Soviet Preludes
Road to Revolution. By Avrahm Yarmolinsky. (Cassell, 25s.) THERE is a vast literature in Russian on the nine- teenth-century Russian Revolutionary Movement, dating partly from the years 1905 to 1917 and partly from the Soviet period. Far the best single work in a Western language that covers this material is Professor Venturi's 11 Popolismo Russo, published a few years ago, which it is hoped will appear in English translation before long. The present work is by the former Head of the Slavonic Division of the New York Public Library, himself of Russian origin and a most learned scholar.
He begins with a brief survey of the begin- nings of radicalism in eighteenth-century Russia, the Decembrists and Herzen. Here he is following a trail well worn even by historians writing in English. Nearly two-thirds of the book is devoted to the Populist movement of the 1860s and 1870s. On this subject, with the exception of David Footman's study of Zhelyabov, Red Prelude, pub- lished in 1944, there has not been much recent work in English of good quality. Mr. Yarmolinsky presents a good account of the movement of the 1870s, discussing adequately the social back- ground to the movement and the personalities, political ideas and revolutionary methods of its leaders. There are some valuable portrait photo- graphs. His last two chapters deal with the much less well known story of the activities in the 1880s of the remnant of the People's Will organisation.
He concludes his narrative with the execu- tion in May, 1887, of Alexander Ulyanov, and the reputed vow of vengeance made by his younger brother, the later Lenin. The book ends with a brief survey of the situation at the begin- ning of the 1890s; when in intellectual circles Marxism was increasingly replacing Populism.
HUGH SETON-WATSON
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