The Bolsheviks and Britain during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-24

The Bolsheviks and Britain during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-24 PDF Author: Evgeny Sergeev
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135027352X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book analyses the principal aspects of the relations between Soviet Russia (USSR) and Britain in the crucial phase of their formation, namely the period from 1917 to 1924. Using previously unavailable and largely unknown archival records and memoirs published by statesmen, diplomats and military commanders directly involved in the events, Evgeny Sergeev not only reconstructs the dynamics of the interaction between Moscow and London, but also strips its key episodes of common myths and stereotypes. The most debatable issues, to which this study draws its primary attention, include Britain's role in the Entente armed intervention against the Bolshevik regime as well as a series of reciprocate attempts to avoid political controversies, and London's contribution to humanitarian aid and the economic recovery of post-revolutionary Russia. Special consideration is also given to the impact of British diplomacy on the recognition of the USSR by other great powers like France, Italy, and Japan in the mid-1920s.

The Bolsheviks and Britain during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-24

The Bolsheviks and Britain during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-24 PDF Author: Evgeny Sergeev
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135027352X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book analyses the principal aspects of the relations between Soviet Russia (USSR) and Britain in the crucial phase of their formation, namely the period from 1917 to 1924. Using previously unavailable and largely unknown archival records and memoirs published by statesmen, diplomats and military commanders directly involved in the events, Evgeny Sergeev not only reconstructs the dynamics of the interaction between Moscow and London, but also strips its key episodes of common myths and stereotypes. The most debatable issues, to which this study draws its primary attention, include Britain's role in the Entente armed intervention against the Bolshevik regime as well as a series of reciprocate attempts to avoid political controversies, and London's contribution to humanitarian aid and the economic recovery of post-revolutionary Russia. Special consideration is also given to the impact of British diplomacy on the recognition of the USSR by other great powers like France, Italy, and Japan in the mid-1920s.

The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution

The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution PDF Author: Lara Douds
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350117927
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
How did a regime that promised utopian-style freedom end up delivering terror and tyranny? For some, the Bolsheviks were totalitarian and the descent was inevitable; for others, Stalin was responsible; for others still, this period in Russian history was a microcosm of the Cold War. The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution reasons that these arguments are too simplistic. Rather, the journey from Bolshevik liberation to totalitarianism was riddled with unsuccessful experiments, compromises, confusion, panic, self-interest and over-optimism. As this book reveals, the emergence (and persistence) of the Bolshevik dictatorship was, in fact, the complicated product of a failed democratic transition. Drawing on long-ignored archival sources and original research, this fascinating volume brings together an international team of leading scholars to reconsider one of the most important and controversial questions of 20th-century history: how to explain the rise of the repressive Stalinist dictatorship.

History's Greatest Heist

History's Greatest Heist PDF Author: Sean McMeekin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300152795
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
How Lenin’s regime turned Russia’s priceless cultural patrimony into armored cars, trains, planes, and machine guns Historians have never resolved a central mystery of the Russian Revolution: How did the Bolsheviks, despite facing a world of enemies and leaving nothing but economic ruin in their path, manage to stay in power through five long years of civil war? In this penetrating book, Sean McMeekin draws on previously undiscovered materials from the Soviet Ministry of Finance and other European and American archives to expose some of the darkest secrets of Russia’s early days of communism. Building on one archival revelation after another, the author reveals how the Bolsheviks financed their aggression through astonishingly extensive thievery. Their looting included everything from the cash savings of private citizens to gold, silver, diamonds, jewelry, icons, antiques, and artwork. By tracking illicit Soviet financial transactions across Europe, McMeekin shows how Lenin’s regime accomplished history’s greatest heist between 1917 and 1922 and turned centuries of accumulated wealth into the sinews of class war. McMeekin also names names, introducing for the first time the compliant bankers, lawyers, and middlemen who, for a price, helped the Bolsheviks launder their loot, impoverish Russia, and impose their brutal will on millions.

The Great Game, 1856–1907

The Great Game, 1856–1907 PDF Author: Evgeny Sergeev
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press / Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9781421415574
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Great Game sheds new light on Asia’s political influence on Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL The Great Game, 1856–1907 presents a new view of the British-Russian competition for dominance in Central Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Evgeny Sergeev offers a complex and novel point of view by synthesizing official collections of documents, parliamentary papers, political pamphlets, memoirs, contemporary journalism, and guidebooks from unpublished and less studied primary sources in Russian, British, Indian, Georgian, Uzbek, and Turkmen archives. His efforts amplify our knowledge of Russia by considering the important influences of local Asian powers. Ultimately, this book disputes the characterization of the Great Game as a proto–Cold War between East and West. By relating it to other regional actors, Sergeev creates a more accurate view of the game’s impact on later wars and on the shape of post–World War I Asia.

Year One of the Russian Revolution

Year One of the Russian Revolution PDF Author: Victor Serge
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608462676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
Brimming with the honesty and passionate conviction for which he has become famous, Victor Serge's account of the first year of the Russian Revolution--through all of its achievements and challenges--captures both the heroism of the mass upsurge that gave birth to soviet democracy, and the crippling circumstances that began to chip away at its historic gains. Year One of the Russian Revolution is Serge's attempt to defend the early days of the revolution against those, like Stalin, who would claim its legacy as justification for the repression of dissent within Russia.

