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Записки о Революции в 3х Томах
Kн. 1 (Мартовский переворот. 23. февраля - 2. марта 1917г). 352 с.
Кн. 2 (Едингж фронт демократии. 3. марта - 3. апреля 1917г). 421 с.
Кн. 3 (Создание единого фронта крупной и мелкой буржназу. 3. апреля - 5. мая 1917г). 456 с.
Кн. 2 (Едингж фронт демократии. 3. марта - 3. апреля 1917г). 421 с.
Кн. 3 (Создание единого фронта крупной и мелкой буржназу. 3. апреля - 5. мая 1917г). 456 с.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1922
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About the author
Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov
6 books1 followerНиколай Николаевич Суханов
Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov (Russian: Николай Николаевич Суханов; 10 December 1882 – 29 June 1940) was a Russian Menshevik Internationalist and chronicler of the Russian Revolution.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov (Russian: Николай Николаевич Суханов; 10 December 1882 – 29 June 1940) was a Russian Menshevik Internationalist and chronicler of the Russian Revolution.
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May 4, 2016
"Revolution!- highly improbable! Revolution! -everyone knew this was only a dream- a dream of generations and long laborious decades...I repeated after them mechanically:
'Yes, the beginning of the revolution.'"
This is a very, very good book.
Sukhanov was a Marxist journalist in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, and when the revolution began, he became part of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and spent several months at the heart of the revolution. This account is abridged from his over-two-thousand-page, as-yet-untranslated account, Notes on the Revolution. It still runs to 668 pages, and is consistently interesting through all of them. And consistently sarcastic, as he has a low opinion both of the liberals and their socialist allies like Kerensky (whom he really has it in for), and of the Bolsheviks. Even when he clearly admires a person, such as the Menshevik leader Martov, he still has an almost too keen eye for their weak points. This all makes him an excellent observer.
"Miliukov began to speak animatedly, and apparently with complete sincerity.
'And for that matter- you surely don't think we are really carrying on some kind of bourgeois class policy of our own, that we are taking a definite line of some kind! Nothing of the sort. We are simply compelled to see to it that everything doesn't go to pieces once and for all...'
Miliukov, recognized by Europe as the head of Russian imperialism....one of the inspirers of the World War, the Russian Foreign Minister...Miliukov, a highly cultivated man, a great scholar and a professor- didn't know he was speaking prose!"
[A reference to Moliere's The Bourgeois Gentleman. "Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it."]
On the other hand, he can be quite condescending toward a long list of people- women, soldiers, peasants, the liberal intelligentsia, the Socialist Revolutionaries (at the time, the largest political party in Russia). This is grating, and it is amusing in light of the general condescension toward women that his wife was letting the Bolsheviks hold important meetings in their flat without his knowledge.
He has a very keen eye for detail- are the trams running? What was the weather like? Who was trying to get hold of whom on the telephone? Where could a person snatch a few hours of sleep in the midst of momentous events? (Answer: in a gallery of the White Hall, on a fur coast laid out on the floor.) Reading his account, you feel as if you are living through the events, or at the very least receiving detailed letters from a regular correspondent as they go on.
It helped my enjoyment of the book that the main points of his analysis hold up quite well, though the book was written in the late 1910's and early 1920's - that World War One was a catastrophe and that those liberals and socialists who wanted to continue it were criminally irresponsible, and that the Bolsheviks, while right on the war, were lying about everything else and using the slogan "All power to the Soviets" to seize absolute power for their Central Committee. However, sometimes it is very hard to understand what he means by socialism or what kind of program he supported, as he tends to assume the reader knows what he means by "Marxist" and "anarchist" in reference to different policies.
There are a number of hilarious anecdotes in the book, whether in his descriptions of the hypocrisy and stupidity of various politicians, the habits of the local anarchist group, or the confusion that can occur in a revolution. For example, the story of how the Menshevik Dan convinces a pro-Bolshevik regiment to defend the Mensheviks and SR's (then the majority in the Soviet) during the July Days, when the soldiers had come to overthrow these groups.
"The regiment, of its own free will, had performed a difficult march to defend the revolution? Splendid! The revolution, in the person of the central organ of the Soviet, was really in danger....And Dan personally, with the cooperation of the officers of the 'insurrectionary' regiment, posted some of these mutinous soldiers as sentries...for the defense of those against whom the insurrection was aimed. Yes, such things happen in history!"
My only regret about this book is that the rest of it is untranslated. It was really a fascinating and highly educational read. When it came out, even those who disagreed with its point of view (the Communists, for example, since it quite openly points out their dictatorial qualities) acknowledged its importance. If you're interested in the Russian Revolution, it's a must read. Otherwise, it's a good guide to any author writing about a revolution, showing the day-by-day improvisation of the people who suddenly find themselves in charge, the machinations of politicians, and the shifting mood in the street. Absolutely full of telling details.
