In Blood on the Snow Robert Service returns to the subject that has formed the backbone of
his long and distinguished career: the Russian Revolution. 'A terrific book about a terrifying
subject by the best historian of Russia working today' - Michael Burleigh author of The Third
Reich For Service the great unanswered question is how to reconcile the two narratives that
underpin the troubled events of 1917. One puts the blame squarely on Tsar Nicholas II and on
Alexander Kerensky's provisional government that deposed him. The other is the view from the
bottom that of the workers and peasants who wanted democratic socialism not the Bolshevik
dictatorship imposed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his successors. Service's vivid and
revisionist account spans the period from the outbreak of the First World War to Lenin's death
in 1924. He reveals that key seeds of the revolution were sown by the Tsar's decision to join
the war against Germany in 1914. He shows with brutal clarity how those events played out
eventually leading to the establishment of the totalitarian Soviet regime which would endure
for the next seven decades. Nicholas II Kerensky and Lenin are to the fore but Service
enriches his narrative by drawing on little-known diaries of those such as the Vologda peasant
Alexander Zamaraev the NCO Alexei Shtukaturov and the Moscow accounts clerk Nikita Okunev.
Through the testimony of these 'ordinary' people Service traces the tortuous path that Russia
took through war revolution and civil war in his trademark engaging style. 'This
authoritative detailed account shows how Lenin won control of Russia and caused untold misery
. . . ' - The Times
