PDF Russia Under the Old Regime (The History of Civilization Series) by Richard Pipes in History

Review

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Russia under the Old Regime is the sine qua non introduction to the history of an enigmatic and tragic nationBy C. M MillsDr. Richard Pipes is a professor emeritus of Russian History at Harvard University. Pipes; a native of Poland; is the author of many books;articles and lectures on the rise of the Soviet state. The book under review is the first in his trilogy of works dealing with modern Russian history: 1. Russia under the Old Regime; 2. The Russian Revolution; 3. Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. This volume is the shortest in the series. Unlike the other two books; it has no illustrations. The print used is very small making it hard for baby boomer eyes to read. The style is very dry which makes the volume read like a textbook( it is often used in college classrooms on Russia). Despite these caveats the book is well worth reading. It explains such matters as:a. How Russia's short growing season and inclement weather led to a poor standard of living for the population and how Russia lagged behind nations of Western Europe in industrialization.b. Russia has always been ruled by absolute leaders who regard the population as their slaves. From Ivan the Terrible to Stalin the vast land has been ruled by cruelty. Democracy and individual rights have not been practiced in this cruel land.c. Over 80% of the population in Russia has been made up of peasants.d. Communal rather than individually owned farms have been the norm in the long history of Russia.e. Rulers like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great sought to increase Russia's trading and industrial growth but met with mixed success. Peter the Great was also important in creating the civi bureacracy and organizing Europe's largest armed forces.f. The middle class was always small and subservient to strong absolute leaders.g. The intelligensia was the class from which revolutionaries such as Lenin and Trotsky grew to adulthood. This element of society would launch the Russian Revolution of 1917. The book is hard reading but if you want to learn more about Russia it might be your cup of tea.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A deep pre-Lenin history of the Russian peopleBy suePipes nails it. Good pre-Lenin history to help you to culturally understand a people that have been conquered and sold into slavery by the Vikings; then conquered for a long duration by the Mongols. What happens when you blend Slavs with Nordic and Eastern Peoples and put them on poor soils with bad growing seasons? The liturgical Russian Orthodox church that morally looked the other way at critical junctures in Russian History. A hard people living in a hard landscape.It makes me appreciate what we have in North America in terms of the people; the history; the land; and the climate; and the incredible value that the Puritans brought to the New World.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Excellent; well-written book about how Russia came to be.By JRThis book greatly expanded my knowledge of Russian history. It was as though the country was cursed from the beginning: poor land for farming; lack of primogeniture; enslavement for 150 years by the Mongols; a system in which all property belonged to the tsar. Reading Tolstoy; I'd come to regard pre-Soviet Russia as Victorian England East but; having read Russia Under the Old Regime it seems an alien; despotic place.I really like Pipes' writing. It is scholarly to the extent that I occasionally had to look up words; but never dry or boring. Written in 1977; he has a cold war; anti-communist point of view that emerges from time to time. Given the horrors that the Revolution of 1917 brought to Russia; I don't think that this attitude is unwarranted. I'm now reading Orlando Figes' "A People's Tragedy" which covers some of the ground in Old Regime and goes on through the Revolution. By contrast with Pipes; Figes seems less judgemental to the point where you sometimes wish that he would be a little irate about the events he chronicles. When revolution breaks out and the mobs are torturing and killing people in Petrograd; Figes essentially says "well; these things are bound to happen in a social revolution." I'd expect Pipes to be a bit harsher in his treatment of those events. I'll read Pipes' next book; the Russian Revolution when I'm finished with "People's Tragedy."