"'Let's sit down at the table,' said the Ministers, and sat down, in order to look like busy statesmen."
'Yes, the beginning of the revolution.'"
This is a very, very good book.
Sukhanov was a Marxist journalist in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, and when the revolution began, he became part of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and spent several months at the heart of the revolution. This account is abridged from his over-two-thousand-page, as-yet-untranslated account, Notes on the Revolution. It still runs to 668 pages, and is consistently interesting through all of them. And consistently sarcastic, as he has a low opinion both of the liberals and their socialist allies like Kerensky (whom he really has it in for), and of the Bolsheviks. Even when he clearly admires a person, such as the Menshevik leader Martov, he still has an almost too keen eye for their weak points. This all makes him an excellent observer.
"Miliukov began to speak animatedly, and apparently with complete sincerity.
'And for that matter- you surely don't think we are really carrying on some kind of bourgeois class policy of our own, that we are taking a definite line of some kind! Nothing of the sort. We are simply compelled to see to it that everything doesn't go to pieces once and for all...'
Miliukov, recognized by Europe as the head of Russian imperialism....one of the inspirers of the World War, the Russian Foreign Minister...Miliukov, a highly cultivated man, a great scholar and a professor- didn't know he was speaking prose!"
[A reference to Moliere's The Bourgeois Gentleman. "Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it."]
On the other hand, he can be quite condescending toward a long list of people- women, soldiers, peasants, the liberal intelligentsia, the Socialist Revolutionaries (at the time, the largest political party in Russia). This is grating, and it is amusing in light of the general condescension toward women that his wife was letting the Bolsheviks hold important meetings in their flat without his knowledge.
He has a very keen eye for detail- are the trams running? What was the weather like? Who was trying to get hold of whom on the telephone? Where could a person snatch a few hours of sleep in the midst of momentous events? (Answer: in a gallery of the White Hall, on a fur coast laid out on the floor.) Reading his account, you feel as if you are living through the events, or at the very least receiving detailed letters from a regular correspondent as they go on.
It helped my enjoyment of the book that the main points of his analysis hold up quite well, though the book was written in the late 1910's and early 1920's - that World War One was a catastrophe and that those liberals and socialists who wanted to continue it were criminally irresponsible, and that the Bolsheviks, while right on the war, were lying about everything else and using the slogan "All power to the Soviets" to seize absolute power for their Central Committee. However, sometimes it is very hard to understand what he means by socialism or what kind of program he supported, as he tends to assume the reader knows what he means by "Marxist" and "anarchist" in reference to different policies.
There are a number of hilarious anecdotes in the book, whether in his descriptions of the hypocrisy and stupidity of various politicians, the habits of the local anarchist group, or the confusion that can occur in a revolution. For example, the story of how the Menshevik Dan convinces a pro-Bolshevik regiment to defend the Mensheviks and SR's (then the majority in the Soviet) during the July Days, when the soldiers had come to overthrow these groups.
"The regiment, of its own free will, had performed a difficult march to defend the revolution? Splendid! The revolution, in the person of the central organ of the Soviet, was really in danger....And Dan personally, with the cooperation of the officers of the 'insurrectionary' regiment, posted some of these mutinous soldiers as sentries...for the defense of those against whom the insurrection was aimed. Yes, such things happen in history!"
My only regret about this book is that the rest of it is untranslated. It was really a fascinating and highly educational read. When it came out, even those who disagreed with its point of view (the Communists, for example, since it quite openly points out their dictatorial qualities) acknowledged its importance. If you're interested in the Russian Revolution, it's a must read. Otherwise, it's a good guide to any author writing about a revolution, showing the day-by-day improvisation of the people who suddenly find themselves in charge, the machinations of politicians, and the shifting mood in the street. Absolutely full of telling details.
"'Let's sit down at the table,' said the Ministers, and sat down, in order to look like busy statesmen."
September 19, 2023
Love this book through and through. and i know it is an abridgement, so ... can i get a full english translation? Still, a very long book that took me forever to read - in separate reading installments, but how i cherish this book. The authors sensibilities and biases are frequently aligned with my own sense - for which there is good and bad. A left SR (internationalist / pacifist aligned with Martov) he is regularly to the left of most governmental policy which puts him... close to the bolshevists, right? right. but he is at pains to distinguish himself throughout from them. For reasons of .... scruples? the authoritarian tendencies he perceives in Lenin/Trotsky? I'm still not sure, but he is clearly on the outs at the end, although ideologically he is aligned throughout with the bolsheviks. I don't always agree with his characterizations (of Kornilov or Kerensky for example), but i am sympathetic with where he is coming from all along. He is also does an amazing job of capturing the underlying mood / direction of the times w/o falling prey to the tendency to hype / dramatize events (which make the actualy dramatic scenes that much more credible / powerful). For example the whole drift of the critical days Oct 22-25, the slowly realized revolutions- halting, unsteady, unsure but more or less settled by real forces on the ground. and the regular reminder that with just a little push from the provisional gov't / kerensky, they still could have saved the day due to the disorganization / unsteadiness of the slowly uncorked revolutionary movement. Just outstanding.
