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Article: A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra. Their Own Story.
- Article from:
- Contemporary Review
- Article date:
- June 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Contemporary Review Company Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Orlando Figes' history of the Russian Revolution is history on the grand scale and its arrangements, as opposed to its contents, owe more to Tolstoy than to E.H.Carr or Richard Pipes. Mr Figes is as much an artist painting a great mural as an historian explaining the hows and whats and whys of the past. Just as an artist will paint human figures against a vast landscape, so Mr Figes tries to make sense of his mammoth canvas by weaving into the text, of which there are 824 pages, the careers of five figures: three of these are well known - Maxim Gorky, General Brusilov and Prince Lvov - and two are unknown - Sergei Semenov, a peasant reformer and Dmitry Os'kin, a peasant who ...