Ambitious in scope, comprehensive in the eyewitness accounts, including the horrific and gruesome loss of life, Helen Rappaport provides a detailed multilayered view on the eruption of Russian Revolution.
The scene is Petrograd, capital of Russia until 1918, teeming with
…more foreigners, functionaries and those who serve them. It is the foreign eyewitnesses whom Rappaport coalesces her research around, and as she surely envisions her primary readership will be. We are on the streets with the embassy employees, their wives and family members, living the expat life in a grand city full of subtext and disillusion. Readers hoping for a close-up commentary from a single voice will be disappointed as Rappaport steers the handheld camera lens of her research down numerous avenues, side streets and alleys alongside 80 individual witnesses.
The tremendous wave of revolution transforms the city itself into a prime witness to the revolution. Readers will mine this work for names they recognize and discover new heroes among the unsung women working as journalists, nursing staff and revolutionary organizers – from the women warriors defending Mother Russia against German invasion to those who boldly take over the telephone exchange.
As Lenin consolidates his position, foreigners surrender their immunity to face the emergence of political forces suspicious of privilege, traditionally held power and economic superiority. James Stinton Jones, Westinghouse engineer at work on the tram system in Petrograd, observed: "The poorer classes of Russia … find themselves a political factor, they are hopelessly at sea, the prey of the last unscrupulous demagogue they have heard." Rappaport calls our attention to the eyewitness observations of the past, providing ample opportunity for contemporary comparisons to fuel lively book discussion. (less)
