nonfiction
Publisher:
Cappellen Damm
Translator:
Eivind Lilleskjæret
Publication year:
2022
«A masterpiece of painfully intrusive topicality.»
“In mud all their lives, with no shelter from the weather, no warm clothes, hot food or tea. We have reinforcements, boys who weren’t dry behind the ears yet. They were sent in a bayonet attack the next day… It was one shocking sight when many of them, who didn’t want to die, cried out in despair: ‘Mom’.”
The words are taken from the chaotic mobilization of 1916, during World War I, which was to be the prelude to the March Revolution of 1917 and the Bolshevik coup, the October Revolution, in the same year. And to the particularly bloody civil war that would last until 1921, when the Bolshevik world revolution stopped in Warsaw, having passed through today’s Ukraine several times. As it has been so many times throughout history. Because such is the geography of the country which means “borderland”. And geography is destiny.
Yell at mom
Even today’s obligatorily mobilized Russians ask for mom from the trenches in Ukraine. Forced mobilization remains chaotic, with reports of recruits lacking uniforms, weapons, food and shelter. They also call mom from the trenches, and this time they make themselves heard through cell phones. And the mothers of soldiers will become the most powerful opponents of the war in today’s Russia. Wait and see.
But that’s another story, and so the comparisons between then and now are over. Because the Russian revolutions and subsequent civil war were, above all, unique. They were unique in their chaos and senseless orgies of violence.
systematic destruction
Beevor strictly adheres to a chronological presentation of his story. Each of the four main chapters is dedicated to a different year, from 1917 to 1920 inclusive.
The author nevertheless produces clear portraits of the main characters. Like the last tsar by the absolute grace of God, Nicholas II, just as utterly unfit for the task as he is. Like the absolutely revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who was absolutely suited to his life’s work, namely the systematic destruction of the whole old order and the relentless struggle against everything that stood in his way. Like the leading “white” generals Denikin and Wrangel, who quarreled rather than cooperated against the Red Bolsheviks. And like the absolute virtuoso joker of the Civil War, anarchist Nestor Makhno, who soon fought against the Reds, and just as quickly turned against the Whites.
AUTHOR: British war historian Antony Beevor has written books on wars, from the Spanish Civil War to the fall of Berlin. He now he puts the Russian revolution under the microscope. Photo: Lars Eivind Bones
sea View
But even as a joker, Makhno had no chance to turn the tables. It is and remains a historical parenthesis, as anarchy as a state project was destined to be. But he must have, Makhno never turned his cloak to the wind. Rather, he turned it upside down, and the poor serf boy of the historic Cossack regions of the Ukraine is therefore an utterly fascinating story. Some talented storytellers should cultivate the underdog story. It will be a good read.
– He can send Putin to a sanatorium
Complicated story
Beevor balances his complicated Civil War story nicely. There are basically four main sections of the front and a number of parties or participants in the civil war. It is the western front with Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and the Baltic countries. It’s the Eastern Front, the Bolshevik advance into Siberia. And there is warfare between the Bolsheviks and their many opponents against the Caucasus in the south, and in present-day Ukraine in the southwest.
The author is accurate in his description of the development of the fronts. And occasionally the details come at the expense of this reviewer’s desire to be able to paint with a slightly wider brush. The broad brush still paints a clear picture.
– The West drugged by Russia
The Bolsheviks won because they cultivated their class hatred and Lenin’s confrontational nature. And all the other lost, from the monarchists who wanted to reintegrate the tsarist family, to the militarists who wanted a military dictatorship, to the “bourgeois” who wanted liberal European development, to the Social Revolutionaries who wanted a democratic and non-dictatorial revolution, to Makhnos’ Anarchists, Austrians, Poles and Ukrainian nationalists. Because the Bolsheviks were much better organised.
And the rest is history. As we now see unfolding in Ukraine, for example. Because history tends to repeat itself. But never in the same way.
