War and Revolution in Russia, 1914-1922

I read Christopher Read's War and Revolution in Russia, 1914-1922. I've been periodically reading about WWI when I have a chance given the centennial. The book is a synthesis and tries to place the revolution more in the context of WWI.

Funny thing, I really enjoyed it but got hung up a bit on chapter one. Among other things it included an in-text Wikipedia reference and this sentence: "Perhaps if the horror that was about to be unleashed had been more widely understood more would have been done to prevent it" (p. 20). Well, yes.

Get past that, though, and you have a nicely written, concise book that is widely accessible to people like me who do not know the literature. What you see first is the amazing incompetence of the Tsar. I wish Read might have said a little more why he thinks the Tsar believed the war was necessary, considering that the quick Russian mobilization was an important factor in pushing the war along.

Then the Tsar just resigns abruptly and Russia suffers a first period of uncertainty while the Bolsheviks figure out what to do. Reading Vladimir Lenin's writings in that context shows how much his theory was just responding to events, so that his "truths" changed all the time as deemed necessary. Events and necessity drove theory. One thing I hadn't really known was that immediately after the Tsar was deposed, popular support for the war remained high. It took a while for the Bolsheviks to change that view.

Finally, the Bolsheviks begin to consolidate power after the October Revolution and Lenin discards his previous truths, then adopts new ones that center on oppression, repression, and centralism. It's a good read, even though it's a serious downer to think about what came next.