Looking for an introduction to the Russian Revolution

by Randomname64

What would be a good account of the Russian Revolution that looks at the following:

  1. The shift from the February to October Revolution.
  2. The killing of the Tsar and its psychological and social ramifications.
  3. The psychological and social changes that the Revolution brought on its people. (I think this relates to the "New Soviet Man" but I have heard that more in relation to Stalin.)
  4. The shifting ideological goals of the various revolutionaries.
  5. The affects of the mass violence of the Russian Civil War.
kieslowskifan

The best introduction for 1917 is Sheila Fitzpatrick's The Russian Revolution. Fitzpatrick was a pioneer in applying social history to the USSR and at the time of its publication, she pushed the timeframe of the revolution to the Stalin period. Mark Steinberg's The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921 is another long chronological take on 1917. Steinberg did a good podcast interview with Sean's Russia Blog. For the revolution itself, Alexander Rabinowitch's Bolshevik trilogy (The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd, Prelude to Revolution The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising, and The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd) are both historiographically important works on 1917 and quite accessible. The anthology Revolutionary Russia: New Approaches edited by Rex Wade is a way to get at the major historical analyses put forward by leading scholars in the field of Russian/Soviet history. If you want something a little out of left field, Time and Revolution: Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions by Stephen Hanson was one of the more interesting books on the Bolsheviks I've read that grapples with the fundamental question of how both Lenin and Stalin conceived of time.

For online sources, UIUC has a Russian history reading list for PhD students with a sizable section on Revolution. Peter Holquist and Benjamin Nathan also have a rather sizable list to punish their grad students foolish enough to want to take a qualifying exam in Russian history.