ETERNAL Russia! Not the least interesting aspect of this vast and rich survey of the makings of revolution in Russia is the light it casts on Gorbachev's efforts to control the fissiparous political situation at the end of the Eighties and Yeltsin's problems now. In spite of three generations of ideological repression and ardent conformism, basic change was elusive, nationalism in the mainstream and on the ethnic fringe - retained its seductive force, and the old human evils lingered on.
To take one small, pregnant detail: the ill fated attempt to contribute to Russia's evolution, politically and economically, by clamping down on the nation's stupendous alcoholism. Gorbachev, in the decaying days of communism, had the same inhibitory notion as the Tsar when imperialism was speeding to its doom. Of that earlier experiment (wines and brandies, of course, were an exception) Orlando Figes writes, "All in all, weighing up the minor gains in sobriety against the major losses in revenue, controls on inflation, public health and political authority, the ban on vodka was nothing less than a disaster, which in no small way contributed to the downfall of the old regime".
By bringing the focus to bear on the entire pre revolutionary period from the early 1890s, instead of 1905 when the first Duma was wrung from the Tsar, or some later date reflecting communist historical preferences, Figes highlights the real drama of a slow moving but inexorable growth of political consciousness in all strata of society, from the peasants in their largely autonomous villages, to the growing middle class and industrial workers, and some sections of the privileged nobility, of the need for radical change: a stream that converged in revolution, but did not unite the various elements it contained.
The broad focus is supplemented by a narrow one that illustrates the changes effected by the Zeitgeist in a number of individuals whose political and emotional development - is tracked through the book. Of these General Alexei Brusilov was the most intriguing. As the man in charge of the south western front fighting the Austrians, he loyally carried out his duty to the Tsar and was one of the few really effective Russian military strategists. Ironically, it was the Provisional Government under Kerensky who was "obsessed with the trappings of power" and already suffering from the Tsar complex inseparable from leadership in Russia who fired him summarily as the war effort disintegrated.
Brusilov exemplified the strong hold of nationalism on many professional men with modernising inclinations. Faced with the choice between nostalgia for Tsarist autocracy and the new order, he threw in his lot with the Bolsheviks. "Now that the empire had been reconstructed, with the loss of only Poland, the Baltic lands and Finland," Figes writes, "he could rest assured that the Russian national spirit would also be restored."
Patriotism would blunt the Red menace, he thought, and eventually turn it White. The communists returned the old man's rather touching trust by making him inspector of cavalry, and when he died in 1926, his burial at the Novodechie Monastery was a startling mixture of old and new, Red Army chiefs mingling with, but not kowtowing to, the priests of the arcien regime.
There were many others who contributed to the tide. One of the most prominent, Prince Georgii Lvov, who headed the provisional government when it was set up in the early months of 1917 belonged to a debt ridden land owning family that restored its modest fortunes by hard work and pragmatism and became the leader of the Zemstvo Union (promoting local government), a man without ideology or vision, apart from a growing sense of the failure of Tsardom. Another was Sergei Semenov, a progressive farmer and agricultural reformer, who dedicated his life to breaking the stranglehold of the old communal landholding and cropping system, benefited initially from the revolution, and was brutally murdered in 1922 by peasant reactionaries who claimed he had been working for the devil.
Given the powerful forces for change at work, and the total absence of any self preserving instinct in Tsar Nicholas and his courtiers, this book takes on the unstoppable drive of a Greek tragedy. We know how it will end, but as Figes explores the individuals in the drama - the changing alliances among the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, the earlier forms of socialism and nationalism that edged their way, often warily, towards the denouement, the growing disillusion among educated observers at the mismanagement of the war, the brutality and backwardness of peasant life - one is bob bed about by jostling events, continually aware of the interconnectedness of the different elements that led to final collapse.
IT is impossible to underestimate the contribution of the Tsar's dim witted attempt to reverse the reformist attempts of his grandfather, Alexander II, to, his bloody downfall. Figes's opening pages brilliantly recreate the celebrations in 1913 marking the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, an occasion which saw the nobles prancing around in 17th century costumes and using the titles of that epoch. That would have been harmless enough, perhaps, without the war, the slaughter, the stupidity of the toy generals and the mass starvation. But it was all part and parcel of a regime that had lost its ability to rule.
The photographs are well chosen to reinforce the point with their images of fatuous elegance, industrial toil and change. One picture in particular epitomises the degradation and the savagery at the edges of revolution. It shows two peasants turned cannibal, sullenly posing with the dismembered pieces of one of their victims.
