Volume 23, Number 19 · November 25, 1976
Russia: The Pursuit of the Extreme
By Leonard Schapiro
The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution 1825-1917
by Edward Crankshaw
Viking, 429 pp., $12.95
In what is probably his best, as well as his most recent, book Edward Crankshaw has set himself the task of presenting the history of the Russian Empire from 1825 until its collapse. His narrative stops before the revolution of 1917—his aim is not to show how it all ended, but to describe the slow accumulation of errors, disasters, and ill fortune which eventually led to the debacle of 1917—and by implication, since the Provisional Government was built on shifting sands, to the revival, in the persons of Lenin and his companions, of the autocracy which the tsars had so stubbornly defended. Mr. Crankshaw is a master of narrative. He knows how to distill his very extensive reading of the works of the Russian as well as the English and American historians of the period, and of the published sources, into crisp and lucid prose, and his account is periodically illuminated by the apt selection of some revealing detail in order to make a more general point. There is something else to note at the outset. Reviewers of comprehensive histories on the scale of this book generally delight in picking on errors. I think this time they are going to be disappointed.
Review, 2175 words
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