Book 1 of March 1917, first published in English by Notre Dame Press three years ago, has been released today in paperback. To catch up on The Red Wheel from the beginning, read August 1914, October 1916, this Book 1 of March 1917, and then Book 2 of March 1917. Book 3 is due out in autumn 2021.
Leona Toker of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a brief review of MARCH-2 in the Summer issue of Russian Review.
“If Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago presented a mindset-changing view of the history of the USSR, the historical novels that make up his epopee The Red Wheel are a counterweight to the heroics of the October Revolution. Solzhenitsyn considers the February Revolution of 1917 not just a prelude to the October Bolshevik usurpation of power but a seminal event—the catastrophe of the Russian Empire, which, despite the idealistic dreams of liberals and social democrats, led to a new form of tyranny, incalculable suffering and mortality of the population, and waste of the country’s talents and resources.”
An impressive and smart review of March 1917, Book 2, also taking into account its precursors—August 1914 and October 1916, as well as Book 1 of March.
““Revolutionary truths,” Solzhenitsyn writes, “have a great quality: even hearing them with their own ears, the doomed don’t understand.” There’s a moment in the revelry, after the soldiers have all donned red, after every policeman has been shot or bayoneted, when intellectuals who called loudest for revolution realize there are no patrols to fend off drunken gangs, nor courts to repudiate armed students arresting whomever they please for “crimes against the people.” In this brave new world, rule of law has been displaced by the rule of gun-toting loudmouths. It’s too late for them, and for the millions who will be subjected to lifelong suffering because ideologically enthralled intellectuals hammered away at society’s foundation until it collapsed. After Lenin comes Stalin. He always does.”
From the May issue of CHOICE magazine:
“Most readers know the name Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but few have heard of—and even fewer have read—The Red Wheel, the author’s longest and most challenging novel, which comprises ten volumes in total. The present volume is book 2 of the March 1917 node, which dramatizes the tumultuous events of the March Revolution—a workers’ strike in Petrograd; abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and house arrest of the Romanov family; establishment of a provisional government to rule over Russia. Although The Red Wheel is fiction, Solzhenitsyn prided himself on the historical accuracy of his work. He spent ten years writing the March 1917 node, adding psychological depth, descriptive details, and, occasionally, his own views to bring well-known personalities and events to life. Solzhenitsyn’s decision to write the novel in vignettes, ranging from several pages to several lines, opens the book to a variety of readers and approaches to reading. Occasionally Solzhenitsyn advances the plot through authentic genres from the period, including telegrams, correspondence, slogans, and official reports. Schwartz’s translation is lively and contemporary. The appendix provides four maps and a helpful index of names that can serve as a reader’s guide through Solzhenitsyn’s maze of embellished historical encounters, which capture the events of March 1917 from many perspectives.”
Richard Tempest reviews the newly-appeared March 1917, Book 2 in the current issue of National Review.
“Contrary to Tolstoy in War and Peace, Solzhenitsyn means to demonstrate that, at the decisive “nodal” moments of history, the action or inaction of a single individual may have a decisive impact on the course of events. In March 1917, for example, Nicholas II, Aleksandr Kerensky, the future head of the provisional government, and Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party, are the most important characters, though plenty of attention is paid to the doings and sayings of other prominent personalities from the theaters of war, politics, and culture, such as General Mikhail Alekseev, chief of the imperial GHQ; Pavel Milyukov, the foreign minister of the provisional government; and Maxim Gorky, the allegedly proletarian writer who supported the Bolshevik cause.”
Gary Saul Morson reviews the newly-appeared March 1917, Book 2 at the American Scholar.
“To capture such confusion as it was experienced, Solzhenitsyn divides nearly 700 pages into 182 brief chapters jolting among countless narrative threads. We witness decisions taken on the basis of rumors later revealed to be false. We see that Petrograd (as St. Petersburg became known after 1914) was not overrun by an organized group of class-conscious revolutionary workers, as Soviet historians later claimed, but by a rabble of drunkards, released criminals, and soldiers who murdered their officers. “That’s what’s freedom’s for,” one rioter explains. “I shoot wherever I want.” The result is a world reminiscent of Hobbes’s struggle of all against all: “In all the city, each person could protect only himself and expect an attack from anyone and everyone. … It was as if the capital itself were drunk.”
Only intellectuals who have read too many romanticized accounts of the French Revolution could celebrate this violence and expect anything good to come from it. With his trademark irony, reminiscent of Edward Gibbon, Solzhenitsyn describes the puzzlement of one government official unable to recognize in this mob “the noble Face of the People” idealized by thinkers across the political spectrum.”
Over at Law & Liberty, Will Morrisey reviews March 1917, Book 2.
