<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35754984-the-empire-must-die" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1500735863m/35754984.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35754984-the-empire-must-die">The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15575750.Mikhail_Zygar">Mikhail Zygar</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2152603239">3 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
Many thanks go to Mikhail Zygar, Hachette Book Group, and Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. <br />Zygar immediately clarified that he is a journalist and that this book is written from that perspective not necessarily from a purely historical standpoint. It begins around the turn of the twentieth century when the royal family was still on the throne, but social and economic reform was being shouted from the rooftops and the country's most hated man was calling himself religious.<br /><br />I'm sorry, but this book was just too long for me. I was too bogged down in the minutiae of Russian political parties. There is no possible way ANYTHING has been left out of this comprehensive literary masterpiece. It was refreshing to finally read something about this time period that wasn't focused on the Romanovs. Most interesting to me to me were the revelations about Lenin. I also didn't know that most Bolshevics took "brutal sounding pseudonyms": steel, stone, hammer, crowbar for example. Although I cannot deny I learned much from reading this, I can't say how much I actually retained. This book is an excellent reference for this time period, or a great gift for a fan of the Russian state. I'm glad I have it, but I don't see myself retreading it for a very long time.
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In this work Mr. Zygar has penned a fascinating of an often overlooked period of Russian history. While much has been written about the fall of Tsarist Russia and the rise of the USSR under the Bolsheviks, the civil society centered on non-Bolshevik revolutionaries and reactionary forces are often overlooked.

Mr. Zygar seeks to correct this imbalance in this exhaustive account of the period between Tsar Nicholas II's coronation and the collapse of Kerensky's provisional government. A vast array of characters take part from bored sons of wealthy buisinessmen, to great writers such as Tolstoy, Chekov, and Gorky, to radical revolutionaries, the reactionary Black Hundreds, playwrights and ballerinas, to a wide variety of Tsarist officials and princes. In spite of this huge cast, Zygar is generally able to keep this figures unique and the often confusing, to a western reader, list of Russian names easy to distinguish and remember.

The only real issue is the author's frequent asides, comparing the events of the past with contemporary Russia. These comparisons don't always seem apt, pull the reader out of the narrative, and I think it would have been better to simply cover them in the epilogue which does discuss contemporary Russia.

In spite of this, the book is otherwise a superb look at the final years of the Tsar and the stage that was set for the Bolsheviks.

Pros:
+ Russian author who uses history to give insight into current Russian
politics.
+ A super in-depth look at the Russian revolution
+ I’ve read a fair amount about the revolution but never from such varied
perspectives
+ All rubles are converted from 1900s values into modern USD, which REALLY
helps put things into perspective
+ Because it’s told in a journalistic way, there is little bias that colors
the presented people and events
+ The epilogue is so powerful it bumped my rating from a 4 to a 5

Cons:
- Really heavy on names/places, and that can be super overwhelming, espec.
if you but the book down for a few days and forget everything (like me)
- If you prefer your nonfic to focus on personal lives, this one’s not for
you


Sooo nonfic isn’t usually my fare on this blog, but it’s something I’ve been reading a lot of since I graduated high school, and I want more of that on here to be quite honest. After reading The Empire Must Die, I realized something: read from natives. SERIOUSLY. Read books written by the people who the history belongs to.

Not only does it give you a more authentic experience, but it gives you a more relevant and authentic viewpoint.

On that tangent, I have to continue. We in the west have a (massive) tendency to romanticize one thing about Russia, and that’s the Romanovs. Putting aside politics, when the average American thinks about Russia, they think about communism and Anastasia. (I know this because I’m American.) (I’d say it’s pretty damn close to true.)

So that generally means the nonfiction we have about Russia, at least in bookstores and on bestseller lists, are about the Romanovs. OTMA, Nicky and Alix, the days at Ipatiev house, their letters and journals, their lives... or they’re about Stalin and the Cold War. That’s not to say there aren’t books about the revolution--quite the contrary--but rarely do they focus on the everyday. Rarely do they focus on the means it took to get there, and the years of missteps, from the embarrassing to the horrific, that caused the revolution in the first place.

So, to me, this book is unique. It shows the revolution exactly as the cover states: 1900 to 1917, in a journalistic style, from the lives and viewpoints of prevalent figures at the time. There is a huge wealth of information in this book and I feel like seeing the revolutionary strings being pulled, inadvertently or by design, was hugely enlightening.

The fact that this was written by a Russian journalist makes this especially intriguing. The author is able to draw many parallels between the politics in Nicholas II’s government to that of the post-Soviet government. All the sums are converted from rubles to modern USD and the translation is wonderful and well-done.

The biggest thing, though, was the epilogue. I definitely enjoyed and learned from this book, but the epilogue had me straight up on the GROUND. The note the author ended on was hugely powerful and had me emotional. The epilogue ALONE is worth reading the whole book, but it’s fantastic as well, so you really can’t lose.