Prelude to Revolution: Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising

… an expert work… remarkable for its objectivity, judiciousness, and its sure handling of the available evidence. -Political Science Quarterly

… a fine piece of historical writing. -Soviet Studies

An able and scholarly inquiry into the perplexing abortive Petrograd uprising of June and July 1917… a very interesting view of revolutionary action on the local level. -Foreign Affairs

First published in 1968, this pioneering study of revolutionary events in Petrograd in the summer of 1917 revised the established view of the Bolsheviks as a monolithic party. Rabinowitch documents how the party’s pluralistic nature had crucial implications for the outcome of the revolution in October.