Orlando Figes
Books by Orlando Figes
A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution
by Orlando Figes
***Winner of the 1997 Wolfson History Prize***
“I think that A People’s Tragedy is the most readable and illuminating history of the Russian revolution to be written, using material that only became available to historians following the Soviet Union’s collapse. Its scope is immense….Figes is basically a social historian. He’s interested in how historical events of the magnitude of the Russian revolution developed out of a number of different social trends. One of the great things about this book is that he combines a number of general theses about the revolution with personal narratives. He chooses five very different characters: Prince Lvov, who was the prime minister in the provisional government that was formed after the February revolution in 1917; General Brusilov, the tsar’s most gifted general who later joined the Red Army; Dmitri Oskin, a peasant soldier; the author Maxim Gorky; and Sergei Semenov, a reforming peasant leader. These personal narratives allow him to look at this period from all points of view – the grand political perspective, the grassroots perspective, a literary perspective, a military perspective.” Read more...
The best books on The Russian Revolution
Roland Chambers, Biographer
Natasha’s Dance
by Orlando Figes
This is an extensive picture of Russian culture, putting culture in its place as inseparable from society. He shows the Russian mind, the cosmology of belief, daily life on a cultural basis. He’s such a graceful writer. He talks about the significance of icons, dance, music, the various brands of Russian Orthodoxy and the way the Russians give meaning to their lives through ceremonies. The Russian landscape is a God-struck landscape. Even the atheists are haunted.
Interviews where books by Orlando Figes were recommended
The best books on Revolutionary Russia, recommended by Thomas Keneally
Best-selling author Thomas Keneally explains that the Cold War biographies couldn’t afford to say that Stalin was attractive, or that Lenin was magnetic, but they were, because otherwise people wouldn’t have followed them. He picks some great introductions to Revolutionary Russia.
The best books on The Russian Revolution, recommended by Roland Chambers
The Russian revolution was the beginning of the modern age, says award-winning author Roland Chambers. He tells us what Solzhenitsyn imagined Lenin was like, and about the children’s author who led a double life as a spy in Bolshevik Russia.
