March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 4

The Red Wheel #3.4

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Marian Schwartz (translator)

In March 1917, Book 4, the willing and unwilling participants of the Russian Revolution try to make sense of their next steps amidst unraveling chaos.

One of the masterpieces of world literature, The Red Wheel is Nobel prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution told in the form of a historical novel. March 1917—the third node—chronicles the mayhem, day by day, of the Russian Revolution. Book 4 presents, for the first time in English, the conclusion of this four-volume revolutionary saga.

The action of Book 4, the final installment of March 1917, is set during March 23–31, 1917. Book 4 portrays a cast of thousands in motion and agitation as every stratum of Russian society—the army on the front lines, the countryside, the Volga merchants, the Don Cossacks, the Orthodox Church—is racked by the confusing new reality. Soldiers start to fraternize across trenches with the enemy. The Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the emperor’s uncle, arrives at military headquarters to assume the supreme command but is promptly dismissed by the new Provisional Government. Even this government holds no power, for at every step it is cowed and hemmed in by a self-proclaimed and unaccountable Executive Committee acting in the name of the Soviets—councils of workers and soldiers. Yet the Soviets themselves are divided—on whether to call for an end to the war or for its continuation, on whether to topple the Provisional Government or to let it try to govern. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, Lenin quietly dictates his own terms to the German General Staff, setting the stage for his return to Russia.

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Politics, Historical Fiction

632 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

also known as
Alexander Solzenitsyn (English, alternate)
Αλεξάντρ Σολζενίτσιν (Greek)

Works, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1975), of Soviet writer and dissident Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, exposed the brutality of the labor camp system.

This known Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian best helped to make the world aware of the forced Gulag.

Exiled in 1974, he returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn fathered of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a conductor and pianist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksan...

Reviews

[Barry Smirnoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the 4th and concluding volume of the March 1917 Node of the Red Wheel series. This book takes us to the end of March and shows the conflicts that developed between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet, as well as the conflicts in each of these groups. The Soldiers are still taking part in Revolutionary Violence against officers and Bureaucrats of the czarist regime. The upper classes are still under attack and there are still criminal gangs masquerading as soldiers, anarchists, and agitators seizing cars, houses, and all forms of wealth from them. The conflicts between the SRs, SDs, and other radical groups intensify as the issue of the War and economic dislocations came to the forefront. The actual conflicts In the Army threaten to open the front to the Germans. The radicals are returning from exile and Lenin is dictating the terms of Bolshevik leaders return from Switzerland to the German General Staff. We now await the translation of the two volumes of April 1917 and the conclusion of the 11 book series, Solzhenitsyn collected hundreds of reminiscences from participants and had access to the vast archives of the Hoover Institute at Stanford. This is an amazing project that includes extraordinary maps and an index of the characters of the book both real and fictional. It is on my Bucket list and I hope that I live long enough to see the concluding volumes. I read the first volume in 1972, and have read the revisions to that book as well as November 1916. He is a great writer, but he is not an easy read, especially if you do not have a background in the history of this period. But it is very satisfying to have brought the series up to this point and I look forward to the conclusion.

[James Violand · Rating 5 out of 5]

To the outside world, Russia appears jubilant in its newfound freedom. Yet, while the public is euphoric for the future, the government and the Army are filled with unbridled division and dissension. The Bolsheviks manipulate the workers and the soldiers to their advantage, hoping to gain uncontrolled power circumventing the Provisional Government and betraying the once popular concept of a Constituent Assembly. Every conceivable collection of interests becomes a Soviet that dominates its field demanding recognition from a disintegrating government. All is ripe for the inevitable Communist takeover in October.

[Spencer Willardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sprawling book takes me to the wide expanse of the revolution and into its most intimate details in the lives of a cast of interesting characters. The more immersed I get, the more the magnitude of the revolution - and its simplicity - strike me. Making my way through this series has been worth the effort.