This new collection of documents helps students understand the complex texture of Russian public rhetoric and popular debate during World War I and the 1917 Revolution. How better to understand history than through the words of those who lived it? Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution: Fighting Words presents documents that underscore the extraordinary richness of public discussion about key events and issues during the 1917 Russian Revolution, one of the pivotal events in modern history. Carefully edited and annotated, the documents help clarify the issues while revealing the broad range of ways in which Russians understood the events unfolding around them. Focusing on public rhetoric and debate in Russia from the outbreak of World War I in 1914 through the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, the documents present the views not only of key political figures, but also of ordinary men and women—mothers, soldiers, factory workers, peasants, students, businesspeople, and educated professionals.

A unique compilation of diverse sources, many in English translation for the first time, this book documents the Mexican Revolution, explains its popular and agrarian nature, and helps to clarify its often perplexing conflicts, alliances, and issues. Competing Voices from the Mexican Revolution: Fighting Words lets readers see this watershed moment in Mexican history in a new light, through the eyes of people who actually experienced it. This annotated collection of brief primary sources—from Mexican and U.S. government documents, novels, news articles, ballads, travel accounts and memoirs, manifestos, correspondence, and graphic arts—brings together a wide range of contrasting opinions on the revolution's pivotal moments and controversies. From the beginnings of social unrest in the 1890s to the war's conclusion in 1923, readers can assess debates between factions, follow key individuals and military/political movements, evaluate the motives of participants, explore U.S.-Mexican relations, and gauge the war's impact across the full spectrum of Mexican society, including women and the peasant and working classes.

"This book brings together a number of opposing perspectives on the Cuban revolutionary process. Covering the period from 1959 to the present day, it uses an array of official documents, speeches, articles, poetry, songs, personal recollections and more - to offer contrasting voices supportive of the revolution against those opposed." "Using a huge array of sources from the political, religious, social, artistic and personal spheres, the story of Cuba, so often linked with the neighbouring US, is set in its historical context and rigorously examined. Issues examined include: the Revolution and upheaval that followed; the Cuban missile crisis; Cuba's position in COMECON; the rise of Cuba's profile in the 1980s; the crisis that followed the dismantling of the USSR; Cuba in the 21st century and its future. What has been the price of the Cuban revolutionary process? And what faces Cuba in the new millennium?" --Book Jacket.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the twentieth century. Now, to mark the centenary of this epochal event, historian Steve Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the nineteenth century, through the First World War and the revolutions of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s, when Stalin simultaneously unleashed violent collectivization of agriculture and crash industrialization upon Russian society. Drawing on recent archivally-based scholarship, Russia in Revolution pays particular attention to the varying impact of the Revolution on the various groups that made up society: peasants, workers, non-Russian nationalities, the army, women and the family, young people, and the Church. In doing so, it provides a fresh way into the big, perennial questions about the Revolution and its consequences: why did the attempt by the tsarist government to implement political reform after the 1905 Revolution fail?; why did the First World War bring about the collapse of the tsarist system?; why did the attempt to create a democratic system after the February Revolution of 1917 not get off the ground?; why did the Bolsheviks succeed in seizing and holding on to power?; why did they come out victorious from a punishing civil war?; why did the New Economic Policy they introduced in 1921 fail?; and why did Stalin come out on top in the power struggle inside the Bolshevik party after Lenin's death in 1924? A final chapter then reflects on the larger significance of 1917 for the history of the twentieth century - and, for all its terrible flaws, what the promise of the Revolution might mean for us today.

The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921 is a new history of Russia's revolutionary era as a story of experience-of people making sense of history as it unfolded in their own lives and as they took part in making history themselves. The major events, trends, and explanations, reaching from Bloody Sunday in 1905 to the final shots of the civil war in 1921, are viewed through the doubled perspective of the professional historian looking backward and the contemporary journalist reporting and interpreting history as it happened. The volume then turns toward particular places and people: city streets, peasant villages, the margins of empire (Central Asia, Ukraine, the Jewish Pale), women and men, workers and intellectuals, artists and activists, utopian visionaries, and discontents of all kinds. We spend time with the famous (Vladimir Lenin, Lev Trotsky, Alexandra Kollontai, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel) and with those whose names we don't even know. Key themes include difference and inequality (social, economic, gendered, ethnic), power and resistance, violence, and ideas about justice and freedom. Written especially for students and general readers, this history relies extensively on contemporary texts and voices in order to bring the past and its meanings to life. This is a history about dramatic and uncertain times and especially about the interpretations, values, emotions, desires, and disappointments that made history matter to those who lived it.

