Young Russia

by Abbott Gleason

A major study with some new interpretations of thsi era of Russian history. The 1860s were a time for revolutionary change brought about mostly by the young people. The author relates that time to 1960s America.

Genres: History

451 pages, Hardcover

First published January 14, 1980

Reviews

[Olaf Koopmans · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not an easy book to review. Cause although Gleason's academic knowledge is outstanding, I'm not sure about the way he's trying to convey that to his public. Maybe the challenge is that he's so familiar with this part of Russian History that at times he rambles on without checking in if what he presumes common knowledge is indeed the case. I must admit that my personal knowledge is more focussed on 20th Century Russia and the Soviet Union that followed, but some of the characters he discusses, even by his own admitting are so obscure and unknown, that it's hard to keep up with all of them. Of course the more familiar ones like Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Iakushkin and Nachaev are covered, but overall it's difficult to follow Gleason's train of thoughts about how all these people, and a lot more, influenced each other and quarreled with each other.
What we're left with is a somewhat muddled, unbalanced, Fragmented, Sketchy, but also in-depth study of a very specific timeframe: Revolutionary Radicals in Russia in the second half of the 19th Century.
In the end, for me, it's foremost a motivation to pick up more books about the people and writers he talks about. A definitive starting point will be a somewhat more famous book by Venturi, 'The Roots of Revolution'. This is mentioned by Gleason himself a lot and covers the same subject, but spanning out over a longer period from the Dekabrist in 1825 to the influences on the people who started the actual Russian Revolution.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is seriously phenomenal. Outside of being -by far- the most in depth account of the early Russian radicals, the narration style is entertaining and sympathetic. Gleason doesn't try to hide his ideological leanings behind some illusory veil of objectivity, but also does a wonderful job of presenting the debates within their historical contexts. Anachronistic and politically volatile accounts like Hingley's take the cake for vulgarity, though Venturi's excellent work still has a slant that levels some of the interesting and strange depth of the historical characters. Gleason gets the best of both sides, while admitting the places where he struggled to complete his information, and problematizing the simplistic methods of his predecessors. I more than recommend trying to locate a copy of this if your interested in the subject (it is sadly out of print).

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the first two years at Grinnell College I deemed myself a Russian history major. Gregory Guroff's two-semester course on the subject and the rise of other interests during a year out of school as a draft evader disabused me of the notion, but the interest in the subject remained and I picked up books on the subject over the years, reading one now and again.

My favorite period in Russian history was that just before the revolution of 1917. A time of great intellectual ferment, the anguish and the debates between native, and exiled, revolutionaries and reformers were easy to relate to my own experiences with the New and the Old Lefts in the United States.

Gleason's history is an engaging survey of the period which may be read with profit by the beginner in the field.