Europe, Russia, World 

This book is concerned with the Russian Revolution in its widest sense - not only with the events of 1917 and what preceded them, but with the nature of the social transformation brought about by the Bolsheviks after they took power. Professor Fitzpatrick's analysis extends through the period of the Civil War and the New Economic Policy up to Stalin's `revolution from above' at the beginning of the 1930s. Her account confronts the key questions: what did the dictatorship of the proletariat really mean in practice? And was Lenin's revolution, in the hands of Stalin, accomplished - or betrayed? This new edition contains more information than the previous one on the Great Purges, and draws on much hitherto unavailable material from secret Soviet archives and unpublished memoirs. This book is intended for supplementary reading for courses on twentieth-century Russian history; students and readers interested in the Russian revolution. - from Amzon