My Book Reviews

I believe this book will become the standard book about this period in history. It is so detailed and thorough that it really amazed me.  My knowledge before reading this book about the Russian revolution and civil war was no more than what I had seen in documentaries about it, yet this is very sketchy and does not go beyond the February and October Revolutions and the remark "the following civil war ended in 1921". And I had seen the movie "Doctor Zhivago", so knew a bit about cruelties and chaos of these days. This book filled all the gaps I had in my knowledge. I can recommend it, although it is not light-hearted reading. The lunacy, the cruelty and the killing. 12 million people died. Of them 938 were British. The UK was heavily involved, provided a lot of weapons and even fought along, although this was considered to stay unknown. So a bit more than a century later the British are heavily involved again in a war in the same region. Another thing that caught my