Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution
(1917-1921) , by Orlando Figes (Oxford University Press, $72).
Why did the Bolsheviks win the civil war that followed the
October revolution of 1917? After all, their support was
centered mainly in the big cities among members of a working
class that numbered only 3 to 4 million people out of a total
population of 160 million. In other words, 4 out of 5 Russians
were peasants. The author of this important work, a young
British historian, was permitted unparalleled access to the
Soviet archives. His is the first non-Soviet history of the
relationship between the Bolsheviks and the peasants in the
critical period of the revolution. Figes concludes that the
Bolsheviks prevented a counterrevolution in rural Russia by
destroying the power of the landowners, strengthening the middle
peasantry, eliminating rural poverty and , encouraging literacy.
"Once the famine crisis had been overcome and the economy
restored to peaceful conditions, the Russian peasa