“Although in one sense a historical novel—most of the characters are real people, and Solzhenitsyn deploys them not as mere cameos but as men and women in full—of all his novels so far, this one feels the most immediate, the most current. The freneticism, violence, confusion, and disorientation of Russians in Petrograd from March 13 through March 15 of 1917 can also be seen in minds and actions of Chinese in Hong Kong, right now. No one knows exactly what to do, although many suppose they do. And even if we didn’t know how the revolution did end, we can see it won’t end well. No one surpasses Solzhenitsyn in conveying a sense of what it feels to live at and near the center of this kind of vortex.”
Russian Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is the author of two great “literary cathedrals,” The Gulag Archipelago and The Red Wheel, the latter of which is an account of Russia’s path to revolution and totalitarianism in the years culminating in 1917. In the third volume of The Red Wheel, entitled March 1917, the story arrives at “the revolution at last.” At the Kennan Institute a few days ago, Professor Daniel Mahoney discussed March 1917 in relation to The Red Wheel as a whole – that is August 1914, October 1916, the four books of March 1917, and the two books of April 1917. The just published English-language version of March 1917, Book 2, a work of both literature and dramatic history, chronicles the fateful days of March 13-15, which led to the collapse of the autocracy and the origins of the Russian Revolution.
Listen above.
The first review of March 1917, Book 2 is out—from Daniel J. Mahoney, writing in the December issue of the New Criterion (subscription required), under the headline ACCELERATING TO OBLIVION. Here is a powerful excerpt:
“Book 2 ends with art of a very high order. In chapter 349, Guchkov and Shulgin visit Tsar Nikolai II in the royal train car which has been circling the capital for three days. The Emperor is without an adequate sense of the extent of the collapse that has taken part in St. Petersburg and its environs. All Nikolai can think of is returning to his beloved Alix, the Empress of Russia, and his sick children. He is incapable of thinking politically or acting like a statesman who is obliged to preserve civilized order against the revolutionary deluge. Unbeknown to Guchkov and Shulgin, Nikolai has already been persuaded by his aide-de-camp Ruzsky to sign an abdication. But Nikolai waffles. He refuses to abandon the heir, suffering as the boy is from hemophilia, and to leave him to elements the Emperor cannot trust. In a chapter that is quietly suspenseful, and riveting in its own way, we see the shock of all concerned when Nikolai modifies the abdication to include himself and his son, thus turning the throne over to his brother Mikhail. But he has not consulted with Mikhail and thus has no idea if he will indeed accept the throne (he does not). Once more, the last Russian Tsar puts family—and personal concerns—above his political responsibilities. And in chapter 353, we see “The Emperor Alone” after his abdication, at peace (of sorts), but still hoping for a miracle or divine intervention to make everything right. Passive as always, he never understood that Providence works, at least in part, in cooperation with human virtue and free will. His passivity ended up dooming an empire and paved the way for seventy years of inhuman and absolutely unprecedented totalitarianism.”
The Red Wheel, Node III, March 1917, Book 2 is available today for the first time in English from University of Notre Dame Press, from Amazon, or wherever books are sold.
With this volume we arrive at “the revolution at last" with an utterly passive and inconsequential Tsar, feckless liberals and socialists in the new Provisional Government (who see no enemies to the Left), disciplined totalitarian socialists with their eyes on the prize, and revolutionary mobs, drunk with the spirit of revolution and destruction. “The Red Wheel” is beginning to arrive at its destination… And there is some superb writing on Solzhenitsyn's part: expertly drawn streets scenes or fragments that capture the collective nihilism of the revolutionary crowds, and a remarkable chapter on the abdication of Tsar Nikolai—not to mention the devastating portrait of the vain Kerensky, and many others. The book covers three dramatic and consequential days, March 13-15, 1917.
We remind Solzhenitsyn readers of the overall sequence of the 10-volume Red Wheel:
Node I: August 1914, Books 1 & 2 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, published in one volume)
Node II: November 1916, Books 1 & 2 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, published in one volume)
Node III: March 1917, Book 1 (University of Notre Dame Press)
Node III: March 1917, Book 2 (University of Notre Dame Press)
Node III: March 1917, Book 3 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
Node III: March 1917, Book 4 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
Node IV: April 1917, Book 1 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
Node IV: April 1917, Book 2 (forthcoming—University of Notre Dame Press)
To inform readers about Solzhenitsyn’s system of “Nodes”, and also to explain the definitive term “Node” (instead of the older “Knot”), here is a portion of the Publisher’s Note that accompanies each of the Notre Dame volumes:
The English translations by H.T. Willetts of August 1914 and November 1916, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1989 and 1999, respectively, appeared as Knot I and Knot II. The present translation, in accordance with the wishes of the Solzhenitsyn estate, has chosen the term “Node” as more faithful to the author’s intent. Both terms refer, as in mathematics, to discrete points on a continuous line. In a 1983 interview with Bernard Pivot, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described his narrative concept as follows: “The Red Wheel is the narrative of revolution in Russia, its movement through the whirlwind of revolution. This is an immense scope of material, and . . . it would be impossible to describe this many events and this many characters over such a lengthy stretch of time. That is why I have chosen the method of nodal points, or Nodes. I select short segments of time, of two or three weeks’ duration, where the most vivid events unfold, or else where the decisive causes of future events are formed. And I describe in detail only these short segments. These are the Nodes. Through these nodal points I convey the general vector, the overall shape of this complex curve.”
