Engelstein delivers a clear-eyed ... account of the difficulties confronting the population, now citizens of a country where the dream of democracy had been abandoned, and everyone was subject to the arbitrary swing of the sword.
Publishers Weekly
[Engelstein] succeeds in presenting a thorough history of these wars and revolutions in an understandable and ... Read moreengaging manner. In this full, richly detailed study, the author effectively argues the Bolsheviks were ultimately triumphant because they focused on power and were more willing to employ violence against their adversaries, and one another, with horrific results.
Library Journal
This is the first history of the Russian Revolution that takes seriously the fact that Russians were a minority in the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Russian empire. With verve and ambition, Engelstein chronicles the history of war and revolution as they swept across this vast empire. In this centenary year there will be many books on 1917, but none will be as original in conception and as bold in argument as this. This is history written on an epic scale by a historian at the height of her powers.
S. A. Smith, All Souls College, Oxford, author of Russia in Revolution
A simultaneously sweeping and focused history of the Bolshevik Revolution... comprehensive, ideologically detached, and enormously enlightening.
Kirkus
Destined to become the standard English language history of this period.
Mark Edele, Australian Book Review
The excellent Russia in Flames...covers not just the two revolutions and their prelude, but also the civil war that ensued...
Wall Street Journal
It is meticulously researched and brilliantly written.
Washington Book Review
The past year has seen a considerable wave of books on revolutionary Russia, few as good as Russia in Flames, which is likely to become a standard work on the subject.
LA Review of Books
A long and rigorously argued study.
Calvert Journal
Magisterial.
Daniel Beer, Times Literary Supplement
Engelstein, in this culmination of her life's work, examines the October Revolution in extraordinary breadth and depth. At its most profound, the book penetrates the deep subterrain of this history.
Foreign Affairs
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