Russia Goes to the Polls: The Election to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917

by Oliver H. Radkey

Held after the overthrow of the monarchy and before the Bolshevik forging of the one-party Soviet system, the 1917 election to the Constituent Assembly was the only ballot that was universal, secret, equal, and direct in the history of the Russians and other peoples who make up today's USSR. Radkey (emeritus history, U. of Texas) reprints his 1950 account of the voting, supplemented with new data and revised in the light of current scholarship. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: History

192 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 1989

About the author

A specialist in Russian and Soviet historym Oliver Henry Radkey Jr. was a professor of Russian history at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reviews

[Fernando Pestana da Costa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 1950, this book becomes the classic work about the election to the Constituent Assembly in Russia, at the end of 1917. The voting took place in the Winter of 1917 shortly after the assumption of power by the Bolsheviks (but way before the implementation of its dictatorship) in extremely difficult conditions over a huge country still at war with Germany (that occupied a large part of its pre-war European area) and in the chaotic processes of an ongoing revolution and incipient civil war. Despite these difficulties the voting was free and fair overall. The current book, although occasionally somewhat arid, is an interesting analysis of the election process and of its results and is of interest to anyone interested in the Russian Revolution and the early stages of the Soviet Union.

[Dimitrii Ivanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seemingly technical in origins, the book is full of pungent phrases and insightful interpretations.