Blood on the Snow: Eyewitness Accounts of the Russian Revolution

Now in paperback—an important history of the Russian Revolution in a collection of incredible eyewitness accounts that redefines the origins of the USSR, and stands as a testament to ordinary people’s courage against the cruelty of war.

This book dramatically reveals, in a chronological story through eye-witness accounts, how the Russian Empire fell in 1917 to a handful of revolutionaries unknown to the masses. It demonstrates the role of Germany supporting the revolutionaries in an attempt to undermine the regime it was unable to defeat on the battlefield. And, it shows the role of the US in financing the revolutionaries in order to get exclusive exploitation rights and contracts mainly for oil and coal.

Prince Felix Yusupov tells of the night that he, along with others, killed the notorious Ras­putin. Tatyana Botkina, daughter of the Czar’s personal physician, wit­nessed her father, along with the Czar and his family, driven from exile to execution. P. N. Malyantovich, Justice Minister of the provisional government, recalls the night that the provisional government was overthrown, and he and the other members of that govern­ment had their lives threatened by an armed mob. Varvara Levitova, a volun­teer nurse who was shot in the battles between the Whites and the Reds, recounts the horrors of the frontline where Russian battled Russian.

The witnesses question commonly held assumptions about the revolution. Was Czar Nicholas II an incompetent and aloof autocrat bent on preserving his own power? Was Lenin a brilliant and popular leader of a popular revolution? Were the people truly clamoring for a revo­lution to transform Russia into a class­less society? From these stories the reality of the Russian Revolution is revealed and we can see the Czar and Lenin, the battles, and the secret meetings, the people, and the events that changed tbe world.