The fall of tsarism : untold stories of the February 1917 Revolution /

While most early accounts of the Russian Revolution of 1917 focused on the political whirlwind that swept through the imperial capital, contemporary historians have widened their lens and adjusted its angle to view events in the periphery and to consider how the revolutionary era was experienced in different regions and among the empire's various social groups. One notable recent example is Aaron Retish's Russia's Peasants in Revolution and Civil War (CH, Oct'09, 47-1024). By presenting readers with an intriguing collection of gripping interviews with a dozen of Russia's revolutionary leaders conducted a mere two or three months after the czar's abdication, Lyandres (Univ. of Notre Dame) returns the focus to Petrograd and to the extraordinary individuals whose decisions, for better or for worse, helped shape the fate of Russia. All but forgotten and now published for the first time, the interviews with key figures such as Aleksandr Kerenskii, Mikhail Rodzianko, and Matvei Skobelev collected here convincingly demonstrate the role of contingency and personality in determining historical outcomes. For anyone with even a passing interest in the last days of czarism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. K. C. O'Connor Gonzaga University