feel is one of the most conicse, well researched and most thoughtful considerations of the causes of the Revolution. It is detailed to the point of tedium. Ebook Download Three " Whys" of the Russian Revolution, by Richard Pipes. The new social history by scholars such as Alexander Rabinowitch, Ronald Suny, and David Mandel had replaced the simplistic Cold War narrative by placing the actions and sentiments of ordinary workers, peasants, and soldiers at the center of the revolutionary process. A Concise History of the Russian Revolution | Richard Pipes | download | Z-Library. I knew I was in for it when it took the author 15 pages at the beginning to decide on a year that the revolution really began. Start by marking “The Russian Revolution” as Want to Read: Error rating book. In an era of brutality, class violence against the Romanovs and the wealthy was particularly galling to Pipes, though mass violence against ordinary Russians was not. As this a concise history of the russian revolution richard pipes, it ends stirring living thing one of the favored books a concise history of the russian revolution richard pipes collections that we have. To see what your friends thought of this book, This volume is both a rigorous history and critique of Communism. This political policing was a Russian invention; Russia was the first country to have two police systems, one to protect the state from its citizens, and the other to protect the citizens from each other. Pipes demolishes cherished notions the Bolsheviks enjoyed any wide support (even among fellow socialists and revolutionaries, let alone the public); untangles the Kornilov Affair; fixes firmly Lenin's establishment and reliance on terror (along with his creepy acolyte, Dzerzhinsky); and leaves the stage set for the emergence of the totalitarian machine and its natural successors, which Pipes su. A bit of a slog. A must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of communism and totalitarianism. Read More Books in 2021 with the Goodreads Reading Challenge. As Kenez suggests, “he believes that people do not want what they seemed to want, for their views and therefore their actions have been manipulated by others.” Pipes’s approach is that of an “extremely conservative man”; the only figures in The Russian Revolution not depicted as knaves or fools are the “remarkable exceptions” of General Kornilov and Nicholas II. Very long narrative history of the lead up and early stages of the Russian Revolution and civil war. Very long narrative history of the lead up and early stages of the Russian Revolution and civil war. The Russian Revolution was tragic and evil, and set the stage for modern tota. He was the director of Harvard's Russian Research Center from 1968 to 1973 and later Baird Professor Emeritus of History at Harvard University. In one of his first books, Social Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement, 1885–1897, Pipes made the astonishing summation that workers were so uninterested in socialism that a frustrated Lenin later developed the “un-Marxist” and “Blanquist” theory of “revolution from above” by intellectuals that would later guide Bolshevik practice. 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