Fitzpatrick admits to a bias. Hers is that the social dimension of the war was truly important. Her basic question is why the radical regime survived. She states that no revolution is completely successful (161), as the fervent revolutionary zeal always dies. Her curiosity leads her to determine the aspects of the regime that expect terminateuring form and why. She examines the social demands and promises of the revolution that seemed to contribute to preferably lasting results.
The social aspects, in Fitzpatrick's view, have been rather unheeded by traditional historians. Trotsky interpreted the revolutionary gains as political, a dictatorship resting on the foundation of an essentially bourgeois bureaucracy. Western scholars have emphasized the ideological aspects over the social ones. This quality of scholarship views Stalin's dictatorship, Lenin's writings, and the Bolshe
Fitzpatrick's social interest group in the plight of the peasantry is clear in this chapter as she discusses the practicable need for more food and the Red phalanx's forceful transport of produce to feed the urbanites and military. Of course relations became strained surrounded by the peasants and the regime, much to the surprise of the Bolsheviks who assumed that the poor would obediently align with whoever was in power (74). The collective farm idea was kind of contrary to the old method of strip farming in which each farmer was in control of his small holding.
The perplexity about war led Stalin to put much get-up-and-go into the industrialization drive, especially the development of iron and steel plants.
The material industry was allowed to decline because Stalin is said to have remarked that "the Red Army would not fight with leather and textiles but with metal" (119). The end of the revolutionary war coincides with Brinton's idea that life returns to normal, like a patient recovering from a fever. Fitzpatrick's book, The Russian Revolution: 1917-1932, is a useful work for academic purposes. It is a step send from the usual primarily political treatment of Soviet muniment and provides two new viewpoints--that of the Brinton stages of revolutions and the increased development of social aspects of the war. This author's remarkable points of view are substantiated with plentiful evidence. For purposes of learning about the Soviet past and history in general, The Russian Revolution would be useful to a serious student or professional. The only if drawback to this work is that it is not easy reading. It would not appeal to mortal looking for light recreational reading about the Russian Revolution.
In a readable way, Fitzpatrick treats this time period as a discipline of retreat. Its purpose was to restore the shattered frugality and calm the fears of the non-proletarian population (88). It meant relaxation over economic, social and ethnic life and the decrease of force in the Commun
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