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Feliks Volkhovskii (1846-1914) was a significant figure in the Russian revolutionary movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He lived through pivotal changes ranging from the rise of ‘nihilism'in the 1860s and the growth of populism in the 1870s, through to the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the early 1900s. Imprisoned three times before he turned thirty, he spent ten years in Siberian exile before fleeing abroad to join the fight against tsarist autocracy from western Europe. Following Volkhovskii's arrival in Britain in 1890, he played a central role in the campaign to win sympathy for the Russian revolutionary movement, editing newspapers and journals including Free Russia. He also helped to smuggle propaganda into Russia as well as becoming one of the most prominent figures in the émigré leadership of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Throughout his life, Volkhovskii was also a prolific writer of poetry and short stories, and was on good terms with many leading literary figures of the time including Ford Maddox Ford and Edward and Constance Garnett. Michael Hughes's groundbreaking new biography provides a vivid history of this notable but hitherto neglected figure of both the political and literary worlds. Based on ten years of research in archives across the world and drawing on sources in multiple languages, this masterful biography explores how Volkhovskii's life illuminates broader intellectual and historical questions about the Russian revolutionary movement. It is essential reading for anyone interested in late Imperial Russia and the Russian revolution.

‘She burst across the revolutionary sky like a blazing meteor, dazzling all in her path,'Trotsky wrote. For the poet Boris Pasternak, she was Lara, the heroine of his novel Doctor Zhivago. Commissar, revolutionary fighter, espionage agent, journalist, Larisa Reisner (1895–1926) was a model for the ‘new woman'of the Russian Revolution, and one of its most popular and brilliant writers, whose works were published in mass editions and read by millions. Her life is set against the world-shaking events of 1917, and draws on material recently released from the Soviet archives to tell her story through the memories of those close to her, her own voluminous writings, and her six books, published for the first time together by Brill with this biography. This biography is accompanied by Brill's publication of Cathy Porter and Richard Chappell's Writings of Larisa Reisner, published as volume 302 in the Historical Materialism book series.

In 1884, the first of 68 prisoners convicted of terrorism and revolutionary activity were transferred to a new maximum security prison at Shlissel´burg Fortress near St Petersburg. The regime of indeterminate sentences in isolation caused severe mental and physical deterioration among the prisoners, over half of whom died. But the survivors fought back to reform the prison and improve the inmates'living conditions. The memoirs many survivors wrote enshrined their story in revolutionary mythology, and acted as an indictment of the Tsarist autocracy's loss of moral authority. Writing Resistance features three of these memoirs, all translated into English for the first time. They show the process of transforming the regime as a collaborative endeavour that resulted in flourishing allotments, workshops and intellectual culture – and in the inmates running many of the prison's everyday functions. Sarah J. Young's introductory essay analyses the Shlissel´burg memoirs'construction of a collective narrative of resilience, resistance and renewal. It uses distant reading techniques to explore the communal values they inscribe, their adoption of a powerful group identity, and emphasis on overcoming the physical and psychological barriers of the prison.The first extended study of Shlissel´burg's revolutionary inmates in English, Writing Resistance uncovers an episode in the history of political imprisonment that bears comparison with the inmates of Robben Island in South Africa's apartheid regime and the Maze Prison in Belfast during the Troubles. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the Russian revolution, carceral history, penal practice and behaviours, and prison and life writing.

In his book Lenin: How to Become a Leader, Vladlen Loginov, one of Russia's leading authorities on Vladimir Lenin, discusses the revolutionary leader's early years, his family, his political awakening and subsequent activities. He reveals the beginnings of the creator of the world's first socialist country, as well as the source of the future statesman's incredible willpower, his ability to influence people, his drive to succeed and his leadership qualities. All of these, the book demonstrates, were intrinsic to Lenin's character from a young age. In his research, Loginov uses new sources and previously unknown documents and memoirs, as well as archives of Russians in exile. Edited and introduced by Professor Geoffrey Swain.

Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for a Free Russia examines the life of the journalist, historian and revolutionary, Vladimir Burtsev. The book analyses his struggle to help liberate the Russian people from tsarist oppression in the latter half of the 19th century before going on to discuss his opposition to Bolshevism following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Robert Henderson traces Burtsev's political development during this time and explores his movements in Paris and London at different stages in an absorbing account of an extraordinary life.At all times Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for Free Russia sets Burtsev's life in the wider context of Russian and European history of the period. It uses Burtsev as a means to discuss topics such as European police collaboration, European prison systems, international diplomatic relations of the time and Russia's relationship with Europe specifically. Extensive original archival research and previously untranslated Russian source material is also incorporated throughout the text.This is an important study for all historians of modern Russia and the Russian Revolution.

Keen to learn but short on time? Get to grips with the life of Vladimir Lenin in next to no time with this concise guide.50Minutes.com provides a clear and engaging analysis of Vladimir Lenin. Having seen his brother executed for a political conspiracy and expelled from university under similar suspicions, Lenin grew up in an environment in which the Russian tsars had an uncomfortable concentration of power. Nonetheless, through his readings of Marx's texts and his committed following from the Bolsheviks, he survived failed insurrections and years in exile to become one of Russia's most renowned leaders, as well as the founder of the Soviet Union.In just 50 minutes you will: • Learn about Vladimir Lenin's life and the formation of his political ideology • Understand Russian politics in the early 20th century, including the fall of the tsarist regime and the violence of Bloody Sunday • Analyse Lenin's legacy, including the establishment of the Soviet Union and his enduring cult of personalityABOUT 50MINUTES.COM | History & Culture50MINUTES.COM will enable you to quickly understand the main events, people, conflicts and discoveries from world history that have shaped the world we live in today. Our publications present the key information on a wide variety of topics in a quick and accessible way that is guaranteed to save you time on your journey of discovery.

In this magisterial and exciting book, Ulam offers a brilliant history of Russian political and intellectual life in those critical years from 1855 to 1884 and describes the successive conspiracies that shook the edifice of tsarist autocracy.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky burst onto the world stage in November 1917 as co–leader of a Marxist Revolution seizing power in Russia. It made him one of the most recognized personalities of the Twentieth Century, a global icon of radical change. Yet just months earlier, this same Lev Trotsky was a nobody, a refugee expelled from Europe, writing obscure pamphlets and speeches, barely noticed outside a small circle of fellow travelers. Where had he come from to topple Russia and change the world? Where else? New York City. Between January and March 1917, Trotsky found refuge in the United States. America had kept itself out of the European Great War, leaving New York the freest city on earth. During his time there—just over ten weeks—Trotsky immersed himself in the local scene. He settled his family in the Bronx, edited a radical left wing tabloid in Greenwich Village, sampled the lifestyle, and plunged headlong into local politics. His clashes with leading New York socialists over the question of US entry into World War I would reshape the American left for the next fifty years.

From My Recent Past is a memoir written by Russian revolutionary Grigory Gershuni (1870–1908), the infamous mastermind behind the Combat Organization (CO) of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR). Grigory Gershuni envisioned himself a knight fighting the dragon of injustice, a believer in a Russian revolution that would sweep away an autocratic “regime that made killers of its own children!” In his view, his personal mission was to cut off the head of that dragon, i.e. eliminate the cruelest, corrupt, and lawless agents of the repressive tsarist regime. Over the course of nine years (from 1902 to 1911), he engaged seventy-eight members of his Combat Organization to commit 263 terrorist acts, including the assassination of two government ministers, thirty-three governors-general, a vice-governor, as well as several admirals and generals.This book depicts his revolutionary activities, his arrest, and proceedings before a military tribunal, a death sentence verdict that was replaced at the last minute by a life sentence, and years of imprisonment in the Peter and Paul and Shlisselburg fortresses. It is presented here in English translation by Katya Vladimirov, with an introduction by Katya Vladimirov and an afterword by John P. Moran.

