Book Review: Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921

Antony Beevor's Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921 is a dramatic survey of one of the most shocking and brutal events of the 20th century - the collapse of the Tsarist autocracy and its replacement by violent zealots determined to reshape the world. 

 

Who is Antony Beevor?

Antony Beevor is an internationally renowned and sometimes controversial British military historian who has written a number of books, including Stalingrad, The Fall of Berlin, and The Battle for Spain, among a number of others.  Interestingly, Beevor had been a tank commander in the British army before deciding to leave and write full-time.

In some countries where his work has been published, his books have generated considerable controversy and even bans. For example, both Russians and Ukrainians took exception to his portrayal of their respective military's actions during the battle of Stalingrad. There was much discussion of the brutality of combatants, including the executions of civilians. However, Beevor's unwillingness to cover up the atrocities of war is one of the reasons why he has become such an important historian.  

He has received numerous awards and honours, including the Pritzker Military Museum & Library's Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement, and he was made a Knight Bachelor in 2017. His list of awards is too long to discuss here.

Beevor's popularity also stems from his highly narrative style. He is first and foremost engaged in telling the story of the events and he shares the perspectives of those involved, whether leaders and generals, soldiers or civilians.  He uses very few footnotes on the pages, and generally his writing is compelling and, in many ways, compelling storytelling.

Still, his work is well researched and solid from an academic perspective, so if you are more academically oriented then no fears on that front.

 

Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921

Beevor's general thesis is that Bolsheviks succeeded because of their single-minded determination and willingness to do whatever was necessary in the cause. The fledgling communist government used whatever tools were available, signed treaties with enemies, relied on tsarist experts, and relentlessly deployed terror against its enemies. For Lenin, it was by any means necessary.

However, the disparate forces arrayed against the Bolsheviks, often called the "Whites", were ideologically fractured, unable to agree with each other, refused to address themselves to even basic reforms or come to terms with the independence movements in areas of the old Russian Empire. 

While the book is primarily about the Russian Civil War, Beevor begins with the disasters of the eastern front that quickened the decline of the Romanov dynasty and created the revolutionary dynamic in Russia, and most importantly, in the city of Petrograd. He covers the general war fatigue within the Russian empire very well, if only briefly, and introduces the major players.

Beevor then covers the February Revolution, the Tsar's abdication and the political turmoil in Russia as the provisional government and key figures such as Kerensky attempted to stabilize the political situation while maintaining the eastern front and even attempting to take the war to the Germans. 

Beevor then describes in detail how the February Revolution came to an end with the Bolshevik coup d'état in October, which was largely bloodless compared with what was to come. Beevor shows how Lenin cynically played to working class slogans while privately revealing his single-minded focus on a Bolshevik dictatorship and displayed his view of people as devoid of value.

The collapse of the Romanov dynasty and the period of the provisional government are lightly covered by Beevor, and a reader that is new to this period might struggle with some of the background knowledge necessary to truly understand the revolutionary events, including in terms of some of the more important people, like Kerensky. Even Lenin, Trosky and Stalin receive light treatment. 

The book really gets going with the civil war as various factions of the opposition attempt to organize military opposition to the October coup. The opposition groups formed on ideological and nationalist grounds initially, but the brutal red terror employed by the Bolsheviks to put down opposition compelled many others to rebel against the commissars and their armies.

Beevor's account of the civil war closes with the defeat of the Red Army outside Warsaw and the final evacuation of white generals and some soldiers and Cossacks from the Crimea.

In terms of Beevor's treatment of the Civil War, the book reads best up to the beginning and towards the end of the Civil War period.  The Russian Civil was complicated in terms of operating armies, regions, nationalities, localized revolts, and ideological variations amongst combatants that it is very difficult to get into the nitty gritty of the conflict without things getting confusing at times. As Beevor rotated between regions and time periods, I often found myself getting lost and needing to figure out where I was in terms of the theatre of conflict.

I also found that generally there was minimal discussion about military strategy and the overall approach to prosecuting the war, whether on the red or white sides.  That said, there was a surprising amount of discussion about allied war aims connected to the intervention of western European and Japanese armies. Winston Churchill figured in this work more prominently than I would have expected.

Instead, the book focused on the conflict on the ground, the battles between the volunteer army, the Cossacks and the red army.  The description of the conflict was unlike anything I have read in connection with the civil war. Beevor covers the vicious nature of the conflict, the massacres and pogroms in civilian areas, the executions and brutal torture of combatants and no-combatants alike.  In many ways, this book harkens back to Beevor's famous history of the Battle of Stalingrad.  Here again, he does not shy away from discussing the inhumanity of the actors on all sides who participated in the cycle of atrocities committed during the conflict.  Parts of this book will not sit well with those who are sensitive.

Ultimately, this book will be most interesting for those who want to learn more about the actual fighting in the Civil War. If you are interested in the revolutionary period in Petrograd leading to the Bolshevik coup, or the main actors of the revolution such as Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin then this may not be the book for you.

 

 Check out this post for three more excellent reads on Soviet History!

 

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