Learn more about the forthcoming English publication of March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 2, due out for the first time in English, translated by Marian Schwartz, 15 November from University of Notre Dame Press.
Foreword Reviews recently announced their 2017 Indie Finalists; they have named March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1 as a finalist in the History category. Foreword Reviews highlights the best of the indie book publishing industry, including independent publishers and university presses. University of Note Dame Press published Book 1 of March 1917 in November 2017 as the first volume in its ongoing The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series.
“Histories tend to collapse events into a single narrative; Solzhenitsyn insists on plurality. He explodes the Russian Revolution back into myriad voices and parts, disarrayed and chaotic, detailed and tumultuous. Combining historical research with newspaper headlines, street action, cinematic screenplay, and fictional characterization, the book is as immersive as binge-worthy television, no little thanks to this excellent translation that renders its prose as masterful in English as it was in Russian.”
Daniel J. Mahoney's review of March 1917, Book 1 (originally appearing in National Review) has been re-published today at VoegelinView.
March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1 was selected by the Association of University Presses for the 2018 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show. Jeff Miller, a designer with Faceout Studio, and Wendy McMillen, production and design manager of the University of Notre Dame Press, collaborated on the design. The design was one of 53 chosen from a total of 375 submissions. The show is held each year to celebrate the year's best work in design and production in university presses. The show will be exhibited across the U.S. from June 2018 to May 2019; the first show opens June 17th in San Francisco during the 2018 AUPresses Annual Meeting
Since 1965, the Association of University Presses has held the Book, Jacket, and Journal Show each year to highlight achievements in design and production in university presses. The winning books and journals for 2018, selected by jurors in New York City, will be displayed in the annual catalog and the traveling show, which premiers in San Francisco on June 17, and continues throughout North America until May 2019.
Guy Burnett reviews March 1917, Book 1 in tandem with Catherine Merridale's Lenin on the Train.
“There was no shortage of blame, but Solzhenitsyn shows how the most dangerous blunders leading up to October 1917 were the Czar’s. He presents Nicholas II as a naïve but devoted family man, a great neighbor but poor leader, whose faith in the protestors was his undoing.”
The novelist Jeff Bursey reviews March 1917, Book 1, suggesting that it is very much a modernist novel, even as History herself emerges as a "skillfully drawn character in this portrait of Russia on the eve of its transformation".
“What we have, so far, of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s mega-novel The Red Wheel is correspondingly inventive, despairing, sharp, acidic, lyrical, and panoramic, with shafts of insight illuminating murky or forgotten corners.”
A probing review of March 1917, Book 1, posted today.
“Solzhenitsyn has made this mob of characters and passions, this kinesis of revolution, intelligible. For this his work deserves to be read not only in Russia but everywhere. The thoughts of the characters, their understandable confusion, their elation or despair, come through without any resort to moral relativism. In scenes that parallel one another, Solzhenitsyn gives us mind after mind, capturing the insights but also the illusions of each. When he intervenes in his own voice he speaks not with narrative omniscience, which he leaves to God, but with narrative judgment, which as a Christian he shares a bit with God, thanks to God.”
Insightful review of March 1917, Book 1 from renowned Solzhenitsyn scholar Daniel J. Mahoney in the new issue of National Review.
“This volume consists of 170 chapters (out of 656 in March 1917 as a whole), most of them relatively brief. One experiences on every page the frenzied pace of events spiraling completely out of control.”
The University of Note Dame Press has announced a major new Solzhenitsyn series, called The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series. March 1917: Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1, the first book in this series, will be published later this month. It is the continuation of Solzhenitsyn's epic Red Wheel novel, which begins with August 1914, then October 1916, and now March 1917.
James Pontuso, writing at the Victims of Communism blog: "Solzhenitsyn’s multi-volume The Red Wheel attempts to answer the question: why did the Russian Revolution occur?”
“It was in this chaotic situation that the peculiar talents of Vladimir Lenin came into play. Solzhenitsyn portrays Lenin throughout The Red Wheel as disciplined, self-assured, cunning, and ruthless.”
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