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Loading... November 1916 (1983)by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Russian Literature (118) Loading...
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Belongs to SeriesThe Red Wheel (knot 2)
A novel on the 1917 Russian Revolution, chronicling the events which led up to it. The protagonists are its participants--from peasant to tsar. Part two of a multi-volume epic which began with August 1914. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)891.73Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages Russian and East Slavic languages Russian fictionLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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The book is dense and extremely detailed, and for the most part reads like a dry history treatise. The novelistic aspects and characters of August 1914 play second fiddle. Solzhenitsyn has also chosen to include huge bundles of source documents, transcripts of Duma proceedings for example, within the narrative itself. To give you an idea of what you can expect to find in the book, here is the headnote description of Chapter 7, the origins of the Kadets:
How did the schism begin?--why were the terrorists in such a hurry?--terror as an assertion of righteousness--liberalism's leftward deviation--difficulty of the middle line--original orientation of the Russian zemstovo--how it differed from western local governmental institutions--Alexandr III puts the brakes on--self-limitation in the conduct of state affairs?--Nikolai II and "groundless dreams"--the idee fixe: hold back from evolution--Shipov's interprovincial conference in 1902--the government's flat refusal--differentiation of zemstovo groups--formation of the League of Liberation--its program and tactics..
Yikes--I just turned the page and saw that the above is only about 1/4 of what Solzhenitsen outlines he will cover in Chapter 7 of the supposed novel.
I simply am not the reader for this book. I am sure there is much to admire in it, especially for a scholar of early twentieth century Russian history, the book was too much for me. You can decide if it sounds like something you'd enjoy ( )