March 1917

The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Translated by Marian Schwartz

Series: Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series

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Published: November 2017

ISBN 9780268102685

$22.99

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Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show, 2018

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the University of Notre Dame Press is proud to publish Nobel Prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s epic work March 1917, Node III, Book 1, of The Red Wheel.

The Red Wheel is Solzhenitsyn’s magnum opus about the Russian Revolution. Solzhenitsyn tells this story in the form of a meticulously researched historical novel, supplemented by newspaper headlines of the day, fragments of street action, cinematic screenplay, and historical overview. The first two nodes—August 1914 and November 1916—focus on Russia’s crises and recovery, on revolutionary terrorism and its suppression, on the missed opportunity of Pyotr Stolypin’s reforms, and how the surge of patriotism in August 1914 soured as Russia bled in World War I.

March 1917—the third node—tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob, but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The action of book 1 (of four) of March 1917 is set during March 8–12. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. Bread riots in the capital, Petrograd, go unchecked at first, and the police are beaten and killed by mobs. Efforts to put down the violence using the army trigger a mutiny in the numerous reserve regiments housed in the city, who kill their officers and rampage. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition, horrified by the violence, scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power, while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it. Meanwhile, Emperor Nikolai II is away at military headquarters and his wife Aleksandra is isolated outside Petrograd, caring for their sick children. Suddenly, the viability of the Russian state itself is called into question.

The Red Wheel has been compared to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for each work aims to narrate the story of an era in a way that elevates its universal significance. In much the same way as Homer’s Iliad became the representative account of the Greek world and therefore the basis for Greek civilization, these historical epics perform a parallel role for our modern world.

"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent many years in the latter part of his long life working on The Red Wheel, a multivolume chronicle of 'the whirlwind of revolution in Russia.' Until now, only two parts of this hugely ambitious work had appeared in English translation, followed by a long hiatus. Now, at last—on the centenary of the Russian Revolution—the first part of another volume has appeared in English, March 1917, with translations of the remainder of the work promised. . . . The Red Wheel—like Solzhenitsyn’s life and work taken whole—is a testament to hope married to determination." —The Christian Century
"The February revolution, in Solzhenitsyn’s considered judgment, was a disaster of the first order and not a welcome, democratic eruption in a country ill-prepared for democracy. A reader of March 1917(Node III of The Red Wheel . . .) would be hard put to quarrel with Solzhenitsyn’s judgment. As this great work of history and literature attests, February indeed was the root of all the evils to come and not a brief shining display of Russian democracy. . . . This action-packed account, beautifully translated by Marian Schwartz, tells the story of one moment in which the failure of good men to act made all the difference in the world." —National Review
"[I]n the volume translated by Marian Schwartz, March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book I, the wheel turns. The Russian Revolution begins, and the chapters become shorter, the rhythm no longer adagio but staccato. Solzhenitsyn doesn’t much care about the literary modernism of Western Europe, but he does imitate the kinetic pace of 20th century cinema. . . . In The Red Wheel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn produced a masterpiece, and proved himself a worthy companion of Dostoevsky and rival of Tolstoy." —Law and Liberty
"The Red Wheel and The Gulag Archipelago have been called Solzhenitsyn’s two 'cathedrals.' You cannot fully understand the horrors of communism and the history of the 20th century without reading them." —New York Journal of Books
"The latest Solzhenitsyn book to appear in English, March 1917, focuses on the great turning point of Russian, indeed world, history: the Russian Revolution. . . . Almost moment by moment, we follow historical and fictional characters from March 8 to March 12, 1917, as chaos unfolds. Although the Kadets think that history must fulfill a story known in advance, Solzhenitsyn shows us a mass of discrepant incidents that fit no coherent narrative." —The New Criterion
"March 1917, node III, gives a sketch of the events in St. Petersburg that culminated in the overthrow of the Tsar. Most striking in this segment is the ineptitude of Russia’s ruling class. Although a decent man, Tsar Nicholas was slow to make decisions, fearful of talented people, and incapable of resolving difficult issues. The ministers who exercised executive power were appointed by the Tsar and therefore lacked energy or ability. . . . Solzhenitsyn’s art allows readers to grasp one of the pivotal episodes in history." —James Pontuso, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Blog
"Histories tend to collapse events into a single narrative; Solzhenitsyn insists on plurality. He explodes the Russian Revolution back into myriad voices and parts, disarrayed and chaotic, detailed and tumultuous. Combining historical research with newspaper headlines, street action, cinematic screenplay, and fictional characterization, the book is as immersive as binge-worthy television, no little thanks to this excellent translation that renders its prose as masterful in English as it was in Russian. In March 1917, Solzhenitsyn attempts the impossible and succeeds, evoking a fully formed world through episodic narratives that insist on the prosaic integrity of every life, from tsars to peasants. What emerges is a rich history that’s truly greater than the sum of its parts." —Foreword Reviews
“'Many readers know that Solzhenitsyn was unjustly imprisoned by the communist regime and wrote about the camps, which are the result of the [Russian] revolution, but few know that Solzhenitsyn in fact dedicated his life to studying the revolution itself, and its causes,' said Stephan Solzhenitsyn. 'You might say that he caught the last train of departing memory. He was able to interview some of the last living participants of those fateful days in 1917, and of the Russian civil war that followed.'" —The Guardian
"The Red Wheel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s epic of World War I and the Russian revolution, belongs to the Russian tradition of vast, densely plotted novels of love and war set during a time of social upheaval. An extended act of author-to-nation communication, this multivolume saga poses the question, 'Where did we go wrong?' and answers it in human and political terms, but with a mystical twist that is unlike anything else in Solzhenitsyn. This translation beautifully conveys the distinctive flavor of Solzhenitsyn’s prose, with its preternatural concreteness of description, moments of surreal estrangement, and meticulous detailing of the nuances of human relationships in the shadow of encroaching chaos. The novel’s reliable, unreliable, and even mendacious character voices, its streams-of-consciousness, and its experimental flourishes possess the same vividness and freshness as they do in Russian. Think Anna Karenina and Doctor Zhivago, with Dostoevsky’s Demons thrown in for good measure." —Richard Tempest, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"In his ambitious multivolume work The Red Wheel(Krasnoye Koleso), Solzhenitsyn strove to give a partly historical and partly literary picture of the revolutionary year 1917. Several of these volumes have been translated into English, but the present volume appears in English for the first time. The translation is very well done and ought to give the reader a better understanding of the highly complex events that shook Russia exactly a century ago." —Richard Pipes, emeritus, Harvard University
"There is no doubt that The Red Wheel is one of the masterpieces of world literature, made all the more precious by its relevance to the tragic era through which contemporary history has passed. Moreover, the impulse of revolutionary and apocalyptic violence associated with the age of ideology has still not ebbed. We remain confronted by the fragility of historical existence, in which it is possible for whole societies to choose death rather than life." —David Walsh, Catholic University of America
"As the great Solzhenitsyn scholar Georges Nivat has written, Solzhenitsyn is the author of two great 'literary cathedrals,' The Gulag Archipelago and The Red Wheel. The first is the definitive exposé of ideological despotism and all of its murderous works. The Red Wheel is the definitive account of how the forces of revolutionary nihilism came to triumph in the first place. It is a sprawling and fascinating mix of philosophical and moral discernment, literary inventiveness, and historical insight that sometimes strains the novelistic form, but is also one of the great works of moral and political instruction of the twentieth century." —Daniel J. Mahoney, co-editor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings

"Progressive historians have whitewashed the Revolution into a 'people’s revolution,' inspired by the benevolent and charismatic Lenin and founded on the humanitarian Marx’s principles of equality. In truth, the Revolution wasn’t even supported by a majority of the proletariat. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s recently translated The Red Wheel: March 1917 . . . [is a] sobering antidote to this naïve view." —Claremont Review of Books

"March 1917 is a long, difficult, confusing masterpiece. No great work of literature is easy to read, but this third installment of The Red Wheel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's narrative of the events leading to the Russian Revolution, is remarkable in its complexity. The novel presents a polyphonic kaleidoscope of people, places, and events, some real, some fictitious." —Society Journal

"Solzhenitsyn's historical epic The Red Wheel, the author's magnum opus, narrates Russia's transition from monarchy to Soviet rule. . . . The present volume, the first book (of four) of the March 1917 node, narrates the events of the Russian Revolution, notably the overthrow of the Tsar's imperial government and the chaos that resulted among opposition leaders unprepared to lead a country in crisis. . . . The Red Wheel is intimidatingly voluminous, but Solzhenitsyn's stream-of-consciousness style—and the clarity of Schwartz's careful translation—makes for an engaging and dynamic experience, whether reading the novel cover to cover or in individual vignettes." —Choice

“Only a great work of art like The Red Wheel can convey the soul of a lawless mob that has lost all sense of measure. . . . This action-packed account, beautifully translated by Marian Schwartz, tells the story of one moment in which the failure of good men to act made all the difference in the world.” –National Review

"In the first volume of March 1917, well translated by Marian Schwartz, many haunting passages can be found, such as Nicholas II's confrontation with the icon of Christ following his tormented abdication." —Times Literary Supplement

“[Solzhenitsyn] lived with the consequences of this cataclysmic historical moment… [The Red Wheel: March 1917, Node III, Book 2] never allows the reader to imagine they have the full story or a definitive answer about everything that happened during the tumultuous few days. Instead it shows the multitudes affected and their immediate, confused, and ignorant responses.” —Soshi’s Book Blog

"[A] translation of the first of . . . four volumes, focused on the initial five days of snowballing street violence, multiplying labor strikes and military mutinies, as well as on the unrelieved hostility of the Duma to a painfully incompetent regime. The fictional elements of the story pale next to the overwhelming drama of the unfolding real historical events." —The Russian Review

"Marian Schwartz, a distinguished translator, has rendered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s March 1917 into English in its entirety for the first time. . . . [Her] translation makes Solzhenitsyn more straightforward by occasionally dropping the façade of antiquated language, . . . March 1917 is part of Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel, a book series in which he conveys why he views not only the October Revolution, but also its predecessor from February 1917 as disasters for Russia." —The Slavic Review

Over the Nikolaevsky Bridge, another life awaited Veronya and Fanya. Left behind was the dozing Tsarist city they detested—and here they had stepped foot into a city of revolution! What this revolution looked like and what this revolution constituted was still not clear. They had never seen one! Still hanging on building walls and fences were the same proclamations by Commander Khabalov with calls for order and with threats—but only his notices. Nowhere were his bristling hordes. There was no guard at the other end of the Nikolaevsky Bridge, or the embankment, or Annunci - ation Square—no police guards anywhere and only rare patrols, whereas the freely scurrying public, with their motley, concerned, joyous faces, included a greater number of soldiers without formation or command and many who had been recovering in hospitals and were now talking excitedly and waving their bandages.
But there was no rally per se, no red flag—so the young women chose to turn toward the center, closer to events. Before them, though, a little to the right, they saw thick clouds of smoke, and they were told that the Lithuanian Fortress was burning and the prison was being liberated. Hurrah! That’s where the girls ran—to liberate the women’s prison!
Before they could get there, though, in front of the Potseluev Bridge on the Moika, they encountered a procession of already liberated women prisoners—a file of twenty or thirty, all wearing prisoner gowns and shoes— and they walked that way down the snowy street, and even though there was not a hard frost—my God!—they had to be clothed somewhere, fed and warmed! Veronya and Fanya rushed toward the file greatly agitated and confused. So how are you? What’s happening? Women, comrades, how can we help you? But the prisoners either had not awoken from their release or had already answered enough on their way. They didn’t even turn their heads but dragged along apathetically, single file, no one answering anything, and only one telling them crudely where they could go.
As if struck, Veronya and Fanya froze, shied away, and let the entire file pass. The fact that they were dressed too nicely had probably offended the prisoners.
Now they felt self-conscious about going to the prison. And they were dissuaded from going to the center by amiable passersby with revolutionary joy on their face: the regime rules there and you should go to the worker and army districts instead. So the young women headed over the Fontanka.
Their expectations were vindicated. Soon they began to hear gunfire: a few adolescents ran past them, firing shiny new black pistols in the air and immediately reloading them from their pockets as they went, something they’d picked up somewhere!
Soon they did see a rally. A student with an officer’s saber strapped on climbed onto a firm mound of snow and spoke very well about freedom, although it was impossible to determine his party orientation—maybe ours, but maybe SR. Listening to him were a few dozen quite random people— wounded soldiers, lower middle-class people, one official. The young women could have stayed and spoken as well, and maybe debated with the student, but now that they had abandoned their own island and duty anyway, they wanted to see more, to take it in and move!
So on they went, on they went.
There was a little scene by a building: a pale man in civilian dress with white hands pressed to his chest was standing there and opposite him was a cluster of about a dozen people of various sorts. Someone shouted, “Let’s take him, comrades!” But a lady asked, “But will you take him to the State Duma?” “We know where we’ll take him!” they shouted at her. While they were talking, the pale man dashed through a gateway, into a courtyard. And the entire bunch went after him, shouting. A shot rang out and the lady on the sidewalk explained to the young women that this was a young policeman who had changed clothes and who lived on their courtyard.
The young women cringed: this was the first death they’d come close to seeing.
Right then there were shouts:
“Ah, the jig’s up! Filthy coppers, black hundreds!”
They walked on. Across the Fontanka it was even livelier. There was another rally—from an unharnessed horse-cart, and with several speakers now. But the young women didn’t stop. They knew perfectly well what was being said here, and they wanted to see and even act.
Here was joy! People were carrying bolts of red bunting out of a dry goods store, and clearly they hadn’t bought it. Straight from the threshold they threw the bolts at the public so that they flew over their heads and came unwound, and then fell on someone’s shoulders or on the pavement. Everyone ran for the bunting and tore at it as if it were more precious than bread. Some carried entire pieces farther on to pass out while the rest ripped it up right there, and someone even took pins from the dry goods store.
How was it the young women hadn’t had that idea before? Now they made large rosettes for their chest and coat. Some made bows, some ribbons. But Fanechka also tore off a long wide ribbon and pinned it slantwise across her shoulder, the way Tsarist dignitaries wore their insignia. Funny!
Some took it for banners, some made red cockades for their caps, and some snatched a scrap and fastened it to a soldier’s bayonet—and he liked that and carried it like that, and everyone shouted loudly.
From that spot, from the passing out of red fabric, when they themselves and all the people around them became colorful, and no one chased the red or came down on them with whips, it was as if everything around them had begun to sing and change with great joy.

March 1917

The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1

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