Next year will be the centenary of the Russian Revolution. Doubtless it will produce much coverage in books and articles, even though no member of a western-style democracy would wish to celebrate the event, any more than a Catholic would want to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation this year.
These thoughts have been prompted by Helen Rappaport’s book Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917. By concentrating on the city where the Revolution first began, and only describing the year it all blew up, she manages to make the reader feel part of those frenzied days and weeks through a judicious selection of eye-witness accounts. She deliberately avoids John Reed’s classic Ten Days That Shook the World, preferring to quote from lesser well-known western journalists, as well as diplomats, British nurses and others.
