Book description
This is a book on the Russian Revolution with a difference. It unites
the formal history and the individual memoir by telling the story of
1917 in the words of eyewitnesses who say history in the making. They
witnessed two revolutions - the overthrow of Tsarism in March and the
Bolshevik seizure of power in November - and described them with an
immediacy that later accounts never achieve.
These witnesses are British and American rather than Russian: as
outsiders, they could see more of the game. They include diplomats,
newspaper correspondents, the military, businessmen, even the
occasional English governess. There are also adventurous young
American radicals like John Reed, author of Ten Days That Shook the
World, and unexpected figures like Arthur Ransome, who married
Trotsky's secretary and later wrote such children's classic as
Swallows and Amazons. Their brilliant journalism has been
unread since 1917, while many other eyewitness accounts are published
here for the first time. Harvey Pitcher skilfully weaves their
accounts into a vivid and absorbing narrative, treating the witnesses'
often conflicting views of the Revolution with impartiality and
leaving readers free to form their own judgements.
In a new Afterword to the Pimlico edition, Harvey Pitcher relates
the events of 1917 to what is happening in Russia today.
Harvey Pitcher studied at Oxford and Leningrad, and in 1963 started
the Russian Department at St Andrews University. Since 1971 he has been
a full-time writer. His first book to achieve widespread popularity,
When Miss Emmie was in Russia
(1977), was described by Paul Scott as 'a study of the whole adventure'
of being an English governess before and during the Russian Revolution.
This was followed by other books on the British and American communities
in pre-Soviet Russia:
The Smiths of Moscow
(1984) and
Muir & Mirrielees
, about Russia's first department store (1994). Harvey Pitcher is also a
leading Chekhov scholar. He is the author of a standard work,
The
Chekhov Play: A New Interpretation
(1973) and of
Chekhov's Leading Lady
(1979), a portrait of Chekhov's actress wife, Olga Knipper. With fellow
translator Patrick Miles he introduced English readers to the delights
of Chekhov's early comic stories. Harvey Pitcher lives in Cromer on the
north Norfolk coast.
