good overview of the russian revolution?

[bekah]

I don't see how the Russian Revolution could be much a part of 
Against the Day because the Revolution is usually dated as being in 
1917 (although 1905 is important) and Pynchon's book ends right 
around the time of WWI.   I just answered the man's question about 
another book re the Revolution.    The Revolution might be important 
if Pynchon is playing "Against the Day" of revolution.

Bekah

At 11:37 AM -0400 7/31/06, David Kipen wrote:
>am i missing something? does pynchon come out and say on amazon that 
>the Russian Revolution will be dealt with in ATD? i'd love to brush 
>up on it, but oughtn't we better to concentrate on the mexican 
>revolution, which he actually mentions, and for which i'm open to 
>suggestions other than azuela's 'the underdogs' or reed's 'insurgent 
>mexico'?
>
>all finest,
>david kipen
>
>p.s. anybody got suggestion for a better single-volume vade mecum 
>between now and december 5 than tuchman's 'the proud tower: a 
>portrait of the world before the war, 1890-1914'?
>
>
>On 7/31/06, bekah 
><<mailto:bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>The best book I know of about the Russian Revolution is "A People's 
>Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924" by Orlando Figes.  Figes 
>makes the point that the Revolution was a complete tragedy for the 
>Russian people and he looks at the role of the workers, peasants and 
>official through excellent use of primary  source material.  It's 
>not short - 824 pages - but it's not hard to read.  He includes 
>excellent little mini-biographies of many of the key  players,  some 
>of whom I had never heard of before (not surprising,  I guess). 
>
>Anyway, the book rather arbitrarily deals with the time period 
>between 1891 (the onset of some serious economic difficulties) and 
>1924 (Lenin's death) and that certainly plays into his basic theme 
>of how  'the people'  were affected but the focus is far more on the 
>revolution and Marxists than the whole history of bloody Tsars. The 
>book also uses biographical sketches of people who illustrate Figes' 
>points by being close to the peasants and/or workers,  or rejecting 
>them.
>
>Literary references are important to Figes probably because of his 
>prior work,  Natasha's Dance, which is the cultural history of 
>Russia.  These parts are rather interesting because the 
>intellectuals always had a love-hate relationship with the reality 
>of the peasants;  loving the idea them only, it would seem,  and 
>hating the reality.
>
>Bekah
>happy reading    :-) 
>
>
>
>
>At 6:10 PM -0400 7/30/06, jd wrote:
>
>>I'm reading The Russian Revolution 1917-1921 by Beryl Williams, which
>>seems to be a decent intro to the subject, but it's only 99 pages long
>>and seems to gloss over a lot of details, giving a more eagle-eyed
>>view of the situation, and I was wondering if any of you could
>>reccomend a book that might be better at both giving that view as well
>>as more detail to the events leading up to and surrounding the
>>revolution.  This book is decent but sort of flies through events in a
>>way that makes them sometimes easy to miss.
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20060731/fc12c444/attachment.html>