This October, the University of Notre Dame Press will publish March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 4, the epic conclusion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s four-volume revolutionary saga. For a limited time, we are giving away a book pack of all four books of March 1917! Enter to win by filling out the form at the bottom of this post. This offer expires October 31st and is open to U.S. residents only.
Can’t wait to start reading? Reviewers, bookstore employees, librarians, and other members of the book industry can request a digital review copies through Edelweiss. We encourage you to leave a review if you enjoyed the book.
One of the masterpieces of world literature, The Red Wheel is Nobel prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution told in the form of a historical novel. March 1917—the third node—chronicles the mayhem, day by day, of the Russian Revolution.
Book 1: March 8–12, 1917
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. A cast of more than fifty characters experience the crumbling of the Russian Empire.
Book 2: March 13–15, 1917
The revolution has already won inside the capital, Petrograd. News of the revolution flashes across all Russia through the telegraph system of the Ministry of Roads and Railways. But this is wartime, and the real power is with the army.
Book 3: March 16–22, 1917
The Romanov dynasty ends and the revolution starts to roll out from Petrograd toward Moscow and the Russian provinces. The dethroned Emperor Nikolai II makes his farewell to the Army and is kept under guard with his family. In Petrograd, the Provisional Government and the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies continue to exercise power in parallel.
Book 4: March 23–31, 1917
A cast of thousands are in motion and agitation as every stratum of Russian society—the army on the front lines, the countryside, the Volga merchants, the Don Cossacks, the Orthodox Church—is racked by their confusing new reality. During the chaos, in Switzerland, Lenin quietly dictates his own terms to the German General Staff, setting the stage for his return to Russia.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), Nobel Prize laureate in literature, was a Soviet political prisoner from 1945 to 1953. His story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) made him famous, and The Gulag Archipelago (1973) further unmasked Communism and played a critical role in its eventual defeat. Solzhenitsyn was exiled to the West in 1974. He ultimately published dozens of plays, poems, novels, and works of history, nonfiction, and memoir, including In the First Circle, Cancer Ward, The Red Wheel epic, The Oak and the Calf, and the two-volume Between Two Millstones memoir (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018 and 2020).
Marian Schwartz is a prizewinning translator of classic and contemporary Russian literature, including works by Leo Tolstoy, Nina Berberova, Olga Slavnikova, and Leonid Yuzefovich.
“In The Red Wheel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn produced a masterpiece and proved himself a worthy companion of Dostoevsky and rival of Tolstoy.”
—Law and Liberty