March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1
688
March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1
688Hardcover(1)
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Overview
The Red Wheel is Solzhenitsyn’s magnum opus about the Russian Revolution. Solzhenitsyn tells this story in the form of a meticulously researched historical novel, supplemented by newspaper headlines of the day, fragments of street action, cinematic screenplay, and historical overview. The first two nodes—August 1914 and November 1916—focus on Russia’s crises and recovery, on revolutionary terrorism and its suppression, on the missed opportunity of Pyotr Stolypin’s reforms, and how the surge of patriotism in August 1914 soured as Russia bled in World War I.
March 1917—the third node—tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob, but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The action of book 1 (of four) of March 1917 is set during March 8–12. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. Bread riots in the capital, Petrograd, go unchecked at first, and the police are beaten and killed by mobs. Efforts to put down the violence using the army trigger a mutiny in the numerous reserve regiments housed in the city, who kill their officers and rampage. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition, horrified by the violence, scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power, while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it. Meanwhile, Emperor Nikolai II is away at military headquarters and his wife Aleksandra is isolated outside Petrograd, caring for their sick children. Suddenly, the viability of the Russian state itself is called into question.
The Red Wheel has been compared to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for each work aims to narrate the story of an era in a way that elevates its universal significance. In much the same way as Homer’s Iliad became the representative account of the Greek world and therefore the basis for Greek civilization, these historical epics perform a parallel role for our modern world.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780268102654 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Notre Dame Press |
| Publication date: | 11/30/2017 |
| Series: | The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 688 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Over the Nikolaevsky Bridge, another life awaited Veronya and Fanya. Left behind was the dozing Tsarist city they detested—and here they had stepped foot into a city of revolution! What this revolution looked like and what this revolution constituted was still not clear. They had never seen one! Still hanging on building walls and fences were the same proclamations by Commander Khabalov with calls for order and with threats—but only his notices. Nowhere were his bristling hordes. There was no guard at the other end of the Nikolaevsky Bridge, or the embankment, or Annunci - ation Square—no police guards anywhere and only rare patrols, whereas the freely scurrying public, with their motley, concerned, joyous faces, included a greater number of soldiers without formation or command and many who had been recovering in hospitals and were now talking excitedly and waving their bandages.
But there was no rally per se, no red flag—so the young women chose to turn toward the center, closer to events. Before them, though, a little to the right, they saw thick clouds of smoke, and they were told that the Lithuanian Fortress was burning and the prison was being liberated. Hurrah! That’s where the girls ran—to liberate the women’s prison!
Before they could get there, though, in front of the Potseluev Bridge on the Moika, they encountered a procession of already liberated women prisoners—a file of twenty or thirty, all wearing prisoner gowns and shoes— and they walked that way down the snowy street, and even though there was not a hard frost—my God!—they had to be clothed somewhere, fed and warmed! Veronya and Fanya rushed toward the file greatly agitated and confused. So how are you? What’s happening? Women, comrades, how can we help you? But the prisoners either had not awoken from their release or had already answered enough on their way. They didn’t even turn their heads but dragged along apathetically, single file, no one answering anything, and only one telling them crudely where they could go.
As if struck, Veronya and Fanya froze, shied away, and let the entire file pass. The fact that they were dressed too nicely had probably offended the prisoners.
Now they felt self-conscious about going to the prison. And they were dissuaded from going to the center by amiable passersby with revolutionary joy on their face: the regime rules there and you should go to the worker and army districts instead. So the young women headed over the Fontanka.
Their expectations were vindicated. Soon they began to hear gunfire: a few adolescents ran past them, firing shiny new black pistols in the air and immediately reloading them from their pockets as they went, something they’d picked up somewhere!
Soon they did see a rally. A student with an officer’s saber strapped on climbed onto a firm mound of snow and spoke very well about freedom, although it was impossible to determine his party orientation—maybe ours, but maybe SR. Listening to him were a few dozen quite random people— wounded soldiers, lower middle-class people, one official. The young women could have stayed and spoken as well, and maybe debated with the student, but now that they had abandoned their own island and duty anyway, they wanted to see more, to take it in and move!
So on they went, on they went.
There was a little scene by a building: a pale man in civilian dress with white hands pressed to his chest was standing there and opposite him was a cluster of about a dozen people of various sorts. Someone shouted, “Let’s take him, comrades!” But a lady asked, “But will you take him to the State Duma?” “We know where we’ll take him!” they shouted at her. While they were talking, the pale man dashed through a gateway, into a courtyard. And the entire bunch went after him, shouting. A shot rang out and the lady on the sidewalk explained to the young women that this was a young policeman who had changed clothes and who lived on their courtyard.
The young women cringed: this was the first death they’d come close to seeing.
Right then there were shouts:
“Ah, the jig’s up! Filthy coppers, black hundreds!”
They walked on. Across the Fontanka it was even livelier. There was another rally—from an unharnessed horse-cart, and with several speakers now. But the young women didn’t stop. They knew perfectly well what was being said here, and they wanted to see and even act.
Here was joy! People were carrying bolts of red bunting out of a dry goods store, and clearly they hadn’t bought it. Straight from the threshold they threw the bolts at the public so that they flew over their heads and came unwound, and then fell on someone’s shoulders or on the pavement. Everyone ran for the bunting and tore at it as if it were more precious than bread. Some carried entire pieces farther on to pass out while the rest ripped it up right there, and someone even took pins from the dry goods store.
How was it the young women hadn’t had that idea before? Now they made large rosettes for their chest and coat. Some made bows, some ribbons. But Fanechka also tore off a long wide ribbon and pinned it slantwise across her shoulder, the way Tsarist dignitaries wore their insignia. Funny!
Some took it for banners, some made red cockades for their caps, and some snatched a scrap and fastened it to a soldier’s bayonet—and he liked that and carried it like that, and everyone shouted loudly.
From that spot, from the passing out of red fabric, when they themselves and all the people around them became colorful, and no one chased the red or came down on them with whips, it was as if everything around them had begun to sing and change with great joy.