A People's Tragedy
 | |
| Author | Orlando Figes |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Russian Revolution |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
Publication date | 1996 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover, paperback) |
| Pages | 923 |
| ISBN | 0-224-04162-2 |
| LC Class | DK260.5F4 |
A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924 is an award-winning book written by British historian Orlando Figes and published in 1996.
Background
The book chronicles Russian history from the Famine of 1891-1892, the response to which, Figes argues, severely weakened the Russian Empire, until the death of Lenin in 1924, when "the basic elements of the Stalinist regime - the one-party state, the system of terror and the cult of the personality - were all in place". According to Figes "... the whole of 1917 could be seen as a political battle between those who saw the revolution as a means of bringing the war to an end and those who saw the war as a means of bringing the revolution to an end."[1]
Reception
A People's Tragedy won the Wolfson History Prize, the WH Smith Literary Award, the NCR Book Award, the Longman/History Today Book Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2008, the Times Literary Supplement listed it as one of the "hundred most influential books since the war".[2] Eric Hobsbawm, reviewing the book, called it a "very impressive piece of history-writing."[3]
Release details
References
- ↑ Figes, p. 380.
- ↑ Times Literary Supplement, 30 December 2008
- ↑ "Out of the Great Dark Whale" by Eric Hobsbawm, London Review of Books, Vol. 18, No. 21, 31 October 1996