A people's tragedy review by Josh

A People's Tragedy is an exhaustively researched and well written overview of the Russian Revolution. I give it 4 stars instead of 5 only because I feel like the author's biases occasionally cloud his historical judgement.

Figes clearly has strong anti-Bolshevik views. There's nothing wrong with that - there are plenty of good reasons to dislike both Bolshevism/Leninism as an ideology and many of the leading figures in the revolution as individuals.

More frustrating for me is Figes' dismissal of the peasantry (the vast majority of the Russian population) as essentially a bunch of ignorant yokels lacking any real agency. He writes about the peasantry in the same tone as the Russian aristocracy wrote about them.

Figes is opinionated, but he's not a hack. He credits the Bolsheviks where credit is due, and acknowledges exceptions to his generalizations about the peasants when there is evidence. But, when evidence is lacking he sometimes seems to fall back on his biases to fill in the gaps. He attributes Bolshevik cruelty to sadism, and is apt to report the most scandalous claims of their opponents as fact.

On the peasant side, he repeats tales of peasant ignorance, some of come off a bit like early 20th century "dumb blonde" jokes. Perhaps they're true, but Figes doesn't really seem to interrogate the biases he has inherited from the Russian aristocratic tradition - which (as he notes) generally saw them as closer to livestock than humans.

Despite these irritations, this is still an excellent survey of the revolution, and offers some interesting insights on Russian (/Soviet) culture.