The Russian Revolution: A New History

By Sean McMeekin,

Profile Books, £25

Review by Trevor Royle

ANOTHER centenary and another new history recording the event. There is nothing new in all this – publishers love anniversaries and the publicity they attract – but this book is not a case of leftovers being reheated. As the bibliography shows and as the splendidly related narrative makes clear, Sean McMeekin, a tenaciously skilful historian from New York by way of Turkey, has dug deeply into the archives to produce a wondrous book which not only tickles the upper brain cells but will force readers to think again about the Russian Revolution of 1917.

His central thesis is quite startling and it will not make pleasing reading for those who like their history clear-cut and instantly comprehensible. Stripped to its basics it goes something like this. Tsarist Russia was not brought to its knees by the inherent wickedness of the Romanovs or by the stupidity or venality of the liberal nobility. Neither the Bolsheviks nor their puppet master Lenin (aka Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) played any pivotal role in fomenting the events which led to the outbreak of the mayhem which brought down the ancient regime in Petrograd and Moscow. Rather, it was the Germans and their huge reserves of cash that permitted Lenin to “print propaganda in virtually unlimited quantities”.

Enough is known about their role and the infamous “sealed train” which brought Lenin back to Russia but it may not be so evident that the Germans supplied him with a massively expensive and effective printing press, the better to get across his message to the masses. They also provided him with the cover and protection he needed to be shielded from his many enemies and McMeekin is in no doubt that if these necessities had not been forthcoming, “an out of touch Lenin would have had little impact on the political scene had he not been furnished with German funds to propagandise the Russian army”. It also helped the shining hour that following the Tsar’s abdication in the spring of 1917, Russia imploded and its new rulers signed a peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk, which not only drove the country out of the war at a critical moment but also surrendered land and influence, thereby plunging the country into a long and bitter civil war.

In the midst of this mayhem the leaders of the provisional government were on a hiding to nothing and, flush with German funds, Lenin and his fellow revolutionaries took full advantage of their new-found authority. They alone stood for an end to the fighting, they alone promised to bring the soldiers home from the battle fronts and they alone held out the allure of “peace, land and bread”. It was largely illusion, of course, and while the Bolsheviks did deliver on many of their promises they also brought in an age of austerity, violence and bloodshed as they swept all before them and eliminated those who stood in their way.

The revisionism does not just stop with the revolution and the importance of the German intervention. McMeekin has a good grasp of the historiography of the First World War and he will not tolerate the outdated theory that the Russian army was just there to make up numbers even though the figures were hugely impressive. In his view, Russian infantrymen were not just cannon fodder; they were good and well-armed soldiers led by capable officers and, in the early days of the conflict, they gave a good account of themselves by seeing off the supposedly more professional Austro-Hungarian forces on the Galician front where their breakthrough in 1916 resulted in the capture of territory roughly the size of Belgium. Imagine if that had happened on the Western Front where the French and their British allies were locked in the stalemate of the Somme. The Russian army also had an excellent field commander in General Alexei Brusilov, and one of the intriguing “what ifs” of this narrative is the unspoken conundrum surrounding Field Marshal Lord Kitchener’s doomed expedition to Russia by warship in June 1916 to shore up the Russian war effort which instead fell victim to a German mine off the coast of Orkney.

Wisely, McMeekin does not concern himself with imponderables of that kind as he has more than enough material to construct a history which is rich in subtlety and replete with frequently startling information. He is particularly good at building up a believable yet shocking view of life at the Russian court with its sordid intrigues and larger-than-life characters, each one intent on furthering their own interests. Here is the “mad monk” Rasputin; there is his dupe the Tsarina Alexandrina of Hesse and her weak husband Tsar Nicholas II. Here, too, is the doomed liberal politician Pavel Milyukov, who saw through the whole charade but was powerless to halt its progress, and everywhere is the legion of the damned: courtiers and politicians doomed to halt the course of history and unable to stand up to the relentless weight of German gold.

This is an endlessly complicated story with a gallery of startling characters, some good, some bad, and a physical backdrop which spans the entirety of Mother Russia (as the country is so often personified) but McMeekin has risen to the challenge. Not only does he emerge as a dexterous helmsman skilfully navigating his way through some treacherous waters, but he also has the vision and the temperament to bring his readers safely ashore.