RECENSIONI / Libera Pisano /
As an author of fiction and leftist activist, China Miéville in his last volume is able to offer a brilliant retelling of the Russian Revolution. The author starts the narration in medias res, leaving aside all ideological battles. One can say that among the vast range of critical works about this epoch-making event, this volume has the peculiarity of offering a historically accurate overview without adopting an academic tone and a strictly scholarly approach. However, this does not mean that the pages in question are not the result of an accurate enquiry, quite the contrary. And as evidence of this, one might mention two precious tools provided at the end of the volume: one is the glossary of the personal names which were involved in the revolution and the other is a selected list of titles that the author found extremely helpful when carrying out his research for the book.
The volume starts with a prehistory of the Russian Revolution and then the chapters follow the time frame of 1917 from the “joyful tears” of February to the “red October” by showing how this was the result of a long series of revolutions. In order to offer readers also an idea of the geographical extent of the action, at the beginning of the book there are two maps: the first is a map of St Petersburg showing almost 60 relevant places – such as the Tauride Palace, the Winter Palace, and also the Pravda editorial offices – and the second one is a general map of all the different regions of European Russia. St Petersburg was without any doubt «the crucible of the revolutions» and «the story of 1917 […] is above all the story of its streets», while the huge Russian Empire – from the Arctic to the Black Sea, from Poland to the Pacific – was the stage of a complex power struggle at the turn of the last century. The geographical dimension is relevant in order to appreciate the characteristics of this huge and complicated country, as the author states in the epilogue of the book: «The specifics of Russia, 1917, are distinct and crucial. It would be absurd, a ridiculous myopia, to hold up October as a simple lens through which to view the struggles of today» (p. 318). In the reconstruction of the turmoil caused by the various alliances and putsches, coups and counter-coups, the history of the Russian Revolution becomes an engaging novel…
