Jonathan Smele – лучшие книги

This volume offers a comprehensive and original analysis and reconceptualization of the compendium of struggles that wracked the collapsing Tsarist empire and the emergent USSR, profoundly affecting the history of the twentieth century. Indeed, the reverberations of those decade-long wars echo to the present day - not despite, but because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which re-opened many old wounds, from the Baltic to the Caucasus. Contemporary memorializing and 'de-memorializing' of these wars, therefore form part of the book's focus, but at its heart lie the struggles between various Russian political and military forces which sought to inherit and preserve, or even expand, the territory of the tsars, overlain with examinations of the attempts of many non-Russian national and religious groups to divide the former empire. The reasons why some of the latter were successful (Poland and Finland, for example), while others (Ukraine, Georgia and the Muslim Basmachi) were not, are as much the author's concern as are explanations as to why the chief victors of the 'Russian' Civil Wars were the Bolsheviks. Tellingly, the work begins and ends with battles in Central Asia - a theatre of the 'Russian' Civil Wars that was closer to Mumbai than it was to Moscow.

The Russian Civil War of 1917-1921 was a cataclysmic series of overlapping conflicts. It was a pivotal event in modern history, and left a deep imprint on the participants and their descendents for decades after its end. It was the Bolshevik victory in this bloody struggle, not in the skirmishes on the streets of Petrograd and Moscow in October 1917, which secured the victory of Soviet Communism and provided the legitimacy for seventy years of rule. The narrowness of Lenin's victory and the principles for which his opponents fought, have been largely neglected. This book traces the clash between the 'Reds' of the Moscow-based Soviet regime and the 'Whites', the militaristic, counter-revolutionary governments which were established around the periphery of Russia and aided by Allied interventionists. In particular, it details the history of the White movement in Siberia, and the fortunes of its leader, Admiral Alexandr Kolchak, the 'Supreme Ruler' of Russia. Using a wide range of contemporary sources, Jonathan Smele examines Kolchak's political and military record, and concludes that the White defeat resulted as much from the harsh facts of Siberian economy and geography as from the failures of White policy and leadership.