MixedThe Financial Times (UK)... makes compelling use of comparable witness testimony, including material from Russian archives gathered by his collaborator and friend, Lyubov Vinogradova ... After a routine account of the upheavals of 1917 — popular unrest in Petrograd; Romanov abdication; Bolshevik coup; suppression of elections — Beevor hits his stride with the formation of the Volunteer Army and rising military opposition to the Bolsheviks ... While Beevor’s canvas is tighter than Smele’s, the book gives a sense of this lasting resonance ... Beevor spares no detail in his account of cruelty on the Soviet side ... As an account of internecine inhumanity, Russia has panoramic sweep. Had Beevor pushed harder to explain that inhumanity, the book might have been thought-provoking too.
