Revolution returned to the people

When we think of the Russian revolution and its aftermath, we tend to see it in terms of central characters - Nicholas Romanov, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Josef Stalin.

They become the main protagonists and they stride like giants across the revolutionary landscape, blotting out the millions of ordinary people who made the insurrection possible.

Orlando Figes believes historians are chiefly responsible for this obsession with leaders. He tries to restore the balance and show what the revolution meant to the people in the streets, on the Eastern Front and in the peasant commune.

His empirical analysis of the salient points of the revolution and his treatment of Marxist-Leninist ideology provide nothing new. He is especially critical of the right-wing American historian Richard Pipes, and rightly so.

Academically, he cannot match Pipes' flawed but brilliant The Russian Revolution. Also, his chapters on the Civil War lack the prescience and unique insight of former Red Army general, Dimitri Volkogonov (in his book Trotsky ) and Figes' examination of Trotsky's pivotal role as commissar for war is cursory and dismissive.

Where this book stands out as a landmark work is in the wealth of social history which fills its pages. His exhaustive research brings the revolution to life. He is, in effect, trying to give history back to the people who made it and who, until now, have seldom merited a footnote.