Hello all, I’m curious if such a book exists? I know there was a century of propaganda to sprinkle pretty large misconceptions so if there were even two fairly easily to take in accountings from opposite ends of the historical retelling spectrum, that would be fine. I saw them mentioned in a speech the other day and I really don’t want to go into it tryin to confirm or deny my opinion of that, I want to understand how on or off that statement was (and not just be told etc). I’m asking for easy read because I work a full time job, I run a full time business, and I read at a very very slow rate.
If I need to move this somewhere please let me know.
Of if someone wants to chime in on the accuracy of the American right / maga people being akin to the Bolsheviks, I’m all ears, I don’t really want to get bludgeoned with rhetoric. Hence my willingness just to read lol. Thanks boys and gals love your sub and what you do.
Not exactly what you are looking for but a classic book (1940) and extremely readable is To The Finland Station by Edmund Wilson which traces the rise of Socialist/Marxist/Bolshevik ideology from the French Revolution to the Eve of the October Revolution (I.e. Lenin’s arrival at the Finland Station in St Petersburg).
Hi there anyone interested in recommending things to OP! While you might have a title to share, this is still a thread on /r/AskHistorians, and we still want the replies here to be to an /r/AskHistorians standard - presumably, OP would have asked at /r/history or /r/askreddit if they wanted a non-specialist opinion. So give us some indication why the thing you're recommending is valuable, trustworthy, or applicable! Posts that provide no context for why you're recommending a particular podcast/book/novel/documentary/etc, and which aren't backed up by a historian-level knowledge on the accuracy and stance of the piece, will be removed.
For something on the longer side, SA Smith's Russian in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890-1928 is a good and up-to-date overview that starts with the deep roots of the revolution and continues a decade into its aftermath. I haven't personally read it but I know Smith also wrote The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, which covers some of the same material in under 200 pages.
Sheila Fitzpatrick's The Russian Revolution is an earlier, classic short introduction similar to Smith's, though it moves further into the Stalin era. Fitzpatrick is a little less sympathetic to the revolution than Smith (not a value judgement), but about as well-researched.
On the Bolsheviks themselves, Lars Lih's Lenin: Critical Lives is a good, concise biography which digs heavily into the political ethos and motivations of Bolshevism. While the others listed above focus on the broad causes and impact of the revolution across society with the Bolsheviks as just one component, Lih is useful for understanding Bolshevism itself.