Revolution: A Novel of Russia

By Barnaby Williams

Book Overview

For the classmates of the Empress's school in Tsarskoyeseloe, life would never be the same again. 1917 is the year of their graduation and the year their world is shattered by the Bolshevik... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671851810
• ISBN13: 9780671851811
• Release Date: February 1995
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Trade Division)
• Length: 816 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A real-life horror story

'Revolution' has been described as ' a Twentieth Century War and Peace' and Barnaby Williams as the 'Tolstoy of our times'. One needs to read this phenomenol book to understand why. I would , without a doubt , judge it as the best novel of the 1990's by far , and my favourite novel too. It traces the cruel and tyrannical rule by the Communists of Russia from 1917 to 1990 through the eyes of a group of friends who graduated from a Lyceum in St Petersburg, the year of the horrific revolution. It is more horrifying than any Stephen King novel BECAUSE it is all true. All of these things happened exactly as recorded on this story by Barnaby Williams. From the terrors perpetrated by the Bolsheviks on the people of Russia during the Civil War, to the gulags and the de-Kulakization process, to the mental destruction of dissidents in so-called mental institutions during the Kruschev years, this book reminds us that these cruel ideas destroyed the lives of real people, like the many characters in this book , who are in fact not characters - because there where many people exactly like Ruth and Yelena , Katya , Konstantin , Ivan etc. There where also real monsters, described so rightly by Ruth as 'narrow minded fanatics and tyrranical hypocrites' such as Rykov, the psycopath who kills for pleasure, a man who thrives on a system loike Bolshevism, the cold-blooded Party Functionary Leon Krivitsky , and apologists for the terror like Beatrice Webb who coldly justifies every outrage carried out by the Communists , because of her own selfish ideas , and her dissatisfaction with her own society. The system can be summed up by Yelena who reminds of the fact that there is really no difference at all between Communism and Nazism: ' `Where in essence are they different? They are, or were, both socialist; both paranoid, requiring hate objects ; both needing to kill or maim any who stand in their way ; both demanding public belief in things demonstrably insane , demanding worship of man made gods ; both based on the power of the lie.' and sums up the Marxist-Leninist system perfectly : `I can think of no other form of government so certain to produce -slowly and steadily, like soil erosion, or the action of the tides-an erosion and corrosion of the human spirit. It cuts man off from all nourishment, from his metaphysical roots, from religious experience, from any feeling of in and as one with the world. It produces a dehydration of the soul , spiritual death.'It also speculates on the fate of Rosa Luxembourg and what happened behind the mysterious death of the Satanic Joseph Stalin. This novel covers the history of Russia during its enslavement to this hideous system, as well as any, together with the works of Solzhenitsyn and Koestler.It will certainly leave any feeling human being incredulous that there are still influential and educated people who believe in Marxist-Leninism, despite its human cost.