Suggest Books

This movie was based on John Reed's work "Ten days that shook the world". That would be an obvious choice.

"Romantic Revolutionary"

"The Russian Revolution - a People's Tragedy" by Orlando Figes. If that's too long for you - it's over 800 pages - try his other book "Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991"

And if you want to know anything about the Russian involvement in WWI, try Norman Stone's seminal work "The Eastern Front, 1914-1917". There are very, very few other books in English on the subject . It's brilliant and full of surprises. It will give you very good background material on why the Russians wanted out.

Louise Bryant
Six Red Months in Russia, 1918

John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World needs to be echoed here. It's one of the most brilliant pieces of journalism from any era.

The most definitive sources for the 1917 revolution through the early Stalinist period all come from Leon Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution, The Permanent Revolution, The Revolution Betrayed. The greatest Trotsky biographer and factchecker, and one is needed to keep the accounts honest, is Isaac Deutscher, whose 3-volume work on Trotsky, The Prophet, I highly recommend above all else.

I have heard good things about the Figes book already mentioned, but I have not yet read it.


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