A Russian Civil War Diary Alexis Babine 1917-1922

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"There are very few surviving memoirs by witnesses to the tragic events in revolutionary Russia between 1917 and 1922. Babine's diary is particularly useful because it reflects the experiences and thinking of an average member of the provincial middle class .... "The diary has been well edited by Professor Raleigh, a specialist on Saratov, who has added useful annotations and a preface .... Babine restores to historical discourse a sense of what it was like to live through a time of great uncertainty and confusion, when orderly government had broken down and one's fate might well be determined by the whim of some informer or political gangster. It should be read with appreciation by [those] interested in the circumstances in which the Soviet regime was born." -John Keep, University of Toronto In the fall of 1917, Alexis V. Babine, a Russian-born American educated at Cornell University, accepted an appointment as instructor in English at the newly opened university in the Russian provincial capital of Saratov. That October, the Russian Revolution broke out, followed by a cataclysmic civil war. Babine remained in Saratov as a teacher throughout most of the Civil War; this is his diary from that period, retrieved from the obscurity of the Library of Congress archives. The rich detail on life in Saratov during the Civil War affords a rare, poignant, and visceral view of war and revolution in a provincial town and brings to life the terrible daily struggle to survive. The work provides invaluable insights into the course of the Civil War and the day-to-day workings of the revolutionary process at the grass-roots level. From the time of Babine's arrival in Saratov until his escape with the help of the American Relief Administration (which opened an office in Saratov to distribute food to the victims of famine), the diary captures the distinct texture of civil war during five years of tumultuous disorder, deprivation, and personal danger. Front 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 Selected Bibliography Index Back