Revolution! Writings from Russia, 1917

Commemorating the October 2017 centenary of the Russian Revolution, an anthology of wide-ranging voices and scholarship throw fresh light on this momentous historical event.  The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the crucial moments of the twentieth century, and passionately fought over by those on all sides of the political spectrum.

Revolution! contains writing by Russians and by foreigners who went to Russia and for whom the Russian Revolution was a political litmus test. The themes—hunger and heating, the limits of personal freedom, the infallibility of the party, free love, the role of art in the revolution—dominated twentieth century intellectual life and continue to resonate today. Many books on the Russian Revolution will be published in the centenary year, but Revolution! will be unique in portraying this momentous event through the writings of those who witnessed it (or its immediate after-effects).

Following No Man’s Land and No Pasaran, it is an anthology that vividly portrays the many sides of an event that changed the course of world history—and is still contested today.

“Leninists, Bolsheviks, anarchists and communists, thugs, registered housebreakers – what a muddle! What a Satanic vinaigrette! What immense work – to raise once more and cleanse from all this garbage the great idea of socialism.” —Teffi