October 17, 2024
Sukhanov was a genuine internationalist and a courageous figure, but he was also an incorrigible petit bourgeois intellectual.
Above all his memoirs capture the personal and emotional aspects of political life. As a result, there is a constant supply of laugh-out-loud scenes: Kerensky standing on a table, shouting at everyone to obey him; the Bolshevik Ryazanov bamboozling a hall of increasingly agitated Mensheviks about whether an uprising was being planned; and Sukhanov being teased all day at the Petersburg Soviet the day after Lenin wrote an article about him.
What holds the memoirs (and the author) back is that he can often be a bit of a curmudgeon. He frequently veers into diatribes against various Bolshevik policies, speeches, or slogans. Yet, in almost every instance, he ultimately agrees with the necessity of their actions. Time and again, you think he is about to concede and join the Bolsheviks, only for the next page to reveal that he has found yet another hill to die on!
Despite this, you can’t help but warm to the man while reading the book. Despite his faults, he comes across as a genuine leftist and a first-rate historian, situated at the very heart of one of the most incredible events in history.
This book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in the Russian revolution, but it is not a suitable entry point to the subject. Sukhanov stumbles into various political potholes, despite (or perhaps because of) his unique vantage point. For someone new to the topic, I would recommend Alan Wood's "Bolshevism" instead. Sukhanov would certainly not agree with that recommendation, but there you go!
Above all his memoirs capture the personal and emotional aspects of political life. As a result, there is a constant supply of laugh-out-loud scenes: Kerensky standing on a table, shouting at everyone to obey him; the Bolshevik Ryazanov bamboozling a hall of increasingly agitated Mensheviks about whether an uprising was being planned; and Sukhanov being teased all day at the Petersburg Soviet the day after Lenin wrote an article about him.
What holds the memoirs (and the author) back is that he can often be a bit of a curmudgeon. He frequently veers into diatribes against various Bolshevik policies, speeches, or slogans. Yet, in almost every instance, he ultimately agrees with the necessity of their actions. Time and again, you think he is about to concede and join the Bolsheviks, only for the next page to reveal that he has found yet another hill to die on!
Despite this, you can’t help but warm to the man while reading the book. Despite his faults, he comes across as a genuine leftist and a first-rate historian, situated at the very heart of one of the most incredible events in history.
This book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in the Russian revolution, but it is not a suitable entry point to the subject. Sukhanov stumbles into various political potholes, despite (or perhaps because of) his unique vantage point. For someone new to the topic, I would recommend Alan Wood's "Bolshevism" instead. Sukhanov would certainly not agree with that recommendation, but there you go!
March 9, 2025
Зачем я потратили 4 месяца на прочтение трех с половиной тысяч страниц о революции? Изначально хотелось найти работу критически описывающую историю революции и Ленина, написаную в те времена. Про Ленина здесь совсем мало. Эти записки Суханова описывают период в несколько месяцев формирования и работы временного правительства и исполнительного комитета в Петербурге. Поражает бесконечное количество дебатов, выступлений, речей, прокламаций, докладов, и разговоров. В русском языке есть прекрасное слово которое все это описывает - пиздёж. Это был бесконечный пиздёж; пустой треп языком. Вспоминая советские 80-ые, становится понятно откуда взялось характерное пустословие тех времен. В итоге поражает никчемность и недальновидность участвовавших в этом провалившемся эксперименте.
July 12, 2017
It’s incredible to believe that it’s been 100 years since the Russian Revolution: the Ten Days that Shook the World as Jack Reid called them. It begun one of the greatest social experiments in humanity and now, 100 years later, having “failed,” it’s still subject to in depth analysis, what it accomplished, where it fell short, and what we can learn from it.
Probably the most in-depth account of the Russian Revolution can be found in Leon Trotsky’s book of the same name. Although it’s incredibly thorough and in-depth, it’s fair to say we’re not going to get an impartial account from Trotsky. After all, this was a man who was incapable of criticizing the party while he was part of it but found everything wrong with it the moment he was exiled. Trotsky’s contemporaries either died, were not big writers, or their writings of the revolution simply didn’t survive. The closest thing we’re going to get of a more critical first-hand account would be this: Sukhanov’s The Russian Revolution: 1977 A Personal Account.
