Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 by Antony Beevor – a ‘grimly magnificent’ book
This is an ‘unceasingly agonising, yet always irresistible’ work

Antony Beevor’s new book, a history of the Russian Civil War, is “easily the most horrifying war story I’ve ever read”, said Gerard DeGroot in The Times. The four-year conflict, a period of “unrelenting terror”, caused as many as ten million deaths.
Beevor begins by “speeding through the familiar ground of the revolution”: the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917, the establishment of a provisional government soon afterwards, and its toppling in November, which marked the beginning of Bolshevik rule.
Next came what he calls a “kaleidoscope of chaos”, as the Bolsheviks fought to resist the counter-revolutionary White Russian forces. In a war of wild strategic swings – one railway station in Ukraine changed hands 28 times – both sides showed “boundless cruelty”, with “ordinary Russians” (and women especially) suffering the most. Finally, in 1921, the Bolsheviks prevailed – mainly because “White aspirations were incompatible with 20th century ideals”.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Meticulously researched and superbly written, this is an “unceasingly agonising, yet always irresistible” work. Beevor has always been “keener on gory detail than analysis”, said Dominic Sandbrook in The Sunday Times – and much of the violence he describes here is “mind-bogglingly horrible”.
In Azerbaijan, women smeared themselves with excrement to avoid being raped by the Cossack soldiers fighting for the Whites – but “the soldiers simply wiped it off with rags and raped them anyway”. No less inhumane were the Bolshevik Cheka (secret police), who carried out the Red Terror – Lenin’s campaign against bourgeois “vermin”. When transporting prisoners by train, Chekists would randomly roast some alive in the locomotive’s furnace. One of their favourite torture techniques was to burn a prisoner’s hand, before slowly peeling off the skin in a perfect “glove”.
Although the Russian Civil war was “one of the most colossally damaging conflicts of the 20th century”, there haven’t been many general accounts of it, said Noel Malcolm in The Daily Telegraph. Beevor’s “grimly magnificent” book makes you see why – for this was a conflict that was “complex to the point of near-chaos”.
Military action was often indistinguishable from “foraging and plunder”, and the war sucked in many foreign powers (including Japan, China, America and Britain) and extended across a mammoth area (not only the whole of Russia, but also the “crescent of bordering states” to its west). It’s a story that’s hard to make sense of – but “Beevor tells it supremely well”.
W&N 576pp £30; The Week Bookshop £23.99 (incl. p&p)
The Week Bookshop
To order this title or any other book in print, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk, or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835. Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
The Week Unwrapped: How did Japan become a space superpower?
Podcast Plus, why on earth are Labubu dolls so popular? Will buy-now-pay-later cause a new financial crisis?
-
The week's best photos
In Pictures A tomato fight, painting behind bars, and more
-
Mountainhead: Jesse Armstrong's tech bro satire sparkles with 'weapons-grade zingers'
The Week Recommends The Succession creator's first feature film lacks the hit TV show's 'dramatic richness' – but makes for a horribly gripping watch
-
Mountainhead: Jesse Armstrong's tech bro satire sparkles with 'weapons-grade zingers'
The Week Recommends The Succession creator's first feature film lacks the hit TV show's 'dramatic richness' – but makes for a horribly gripping watch
-
Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists – a 'riveting' exhibition
The Week Recommends Pallant House exhibition offers fascinating instances of painterly reciprocity
-
Geoff Dyer shares his favourite books on war
The Week Recommends Out of Sheer Rage author chooses works by Martha Gellhorn, Michael Herr and Dexter Filkins
-
6 sun-drenched homes by the sea
Feature Featuring a large patio overlooking the ocean in Laguna Beach and a marble rainfall shower in Norwalk
-
Garsington Opera opens its summer festival with two 'very different productions'
The Week Recommends A 'fabulous' new staging of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Donizetti's fake-love-potion comedy L'elisir d'amore
-
The Rehearsal series two: Nathan Fielder's docu-comedy is 'laugh-out-loud funny'
The Week Recommends Television's 'great illusionist' has turned his attention to commercial airline safety
-
The Ballad of Wallis Island: bittersweet British comedy is a 'delight'
The Week Recommends A reclusive millionaire lures his favourite folk duo to an island for an 'awkward reunion'
-
Aston Martin Vantage Roadster: 'a rare treat indeed'
The Week Recommends The Roadster version of Aston Martin's new Vantage coupé makes even 'the most mundane journey feel special'