This is an amazing book. If it were fiction i would categorize it as trashy pulp adventure suspense: From the very beginning we know the Bolsheviki are going to pull it off, but on every page there is something to stop them, something to save the country or ruin everyone or cause civil war or avoid civil war. What makes it gut wrenching is that it's a first hand account of actual events which lead a country of 150 million hoping for reform and democratic socialism into a totaliatarial state. What surprised me the most were two things: First: I had no idea how well educated, engaged and organized the milions of workers, peasants, students and soldiers were. Second: the Bolsheviks gained huge support from their insistence on negotiating an end to a war which had no real publicly stated aim (except victory), thereby forcing the other allies (Britain, france, and the US) to say that the war was being fought for democracy and self-determination. The fight of common peasants and factory workers caused uge chanes across the globe IMMEDIATELY.