The letters of Alexandra Fedorovna to Nicholas II during the war have been edited by Bernard Pares: Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar, 1914–1916 (London, 1923). Nicholas’s letters to his wife during this period are available only in a Russian translation in KA, No. 4 (1923). Immensely valuable are the minutes of the cabinet meetings in 1915–16, prepared by A. N. Iakhontov in Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, XVIII (1926); they have been translated by Michael Cherniavsky as Prelude to Revolution (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967).
The best treatment of Rasputin is by high officials of the security services: S. P. Beletskii, Grigorii Rasputin (Petrograd, 1923), and A. I. Spiridovich, Raspoutine (Paris, 1935).
The situation in Russia on the eve of the February Revolution is reflected in the remarkably objective and well-informed confidential reports by the Corps of Gendarmes, published by B. B. Grave under the misleading title Burzhuaziia naka-nune fevral’skoi revoliutsii [The Bourgeoisie on the Eve of the February Revolution] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927). E. D. Chermenskii’s IV Gosudarstvennaia Duma i sverzhenie tsarizma v Rossii (Moscow, 1976) is a conventional Communist account that has its uses because of the author’s access to archival sources.
The standard history of February 1917 is T. Hasegawa’s The February Revolution: Petrograd, 1917 (Seattle-London, 1981). Very informative is E. I. Martynov’s Tsarskaia armiia v fevral’skom perevorote [The Tsarist Army in the February Revolution] (Leningrad, 1927), which deals with much besides the armed forces and provides solid documentation. S. P. Melgunov’s Martovskie dni [The March Days] (Paris, 1961), as everything by this author, is well informed but contentious and disorganized. Of the memoir literature on 1917, pride of place belongs to the recollections of Nicholas Sukhanov, Zapiski o revoliutsii [Notes on the Revolution], 7 vols. (Berlin-Petersburg-Moscow, 1922–23), a Menshevik who was directly involved in the events and who had, in addition, uncommon literary gifts. A good part of this work has been translated and edited by Joel Carmichaeclass="underline" N. N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution: A Personal Record (Oxford, 1955). Paul Miliukov’s Istoriia Vtoroi Russkoi Revoliutsii [The History of the Second Russian Revolution], 2 pts. (Sofia, 1921), is part history, part memoirs. In English: Paul Miliukov, The Russian Revolution, 3 vols. (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1978). A. Shliapnikov’s Semnadtsatyi god [The Year 1917], 3 vols. (Moscow-Leningrad, various dates in the 1920s), are the memoirs of an important Bolshevik. I. G. Tsereteli’s Vospominaniia 0 Fevral’skoi Revoliutsii, [Memoirs of the February Revolution], 2 vols. (Paris-The Hague, 1963), are an overly long but important account by the Menshevik leader of the Petrograd Soviet. Maxim Gorky’s Untimely Thoughts (New York, 1968), translated by H. Ermolaev, is a collection of his forceful comments in 1917–18 on the pages of the daily Novaia zhizn’.
The basic texts on the abdication of Nicholas II are in P. E. Shchegolev, ed., Otrechenie Nikolaia II [The Abdication of Nicholas II] (Leningrad, 1927).
Part II
A very good account of Russia in 1917–18 is Volume I of William Henry Chamberlin’s Russian Revolution (London and New York, 1935). Leon Trotsky’s The Russian Revolution, 3 vols. (New York, 1937), is partly political tract, partly literature. Peter Scheibert’s Lenin an der Macht [Lenin in Power] (Weinheim, 1984) is a storehouse of little-known information about Russia under Lenin’s rule.
On Lenin, several biographies can be recommended. David Shub, a Menshevik with a keen sense for the milieu in which Lenin worked, is the author of Lenin (New York, 1948; London, 1966). Adam Ulam’s The Bolsheviks (New York, 1965; London, 1966) also focuses on the Communist leader. There are insights into his personality in Leon Trotsky’s O Lénine [About Lenin] (Moscow, 1924) and Maxim Gorky’s Vladimir Il’ich Lenin (Leningrad, 1924). N. Valentinov’s The Early Years of Lenin (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1969) is based on personal conversations.
Lenin’s return to Russia by way of Germany is discussed and documented in W. Hahlweg’s Lenins Rückkehr nach Russland, 1917 [Lenin’s Return to Russia, 1917] (Leiden, 1957). Essential documents on Lenin’s relations with the Germans from the archives of the German Foreign Office have been published by Z. A. B. Zeman, Germany and the Revolution in Russia, 1915–1918 (London, 1958).
Kerensky edited in collaboration with Robert Browder a three-volume collection of documents under the title The Russian Provisional Government, 1917 (Stanford, Calif., 1961). His recollections of 1917 are available in several versions, of which the best are The Catastrophe (New York-London, 1927) and Crucifixion of Liberty (London and New York, 1934). There is an admiring biography by Richard Abraham, Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution (New York, 1987).
The Provisional Government is viewed from the inside in V. D. Nabokov and the Russian Provisional Government, 1917 (New Haven-London, 1976), which contains his memoirs as State Secretary. The best account of the rival organization is by Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets (New York, 1974).
The July Bolshevik putsch has not yet found an authoritative historian. Many key documents have been published under the editorship of D. A. Chugaev, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v iiule 1917 g. [The Revolutionary Movement in Russia in July 1917] (Moscow, 1959). There is a great deal of information on this event as well as on other Bolshevik activities during 1917 in the recollections of the head of Kerensky’s counterintelligence, Colonel B. Nikitin, Rokovye gody (Paris, 1937) (in English: The Fateful Years, London, 1938).
John L. H. Keep’s The Russian Revolution (London, 1976) analyzes the social changes in Russia in 1917–18.
D. A. Chugaev edited a collection of documents on the Kornilov Affair under the title Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v avguste 1917 g.: Razgrom Kornilovskogo miatezha [The Revolutionary Movement in Russia in August 1917: The Crushing of Kornilov’s Mutiny] (Moscow, 1959). Of the secondary accounts, the best are by E. I. Martynov, Kornilov (Leningrad, 1927) (hostile to Kornilov), and George Katkov, The Kornilov Affair (London-New York, 1980) (friendly).