Liberating Revolution challenges the idea that we understand what revolution is. All current understandings of revolution are different ways of portraying the state. To liberate revolution, we must explain radical change without determining its course or limiting what it can do. Nathan Eckstrand reviews earlier theories of revolution from history—social contract theory, Marxism, Hegelianism, liberalism, communism, totalitarianism, and Machiavellism—and studies how they describe political change. He then puts forth a new theory of change called Dynamic Anarchism, drawing on Event Ontology's discussions of radical change, systems theory's understanding of dynamic and adaptive systems, and anarchism's attempts to think of politics independent of the state. In its final chapter, Liberating Revolution advises how to produce radical change effectively. A valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion of how best to understand change given discoveries both microscopic and global, this book offers useful ideas to students curious about why revolutions often fail to achieve their goals or to anyone learning how change is depicted in political theory.

Historical Dictionary of the Russian Revolution focuses on the leading individuals, ideas, political parties and main events that were central to the transformation of Russia during the revolution. The time period runs from January 1917 through to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that took Russia out of the First World War in March 1918. It covers the main events, ideas, people and parties and takes the story of the revolution from the eve of the overthrowing of Tsar Nicholas II through to the Bolshevik seizure of power, the first six months of Leninist rule and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that ended Russia’s involvement in the First World War. Historical Dictionary of the Russian Revolution contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 200 cross-referenced entries on the revolutions, the First World War, political parties, ideologies and individuals, and the main events that defined the course of the Russian Revolution. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Russian Revolution.

Readings on the Russian Revolution brings together 15 important post-Cold War writings on the history of the Russian Revolution. It is structured in such a way as to highlight key debates in the field and contrasting methodological approaches to the Revolution in order to help readers better understand the issues and interpretative fault lines that exist in this contested area of history. The book opens with an original introduction which provides essential background and vital context for the pieces that follow. The volume is then structured around four parts – 'Actors, Language, Symbols', 'War, Revolution, and the State', 'Revolutionary Dreams and Identities' and 'Outcomes and Impacts' – that explore the beginnings, events and outcomes of the Russian Revolution, as well as examinations of central figures, critical topics and major historiographical battlegrounds. Melissa Stockdale also provides translations of two crucial Russian-language works, published here in English for the first time, and includes useful pedagogical features such as a glossary, chronology, and thematic bibliography to further aid study. Readings on the Russian Revolution is an essential collection for anyone studying the Russian Revolution.

Combining reference entries and examination of primary documents from the Russian Revolution, this book gives students a better understanding of how and why political forces fought to reshape the Russian empire 100 years ago—and provides keen insights into the Soviet Union that resulted. This invaluable reference guide provides an understanding of the social, political, and economic forces and events in Russia that led to the 1905 Russian Revolution in which leftists radicals disposed of the Czar and his regime. It addresses key developments such as the formation of the provisional government, the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917, and the Russian Civil War—connected, evolutionary historical events that fundamentally reshaped Russia into the Soviet Union. This book serves students and general readers seeking a single source that provides in-depth coverage of the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War. Beyond the reference entries, the book contains primary documents that cover the key events, people, and issues that emerged during Russia's revolutions and Civil War. These documents give readers a more detailed understanding of how the Bolsheviks used calls for greater "democracy" to gain support for their revolution, how the Bolsheviks used terror and control as means to maintain their power once the Bolshevik Revolution took place, and why the Bolsheviks believed such extreme measures were needed. Also included is a chronology of major events from 1890 through 1923 and a bibliography that serves as a starting point for more directed research.

A compendium of original essays and contemporary viewpoints on the 1917 Revolution The Russian revolution of 1917 reverberated throughout an empire that covered one-sixth of the world. It altered the geo-political landscape of not only Eurasia, but of the entire globe. The impact of this immense event is still felt in the present day. The historiography of the last two decades has challenged conceptions of the 1917 revolution as a monolithic entity— the causes and meanings of revolution are many, as is reflected in contemporary scholarship on the subject. A Companion to the Russian Revolution offers more than thirty original essays, written by a team of respected scholars and historians of 20th century Russian history. Presenting a wide range of contemporary perspectives, the Companion discusses topics including the dynamics of violence in war and revolution, Russian political parties, the transformation of the Orthodox church, Bolshevism, Liberalism, and more. Although primarily focused on 1917 itself, and the singular Revolutionary experience in that year, this book also explores time-periods such as the First Russian Revolution, early Soviet government, the Civil War period, and even into the 1920’s. Presents a wide range of original essays that discuss Brings together in-depth coverage of political history, party history, cultural history, and new social approaches Explores the long-range causes, influence on early Soviet culture, and global after-life of the Russian Revolution Offers broadly-conceived, contemporary views of the revolution largely based on the author’s original research Links Russian revolutions to Russian Civil Wars as concepts A Companion to the Russian Revolution is an important addition to modern scholarship on the subject, and a valuable resource for those interested in Russian, Late Imperial, or Soviet history as well as anyone interested in Revolution as a global phenomenon.