{"id":129,"date":"2017-07-06T12:35:25","date_gmt":"2017-07-06T16:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/?p=129"},"modified":"2017-07-06T12:35:25","modified_gmt":"2017-07-06T16:35:25","slug":"a-new-history-of-the-russian-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/2017\/07\/a-new-history-of-the-russian-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"A New History of the Russian Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark D. Steinberg, The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921 <\/em>(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 388.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Review by Jacob Bruggeman<\/p>\n

Mark D. Steinberg\u2019s new book, The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921, <\/em>is a history of the Russian Revolution as an effusion of experiences. The years of the revolution, delineated by Steinberg as 1905 \u2013 1921, compose a period of multi-national and cross-class experimentations, in both political thought and governments, with ideas of freedom, how to achieve it, and the consequences of trying to do so.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Steinberg\u2019s explicit aim for his book\u2019s first part, \u201cDocuments and Stories,\u201d is to enter the \u201c\u201cspringtime of freedom\u201d in 1917,\u201d and to explore \u201cthe meaning of \u201cfreedom\u201d\u201d (5). To achieve this, Steinberg exhumes numerous \u201cvoices\u201d, providing multiple perspectives, from the tumult and uncertainty in 1917. In bringing these myriad voices to the fore, Steinberg imagines that \u201cwe can walk through the streets during these first months of revolution,\u201d thus allowing readers to \u201cask people what they meant by that great, inclusive, and yet vague idea that everyone insisted defined the revolution: \u201cfreedom\u201d\u201d (15).<\/p>\n

Freedom\u2019s relationship to the revolution is explored through the book\u2019s other two parts, \u201cHistories\u201d and \u201cPlaces and People,\u201d and both titles allude to different lenses through which Steinberg examines his period of the Russian revolution. Through these lenses, readers look at snapshots within Steinberg\u2019s periodization of the revolution. In \u201cHistories,\u201d Steinberg reconstructs a Russia in the period from 1905 through the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and therein discusses a \u201cbacchanalia\u201d of sex and popular violence, how the press viewed the \u201cdarkness\u201d of \u201cthese times,\u201d and the portents of World War I (56-63); in part three, \u201cPlaces and People,\u201d Steinberg pivots back to a telling of the revolution through the subjectivities of human persons\u2014to analyses of the self, or lichnost\u2019 <\/em>in Russian\u2014as engines of history moving through time, and how \u201cpeople understood, lived, and practiced \u201cfreedom\u201d\u201d (5).<\/p>\n

Throughout this three-pronged analysis of the revolution, Steinberg maintains his goal of exploring different meanings of freedom, and in so doing investigates still-important questions about human fulfilment and needs, resistance to power, and truth(s). As he situates these difficult questions in the Russian revolution, Steinberg superimposes the writings of several philosophers\u2014those of Hanna Arendt and Walter Benjamin, and to a lesser extent those of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels\u2014on the events of 1917. Drawing from Arendt and Benjamin, Steinberg interprets the Russian revolution as an example of humanity\u2019s proclivity to \u201c\u201ccatastrophe,\u201d\u201d or at least a natural tip of \u201cthe scales of reality \u2026 in favor of disaster\u201d (17). Nevertheless, Steinberg sees revolutions, and particularly that of Russia, as \u201cone of human history\u2019s strongest expressions of [\u2026] desire, vision, and possibility,\u201d a collective act that, in Walter Benjamin\u2019s words, \u201c\u201cblast[s] open the continuum of history\u201d\u201d (17). In this view, Steinberg argues that the Russian revolution (and revolutions throughout human history) may be interpreted as a \u201cleap in the open air of history,\u201d a rejection of the linearity of time and open embrace of \u201ca sudden new beginning,\u201d of history as \u201cradical possibility\u201d (17-23).<\/p>\n

On the whole, Steinberg\u2019s story of the revolution attempts to reorient scholarship and popular perceptions of the revolution to a more nuanced, perhaps appreciative, reading of the \u2018leap\u2019 taken by Russians in 1917. But Steinberg complicates the notion of a single \u2018leap\u2019, instead suggesting that 1917 was conglomeration of \u2018leaps\u2019, for each revolutionary faction\u2014indeed each individual\u2014foresaw different outcomes of 1917\u2019s \u2018radical possibility\u2019. Consequently, Steinberg questions the sanctity of singular narratives of the revolution, and history in general. In an era when many believe that society \u201cmust venture beyond the life as it is to create life as it ought to be,\u201d Steinberg\u2019s The Russian Revolution<\/em> is an inspiration and warning both. While many scholars focus on the fall, how the \u2018leap\u2019 is landed, Steinberg suggests that, especially in an era in which a \u2018leap\u2019 seems possible, more attention ought to be paid to the process of the \u2018leap\u2019: the various energies built up before it, the multiplicity of muscles that push off the ground, and the outpouring of thought while suspended in air.<\/p>\n

Jacob Bruggeman is a third-year history major at Miami.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark D. Steinberg, The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 388. Review by Jacob Bruggeman Mark D. Steinberg\u2019s new book, The Russian Revolution, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":130,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-issue-2-volume-i","category-volume-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/hst-journeys\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}