Being a journalist, writer, historian, Menshevik, and member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Sukhanov was right where the action was during those crucial months in 1917 (though he was absent at the onset in February). Throughout this extensive yet abridged book (600+ pages), Sukhanov provides interesting, in-depth analysis and commentary on the daily occurrences leading up to the October revolution, and we accompany him on his daily activities as he moves to and from work, going to meetings, attending protests, and witnessing the events unfold. His writing style is comical, self-deprecating, honest, and apprehensive of the direction in which things are going. Being in his position, Sukhanov of course had access to all the big players and he retells his meetings with them. Never trusting the Bolsheviks or the Provisional Government, Sukhanov was quite critical of the decisions being made by both sides. He is unimpressed with the ideas of both Lenin and Trotsky and underlines that their power lay in speeches and persuasion, he insists that due to Kerensky’s ego he truly thought he was the only one who could save the country, and he considers Martov one of the most brilliant minds of his time, yet unable to function as a revolutionary. He even mentions Stalin a couple times, which is a couple more times than Trotsky did in his book. Sukhanov even insists that, as can be suspected, most of the Bolshevik party couldn’t make heads or tails out of Lenin and his ideas. His unpredictable policies and his move to the left were considered confusing to everyone and downright anarchist and his unconditional support for the Soviet was just a tool to gain power. In the end the Bolsheviks were not a party, it was Lenin who was the party, and Trotsky himself kept mutating until he became one with him.
One hundred years later, Sukhanov’s book proves to be an invaluable supplement to the events of the Russian Revolution and a must-read for scholars and fans of the subject. It’s a perfect counterpoint to Trotsky’s book, and its importance is almost unmatched.
Probably the most in-depth account of the Russian Revolution can be found in Leon Trotsky’s book of the same name. Although it’s incredibly thorough and in-depth, it’s fair to say we’re not going to get an impartial account from Trotsky. After all, this was a man who was incapable of criticizing the party while he was part of it but found everything wrong with it the moment he was exiled. Trotsky’s contemporaries either died, were not big writers, or their writings of the revolution simply didn’t survive. The closest thing we’re going to get of a more critical first-hand account would be this: Sukhanov’s The Russian Revolution: 1977 A Personal Account.
Being a journalist, writer, historian, Menshevik, and member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Sukhanov was right where the action was during those crucial months in 1917 (though he was absent at the onset in February). Throughout this extensive yet abridged book (600+ pages), Sukhanov provides interesting, in-depth analysis and commentary on the daily occurrences leading up to the October revolution, and we accompany him on his daily activities as he moves to and from work, going to meetings, attending protests, and witnessing the events unfold. His writing style is comical, self-deprecating, honest, and apprehensive of the direction in which things are going. Being in his position, Sukhanov of course had access to all the big players and he retells his meetings with them. Never trusting the Bolsheviks or the Provisional Government, Sukhanov was quite critical of the decisions being made by both sides. He is unimpressed with the ideas of both Lenin and Trotsky and underlines that their power lay in speeches and persuasion, he insists that due to Kerensky’s ego he truly thought he was the only one who could save the country, and he considers Martov one of the most brilliant minds of his time, yet unable to function as a revolutionary. He even mentions Stalin a couple times, which is a couple more times than Trotsky did in his book. Sukhanov even insists that, as can be suspected, most of the Bolshevik party couldn’t make heads or tails out of Lenin and his ideas. His unpredictable policies and his move to the left were considered confusing to everyone and downright anarchist and his unconditional support for the Soviet was just a tool to gain power. In the end the Bolsheviks were not a party, it was Lenin who was the party, and Trotsky himself kept mutating until he became one with him.
One hundred years later, Sukhanov’s book proves to be an invaluable supplement to the events of the Russian Revolution and a must-read for scholars and fans of the subject. It’s a perfect counterpoint to Trotsky’s book, and its importance is almost unmatched.
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February 7, 2017O melhor livro sobre a Revolução Francesa é História da Revolução em França, de Edmund Burke, de 1790, que previu o Terror de Robespierre e Saint-Just. Se o estudante quer um livro a favor da Revolução Francesa, leia, o título é o de sempre, o de Gaetano Salvemini. A favor da russa a de Sukhanov, que a Oxford University Press resumiu num volume, ou A Revolução Russa, de Trotski, um clássico revolucionário. Mas os fatos falam mais alto que o brilho literário de Trotski.
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January 4, 2010THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, 1917 - A PERSONAL RECORD. by N.N. Sukhanov (1984)
July 25, 2015
Une référence incontournable sur la révolution russe.
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