ABOUT THE BOOK:

During the months following the collapse of the tsarist regime in war-torn Russia, the Bolshevik Party emerged from obscurity to overthrow the Provisional Government and establish the world’s first communist government.

In this absorbing narrative, Alexander Rabinowitch refutes the Soviet myth that the party’s triumph in the October revolution was inevitable, as well as the long-held view of many Western historians that the Bolsheviks won primarily because of their unity, discipline, and responsiveness to Lenin’s revolutionary leadership. Exploring the changing situation and aspirations of workers, soldiers, and Baltic fleet sailors in Petrograd, Rabinowitch’s classic account reveals the critical link between the party’s revolutionary tactics and the Petrograd masses.


PRAISE:

"The Bolsheviks Come to Power remains the best book on the 1917 Russian revolution—a seminal study of events that shaped history for decades and continues to do so even today. Both political and social history, it greatly expands on our detailed knowledge of the turbulent events of that year, while deepening and revising our understanding of the Bolshevik Party and the social factors that brought it to power."

– Stephen F. Cohen, Professor of Russian Studies and History, New York University

[A] brilliant, convincing, and exciting book."

– Stanley Plastrik, Dissent

"Essential reading . . . told with a narrative skill which all too few historians could match."

– Robert M. Slusser, Baltimore Sun

"[Rabinowitch] draws together the sequence of events in Petrograd, the mass moods there, and the role of the party, all the while demonstrating the reciprocal effects of each set of factors on one another. . . a vivid picture of politics in 1917."

– Louis Menasche, Radical History Review


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alexander Rabinowitch is Professor Emeritus of Russian history at Indiana University, author of Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising, and coeditor of Russia in the Era of NEP. His many seminal essays on the history of the revolutionary period have appeared in the United States, Russia, and Europe.


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