Practice of History: Russian Revolution

With powerful, often shocking immediacy, the 317 posters reproduced and discussed in this volume document the political and military conflicts of our century. These works reveal their meaning most clearly when we do not relegate them to the function of illustrating a text or see them merely as specimens of the applied arts, but take them seriously as unique combinations of historical witness and aesthetic object. Drawn from Russia, Central and Western Europe, and the United States, from the turn of the century to the aftermath of the Second World War, the posters form a bridge between the claims of ideology and the state on the one hand and the support or submission of millions of men and women on the other. How can men be persuaded to fight for their party or country, and how can women be convinced to enter the workforce in wartime and retreat to the home when their men return? How can women be brought to believe that losing their husbands and sons is a noble sacrifice? Where can money be found to pay for the costs of the war and of reconstruction? Are guilt, compassion, and fear sufficient to bind the homefront to the fighting men? What is the most effective way to dehumanize the enemy, whether foreign or domestic? These are some of the issues that the posters in this volume lay bare and begin to explain. Together text and image open fresh perspectives on half a century of war, revolution, and renewed war, and point toward a new kind of integrative history. Except for seven posters, the images in this book are from the archives of the Hoover Institution on War, Peace and Revolution at Stanford University. Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Herbert Hoover began to collect documents, including posters, from the warring powers. He laid the foundation for one of the world's great poster collections, now consisting of some 75,000 posters as well as of nearly 40,000 proclamations and other purely typographical announcements.

This new collection of documents helps students understand the complex texture of Russian public rhetoric and popular debate during World War I and the 1917 Revolution. How better to understand history than through the words of those who lived it? Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution: Fighting Words presents documents that underscore the extraordinary richness of public discussion about key events and issues during the 1917 Russian Revolution, one of the pivotal events in modern history. Carefully edited and annotated, the documents help clarify the issues while revealing the broad range of ways in which Russians understood the events unfolding around them. Focusing on public rhetoric and debate in Russia from the outbreak of World War I in 1914 through the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, the documents present the views not only of key political figures, but also of ordinary men and women--mothers, soldiers, factory workers, peasants, students, businesspeople, and educated professionals. More than 300 original documents from the national and local press and from unpublished provincial archival materials, all carefully edited and annotated and either translated into English for the first time or presented in new translations A chronology of major events in Russia for the period from summer 1914 to mid-January 1918 Cartoons that appeared in the national and local press in 1917 A map of Russia in 1917 showing the locations of important cities and geographical features

This book presents for the first time in English a collection of previously unpublished Menshevik documents from the Hoover Institution Archives. It draws a dramatic picture of the Russian Civil War and the establishment of the communist dictatorship as witnessed by the Russian Social Democrats, or Mensheviks. When the opposing Bolsheviks consolidated their power to emerge as the ruling party of the 1917 revolution, the Mensheviks' political influence was swept away and most were driven to exile. This collection is a mosaic of small pictures, specific situations, and tragedies that combine to form a large picture of conflict, struggle, and repression. It depicts the everyday reality of the Bolshevik dictatorship and shows the formation of the new mentality of communist rulers and their new relationship with the workers--how unquestioning obedience, military discipline, and intolerance replaced the free-wheeling multiparty competition of 1917.

Russia's experiences during the Civil War determined the framework within which the Russian people were governed during the Soviet period. This book explores episodes which highlight the complexities of this multi-faceted struggle.

A. B. Murphy uses translated documents from Russian archives to give fresh insight into the Russian civil war, a struggle whose outcome defined much of the history of our time. Areas covered include Soviet relations with the Don Cossacks, the problems of securing supplies for the Red Army, the issue of disloyalty of the two successful cavalry commanders, Colonel Mironov and Sergeant Budyonny, as well as a selection of documents from White sources.

Upon his arrival in Petrograd in 1919, Victor Serge--the great chronicler of the Russian Revolution--found a society nearly shattered by civil war. In these essays he sketches a portrait of the darkest hours faced by the fledgling revolution, defending the new regime against its critics.

"Although much has been written about the political history of the Russian revolution, the human story of what the revolution meant to ordinary people has rarely been told. This book gives voice to the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of the Russian people - workers, peasants, soldiers - as expressed in their own words during the vast political, social, and economic upheavals of 1917." "The documents in the volume include letters from individuals to newspapers, institutions, or leaders; collective resolutions and appeals; and even poetry. Selected from the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, nearly all the texts are published here for the first time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved