%0 eBook %A Faulkner, Neil %I Pluto Press %D 2017 %C London %G English %@ 9781786800190 %@ 1786800195 %@ 9780745399041 %@ 0745399045 %T A people's history of the Russian Revolution %U http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctt1k85dnw %X The Russian Revolution may well be the most misunderstood event in modern history. In A People's History of the Russian Revolution, Neil Faulkner sets out to debunk the myths. In this fast-paced introduction to the tumultuous events, the Russian people are the heroes. Faulkner shows how a mass movement of millions, organised in democratic assemblies, mobilised for militant action, destroyed a regime of landlords, profiteers and warmongers. He rejects caricatures of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as authoritarian conspirators, 'democratic-centralists' or the progenitors of Stalinist dictatorship. He argues that the Russian Revolution was an explosion of democracy and creativity - and that it was crushed by bloody counter-revolution and replaced with a monstrous form of bureaucratic state-capitalism. Laced with first-hand testimony, this history seeks to rescue the democratic essence of the revolution from its detractors and deniers, offering a perfect primer for the modern reader.