October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The events of Saint Petersburg, 1917 are among the most fascinating in history. The largest and most oppressive monarchical empire in the world was over thrown by something that proved to be much, much worse. What makes this book interesting is that it was written by someone who can't quite bring himself to conced that last point.

I never heard of China Mieville before finding the handsome cover of this book. He is a gifted and confident writer who strikes the right balance between procedural detail and human drama. I have read many books on this subject, but Mievell made the material seem fresh.

Mievell concedses off the bat that he is not a neutral observer of these events. A quick Google search confirmed tha the is, even in the year of our Lord 2019, a committed Marxist. His affection for Lenin is not subtle. And it takes a little mental energy to periodically remember that the author believes in the economic equivalent of Scientology. But the story drives forward and builds to the glorious moment when a ramshackle band of second rate political theorists take over land spanning 11 time zones.

At times I was deeply annoyed by his ability to bend facts away from Lenin's faults. He seems to genuinely believe that Lenin was a pure soul with only the best intentions. It borders on the embarassing at times, but I may have read to many right-wing accounts of these same events.

In the epilogue, Mievelle does acknowledge the profound problems that revealed themselves in the decade after the October Revolution. But his thesis seems to be that those events were not an inevitible consequnce of Bolshevism. On that, I must strongly disagree. But this book is a quick read and the style is entertaining.

I will mention one annoying style clithc-Mievell is fond of using obscure words for commonly used concepts. Several times he uses a word that I've never head and then immediately saves the reader a Google by defining it. When a writer feels that is necessary, he's just showing off his Scrabble abilities. Here's a related example. In the epiloque he describes the display of Lenin's corpse as "A gnarled and ghastly relic, recieving obeisance from its catafalque.

And here, let me Google that for you. Catafalque: A decorated wooden framework supporting the coffin of a distinguished person during a funeral or while lying in state. Obeisance: deferential respect.







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