This book, based on extensive original research, examines the widespread and violent pogroms against Jews which took place in the Russian Empire in 1905. It briefly surveys the earlier history of Jews in the Russian Empire and the discriminatory policies against them. The work outlines the extent of the killings and lootings in 1905, explores the role of the authorities who were often neutral or complicit in the violence, and highlights Jewish self-defense measures. It relates the pogroms to the place of the Jews in Russian urban and rural life, to social change and modernisation, and to the revolutionary events of 1905, in which Jews played a prominent role, and during which calls for ethnic self-determination arose among many nationalities of the Russian Empire, most broadly and consequentially among Jews. Overall, the book views the pogroms as a consequence not only of Russian antisemitism, but of the broader, revolutionary breakdown of Russian state and society in 1905.

Readings on the Russian Revolution brings together 15 important post-Cold War writings on the history of the Russian Revolution. It is structured in such a way as to highlight key debates in the field and contrasting methodological approaches to the Revolution in order to help readers better understand the issues and interpretative fault lines that exist in this contested area of history. The book opens with an original introduction which provides essential background and vital context for the pieces that follow. The volume is then structured around four parts – 'Actors, Language, Symbols', 'War, Revolution, and the State', 'Revolutionary Dreams and Identities' and 'Outcomes and Impacts' – that explore the beginnings, events and outcomes of the Russian Revolution, as well as examinations of central figures, critical topics and major historiographical battlegrounds. Melissa Stockdale also provides translations of two crucial Russian-language works, published here in English for the first time, and includes useful pedagogical features such as a glossary, chronology, and thematic bibliography to further aid study. Readings on the Russian Revolution is an essential collection for anyone studying the Russian Revolution.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 has often been presented as a complete break with the past, with everything which had gone before swept away, and all aspects of politics, economy, and society reformed and made new. Recently, however, historians have increasingly come to question this view, discovering that Tsarist Russia was much more entangled in the processes of modernisation, and that the new regime contained much more continuity than has previously been acknowledged. This book presents new research findings on a range of different aspects of Russian society, both showing how there was much change before 1917, and much continuity afterwards; and also going beyond this to show that the new Soviet regime established in the 1920s, with its vision of the New Soviet Person, was in fact based on a complicated mixture of new Soviet thinking and ideas developed before 1917 by a variety of non-Bolshevik movements.

This book brings together the large volume of work on late Tsarist Russia published over the last 30 years, to show an overall picture of Russia under the last two tsars - before the war brought down not only the Russian empire but also those of Germany, Austria–Hungary and Turkey. It turns the attention from the old emphases on workers, revolutionaries, and a reactionary government, to a more diverse and nuanced picture of a country which was both a major European great power, facing the challenges of modernization and industrialization, and also a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional empire stretching across both Europe and Asia.

Laura Engelstein, one of the greatest scholars of Russian history, has written a searing and defining account of the Russian Revolution, the fall of the old order, and the creation of the Soviet state.

Rosa Luxemburg's corruscating politics texts on the 1905 Revolution This collection is the first of three volumes of the Complete Works devoted to the central theme of Rosa Luxemburg’s life and work—revolution. Spanning the years 1897 to the end of 1905, they contain speeches, articles, and essays on the strikes, protests, and political debates that culminated in the 1905 Russian Revolution—one of the most important social upheavals of modern times. Luxemburg’s near-daily articles and reports during 1905 on the ongoing revolution (which comprises the bulk of this volume) shed new light on such issues as the relation of spontaneity and organization, the role of national minorities in social revolution, and the inseparability of the struggle for socialism from revolutionary democracy. We become witness to Luxemburg’s effort to respond to the impulses, challenges, and ideas arising from a living revolutionary process, which in turn becomes the source of much of her subsequent political theory—such as her writings on the mass strike, her strident internationalism, and her insistence that revolutionary struggle never take its eyes off of the need to transform the human personality. Virtually all of these writings appear in English for the first time (translated from both German and Polish) and many have only recently been identified as having been written by Luxemburg.