America's Secret War against Bolshevism

America's Secret War against Bolshevism PDF Author: David S. Foglesong
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469611139
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
From the Russian revolutions of 1917 to the end of the Civil War in 1920, Woodrow Wilson's administration sought to oppose the Bolsheviks in a variety of covert ways. Drawing on previously unavailable American and Russian archival material, David Foglesong chronicles both sides of this secret war and reveals a new dimension to the first years of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Foglesong explores the evolution of Wilson's ambivalent attitudes toward socialism and revolution before 1917 and analyzes the social and cultural origins of American anti-Bolshevism. Constrained by his espousal of the principle of self-determination, by idealistic public sentiment, and by congressional restrictions, Wilson had to rely on secretive methods to affect the course of the Russian Civil War. The administration provided covert financial and military aid to anti-Bolshevik forces, established clandestine spy networks, concealed the purposes of limited military expeditions to northern Russia and Siberia, and delivered ostensibly humanitarian assistance to soldiers fighting to overthrow the Soviet government. In turn, the Soviets developed and secretly funded a propaganda campaign in the United States designed to mobilize public opposition to anti-Bolshevik activity, promote American-Soviet economic ties, and win diplomatic recognition from Washington.

Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904-05

Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904-05 PDF Author: Evgeny Sergeev
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134117639
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Examining Russian military intelligence in the war with Japan of 1904-05, this book, based on newly-accessible documents from the tsarist era military, naval and diplomatic archives, gives an overview of the origins, structure and performance of Russian military intelligence in the Far East at the turn of the twentieth century, investigating developments in strategic and tactical military espionage, as well as combat renaissance. It provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the role of military intelligence in the years immediately preceding the First World War, by comparing the Russian military secret services to those of the other great powers, including Britain, Germany, France and Japan.

The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution PDF Author: Sean McMeekin
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 046509497X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
A “powerful revisionist history” (Times UK) illuminating the tensions and transformations of the Russian Revolution In The Russian Revolution, acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin traces the events which ended Romanov rule, ushered the Bolsheviks into power, and introduced Communism to the world. Between 1917 and 1922, Russia underwent a complete and irreversible transformation. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Tsarist regime in the middle of World War I, the Bolsheviks staged a hostile takeover of the Russian Imperial Army, promoting mutinies and mass desertions of men in order to fulfill Lenin's program of turning the "imperialist war" into civil war. By the time the Bolsheviks had snuffed out the last resistance five years later, over 20 million people had died, and the Russian economy had collapsed so completely that Communism had to be temporarily abandoned. Still, Bolshevik rule was secure, owing to the new regime's monopoly on force, enabled by illicit arms deals signed with capitalist neighbors such as Germany and Sweden who sought to benefit-politically and economically-from the revolutionary chaos in Russia. Drawing on scores of previously untapped files from Russian archives and a range of other repositories in Europe, Turkey, and the United States, McMeekin delivers exciting, groundbreaking research about this turbulent era. The first comprehensive history of these momentous events in two decades, The Russian Revolution combines cutting-edge scholarship and a fast-paced narrative to shed new light on one of the most significant turning points of the twentieth century.

History of the Russian Revolution

History of the Russian Revolution PDF Author: Leon Trotsky
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1931859450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 994

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Book Description
"During the first two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months later the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little known to anybody when the year began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to power. You will not find another such sharp turn in history especially if you remember that it involves a nation of 150 million people. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you think of them, deserve study." --Leon Trotsky, from History of the Russian Revolution Regarded by many as among the most powerful works of history ever written, this book offers an unparalleled account of one of the most pivotal and hotly debated events in world history. This book reveals, from the perspective of one of its central actors, the Russian Revolution's profoundly democratic, emancipatory character. Originally published in three parts, Trotsky's masterpiece is collected here in a single volume. It serves as the most vital and inspiring record of the Russian Revolution to date. "[T]he greatest history of an event that I know." --C. L. R. James "Justly celebrated as a towering, vivid, historically vital work." --China Miéville, October "In Trotsky all passions were aroused, but his thought remained calm and his vision clear.... His involvement in the struggle, far from blurring his sight, sharpens it.... The History is his crowning work, both in scale and power and as the fullest expression of his ideas on revolution. As an account of a revolution, given by one of its chief actors, it stands unique in world literature." --Isaac Deutscher

The "Russian" Civil Wars, 1916-1926

The Author: Jonathan Smele
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190613491
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 571

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Book Description
This volume offers a comprehensive and original analysis and reconceptualisation of the compendium of struggles that wracked the collapsing Tsarist empire and the emergent USSR, profoundly affecting the history of the twentieth century. Indeed, the reverberations of those decade-long wars echo to the present day - not despite, but because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which re-opened many old wounds, from the Baltic to the Caucasus. Contemporary memorialising and 'de-memorialising' of these wars, therefore form part of the book's focus, but at its heart lie the struggles between various Russian political and military forces which sought to inherit and preserve, or even expand, the territory of the tsars, overlain with examinations of the attempts of many non-Russian national and religious groups to divide the former empire. The reasons why some of the latter were successful (Poland and Finland, for example), while others (Ukraine, Georgia and the Muslim Basmachi) were not, are as much the author's concern as are explanations as to why the chief victors of the 'Russian' Civil Wars were the Bolsheviks. Tellingly, the work begins and ends with battles in Central Asia - a theatre of the 'Russian' Civil Wars that was closer to Mumbai than it was to Moscow.