I (a high school junior) am working on designing my own curriculum for an independent study on the Russian Revolution. My supervising teacher is helping but expects me to find much of my material. The only problem is I am entirely unsure where to start looking. I've found some basic outline pieces but I completely lack anything in depth. Are there any books that are an absolute must read? I'm covering the span of forty seven or so years from 1880 (tsar Alexander III taking the throne) to 1927, when Stalin consolidated his power. Any and all help would be sincerely appreciated. Thank you.
I would recommend Trotsky's "History of the Russian Revolution". It might be too long and dense for high school level study, but it is definitely one of the best histories written on the subject. It is written by one of the main participants in the Revolution.
It gets very in depth about the motivations and interactions the many different factions and institutions in Russia at the time. Too often people oversimplify the situation into "Reds" and "Whites", when there was a bewildering array of different factions, including Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Social Democratic Party, two factions of Social Revolutionaries, Ukrainian anarchists, Black Hundreds, Kadets, the officer class, the rank and file soldiers, peasantry, industrial workers, liberal intellectuals, not to mention the various foreign governments who got involved.
It should be taken with a grain of salt because it is written as political propaganda by a man with an axe to grind, but Trotsky does a very good job of sorting out all this information and presenting a narrative that gives a good feeling of the day to day details of the revolution, while illustrating the relationship between small details and large historical theme.
Edit: free online version http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/index.htm
I cross posted this to /r/homeworkhelp as well.
Orlando Figes' A People's Tragedy is very good, in my opinion.