A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution - the definitive history

Orlando Figes

Jan 2017 · Random House

About this ebook

The most vivid, moving and comprehensive history of the Russian Revolution available today.

Unrivalled in scope and brimming with human drama, A People's Tragedy is widely hailed as the definitive account of the Russian Revolution.

Orlando Figes weaves scholarship and storytelling to capture both the epic scale and personal cost of 1917. Gripping and compassionate, he draws on the diaries and letters of workers, soldiers, intellectuals and villagers as their world degenerates into violence and dictatorship, conveying above all the shocking experience of the revolution for those who lived it.

Illustrated with over 100 photographs and now including a new introduction that reflects on the revolution's centennial legacy, A People's Tragedy is - a masterful and definitive record of one of the most important events in modern history

‘A modern masterpiece.’ Andrew Marr

‘The most moving account... since Doctor Zhivago.’ Independent

Ratings and reviews

Excellent book on the details of Tsar’s reign and why the October Revolution took place.

About the author

Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Born in London in 1959, he was previously a Lecturer in History and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. A People’s Tragedy received the Wolfson Prize, the NCR Book Award, the W.H. Smith Literary Award, the Longman/History Today Book Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is the author of many other books on Russian history including Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, The Whisperers: Private life in Stalin’s Russia, Crimea: the Last Crusade and Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag.