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lukescalone's review
2.0
For anyone looking to learn about the Russian Civil War, skip this piece. Although it does tell about military strategy during the Civil War, it doesn't offer much more. It seems that Mawdsley is looking more to challenge other historians while dropping any pretense of impartiality (generally this is ok if the author makes it clear what they're trying to do, but the Russian Revolution & Civil War are still fundamentally political subjects). At the same time, this work is only sparsely sourced and does not offer much in the way of detail.
More significantly, it ignores the complexity of the Civil War, simply classifying people as Reds, Whites, and foreign groupings. This was not the reality on the ground. Both sides forced people across Russia to join them, and the same individual may have fought on both sides of the Civil War at different times, yet we don't hear about them at all. The book ends with a "settling the scores" by counting those who died in the war, which is generally a fair topic of discussion, but in this case it seems to miss the point. The Russian Civil War was excruciating, obviously. But it's also impossible to give any sort of accurate statistics on "whites" and "reds" who died, as these were not entirely discrete groupings.
Anyhow, there is one quote in the book that made me laugh a bit, but only because in my head I imagined Josef Svejk leading the charge against the Bolshevik government:
More significantly, it ignores the complexity of the Civil War, simply classifying people as Reds, Whites, and foreign groupings. This was not the reality on the ground. Both sides forced people across Russia to join them, and the same individual may have fought on both sides of the Civil War at different times, yet we don't hear about them at all. The book ends with a "settling the scores" by counting those who died in the war, which is generally a fair topic of discussion, but in this case it seems to miss the point. The Russian Civil War was excruciating, obviously. But it's also impossible to give any sort of accurate statistics on "whites" and "reds" who died, as these were not entirely discrete groupings.
Anyhow, there is one quote in the book that made me laugh a bit, but only because in my head I imagined Josef Svejk leading the charge against the Bolshevik government:
"At first sight it might seem incomprehensible that some Czechoslovak Corps, which has wound up with us in Russia through the tortuous ways of the World War, should at the given moment prove to be almost the most important factor in deciding the questions of the Russian Revolution. Nevertheless, that is the case." - Trotsky, 29 July 1918
gfox3737's review
3.0
This is the type of history book that views war and conflict from the top-down, from sources regarding the leaders like Lenin, Denikin, Trotsky, Stalin, et al., and then uses soldier memoirs and critical documents to corroborate sources. So, it is a strategic and political history from the major players of the war in a concise history of a many-sided conflict, researched at a time when new data was finally released from the old Soviet archives. What is missing are more voices from the lower echelon like the peasants and non-combattants. However, these additions would deter from Mawdsley's goal of showing the triumph of the Bolsheviks and the eventual defeat of the Whites (and Greens).
He focuses on the macro level for the battles themselves, highlighting outcomes and statistical/strategical data, and only talks about the battle elite like generals and political strategists. He glosses over certain conflicts, like the Polish campaign, which Mawdsley relegates to a minor campaign ending in a defeat but not detrimental to the entire Bolshevik/Red war effort. Much more could be said about this campaign and the damage done to the populace of the areas involved, but perhaps that is better left to other histories (or Isaac Babel!). He also relegates the entire Central Asian communities and areas as a mostly backward and technologically inferior population, falling into the Western worldview fallacy of viewing non-Western European societies of the late -19th century/early-20th century as sub-civilizations and unorganized.
He focuses on the macro level for the battles themselves, highlighting outcomes and statistical/strategical data, and only talks about the battle elite like generals and political strategists. He glosses over certain conflicts, like the Polish campaign, which Mawdsley relegates to a minor campaign ending in a defeat but not detrimental to the entire Bolshevik/Red war effort. Much more could be said about this campaign and the damage done to the populace of the areas involved, but perhaps that is better left to other histories (or Isaac Babel!). He also relegates the entire Central Asian communities and areas as a mostly backward and technologically inferior population, falling into the Western worldview fallacy of viewing non-Western European societies of the late -19th century/early-20th century as sub-civilizations and unorganized.
katemuldowney's review
1.0
Took me a very long time to get through this. Mawdsley cares more about putting across his "unique perspective" on the date which the civil war _really_ began (which he bluntly draws attention to every 20 pages) than about deeply engaging with the many moving parts of its occurrence.
His blatant lack of impartiality shows through most bizarrely in his repeated argument that the Bolsheviks were simultaneously a terrifying, indestructible military force and also a weak, badly organised collection of armies, made up of soldiers constantly attempting mutiny and lacking any resemblance of unity.
His blatant lack of impartiality shows through most bizarrely in his repeated argument that the Bolsheviks were simultaneously a terrifying, indestructible military force and also a weak, badly organised collection of armies, made up of soldiers constantly attempting mutiny and lacking any resemblance of unity.
ekul's review
2.0
For anyone looking to learn about the Russian Civil War, skip this piece. Although it does tell about military strategy during the Civil War, it doesn't offer much more. It seems that Mawdsley is looking more to challenge other historians while dropping any pretense of impartiality (generally this is ok if the author makes it clear what they're trying to do, but the Russian Revolution & Civil War are still fundamentally political subjects). At the same time, this work is only sparsely sourced and does not offer much in the way of detail.
More significantly, it ignores the complexity of the Civil War, simply classifying people as Reds, Whites, and foreign groupings. This was not the reality on the ground. Both sides forced people across Russia to join them, and the same individual may have fought on both sides of the Civil War at different times, yet we don't hear about them at all. The book ends with a "settling the scores" by counting those who died in the war, which is generally a fair topic of discussion, but in this case it seems to miss the point. The Russian Civil War was excruciating, obviously. But it's also impossible to give any sort of accurate statistics on "whites" and "reds" who died, as these were not entirely discrete groupings.
Anyhow, there is one quote in the book that made me laugh a bit, but only because in my head I imagined Josef Svejk leading the charge against the Bolshevik government:
More significantly, it ignores the complexity of the Civil War, simply classifying people as Reds, Whites, and foreign groupings. This was not the reality on the ground. Both sides forced people across Russia to join them, and the same individual may have fought on both sides of the Civil War at different times, yet we don't hear about them at all. The book ends with a "settling the scores" by counting those who died in the war, which is generally a fair topic of discussion, but in this case it seems to miss the point. The Russian Civil War was excruciating, obviously. But it's also impossible to give any sort of accurate statistics on "whites" and "reds" who died, as these were not entirely discrete groupings.
Anyhow, there is one quote in the book that made me laugh a bit, but only because in my head I imagined Josef Svejk leading the charge against the Bolshevik government:
"At first sight it might seem incomprehensible that some Czechoslovak Corps, which has wound up with us in Russia through the tortuous ways of the World War, should at the given moment prove to be almost the most important factor in deciding the questions of the Russian Revolution. Nevertheless, that is the case." - Trotsky, 29 July 1918
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