{"id":1810,"date":"2017-06-04T22:30:28","date_gmt":"2017-06-04T22:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arielsheen.com\/?p=1810"},"modified":"2017-11-02T22:57:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-02T22:57:39","slug":"review-of-october-the-story-of-the-russian-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/04\/review-of-october-the-story-of-the-russian-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of &#8220;October: The Story of the Russian Revolution&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"instagram-media\" style=\"background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 658px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);\" data-instgrm-captioned=\"\" data-instgrm-version=\"7\">\n<div style=\"padding: 8px;\">\n<div style=\"background: #F8F8F8; line-height: 0; margin-top: 40px; padding: 50.0% 0; text-align: center; width: 100%;\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;\"><a style=\"color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BUp4vT8BwYr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shout out to @versobooks for choosing my contest entry to win this signed copy of #China Mi\u00e9ville&#8217;s new #book &#8220;October &#8211; The Story of the #Russian #Revolution&#8221; #bookstagram #octobersveryown #books<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;\">A post shared by Ariel Voyager (@arielvoyager) on <time style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;\" datetime=\"2017-05-28T23:28:47+00:00\">May 28, 2017 at 4:28pm PDT<\/time><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async defer src=\"\/\/platform.instagram.com\/en_US\/embeds.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Based on a number of recommendations and awareness of his political bent, for quite some time I\u2019ve been intending to read the science fiction writings of China Midvale. I\u2019d yet, however, to get around to doing so when I saw that Verso Press was holding a contest to promote his new book\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2qqY0TC\"><strong>October: The Story of the Russian Revolution<\/strong><\/a><strong>.<\/strong> I submitted an entry and sure enough was one of the lucky winners of a free signed copy of this work of non-fiction.<\/p>\n<p>Excepting events in America, the buildup to and aftermath of the Russian Revolution is probably my most read about world historical event. I\u2019ve read books solely on the subject written by those that were present, such as John Reed\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2qr736O\">Ten Days That Shook the World<\/a> or Leon Trotsky\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2qqEoPv\">History of the Russian Revolution<\/a> as well as essays by Emma Goldman and Victor Serge and, of course, Lenin\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2qqDqCO\">Essential Works<\/a>. I\u2019ve read a few left and right wing histories published after the 1990s as well. I share this to establish if not a specialization of knowledge on the issue, than at least an above average familiarity with the events one would expect on such a subject. Anyway, to the book\u2026<\/p>\n<p>As a whole October is a very different creature from most of the texts that I mentioned above. This, however, is not necessarily bad. Trotsky\u2019s writing on this period is simply magisterial and Reed\u2019s journalistic descriptions of the sundry meetings unrest are at times nail-biting. These men had clear agendas that were intimately tied to the events that they were describing. Mieville, it seems to me, is writing this as a means of popularizing knowledge about the events in Russia and trying to do so at a distance. Because of this, as well as what I believe is a desire to avoid getting caught up in the debates of that time through extended focus on particular persons\/issues it lacks some of the same passion. And yet no matter what side of the political spectrum one is on, I feel that this could be appealing to even those that aren\u2019t Reds. I expected some sort of propagandistic asides peppered throughout the book prior to reading it, but none were there.<\/p>\n<p>I could see myself assigning this book for a history class as not only does he do such an even handed job, but also as there is a glossary of terms in the back that would assist those not versed with the terms of the revolution. After a very brief historical context, Mieville begins the Story of the Russian Revolution in February, following the first revolution. It closes eight months later, in October.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of highlighting an identified-with hero (Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin,etc.), Mieville focuses on the sufferings of the soldiers being ground up by the Kaiser\u2019s troops, the unrest of the peasants, the plight of the industrial workers in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the incompetence of the Kerensky government, the rifts between the socialist parties and within the armed services. In this Mieville does a great job and consistently uses the words of those he\u2019s writing about. As a means for creating tension, however, this is not a great technique. Since the only real character development is that of the people of the city that once paid little heed to the Bolsheviks to then viewing them as representative of their political will \u2013 I found this somewhat disappointing as well. Not that the anecdotes aren\u2019t fascinating or the style of writing isn\u2019t good, however my familiarity with it all made me hope for something that this wasn\u2019t. As such I\u2019d say that this was more for those that were unfamiliar with the topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shout out to @versobooks for choosing my contest entry to win this signed copy of #China Mi\u00e9ville&#8217;s new #book &#8220;October &#8211; The Story of the #Russian #Revolution&#8221; #bookstagram #octobersveryown #books A post shared by Ariel Voyager (@arielvoyager) on May 28, 2017 at 4:28pm PDT &nbsp; Based on a number of recommendations and awareness of his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/04\/review-of-october-the-story-of-the-russian-revolution\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Review of &#8220;October: The Story of the Russian Revolution&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-history","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8e7kf-tc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1810"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2313,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions\/2313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}