There are few more divisive names in history than the Soviet communist Leon Trotsky. To some, he was a betrayer, a hypocrite, and a totalitarian, and yet to many others he was a revolutionary of high esteem, who battled an outdated, oppressive dynasty and helped to usher in a new political era, and whose name became a political moniker: trotskyist. Whether colored by disdain or admiration, one thing is certain: Trotsky was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. In Leon Trotsky, Paul Le Blanc delves deep into Trotsky's life and relationships to reveal and make sense of his complex character and decisive actions. Interweaving dramatic historical events with examinations of Trotsky's multi-faceted personality, he offers incisive views of the key facets of Trotsky's life: his involvement with Soviet bureaucracy, the Spanish Civil War, and the rise of Hitler in the years before World War II. Illuminating Trotsky's personal and political struggles and achievements, this balanced portrait will be invaluable to history students or anyone interested in the extraordinary lives that made up the twentieth century.

Historians generally recognise E.A. Preobrazhensky as the most famous Soviet economist of the 1920s. English-language readers know him best as author of The New Economics and co-author (with N.I. Bukharin) of The ABC of Communism. The documents in this volume, many newly discovered and almost all translated into English for the first time, reveal a Preobrazhensky previously unknown, whose interests ranged far beyond economics to include not only party debates and issues affecting the lives of workers and peasants, but also philosophy, world events, and Russian history, culture and politics. Including moments of triumph and tragedy, they tell an intimate story of political awakening and of commitment to socialist revolution as the path to human dignity.

The only Bolshevik leader to write his memoirs, Leon Trotsky published this remarkable book in 1930, the first year of a perilous, decade-long exile that ended with his assassination in Mexico. Expelled from the Communist party and deported from the Soviet Union, the former People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs recalled his lifelong struggle in the world of revolutionary politics. In addition to his firsthand accounts of the early intrigues within the Communist government, Trotsky also delivered chilling glimpses into the rise of the new Soviet bureaucracy and prescient warnings of the Stalinist regime's horrors.My Life recounts the rise of the revolutionary wave in Russia in 1905 and 1917, the devastating effects of World War I, and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution from Lenin's internationalist course to Stalin's increasingly counterrevolutionary policies. Trotsky's exile placed him beyond the pale of both the official Communist party and the rest of the political world; yet in this fascinating historical document, he remains true to a philosophy of permanent world revolution, offering a highly informed perspective on the struggle toward a socialist future.

Helen Rappaport's Conspirator is a vivid account of Vladimir I. Lenin's years of exile in Europe, showing that this often-overlooked period shaped the life of one of the 20th century's most important figures. In the years leading up to the Russian Revolution, Lenin traveled between the capital cities of Europe, developing a complex network of collaborators and co-conspirators that would play a significant role in the struggle to come. Rappaport sheds a rare light onto Lenin's early life, describing his relationship with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and his extraordinary and unexpected love affair with beautiful activist Inessa Armand. In a riveting narrative, Conspirator describes the courage and the comedy, the setbacks, schisms and disappointments, the extreme persistence and the ruthless dedication that carried Lenin and his colleagues along the inexorable path to the Russian Revolution.

Bertram D. Wolfe was one of the foremost American authorities on Soviet history and politics. Several generations of students in dozens of countries have acquired their first understanding of the events and personalities that shaped modern Russia from Wolfe's landmark study, Three Who Made a Revolution. The twelve essays on Lenin and Leninism published in this volume were written during the last decades of Wolfe's life and reflect the unique blend of personal experience, thorough scholarship, and commitment to humanism that informed all of his writings. These essays, nine of which appear in print here for the first time, do not constitute an integrated or complete biography of Lenin. Rather they suggest the direction of Wolfe's research and thinking on the subject of Lenin's place in the twentieth century.